Yeah, that little adventure in Somalia worked out well for Bush 41. And Lebanon for Reagan. And bombing Cambodia for Nixon. That’s just off the top of my head; I’m sure if I put my mind to it, there is more than enough embarrassment to go around. I’ll give you Ike, but by today’s standards, he was a Democrat.
Somalia was fine under Bush 41. Clinton expanded the mission but didn’t have the guts to see it through once he did. I don’t BLAME him per se, he didn’t have much foreign policy experience and Les Aspin was a dud as Defense secretary. But Bush 41 understood mission creep and it wouldn’t have happened had he been reelected. Our troops were there to feed hungry Somalians, not to fight warlords.
Bombing Cambodia, among other things, was an attempt to get better terms to end the Vietnam war. It certainly worked better than anything LBJ was doing.
Lebanon, well yeah, Reagan screwed up, But Reagan’s overall foreign policy legacy is sterling, despite Lebanon and Iran-contra.
Do I get to hand-wave all the embarrassing, uncited missteps Obama has made? Other than that, he was the Hank Aaron of diplomacy.
To hit home runs requires you to actually get the bat off your shoulders. Obama takes every pitch.
To get back on subject, I think that if you polled voters, most would predict that Clinton will have a better foreign policy than Obama, which means that our choices are not the worst ever.
The only area I rate Obama higher on than Clinton is maintaining the dignity of the office. He’s good at being President, something which Bill never really mastered and Hillary isn’t any better. The constant lying and rule bending for personal reasons debases the office. And now we hear that she wanted a personal Blackberry issued, even though only the President gets that. But she’s Hillary CLinton, dammit, not some ordinary SecState that has to follow the normal rules! It’s just unseemly.
Says the guy whose party is nominating Trump. :rolleyes:
And I’m willing to vote for that. I’m not wild about Hilary. I think she is a little more dishonest than that typical politician, and is very interested in feathering her nest, and helping her buddies. But she will be a competent president who will mostly be centrist and who has a reasonably good understanding of how things work. Those things include Congress, science, and economics.
But he won’t be in the ballot in the general election. Yeah, the Republicans ran one guy who seems eminently qualified. I disagree with him on some social issues, but like Clinton, i think Kasich would be a perfectly okay president. Too bad we won’t have the chance to vote for him.
it will be very ugly.
This is nonsensical – Obama’s advances on Iran and Cuba have been extremely bold, in terms of political courage, as was his refusal to commit troops to Syria, despite the clamor for it – conventional politics would have demanded the opposite in all three examples. If Obama had acted as a “typical” president, he would have done very little beyond continuing sanctions on Iran, he would have done nothing on Cuba, and he would have invaded Syria when the clamor arose.
It’s a very, very good thing for America that he went against the grain on all three.
The Democrats had LBJ–& JFK, I guess, who was probably short of catastrophic himself, so I don’t know. The GOP have had Nixon and GWB. I don’t get your numbers.
Limiting myself to 20th and 21st Century races:
1924: Coolidge vs. Davis (to be fair, LaFollette was running)
1928: Hoover vs. Smith
1972: Nixon vs. McGovern
1976: Carter vs. Ford
1980: Reagan vs. Carter
1984: Reagan vs. Mondale
1988: Bush vs. Dukakis
2004: Bush vs. Kerry
Domestically, maybe, although it is his second term. However, to continue to use sports analogies, instead of just taking every pitch this time the President said, “I forfeit the game, you win. See, now we’re both happy!”
As I said before, diplomacy is easy if you just give the other side 90% of what they want.
Given Clinton’s record, she will be very different on foreign policy.
No. Trump is a sales guy. He pitches his persona to the specific crowd. Here is Trump playing another character. It’s different:
Trump discusses Orson Wells’ Citizen Kane with Errol Morris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upC8pX3RY0A
Fantasy-world stuff.
We’ll see. Hopefully not.
Clinton now supports extending ACA to illegals:
Joe Wilson’s office just called, he wants an apology.
Well, it is clear that Republicans like him do not think that those are human beings. And their kids are even less so then.
Human beings are not entitled to ACA. American citizens and legal residents are. Maybe we should extend ACA to Chinese residents?
As Trump would say, sorry, but no one should die on the streets as some Republicans want. Of course he will round them up and take them out, but in the meantime I guess he will help. IIUC any efforts on this front will be left to the states anyhow, so we can also add then the point that Republicans like him then are tossing state rights under the bus.
People die in the streets all over the world. We’re only responsible for the Americans that do so.
But anyway, the point wasn’t so much to debate the merits as to demonstrate how extreme the Democrats have become on the immigration issue.
:dubious: No, sir. We’re responsible for all Americans and all in America who do so. The richest industrialized nation in the world has no excuse conceivable whatsoever for letting anyone die in its own streets. Unless they die of gunshot-wounds, which is of course a Second Amendment thing and therefore untouchable.
+1
As for being extreme adaher, you really need to remember that a lot of Americans do want to see immigration reform, and that will mean that yes, most of the immigrants we are talking about will then legalize their status and should not be treated like sub humans before that takes place.