SDMB’s legal expert Bricker, Esq. assures us that The Affair of the Semen-Stained Dress was a more serious crime than all the lying that led to the War against Gog and Magog. I suppose the GOP is now tossing GOP nymphettes the President’s way; it’s their bad luck that Michelle is one of the sexiest First Ladies ever and, anyway, the choicest nymphettes are mostly Democratic.
Like all Presidents, Obama has made some mistakes. Unlike every other President he never had a chance to demonstrate how great he could be: The GOP made it their “highest priority” since 2009 to “make him fail.”
If so, failing is better than committing ground troops, for America.
No he’s not, thank god.
Failure, in this way, would be way, way better than what Bush did. Bush committed tons of troops, got thousands killed, and still lost. Just abandoning the situation would be way, way better than Bush’s debacle.
That’s a good point. I think the reason that I (and many others) don’t count this as a strong negative is that I do not have a good enough understanding of the situation, that I think I can make any confident conclusions.
I read a convincing argument that Ghadaffi lost power because he became more lenient. Giving the people breathing room also gives them room to revolt.
I’m generally for supporting freedom movements, but maybe this wasn’t the time or the way to do it.
Resurrecting the auto industry - An arguable plus at best, I would probably say it’s a minus. Remember Bastiat - That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen. All the money is drawn from taxes and thereby costing other jobs, just not as visible. Also bailouts encourage recklessness and cronyism.
Killing OBL - He did that yes, but at the cost of giving billions of dollars to the oppressive government of Pakistan. Worth it? I would say it wasn’t.
Passing ACA - Okay. It’s far from perfect, but at least it helps a lot of the poorer people in the society.
Recovering the US economy - That’s a clear no. Economies recover, it would’ve done that whether or not Obama did anything. Blaming or giving credit to presidents for economic recoveries or economic recessions is a bit like blaming them for tornados.
Getting us out of Iraq - Obviously no credit there.
Greatly expanding gay rights - I can’t really give him any credit for that since he was against it until the movement was popular and gaining momentum, and it doesn’t seem as if he did anything to help it. At best he didn’t stand in the way of it. That’s very faint praise. “He didn’t continue to stand in the way of equal rights to homosexuals at political cost to himself. Great president!”
All or nearly all of this money was paid back to the government.
Cite? And I’d say that’s still clearly worth it.
If you’re saying that Presidents have absolutely nothing to do with recessions and recoveries, then I disagree.
Strongly disagree. He could have finagled us staying there in force if he wanted to, and I’m glad he got us out.
He’s been the best president for gay rights in American history. And not just by a little bit. He’s taken many executive actions that have directly benefitted gay people.
Is it not the case that GM’s on-going pension liabilities hugely exceed the U.S. government loss? If the pensions were set aside as a separate matter, the car-making operations themselves were always profitable. Stated differently, money didn’t go from taxpayers to unproductive autoworkers, it went from taxpayers to retirees.
And more importantly, the money didn’t come from taxpayers at all. Taxes are unacceptable in the U.S., so money is supplied by China, Japan; and the FRB in effect prints money. This is all intentional to create jobs, but unemployment (when properly defined) is nevertheless still high in the U.S.
The claim that the car industry employs people who would otherwise be employed more productively might make sense if unemployment were low. Instead, the car industry employs people who would otherwise be unemployed.
That’s an argument you can make. It’s not one the President can make, having prepared America for this war by saying ISIS poses a grave threat to America. You can’t fail in a war started for that reason.
Now given what I think of the man, sure, it would seem in character for him to have said all those things about ISIS and not have meant them, and like most of the things he says, he’ll just “clarify” those remarks later. But I’d like to think that at this point he sees the risk of a historically awful Presidency staring him in the face. And really, do you want expanded health care to always be associated with getting involved in wars we lost?
Sometimes “failing” in a war is just getting involved. Whatever he says, a ground war is a failure – far more of a failure than failed air strikes. A ground war will make everything worse, including the danger to America.
I know you’d like to think this. You’d really, really, really like to think this. But as I’ve said before, it’s unseemly to include your fantasies in these sorts of debates.
Obama is leaving ISIL for the next president to “solve”. He’s been very clear that it’s a long term goal to defeat them. Years, not months. You can argue whether that is a plus or minus, but that’s what we’re dealing with.
Speaking for the small government favoring moderate crowd, I’d say there’s not much of a comparison.
Obama is a below average president - he’s had some accomplishments in the face of extremely partisan politics, but he’s also failed in terms of leadership and accountability within his inner circle and he certainly seems naive at times.
Bush, on the other hand, led us into a disastrous war, completely failed in terms of fiscal discipline as well as solid regulatory functions, injected more religion into government, butchered the handling of Katrina, and made a fool out of himself at every opportunity, as well as actively campaigning against civil liberties.
Problem is, he’s been told that ground troops would be necessary to complete the mission successfully. He has also said “I’m not contemplating failure”. He’s really not in a position to walk away from this without condemning the Democrats to a generation of being regarded as the weak and spineless party.
You are the one predicting that he can just walk away after all he’s said about the threat ISIS poses. In order to do that, he’ll have to engage in some pretty furious backpedalling and spinning.
Another problem with just giving up on ISIS is that following Obama’s lead, a truckload of high ranking Democrats have said that ISIS is a threat to the US. Udall today said, “Immediate threat”.
Is he really going to hang his entire party out to dry on this? I can’t think that even he would do that. And presenting it as a choice between one disaster and another is a false choice, given that he already has been told that he’ll need ground troops. He’s already been told this won’t work the way he wants to do it. So even though he won’t say it publicly, he has to know already that his only options are ground troops or failure. He’s not going to fail.
And if this thing is still raging in 2016, how does that make you consider your vote for Hillary Clinton? You know she ain’t gonna walk away from this.
I strongly disagree. Getting back in with ground troops would be far, far more damaging to the Democrats (and the country) than not doing so.
You mean politics?
So what? That doesn’t mean “ground troops”. And they’re wrong, anyway. ISIS is a marginal threat to us. That doesn’t mean we should ignore them, but they are not a significant threat to the United States. We have far bigger fish to fry – heart disease, cancer, ebola, global warming, etc., are far, far bigger dangers to the American people and US security.
Sending troops in would be hanging everyone, including his party, out to dry on this.
I’ll compare the candidate to the alternative, as I would anyway.
I’m well aware that some people disagree, like this opinion columnist. I hold that this is not worth spending US lives. They are not a big risk, and not worth a ground war.
It does not make Obama worse than Bush. It CAN make Obama worse than Bush. If we fail to defeat ISIS and we get attacked in the US, Obama will drop down those historical rankings pretty precipitously. It will also further damage the Democratic brand in foreign policy.
Have you looked at the polling on Democrats vs. Republicans on national security. It’s opened up to Reagan-era levels. The Democrats are right back to where they were when Carter was President. Demographics won’t save the Democrats if Americans perceive them as weak and unwilling to defend our vital interests.
I think that Obama will succeed because I think he knows all this. If there’s one thing I believe he understands well, it’s politics. Much like LBJ, he’s committed himself and he knows the consequences for the party should he just give up and accept defeat.
The other thing iiandyii fails to consider is how hawkish the Democrats in Congress are right now. The President has played a large role in whipping them into this condition by his rhetoric. He can’t back down. He will actually leave them in an untenable political position if he does.
In this case, the politics and our national security interests align. ISIS must be defeated, or at least they must be denied territory that they control. It’s a very doable mission, and it will be done. I just do not believe the President would define the mission so precisely and name the enemy so directly and bluntly if there was any chance whatsoever that he would back down from what it took to win this war.