Come now, you can’t just drop something like that in here and leave. Explain please.
I blame Obama’s ongoing policy of cutting taxes. It made no financial sense and everyone knew it would increase the national debt. But would Obama listen? No.
We need to rescind the irresponsible Obama era tax cuts and put the government back on a sound financial basis. I just hope the American people vote accordingly.
The Obama administration has fallen well short of being “the most transparent administration in history” if you believe complaints from several journalists.
There have been similar criticisms of Hillary Clinton related to transparency issues (and not just gripes from the right wing fringe) and a tendency to avoidthe pressat times.
Yes, running a government requires some secrecy, but the press is our Fourth Estate for a reason. The prying eyes of journalists help to keep government at least somewhat honest and keep the public informed.
Regardless of who is elected, I do hope that the next president will be more open with the press and genuinely work to improve transparency in government. To this extent, no, I do not want four more years of Obama.
The republicans acting like spoiled children the entire time?
Obamacare widened the scope of public health care, but did nothing about the large bill we’ve been paying for health care in this country. Whether it’s true or not, Obama will be blamed for it when our health care costs become prohibitive and a national crisis. And I think it would at least be fair to say that he didn’t do anything to reduce the cost of health care, as part of his plan, despite health care reform being one of the centerpoints of his presidency.
His government’s solution to the GM bankruptcy was to sell the company to the union which had ran the thing into bankruptcy to begin with. GM did some restructuring and hard work to make it seem like they were finally ready to give a damn about the cars they were making, for a few years, and made some automobiles that scored well on a technical and quality level. But that’s been dropping off, from what I’ve heard, and I suspect that we’re going to see them crazy and burn again in the next ten years.
His government invested deeply in green technology, as a way to spur the economy and do so in a way that isn’t just propping up struggling or established industries. The results of that initiative seem to have been successful on the whole, but it was a risky maneuver that would have backfired if the technology hadn’t come into place as hoped. Imagine if he had backed cold fusion 40 years ago, when everyone thought it would just take a little bit of capital to get past those last few technical hurdles… Yeah, not good. So, he may have lucked out on this one. While I sort of approve of investments in new business as a solution for economic stagnation, it’s a dangerous precedent in general and particularly if you’re going to choose your investment targets based on politically correct measure like backing “green energy”.
Fracking was allowed to develop and expand under Obama, and this has probably done more to stop Putin from taking over the Ukraine than anything else Obama did, intentionally, for that purpose. I somewhat doubt that fracking was something that Obama really sought to have proliferate, so putting it down as thanks to him would probably be incorrect.
While he was able to catch Osama bin Laden, he failed to act strongly enough against ISIS before it could form into a genuine threat. China was allowed to take over the South China Seas with impunity. Putin was able to destabilise the Ukraine without ever really being made to feel any pain for having done so, via anything Obama did.
He largely reneged on his mandate to shut down Guantanamo. (Which should annoy his supporters, even if I personally don’t care terribly.)
Excluding the investments in green energy, his measures to restore the American economy were fairly by-the-text-book and allowed it to heal as well as those methods are concerned. Personally, I put that down more in the category of the nation healing itself, in the absence of stupid, but it is necessary for the government to perform various acts of economic stimulus for placebo purposes. On the whole, I’d give him a good grade for doing fairly reasonable things, and not doing anything stupid in this regard. It was a very measured approach.
He has reestablished diplomacy between the US and Cuba, and the US and Iran. He got the Trans-Pacific Partnership approved. These are good things.
In general, I would say that his approach was very cautious and as such that worked decently for places were caution is fine. But that cautious nature also let Russia, China, and ISIS misbehave without fear.
Where he wasn’t cautious, his handling was very left-politic and in those things I sense future problems coming from them. Even the investment into green energy I expect to have pop up again in a few years as having actually been a bad idea. Though, I don’t know what form that will take.
The only really impressive things that he has done, as president, have been in the last year. I am glad to see his success with Cuba and Iran. But I wouldn’t say that those successes turn him into a good president, just one smart enough to have figured out how to remain meaningful in the last years of his last term.
I definitely think that there can be a better president than Obama, but his presidency doesn’t horrify me. The idea of another four years doesn’t make me salivate nor weep, but it does make me hope for someone a little more responsive to international crises and a bit less lefty. Hilary won’t be Obama though. She will be more responsive to international crises and more militaristic, overall.
As regards lefty vs. righty, I expect her to be rather schizophrenic. In her heart, she’s a money loving, big business gal. But her image is as a sweet and loving “it takes a village” hippie. She’ll be all over the place trying to do what she naturally thinks is good as a closet Republican while doing a bunch of stupid shit to prove that she’s really a peace living flower child. I expect these latter attempts to prove of poorly just because they won’t really appeal to her interests, and they’ll send up muddled and unsupervised from whatever committee came up with it.
But as someone upthread said, anything is better than Trump.
You misspelled “one day”.
I’m not sure Obama had any cards to play with regard to China and Russia. Do we want to engage in war with China over sea disputes with Vietnam? Not really, any more than China would interfere with a theoretical American takeover of the Caribbean. Perhaps some sanctions could have been placed, but that could backfire in the economic loss that would ensue. Is there anything the US could have done regarding Ukraine? Not that I can think of. What was Obama supposed to do, send in a million troops and start World War III? ISIS is not solely an American problem, as the French and Turks can tell you. It isn’t going to be solved by invading or bombing although some surgical military strikes are a piece of the solution. I don’t think you can blame Obama for lack of leadership on any of this as I don’t know if there were better options available.
I am a progressive and have stated on this board that I think Obama will go down as one of the best presidents.
In talking with conservative family members and friends, I really do NOT hear about specific issues except for tentpole things like Obamacare being Bad.
What I hear about is his general “attitude”:
- His community-organizer approach that treated the Establishment (i.e., Republican Congress) as something to resist.
- His generally aloof, academic mindset - he didn’t build relationships correctly.
- His foreign policy approach was weak and didn’t represent America well.
- He supports forms of social and cultural change that go too far.
In short, they really just don’t like the guy himself, and use specific policy decisions to bolster that feeling.
With Hillary, she comes with a built-in legacy of that feeling already being in place for decades with many people.
My $.02.
I’m sure electing a republican billionaire is going to help in this regard…
Obama was a very ineffective president. He achieved very few of the goals he had set out for himself, and was not aggressive in standing up for them. His work as a statesman has fostered very little optimism for the nation or the world.
I don’t have to delineate them here, just Google /obama 2008 pledges/, you’ll get dozens of hits from the whole spectrum of sources. Judge them for yourself.
According to Politifact, Obama has kept 45% of his promises, compromised on 25% of them, broken 22% of them, and has 8% in the works or stalled.
I don’t know how every President compares to this, but more than 2/3rds of promises kept or compromised on and only about 1 in 5 broken sounds pretty damn good of a record in keeping one’s pledges.
Please. Link just a couple from that Google list to convince us.
I admit Obamacare doesn’t go as far as it should but I don’t hate it. First time in my entire life I feel a little safer when it comes to health insurance. Right now I am on my husband’s health insurance and it is excellent. But if we should ever lose that for some reason, I finally have a net that I can fall back on. It’s not the best but at least there’s some competition and not just COBRA.
The problem is, it’s all very well and good to say that you hate Obama’s policies or that you don’t want another Democrat in the office, but we really have no choice. You think I am voting for Trump? As both a brown person and a woman? That racist sexist weirdo from Bizarro World?
My husband who has always been conservative is just disgusted with the utter disintegration of the Republican Party. Whether you think it is or not, it feels to us as the party of racists. We watch what’s going on in London after Brexit with some fear and trepidation - “immigrants” who have been there for 20 years or more are being yelled at and abused to return to their country.
I’ve been here 36 years out of my 40. I am an American. He was born here. It wouldn’t be the first time we heard “go home”, but the last time was in grade school. Compared to the fear the Trump brings, I’d rather go with a Democrat, even if she is not the best we’d hoped for.
He made multiple efforts to shut down Guantanamo and was stonewalled by Congress every time. That one lies squarely on Congress (both parties). Shutting down Gitmo is not something he was ever legally able to do unilaterally.
The rest of your list is much the same sort of selective interpretation:
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Medical costs were skyrocketing before ACA passed; by several measures, while costs continue to increase the rate of increase has significantly reduced.
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The alternative to bailing out GM would have been to let it go bankrupt as Romney suggested, with a resultant loss of thousands - maybe tens or hundreds of thousands - of jobs.
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The investment in green energy was done to challenge China’s dominance in that sector; the Bush administration’s refusal to even consider green energy meant that the US was far behind technologically.
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You claim his handling of the economy was strictly by-the-book, which ignores just how bad the economy was when he took office in 2009. Unemployment was soaring, the stock market was tanking, and we were heading into the worst financial crisis this side of 1929. There’s no “book” written for what happened. Obama didn’t fix the economy singlehandedly, of course, but you’re really underselling the administration’s role.
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The note on fracking essentially reads “I can’t think of anything bad to say about the spread of fracking, therefore Obama probably wasn’t responsible for it.” Meanwhile, I remember plenty of right-wing complaints that Obama was actively suppressing domestic oil and petroleum production despite domestic production surging. He also made BP pay for the Deep Horizon fiasco, something previous presidents would have let slide.
And one has to consider that the things he did achieve were done in the face of one of the most obstructionist Congresses ever. Had he been dealing with reasonable men - even reasonable Republicans - instead of a bunch of whiny toddlers willing to crash the country, imagine what he could have achieved.
Best ever? Not really - I’m still guessing he’ll end up at the top of the second quartile, which is pretty good when the people ahead of you include Washington, Lincoln and the two Roosevelts. Worst ever? Not even close.
The ACA has fundamentally altered some aspects of the health care system, often in ways average consumers don’t see. Entirely new payment methods in Medicare, for example, impact everyone, not just Medicare providers and consumers, since Medicare sets standards that private insurers later follow.
This is a big deal.
The epitome of Obama vs his critics to me was when Hurricane Sandy was approaching the East Coast and several Republicans complained that Obama was spending too much time helping with the preperation for the disaster.
I reacll some of these same critics then blocked emergency aid money for states hit by Sandy. They were reps from states that grabbed billions from Katrina, of course.
I will take 4 more years of Obama before anything these assholes have to offer.
He never did walk on water so fuck him.
Worst? Worst??
Do you remember your President Nixon? Do you remember the bills you had to pay?
There were a lot worse Presidents than Obama, even if you stretch and count things like Gitmo as failures. At least he didn’t start two endless wars.
I give you bonus point for the term “asministration”, though. I’d never seen that before. Hope it wasn’t just a typo.
Agreed (though I’m not necessarily “progressive” in the Sanders sense - more between that and the Bill Clinton New Democrat type).
I think Obama will be remembered in the Top 10 of American Presidents.
The fact is, Obama is the most conservative president we’ve had since Eisenhower. He’s pushed for incremental change and not doing stupid shit.
I hereby predict that on January 21st 2017 we’ll see a vast wave of Strange New Respect for Obama from all the conservatives who today claim he’s the worstest ever. And in a decade or so Fox News will be accidentally adding an R after his name and trying to claim Obama’s legacy.