There is no reason Hillary can’t be a better president than Obama. I would be surprised. Pleased, but surprised.
I would be ecstatic. I very much hope this happens!
I think that if a Democrat wins in 2016, you’ll all be quite shocked at how well the Republican Congress gets along with him or her. The current President prefers to use obstruction as an excuse for why he can’t do his job rather than trying to actually get to “yes.”
Bill Clinton had all kinds of opportunities to say “woe is me” rather than doing his job. If the Mexican currency crisis had sunk the US economy he could have blamed that for his problems. When the government shut down he could have taken the issue, as Obama did, rather than use it as an opportunity to develop a working relationship with the Republican leadership. When they freakin’ IMPEACHED him, he could have spent the last months of his Presidency lambasting them instead of continuing to sign their legislation. When Saddam forced the weapons inspectors to leave, he could have said, “Bush caused that mess, not my problem.”
I think that you fail at political analysis and political predictions nearly every chance you get.
Says the guy who ranks a President with a 41% approval rating as the best of the last six.
So did you. All the presidents on the list had an approval rating of 41% at some point during their presidency.
My god – do you even think about what you just typed before you hit “post”?
At some point. Don’t be ridiculous. If Obama leaves office at 60% or even 50% then I’ll gladly admit i was wrong about him, because in order for that to happen he’d have to do something right between now and then rather than complaining about how hard the Republicans are making his job.
Clinton and Reagan left office at 60%+. GHWB’s stature has increased in hindsight. Now if you want to make the case that Obama’s administration is about to turn a corner, or that he’ll be judged more kindly by historians than he is now, that’s one thing. If you prefer Obama because he did something you personally liked, that’s fine too. But frankly, I think you should explain yourself when you rank a guy who has been sub-50% for the vast majority of his term at #1. It’s like saying the Jaguars have been the best football team of the decade, if only the NFL wasn’t so darn unfair to them.
Complete nonsense (and factually incorrect that he’s been “sub-50% for the vast majority of his term”). Truman had a low approval rating, much lower than Obama, for a huge chunk of his presidency.
A presidency’s approval rating has a lot to do with whether he gets re-elected, but not much to do with whether or not he was a good president in the long run.
My ranking is based on how I think these presidents will be seen by history in the long term. This has pretty much nothing to do with approval ratings, but has a lot to do with their accomplishments.
You fail, in a way that would be hilarious if it wasn’t so damn repetetive, again.
My vote was for GHWB, but Clinton would be a close second. As far as I’m concerned, they’re pretty much the only two in the race. The reasons for both are pretty much the same, in that both had few crises to deal with, but when they did they generally handled them with competence. Obviously, Clinton had some mistakes, notably as mentioned up thread the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and GHWB only had one term, and all the rest except Carter had a second term, and things seemed to get worse for them in it.
I don’t think this is a fair criticism against Clinton. As I understand, DADT was seen as an advancement at the time because, even if it wasn’t ideal, it allowed gays to serve in the military. I could be incorrect about how that was perceived by the gay community, I was too young to pay attention at the time. Regardless, it seems to me that there’s been a massive shift in how gay rights are perceived in this country in the years since Clinton left office, and I don’t think he could have done much, if any, more to that regard.
I also can’t give Obama any credit for having a highly oppositional congress. As others said, I think part of being a good politician is making one’s own luck. Clinton pushed hard for health care reform early in his term, it got no where, and he moved on. He still had a lot of hate from the Republicans, but things still more or less got done. Obama also focused on health care, but unlike Clinton, he spent all of his political capital to make it happen. He still didn’t get everything he wanted, and now he has an extraordinarily hostile congress. Of course, it’s not really fair to blame Obama for the hostility, but ultimately history judges based on what happens, not on what could have happened had the right circumstances presented themselves.
That said, maybe in a generation or so, depending how ACA plays out–regardless of whether one likes it or not now, I still think we lack reasonable historic perspective–maybe Obama will be seen quite well to have been willing to risk all to push it through, and if it looks worse in that perspective, he could look quite foolish.
I’ll agree that a huge chunk of the long-term judgment about Obama will be based on the performance of the ACA. If (as I believe) it’s just the not-close-to-perfect beginning of an improvement of our health care system that puts us on par with the rest of the advanced countries in the world, then he’ll probably be judged as very successful.
If the beginning cost $1 trillion over 10 years, how much will the end cost? If ACA was universal health care, then Obama might be credited for implementing universal health care. Yay! Problem is, he only got part of the way and it took all his political capital to do it, and it’s an unpopular first step. Where will Democrats get the political capital for step 2?
They probably won’t. They’ll have to wait for the end of the political wave of whiny nihilists who prefer the suffering of others to the well being of themselves. As the board’s spokesperson for that wave, let us know when you guys plan to clear out.
America is an individualist nation. Get over it. That’s not changing.
Perhaps someday people will grow up and realize that the rugged individualist doesn’t exist, and instead we’ve invested in our collective future with a massive public infrastructure. Until then we’ll have adults believing in fairy tales.
I didn’t read the thread; am diving in at this point to say I voted for Reagan. Am chuckling because I knew he would likely end up doing terribly here. But then I see he’s in third place, just behind Obama.
Currently it is:
86: Clinton, 61.43%
22: Obama, 15.71%
21: Reagan, 15.00%
That’s a lot better than I thought he’d be. It’s surprising how poorly Obama is doing, relatively to Reagan, given our SDMB community’s leanings.
Go Reagan! 
And I won’t enter into any debate pissing contest. You say to-MAHH-to, and I say to-MAY-to. To each his/her own, and we’ll vote that way, and that’s part of what keeps our country great.
Oh noes!! My gawd, not $100B/year!! That’s a whole, what, 1/160 of our GDP, and maybe 3% of the Federal budget?
Holy moly, how will we ever recover from his spendthrift ways?!
That’s what we founded this country on and it’s gotten us pretty far. There are 180 other countries to live in if you don’t like the model.
I don’t have much interest in philosophical propositions as drivers of policy. I don’t care to what extent we’re the bannermen of individualism, or free markets, or social equality, or whatever. I lived in Germany for three years, and the healthcare there is better, and cheaper, and easier than it is in the US. To choose against what’s good for you because it doesn’t fit your philosophical predispositions seems like nihilism to me. And you can’t argue the best path to success with someone whose goal isn’t success.
Then as a German, you should know that individual liberty can sometimes trump what’s good for you, and furthermore, it should. Germans more than anyone should be wary of appeals to subvert the individual’s desires in favor of the larger community.
Personally, I see ACA as the endpoint, not the starting point. ACA allows everyone to get insurance who wants it. There’s nothing more that we need here.
See, here’s a big difference between Clinton and Obama. Obama takes an action that results in a human catastrophe, then blames Republicans for it, while promising to do even more to attract desperate people to try to illegally cross our border:
What we see here is lack of competence, lack of a sense of responsibility, and mostly, just lack of shame. We had an illegal problem when Clinton was President too. You know what he did?
President Clinton will continue to implement his comprehensive strategy to reduce illegal immigration and foster legal immigration and naturalization by:
*
Continuing to increase border personnel and technology to curtail illegal crossings and smuggling.
*"
Vigorously enforcing worksite laws against employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.
*"
Ensuring that American jobs are made available for legal workers.
*"
Testing effective, nondiscriminatory means of verifying the employment authorization of new employees.
*"
Reforming and streamlining deportation procedures and seeking enhanced exclusion authority.
*"
Increasing deportation levels 25% this year and another 50% next year.
*"
Requiring families to take financial responsibility for immigrants they sponsor.
*"
Expanding efforts to help legal immigrants become citizens, achieve and maintain self-sufficiency, and participate and contribute fully as members of our national community. The Administration’s naturalization goal this year is to swear in over one million new citizens.
*"
Fighting against discrimination that denies opportunity to legal immigrants.
Source: Bill Clinton for President 1996 Web Site
http://www.4president.us/issues/clinton1996/clinton1996immigration.htm
Today that program would be a pretty far right program.