When the recession was over? When did that happen?
Bush inherited a surplus and flushed it down the toilet. Obama inherited a budget with giant leak in it, caused by the previous administration.
My biggest problem with Obama is that he just has not behaved in a very presidential manner. When he was elected, I was filled with hope and the belief that he would make big changes in the country to right the wrongs plaguing us. But he has never seemed to explain what he was doing in a plain and simple way (i.e. using “plain talk”).
When I look back in history and listen to ex-presidents like FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, (skipping over Nixon), Regan, etc., they all seem to speak in a presidential manner. It’s not just the tone of voice they use and their vocabulary, but they also discussed issues in a presidential manner. I don’t know when this seemed to change. Certainly, by the time of George W, it had changed. He did not seem at all presidential. Do you remember all those gaffs he made that Letterman broadcast? It seemed like every night Dave had a new gaff to show us that was made by W. He came across in a manner that couldn’t seem to be less presidential. He seemed to be a fool - not at all like a US president.
I know this is not a serious complaint based on facts and logic. But it just seems to me that even though BO tries to sound serious and he tries to sound presidential, to my ears, he just falls flat.
Do you remember hearing about FDR’s fireside chats? Well BO knows the kinds of things that are bothering his constituency. I would expect that he would come out and hold something like a fireside chat to explain and reassure us as to his view of the problems and tell us his plans for making things better. What is he doing to make things better how will his plans go about accomplishing those goals?
Given that he has put himself forward as a man of the people, I would have expected that he would have talked to us and explained to us in simple terms:
- What is his view of the problems facing the nation.
- What are his plans for resolving those problems.
- How will his plans resolve those problems.
In other words, based on the campaigin he ran, I would have expected that he would have told us, in plain talk, just what is wrong and how he is going to make things right. But that has never happened. It seems to me that he has just been working behind closed doors and has never really let us in on what is going on.
Well, I’m sorry that I have written this post “off the cuff” so to speak. For something this serious I would have normally liked to have taken a day and edited this post. But I hope I have communicated my basic source of discontent with BO. It is about the fact that I expected him to communicate with us in “plain talk” just what problems we faced and how he was going to lead us into resolving those problems. And that has just never happened.
Wow! You made such a nice short post. But it seems to have encapsulated all that I was trying to say in my big long-winded post above.
I may be wrong, But I have always had the feeliing that most of the nation would agree with your sentiments. I know I could be wrong. But at least, I know that I agree with them.
There can be no doubt that he is far better than his opponents (I mean Sarah Palin?) or than the George W. administration. But that doesn’t really mean that BO is doing a good job.
Obama does a weekly video address. Go here to see them all.
By the commonly used technical measure of “recession” in the United States (which is to say, the NBER’s determination of things), a recession ends when the various macroeconomic indicators bottom out and start heading up in a positive direction again. The most important indicator is GDP, and it bottomed out last year. Around the time that GDP bottomed out and headed up again will be marked as the official end of the recession.
I must hasten to add, though, that the output gap is still incredibly large. We like to talk about “deficit spending during a recession” out of convenience, but actually, the macroeconomic validity of deficit spending remains valid for as long as a large output gap persists. This was an incredibly large recession, a Great Recession, and our current output gap will persist for many years.
Fave, still fav.
- His opposition had nothing that could compete with him, they still don’t.
- He’s inherited a massive clusterf*&% and as such it is unrealistic to assume he’s going to solve the nation’s problems inside of 2 years.
- He’s level-headed under fire and I am in lockstep agreement with his foreign policy.
- I’m disappointed that the disgrace at Guantanamo hasn’t been fixed, but he’s had a lot of big fish to fry, and now there’s the Gulf of Mexico spill. “The needs of the many…” and all that.
- My only criticism is that he’s not enough of a dictator. Whether he lacks the ability to bully, cajole and convince, or simply the desire to do it, he’s fighting harder with congress than I like. hell, he even has trouble with Democrats. Clinton was “blood in” and pretty much got his agendas advanced with token resistance.
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Inigo Montoya,
I have always thought the disgrace at Guantanamo was part and parcel of the disgrace of the two wars he inherited.
I had always hoped that BO would have come to us with some kind of intelligent plan for ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and helping us to get out of those wars.
But, I don’t seem to have ever seen or heard him come out with any kind of definitive plan to help us get the heck out of those two miseries. It just seems to me that we are coasting along in both wars spending a fortune in money as well as the lives of so many of our best and brightest young people.
Shouldn’t the president be leading us in a plan to stop both of those gushing geysers of money and human lives?
I realize that I never heard him promise to end these wars. But wouldn’t you expect that to be a high priority?
The dude fixed the economy in 6 months. Fricken amazing. I’m willing to give him a free ride until his first term is over.
But, I also blame Bush for current problems. Untangling his shit will take decades and multiple presidents.
Pretty much everything Tom Scud said, with the same somewhat unsatisfactory vote choice. I didn’t expect a great deal, but hoped he might have been a bit bolder out of the starting blocks. I still think he was the preferred option ( and it would take quite a bit to change my mind on that count ), but he has been a bit more blah and generic politician than I had hoped at my most optimistic.
Favorable with reservations originally, favorable with reservations now.
Well, what would you have him do? We can’t just leave. Iraq had nothing to do with the War on Terror, but thanks to Bush, it really is the primary battleground now. Pulling out would turn it into a richer Afghanistan, or even leave it as a client state of Iran.
We told the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to rise up and overthrow their oppressors. Bush I did the same thing the last time we were in Iraq, and when they did, promptly pulled out, leaving the Kurds to get slaughtered. We at least gave it a go this time, but if we pull out, we’ll be leaving the pro-American factions to be slaughtered again.
Thanks, but while in day to day life I’m a genius, around here I’m just one smart person among many, and probably not even in the top half.
Exactly how I feel, and Eisenhower was the first POTUS I can remember.
Shot from Guns, care to renew our discussion about whether SDMB polls say anything about people besides those who participate? This poll is currently tracking very far from the national average on those who view Obama favorably.
As William Greider points out, deficits are the cure, not the disease. Obama’s failure is not spending enough. I still view him favorably, though, making allowances for the political circumstances he has to face.
I don’t think SDMB polls are representative, but you’ve picked a terrible example to try and prove your point. Most polls in the last month put Obama’s favorability around 55%. I imagine the current result in this SDMB poll is within the margin of error of most of those polls.
I liked him enough to vote for him and I STILL like him. (Long-time registered Independent of the progressive/leftist stripe).
Some of my fellow progressive/leftist friends are joining in the attacks, and I find that idiotic and counterproductive. LOOK, he ran as a moderate pragmatist. He never claimed to be or made allusions to being a “radical liberal/socialist”. I find a lot of folks voted for him thinking he really WAS something like that, wink, wink, and NOW, they are all disgruntled because he is NOT. :rolleyes:
Newsflash; he wasn’t lying. He wasn’t trying to pull a fast one on the American people. He stated his agenda very clearly. What? Did they actually BELIEVE the right-wing hype? 
I voted for him, knowing full well he was not a socialist/leftist, because:
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better than the alternatives. I tend to vote 3rd party, but in close and/or vital elections, I WILL throw my vote to the Dems. I chose to in this case. The option of not getting the Republicans out was NOT an option…as it turned out, he had won by a landslide before my west coast vote was even counted, but better safe than sorry.
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I honestly admire the man and his ideas. He is, in many ways, one of the most intelligent, articulate, thoughtful, principled, and (imo) inherently DECENT Presidents we’ve had in a long while. (since say, Carter)
I think he has strong convictions and ethics and will honestly seek to do what he feels is best for the nation, regardless of personal political or economic gain.
I like his humor…often subtle asides that both make a point and lighten the mood.
And I like that he gets angry when he SHOULD…and uses that anger to stand up for those he SHOULD stand up for.
He is a brilliant speaker, (who, by some accounts, writes the bulk of most of his own speeches) touching on points that need to be pointed out and stating his beefs and alternatives clearly, bluntly, but still respectfully. (yes, he needs to reach out more to the people, but part of that has to do with the network coverage of speeches, which has been dwindling to nothing for a while…used to be EVERY network interupted programming to broadcast a Presidential speech…now, few if any do. )
- He is NOT, I repeat, NOT a socialist or even terribly far to the left. BUT, he beats the HELL out of the right-wing extremists running as Republicans lately, and IS making significant progress on some very important issues (health insurance reform, corporate responsibility, etc…)
As for the national debt/deficit, I refer you to Kevin Phillips and his excellent writings on how the Republican party has historically run up massive debt (through wars, tax breaks to the rich/big business/other spending on their pet projects and cronies) THEN turned around after losing power and screamed about the cost of a Democratic administration implementing ITS agenda, which invariably involves shifting the burden from poor and middle class to the rich and the wealth from the rich to the poor/middle class…it is a calculated plan designed to thwart progressive reforms.
The thing is, in an economy in which over 80% of all activity is in the form of consumer spending, policies which benefit the vast majority who earn less than 80 grand a yr. and put more money into their pockets, benefit the whole economy. Policies which favor the top 1-10% who are already rich don’t tend to spread that much more around…they just stick it on top of the pile. The rest of us go out and SPEND it on things we need, creating jobs and stimulating the economy.
I couldn’t believe that so many people actually gave serious consideration to Sarah Palin. I don’t care whether she was running for VP or for president. The lady is a complete disaster. I would be enormously embarassed - even mortified to live in any country where that lady holds a high political office.
But, I also know that racism had a large part to play in my decision and I’ve always thought it had a large part to play in many other peoples’ decision to vote for BO. It was gosh darned exciting to be part of the vote that voted in America’s first black president. I am not black. So I suppose I should call it reverse-racism. But I have to admit that voting in the first black president really and truly was a major component of my decision to vote for BO. However, I would never have voted for him, had I thought he was stupid or incompetent - regardless of race. I have to go along with the sentiments you express in your next paragraph.
As I explained above, I fully agree. BO is enormously intelligent and I had hoped that would make a big difference in the way that he would run the country. But, I am terribly disappointed because it doesn’t seem to have made much difference at all.
This may be part of your problem. Voting for someone because of their skin color as a “major component” of your decision probably isn’t healthy. Voting for the person who you think will do the best for the country is probably your best bet.
Yes. There is no arguing with that POV.
But, it was all just so thrilling - just so exciting - I could not seem to resist the temptation. I was all just overwhelming.
As I said earlier, I wouldn’t have voted for him, if I thought he was an incompetent or otherwise incapable. His race was **not **the only factor in my decision.
Just out of curiousity, why do you think he is enormously intelligent?