POTUS Obama | Pro and Con

[Simple Minded]

What is happening to Obama is straight out of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer.

When the newest/latest/greatest/most pure ___________ savior/candidate proves ideology and administration are subject to constraints of reality (ie: little different than his predecessors, or faced with the same options) he has to be discredited/dehumanized (being called a republican is more dehumanizing than any other label they could devise) by his former followers so they can groom a replacement, who, again, promises to be a better, new and improved, mixture of Jesus/Gandhi/King Canute/King Midas/Mother Teresa.

"Our guy was right, just wasn't pure _______ enough."
"We need more time/money."
"It will work on a larger scale."
"They are obstructionists."

The only alternate is to admit that their ideology/philosophy/religion/world view is wrong.

That ain't gonna happen. On either side.

"My gang can do it better." "I'm a victim!"

Humanity loves scapegoats!

[Enki]

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/ ... epublican/

Without a doubt Obama was a war hawk in 2008. He is the only American politician I know of that said he would considered invading Pakistan.

Otherwise what Lincoln said.... You can fool some of the people all of the time.

Yup, Obama definitely campaigned openly and honestly as a war hawk. Anyone who thought differently was deluding themselves.

[Enki]

more "proof"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zues ... 81092.html

This is quite obvious to anyone who has worked in politics in minority communities. There are a few issues that people follow due to their actual day to day interests. i.e. Hispanics in NYC are likely to support Unions. But otherwise they are quite Conservative. The Democratic party as a whole is quite Conservative, and this largely has to do with the fact that the Republican party is perceived as the party of white racists, so the constituents are Democrats even though in many ways the constituencies are VERY Conservative.

That being said, I don't think calling him a Republican is dehumanizing, I think it's because his policies have actually been quite Conservative on the whole.

And this article was in the American Conservative, so this is a Conservative claiming him, not a Liberal exiling him.

[Doc]

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/ ... epublican/

Without a doubt Obama was a war hawk in 2008. He is the only American politician I know of that said he would considered invading Pakistan.

Otherwise what Lincoln said.... You can fool some of the people all of the time.

Yup, Obama definitely campaigned openly and honestly as a war hawk. Anyone who thought differently was deluding themselves.

DO you remember that you and I were talking about that before the 2008 election? Maybe even before most of the primaries were run?

[Mr. Perfect]

This is quite obvious to anyone who has worked in politics in minority communities. There are a few issues that people follow due to their actual day to day interests. i.e. Hispanics in NYC are likely to support Unions. But otherwise they are quite Conservative. The Democratic party as a whole is quite Conservative, and this largely has to do with the fact that the Republican party is perceived as the party of white racists, so the constituents are Democrats even though in many ways the constituencies are VERY Conservative.

And you have explained very clearly the doom of the Democrat Party. When Hispanics figure out that we are not racists your party is finished.

[Simple Minded]

more "proof"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zues ... 81092.html

This is quite obvious to anyone who has worked in politics in minority communities. There are a few issues that people follow due to their actual day to day interests. i.e. Hispanics in NYC are likely to support Unions. But otherwise they are quite Conservative. The Democratic party as a whole is quite Conservative, and this largely has to do with the fact that the Republican party is perceived as the party of white racists, so the constituents are Democrats even though in many ways the constituencies are VERY Conservative.

That being said, I don't think calling him a Republican is dehumanizing, I think it's because his policies have actually been quite Conservative on the whole.

And this article was in the American Conservative, so this is a Conservative claiming him, not a Liberal exiling him.

Be careful Tinker. That's what THEY want you to think! Do you recall the right winger who started the whole Obama was born in Kenya campaign?

As always, any of the definitions of the binary political terms, left, right, liberal, conservative, democrat, republican are localized, subjective, relative, and always in flux. Back in 06 I had a great heated discussion with a home boy I've known for 40 years who kept calling GW Bush a NEOCON. I said "Cmon bro, call it like it is. NEOCONS are Liberals." Since he moved from Rochester NY to Garden City NY his definitions of liberal and conservative had changed, both of himself and POTUS.

Witness this forum. 90% of the political posts are "Your definition of X and Y are wrong. My definition of X and Y are correct." Entertaining, but little else.

The notion that democrats are liberals and republicans are conservatives may keep the MSM profitable, but it does not seem to apply well in the areas where I have lived.

After everything Obama has said regarding republicans, If he actually believed what he said, being called a republican must rankle him worse than any other insult he has previously heard. But I doubt it bothers him, he knows politics is stagecraft. He is as good an actor as any other.

Oh well, that is how the game is played.

[Doc]

more "proof"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zues ... 81092.html

This is quite obvious to anyone who has worked in politics in minority communities. There are a few issues that people follow due to their actual day to day interests. i.e. Hispanics in NYC are likely to support Unions. But otherwise they are quite Conservative. The Democratic party as a whole is quite Conservative, and this largely has to do with the fact that the Republican party is perceived as the party of white racists, so the constituents are Democrats even though in many ways the constituencies are VERY Conservative.

That being said, I don't think calling him a Republican is dehumanizing, I think it's because his policies have actually been quite Conservative on the whole.

And this article was in the American Conservative, so this is a Conservative claiming him, not a Liberal exiling him.

Be careful Tinker. That's what THEY want you to think! Do you recall the right winger who started the whole Obama was born in Kenya campaign?

As always, any of the definitions of the binary political terms, left, right, liberal, conservative, democrat, republican are localized, subjective, relative, and always in flux. Back in 06 I had a great heated discussion with a home boy I've known for 40 years who kept calling GW Bush a NEOCON. I said "Cmon bro, call it like it is. NEOCONS are Liberals." Since he moved from Rochester NY to Garden City NY his definitions of liberal and conservative had changed, both of himself and POTUS.

Witness this forum. 90% of the political posts are "Your definition of X and Y are wrong. My definition of X and Y are correct." Entertaining, but little else.

The notion that democrats are liberals and republicans are conservatives may keep the MSM profitable, but it does not seem to apply well in the areas where I have lived.

After everything Obama has said regarding republicans, If he actually believed what he said, being called a republican must rankle him worse than any other insult he has previously heard. But I doubt it bothers him, he knows politics is stagecraft. He is as good an actor as any other.

Oh well, that is how the game is played.

Actually I think Tinker is a ultra extreme ring wing Republican. So ultra extreme that to many he appears to be a leftist. But that is just my two cents.

[Mr. Perfect]

Tinker is in the deep final stages of cognitive dissonance. He thought he was on the verge of a leftist collectivist utopia after 2008 now in 6 short years he is handing the country back to the opposition Reaganite party, with the only lasting accomplishment a couple of homosexual issues no one really cares about. His mind is unable to handle the pain and is desperately embracing any rationalization he can find, in this case that he was hornswaggled by a closet Republican. Padded rooms to come.

[Simple Minded]

Tinker is in the deep final stages of cognitive dissonance. He thought he was on the verge of a leftist collectivist utopia after 2008 now in 6 short years he is handing the country back to the opposition Reaganite party, with the only lasting accomplishment a couple of homosexual issues no one really cares about. His mind is unable to handle the pain and is desperately embracing any rationalization he can find, in this case that he was hornswaggled by a closet Republican. Padded rooms to come.

Mr. P,

Thou dost have a fertile imagination.

Occam's toothbrush: The simpler explanation is he has two kids and he is rapidly closing in on the big 4-0.....

Of course, some may prefer padded rooms......

[Mr. Perfect]

I would have guessed 30, but anything is possible.

[Mr. Perfect]

This is closer to the truth (excepting the parts about liberals being "intelligent")

http://www.salon.com/2014/10/26/thomas_ ... ch_losers/

“We are such losers”

Liberals yearn to believe in post-ideological blank slates -- and get disappointed every time. Will we ever learn?

That we are living through an endless repeat of the 1970s is becoming more apparent all the time. Nostalgia and retro culture burn as brightly today as they did in the era of “Happy Days” and “American Graffiti,” while distrust and suspicion of government hover at near-Watergate levels. Disaster dreams are everywhere, just as they were in the days of “The Towering Inferno” and Three Mile Island. The culture wars, the 1970s’ No. 1 gift to American politics, still drag on and on, while the New Right, the decade’s other great political invention, effortlessly rejuvenates itself. Jerry Brown is governor of California again. The Kansas City Royals are a good team.

No reminiscence of that decade of malaise would be complete without mentioning Jimmy Carter, the president who—fairly or not—will be forever associated with national drift and decline and all the other horrors that were eventually swept away by the Reagan magisterium. Indeed, comparing the hapless Carter to whoever currently leads the Democratic Party remains a powerful shibboleth for American conservatives, and in 2011 and 2012 Republicans indulged in this favorite simile without hesitation.

I pretty much ignored the Carter-Obama comparison in those days because it was so manifestly empty—a partisan insult based on nothing but the lousy economy faced by both Carter and Obama as well as the recurring problem of beleaguered American embassies in the Muslim world. (Get it? Benghazi=Tehran!) More important for Republican purposes was the memory that Jimmy Carter lost his re-election campaign, which they creatively merged with their hopes that Obama would lose, too. Other than that, the comparison had little connection to actual facts; it was a waste of trees and precious pixels.

What has changed my mind about the usefulness of the comparison is my friend Rick Perlstein’s vast and engrossing new history of the ’70s, “The Invisible Bridge.” The book’s main subject is the rise of Ronald Reagan, but Perlstein’s detailed description of Carter’s run for the presidency in 1976 evokes more recent events so startlingly that the comparison with Obama is impossible to avoid. After talking over the subject with Perlstein (watch this space for the full interview), I am more startled by the similarities than ever.

In 1976, when Carter shocked the political world by beating a field of better-known politicians for the Democratic presidential nomination, the essence of his appeal was pure idealism—idealism without ideology, even. He presented himself, Perlstein writes, as an “antipolitician,” a figure of reconciliation who could restore our best qualities after the disasters of Vietnam and Watergate.

Jimmy Carter’s actual politics were ambiguous, however, in a way that should be very familiar. His speechwriter James Fallows wrote in 1979 that he initially signed up with the candidate out of a hope that he “might look past the tired formulas of left and right and offer something new.” As with Barack Obama, who promised to bring a post-partisan end to Washington squabbling, Jimmy Carter’s idealism was not a matter of policies or political ideas but rather of the candidate as a person, a transcendent figure of humility and uprightness.

Idealists of all kinds saw what they wanted to see in Jimmy Carter in 1976. Just as Barack Obama is, famously, a “blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views,” so presidential candidate Jimmy Carter tried to be “all things to all people,” Perlstein writes. Carter denounced elites in a memorable way in his speech to the Democratic convention that year, but when asked where he stood on the political spectrum, according to an article Perlstein quotes from The New York Times, Carter would say things like, “I don’t like to categorize, I don’t see myself as liberal or conservative or the like”—then proceed to suggest that he was a little of both.

Nevertheless, liberals in 1976 steadfastly maintained that Carter was one of them—to the utter exasperation of the journalists who had studied Carter’s statements and positions over the years. The man from Plains, Georgia, was no progressive, the journalists argued. But in those days, nothing was capable of shaking the faith of his disciples.

That faith was something to behold. “They yearned to believe,” Perlstein writes of Carter’s fans. Among the smitten were hardened journalists like James Wolcott and Hunter S. Thompson (!) as well as the leaders of some of the big labor unions, in those days the bulwark of American liberalism.

Once the election was over, the pundits of the day amused themselves—just as they do today—by speculating that the GOP was permanently done for. Today, it’s demographic change that is supposed to be slowly crushing the right; back then there were similar theories. In 1977, a columnist for the Boston Globe added up all the constituencies that the GOP had alienated over the course of the decade and wrote that the “Grand Old Party has begun to face the unpleasant fact that it risks becoming a permanent opposition dwarfed by a much larger ruling party.” Another notion, which Perlstein describes, was the widespread belief that the rise of the Now Generation would drag the whole spectrum of opinion leftward—just like millennials are expected to do today.

As president, of course, Carter wasn’t much of a liberal at all. Although economic conditions were not good when he took over, the stimulus he proposed was far too small because, like another Democrat who comes to mind, Carter was always drawn to fiscal responsibility and “hard choices.” “He has emphasized balancing the budget as if it were more important than reducing unemployment,” wrote the columnist Joseph Kraft in 1977.

President Carter did sign a big capital-gains tax cut, and he went on to deregulate the airlines, the trucking industry and oil prices. However, when the AFL-CIO proposed a bunch of labor-law reforms including what we now call “card check,” Carter first diluted the proposal, then allowed it to die in the Senate without straining himself on its behalf, a scenario that was replayed by Obama virtually move for move.

Like Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter was drawn instinctively toward austerity—keeping the White House thermostat down and advertising his personal devotion to domestic thrift by donning a cardigan in a televised chat on the energy crisis. In the fight against inflation—the real deal, not the imaginary kind we fear today—Carter demanded spending cuts and made an effort to balance the federal budget. His hand-picked Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, jacked interest rates up to unprecedented levels, which had the unfortunate effect of crushing the economy. (One of the few supporters of Volcker’s efforts was the West German government, obsessed then as now with austerity and inflation-fighting.)

Along the way Carter managed to antagonize all manner of liberal interest groups, especially organized labor, even though union members had been instrumental in electing him in 1976. According to the bien pensant thinking of the 1970s—and also of the 2010s—such groups were merely relics of a bygone era. Unfortunately for Carter, however, certain of those dinosaur labor unions went on to support Ted Kennedy’s challenge to him in the 1980 Democratic primaries, which in turn set him up for his spectacular defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan.

One of the most perceptive pieces of journalism on the subject of Jimmy Carter was a 1979 essay by his former speechwriter Fallows called “The Passionless Presidency.” The title alone summons up an almost perfect image of the cool, detached Obama style, but the shocks of recognition keep piling up as you read on.

Carter, Fallows maintained, “is probably smarter, in the College Board sense, than any other President in this century.” Something similar could obviously be said for Obama. But smarts are not enough, either today or in the troubled 1970s. They led Carter and Company to place their faith in experts and expertise, and to try to solve problems as though they were a complicated math quiz, where “Once you had the right answer, they thought their work would be done.”

The job required much more than that, however. Carter could work out solutions on paper, Fallows acknowledged, but he failed “to project a vision larger than the problem he is tackling at the moment.” More bluntly: “Carter cannot explain what he is doing.” Narrative is always a problem for post-ideological Democrats, of course, but it has been a notable obstacle for Barack Obama, who (unlike Carter) is one of the great orators of our time and yet who is convinced, according to Jonathan Alter’s book “The Center Holds,” that presidential oratory doesn’t really matter.

The final ironic lesson of the Carter presidency should be a cautionary tale for any centrist Democrat who dreams of striking a “grand bargain” with the right: No matter what conservative deeds Democrats undertake, as Rick Perlstein told me in conversation a few days ago, they will never win respect for it. It was Jimmy Carter, not the Republicans, who enacted the sweeping deregulation of transportation. It was Carter, not Reagan, who recommitted America to the Cold War and who slapped a grain embargo on the Soviet Union after that country invaded Afghanistan. (Reagan is the guy who lifted it.) And yet, in the mind of the public, Carter will stand forever as a symbol of liberalism’s fecklessness.

Barack Obama survived his re-election, but he is suffering a form of Jimmy Carter’s fate nevertheless. The ambiguous idealism of Carter’s first run for the presidency was precisely what set the table for his downfall later on. Being a “blank screen” or the personal object of the enthusiasm of millions—these may play well when a candidate is unknown, but they are postures impossible to maintain as president. In both cases, they led inevitably to disappointment and disillusionment.

The moral of this story is not directed at Democratic politicians; it is meant for us, the liberal rank and file. We still “yearn to believe,” as Perlstein says. There is something about the Carter / Obama personality that appeals to us in a deep, unspoken way, and that has led Democrats to fall for a whole string of passionless centrists: John Kerry, Al Gore, Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart and Bill Clinton. Each time, Democratic voters are enchanted by a kind of intellectual idealism that (we are told) is unmoored from ideology. We persuade ourselves that the answer to the savagery of the right—the way to trump the naked class aggression of the One Percent—is to say farewell to our own tradition and get past politics and ideology altogether. And so we focus on the person of the well-meaning, hyper-intelligent leader. We are so high-minded, we think. We are so scientific.

We are such losers.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

I would have guessed 30, but anything is possible.

Not that is really matters, but Enki posted his age a few years ago during a classic Mr.P-Tinker bickerfest. He's in his mid-thirties now. I also remember Simple Minded sharing his birth year once- that sticks because it was the same year as my father's. Endovelico stated his age in range of 70+; and of course, Mr. P has plainly reminded us several times that he was best man at Methuselah's wedding. We certainly know that with age, his opinions have evolved. To quote myself from a post two years ago:

I didn't know whether to mention it in this thread or the "Next Four Years" thread but there was a time not so long ago when Mr. P would've voted for President Obama

Re: Americans - Who's Your Current Choice?

Postby Mr. Perfect » Thu Jan 24, 2008 12:50 pm

Rapp wrote:I have finally decided. It looks to me like the four surviving candidates will be Clinton, Obama, McCain, and Romney. It may be close, so we may even see some convention antics this go-round. Here is what I plan to do at this point.

Clinton vs. Romney .......................... Romney
Clinton vs. McCain ............................ McCain
Obama vs. Romney ........................... Romney
Obama vs. McCain ............................. Obama

My choices are exactly the same.

So did Mr.P follow through and vote for the very man he is so against? Has he been playing for the other side this whole time?

This (and Tinker being a registered Republican) are some of the strange things you find when looking for old threads on the Spengler atttimes board.

EDIT: Sorry, sorry, I posted too soon; it took all of five days for the Mr.P of the past to come to his senses and say:

Postby Mr. Perfect » Tue Jan 29, 2008 5:54 pm
As of this moment, I am pulling for a Hillary/McCain race, with JM winning. I think it would be demoralizing to the opposition and McCain can flail around on his own without me having to defend him. McCain is really a 3rd party candidate. As for Romney, I just don't feel like defending the flip flopping for 4 years, let alone the election.

At first I was kind of tolerant of Obama because he seemed harmless and genuinely a nice guy, but after today I don't know if I could take him. Campaigning on change and then joining yourself at the hip with Teddy the Chapster sort of punctures the balloon. And, he's a straight up liberal on taxes, spending, education, defense issues, socialized medicine, environment, abortion, property rights, etc etc. All his positions are ones I've spent my whole life fighting, so sorry Obamers, I'm out.

So if there is a silver lining to all of this: as the sink ships, there will be no time wasted flip-flop defending.*



*this last line is just as apropos to the current sinking ship as it was to the sinking ship from two years ago.

[Simple Minded]

Excellent summary Nap. No one survives more than about two years in politics without being on both sides of every issue at times. Same reason the classic religious books are full of contradictions.

Information age technology is the true enemy of mankind's leaders. All their previous proselytizations are recorded.

The other upside of declaring Obama to be a republican is it will allow all his critics to unload their quivers of racist, misogynist, homophobe, greedy, selfish, right wing oppressor arrows at him before the campaign, rather than at his replacement.

The downside is the guy FINALLY decides to become a uniter rather than a divider, only to find that Merika don't want no uniters no mo.

Timin is everythang....

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Excellent summary Nap. No one survives more than about two years in politics without being on both sides of every issue at times. Same reason the classic religious books are full of contradictions.

Information age technology is the true enemy of mankind's leaders. All their previous proselytizations are recorded.

The other upside of declaring Obama to be a republican is it will allow all his critics to unload their quivers of racist, misogynist, homophobe, greedy, selfish, right wing oppressor arrows at him before the campaign, rather than at his replacement.

The downside is the guy FINALLY decides to become a uniter rather than a divider, only to find that Merika don't want no uniters no mo.

Timin is everythang....

Well, "Man, in short, is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his belief to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another." is still as true as ever.

Bluntly. I think this article is a load of filler and having read it several times, I cannot see how it touches upon anything close to reality. However, it can't dismissed out of hand because there is a segment of Democratic Party and the American Left who sincerely believe this narrative. I've read the article several times and every time I've gone to respond to it, by fisking it's tendentiousness of course, I can't help but shake the previous thought. There is something to it, but this misses the mark.

I don't think this willful blindness on my part, I just don't see this as anything more than a provocative rhetoric for the choirs. There isn't much there, and it definitely isn't engaging to anyone but a class of people perpetually aggrieved (which happens to make up a sizable group of the Crunchy-Con American Conservative readership and left.) His characterization of the Obama candidacy is nothing like reality. The "Yes, We Can" "Change" "Post-Political" Candidate (who wrote two memoirs, accepted his nomination on a Greek colonnade, and promised global healing upon his election) lacked ambitious and wasn't elected to upset the apple cart? The article has a running theme of the finest revisionism that our chattering class has often resorted to lately. From the get go, I cannot square this circle presented like the author. And I think his disillusionment is affecting his perceptions of history. Robert Gates and Hillary were practical political compromises with much messier histories than suggested. And messy may be the operative word here- every little tendentious trick (like the exit poll fallacy) comes with a heavy 'but', loud however, and deflating 'except that.' The main party trick- Conservative=Republican- at the heart of the article is such a false dilemma it's embarrassing to discuss.

We have a very clear way of determining President Obama's leaning. Which party coalition is he joined with? The D next to his name not an accident. Any other "true believer" arguments are circuitous and ultimately fallacious. He doesn't magically become a Republican no matter how hard anyone wishes.

And wishes is what the sentiment is based on. No one wants to own Obama now. He's the most famous homeless man in United States right now, albeit a bum who gets to spend his day on some of our better golf courses.The author posits that some future generation of Republicans will claim him as one of his own. And it could always happen. Politicians would embrace anyone for that one more vote. And besides, I have a feeling from now until the end of the Empire, we will hear our lumpen-intelligesia try to rewrite history just like this. It will be bludgeoned onto Americans (and Republicans particular) until they start repeating it. If this happened in a relationship, it would be called abuse; but here, we just have convenience of short memories for the people, and expediency for the megaphoned.

The question of how to define Obama is an attempt to hide his abandonment and renunciation. The author touched on something I do think is very true. By temperament, the gentleman is probably rather conservative (in the small 'c' sense.) This is not something unique, most of the political class is like that too. But what seems to hurt the author and those with similar sentiments is that the President, in their eyes, came up small. He didn't rise to the occasion and couldn't overcome the moment. The question with President Obama has never been, "Is He a Republican," or "Is He a Democrat," or "Is he Really Chuck Norris in Disguise;" It has always been, "Is He Important?"

So, "Is He Important?" I think you can make a case for his Presidency (so far) in the affirmative; but it's going to be awfully hard in the present. Articles like this confirm for me that there are a lot of people who feel a whole lot of angst over the question. He wasn't the important 21-century FDR or Reagan, that they wanted or expected. There is a lot of pessimism on his perceived smallness and it must be eating away at the people who have supported him. It'd be too easy to say that people were hoping he'd be important because it would reconfirm their own importance. A case of, "his is great because a great people voted him in." I remember it, all the tears, and hugging and the whole "seminal moment"-aura around a mulatto man being President of the United States. When I was overseas, I met so many people who were ecstatic, amazed, exhilarated, about President Barack Obama; none of their enthusiasm matched what went on in this country in those first few (pre-swearing in) months. You even had conservative pundits saying good things about him, the moment, the future, in the days and weeks after his election.

Maybe it wasn't so egotistical though. The economy was done, we were exhausted from war; maybe we really needed a great man-type to rebound. Maybe a President who could reassure us about the future. But where are we right now?

I love Mr.P's quip, "Politics for me but not for thee," because I think it reflects pretty well the temperament of Democratic (or Democratic leaning) supporters Republicans play politics and it's a national travesty. Democrats use the same tactics, and it's just smart gambits; good tactics; establishing the right side of history. This may sound like sour grapes, common sniping, or resentment; but the great big blind spot of my Democratic Party is how much their contempt has played a role in sinking this President. And I bring this up because this article is part and parcel of the same old strategy to make the word Republican signal Low-Status (like Simple Minded is alluding to.) One would think they think they'd get it by now, but I haven't seen it.

It is in a lot of ways the prime tragedy of the President Obama administration. Here was a man, in the middle of Chicago on a cold November night (if memory serves well, ) talking about being a "post-political" President, unaware that the hubris of his own party was going to retard all of his moves. It polarized the nation severely. Every move he made from then on was questionable (just as they started doing with Bush.) He was dealt a bad economy, a parlous foreign policy, a congress he had no control of, a military-industrial complex he had no experience with. He compounded this with a terrible VP pick, a PR-picked cabinet which blew up in his face, a frat boy/woman unfriendly-atmosphere, an introverted personality with little experience and a conservative mien who never got as far as he should have.

Whether you want to blame him, praise him, hang him or hug him; the President couldn't get out of his own way for the last six years, and he never had time to be that great man his supporters wanted. He hasn't been FDR or Reagan. He hasn't been Roosevelt or LBJ. He's been described as some sort of amalgamation of Richard Nixon [the bad parts]; Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. That is who he is being defined as- not a Republican but an incompetent loser.

That's quite a Frankenstein [all the parts made up of former death panel patients? ] And in this milieu where saying President Obama is Low Status by equating him to Republicans is a really lousy way to get at the point. He's not important in the grand scheme of things, let's hope the next guy does more than tread water.

[Simple Minded]

another great post Nap!

Reading your post reminds me of the very day I started to feel sorry for Obama. It was during his first campaign and people were lining up along one of the interstates to get a glimpse of his motorcade as it drove by! I thought "Wow! I've never seen anything like this except for the Pope or maybe the Beatles. When these poor self-deluded bastards turn on him, it may get uglier than anything I have ever seen in my lifetime."

I do not know if Obama was so self-deluded as to believe his own press releases or campaign or not. If so, I feel even sorrier for him. If not, he is one of the best actors I have ever seen. Either way, he played the roles his audience demanded.

People don't like you much if you don't support their delusions of reality.... always and forever. He could have been a historic figure. Merely pointing out all the "potential" disadvantages in his own background (mulatto, abandoned by his mother, father, step father) and then proclaiming "I did not let the shortcoming in my life destroy me. Stop blaming others and deal with what life has dealt you!"

But as you are well aware, no one campaigns on the platform of personal responsibility. It will guarantee your defeat. But once in office, if Obama had played that card, I think his second term election would have been the biggest presidential landside victory the US has ever seen. Of course, as a self-aware dinosaur, I could be very wrong. Self-delusions are everywhere (even between my ears).

Obama like all candidates/politicans didn't have enough "right Stuff" to say "What the hell are you people thinking? You want magicians? Go to Vegas! You want to make the world a better place? Start by growing up!"

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3085

Are you aware of the contrary magazine cover indicator? I recall going into Barnes & Noble several times, during his first campaign and during the first couple of years of his presidency, and seeing Obama's face on 10-15 magazine covers simultaneously. I thought the same thing each time "The mob is going to crucify this poor guy and I doubt he even sees it coming."

Projection is a nasty aspect of the minds of a lot of people. Politicians and candidates are indicators, not prime movers.

"I married Miss America and she got fat!" "I married Prince Charming and he farts and burps a lot!"

"Really? That deceptive bastard/bitch screwed ya!"

Enjoy the show and keep yer poker face ever ready!

[Mr. Perfect]

Actually Nap I wrote that before Reverend Wright came out. Reverend Wright was the game changer, where our little lamb was exposed as the devil himself.

[Mr. Perfect]

And Nap you are a Nor'easterner through and through.

[Mr. Perfect]

Bluntly. I think this article is a load of filler and having read it several times, I cannot see how it touches upon anything close to reality. However, it can't dismissed out of hand because there is a segment of Democratic Party and the American Left who sincerely believe this narrative. I've read the article several times and every time I've gone to respond to it, by fisking it's tendentiousness of course, I can't help but shake the previous thought. There is something to it, but this misses the mark.

The thing is is that obama is/was a chicken$#!t when it comes to making decisions in reality. Abstract decisions, very decisive. But from his early "policy" in AFG, Iraq, to Libya/Syria now ISIS total chicken$#!t. can't stand the idea of being wrong. Hence the vascillations and endless can kicking. Keep options open indefinitely. Speaks to no life experience.

I don't think this willful blindness on my part, I just don't see this as anything more than a provocative rhetoric for the choirs. There isn't much there, and it definitely isn't engaging to anyone but a class of people perpetually aggrieved (which happens to make up a sizable group of the Crunchy-Con American Conservative readership and left.) His characterization of the Obama candidacy is nothing like reality. The "Yes, We Can" "Change" "Post-Political" Candidate (who wrote two memoirs, accepted his nomination on a Greek colonnade, and promised global healing upon his election) lacked ambitious and wasn't elected to upset the apple cart? The article has a running theme of the finest revisionism that our chattering class has often resorted to lately. From the get go, I cannot square this circle presented like the author. And I think his disillusionment is affecting his perceptions of history. Robert Gates and Hillary were practical political compromises with much messier histories than suggested. And messy may be the operative word here- every little tendentious trick (like the exit poll fallacy) comes with a heavy 'but', loud however, and deflating 'except that.' The main party trick- Conservative=Republican- at the heart of the article is such a false dilemma it's embarrassing to discuss.

Yeah.

We have a very clear way of determining President Obama's leaning. Which party coalition is he joined with? The D next to his name not an accident. Any other "true believer" arguments are circuitous and ultimately fallacious. He doesn't magically become a Republican no matter how hard anyone wishes.

obama had the most liberal voting record in the Senate when he was there. He has the most liberal Presidency in history, period.

And wishes is what the sentiment is based on. No one wants to own Obama now. He's the most famous homeless man in United States right now, albeit a bum who gets to spend his day on some of our better golf courses.The author posits that some future generation of Republicans will claim him as one of his own. And it could always happen.

They won'.t Michael Moore of all people got it right on "legacy".

Politicians would embrace anyone for that one more vote. And besides, I have a feeling from now until the end of the Empire, we will hear our lumpen-intelligesia try to rewrite history just like this. It will be bludgeoned onto Americans (and Republicans particular) until they start repeating it. If this happened in a relationship, it would be called abuse; but here, we just have convenience of short memories for the people, and expediency for the megaphoned.

The question of how to define Obama is an attempt to hide his abandonment and renunciation. The author touched on something I do think is very true. By temperament, the gentleman is probably rather conservative (in the small 'c' sense.)

Not conservative, cautious at epic levels.

This is not something unique, most of the political class is like that too. But what seems to hurt the author and those with similar sentiments is that the President, in their eyes, came up small. He didn't rise to the occasion and couldn't overcome the moment. The question with President Obama has never been, "Is He a Republican," or "Is He a Democrat," or "Is he Really Chuck Norris in Disguise;" It has always been, "Is He Important?"

Not anymore.

So, "Is He Important?" I think you can make a case for his Presidency (so far) in the affirmative;

Michael Moore disagrees with you. I think he is right. obamacare will ultimately be repealed, after that no legacy, at all except debt and national insolvency.

but it's going to be awfully hard in the present. Articles like this confirm for me that there are a lot of people who feel a whole lot of angst over the question. He wasn't the important 21-century FDR or Reagan, that they wanted or expected. There is a lot of pessimism on his perceived smallness and it must be eating away at the people who have supported him. It'd be too easy to say that people were hoping he'd be important because it would reconfirm their own importance. A case of, "his is great because a great people voted him in." I remember it, all the tears, and hugging and the whole "seminal moment"-aura around a mulatto man being President of the United States. When I was overseas, I met so many people who were ecstatic, amazed, exhilarated, about President Barack Obama; none of their enthusiasm matched what went on in this country in those first few (pre-swearing in) months. You even had conservative pundits saying good things about him, the moment, the future, in the days and weeks after his election.

Not that much. No Republicans voted with him at all in those days.

Maybe it wasn't so egotistical though. The economy was done, we were exhausted from war; maybe we really needed a great man-type to rebound. Maybe a President who could reassure us about the future. But where are we right now?

I love Mr.P's quip, "Politics for me but not for thee," because I think it reflects pretty well the temperament of Democratic (or Democratic leaning) supporters Republicans play politics and it's a national travesty. Democrats use the same tactics, and it's just smart gambits; good tactics; establishing the right side of history. This may sound like sour grapes, common sniping, or resentment; but the great big blind spot of my Democratic Party is how much their contempt has played a role in sinking this President. And I bring this up because this article is part and parcel of the same old strategy to make the word Republican signal Low-Status (like Simple Minded is alluding to.) One would think they think they'd get it by now, but I haven't seen it.

It is in a lot of ways the prime tragedy of the President Obama administration. Here was a man, in the middle of Chicago on a cold November night (if memory serves well, ) talking about being a "post-political" President, unaware that the hubris of his own party was going to retard all of his moves. It polarized the nation severely. Every move he made from then on was questionable (just as they started doing with Bush.) He was dealt a bad economy, a parlous foreign policy,

Actually those were the only reasons he got elected. BHO was unelectable without those things.

a congress he had no control of,

He had total control, but didn't know what to do with it. Huge difference.

a military-industrial complex he had no experience with.

He had no experience with anything. At all. In life.

He compounded this with a terrible VP pick, a PR-picked cabinet which blew up in his face, a frat boy/woman unfriendly-atmosphere, an introverted personality with little experience and a cautious/chicken$#!t mien who never got as far as he should have.

And aren't we lucky. Everything was right here except the part I fixed.

Whether you want to blame him, praise him, hang him or hug him; the President couldn't get out of his own way for the last six years, and he never had time to be that great man his supporters wanted. He hasn't been FDR or Reagan. He hasn't been Roosevelt or LBJ. He's been described as some sort of amalgamation of Richard Nixon [the bad parts]; Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. That is who he is being defined as- not a Republican but an incompetent loser.

Yeah.

That's quite a Frankenstein [all the parts made up of former death panel patients? ] And in this milieu where saying President Obama is Low Status by equating him to Republicans is a really lousy way to get at the point. He's not important in the grand scheme of things, let's hope the next guy does more than tread water.

Polls have him as the worst President history. I think they are right.

[Nonc Hilaire]

Best overview I have seen.

http://boingboing.net/2014/10/29/obamac ... at-it.html

[Enki]

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/ ... epublican/

Without a doubt Obama was a war hawk in 2008. He is the only American politician I know of that said he would considered invading Pakistan.

Otherwise what Lincoln said.... You can fool some of the people all of the time.

Yup, Obama definitely campaigned openly and honestly as a war hawk. Anyone who thought differently was deluding themselves.

DO you remember that you and I were talking about that before the 2008 election? Maybe even before most of the primaries were run?

Yes. He was quite forthright about being a hawk in Afghanistan. I don't remember particular conversations, but I do remember conversing about it on these various fora.

[Enki]

Tinker is in the deep final stages of cognitive dissonance. He thought he was on the verge of a leftist collectivist utopia after 2008 now in 6 short years he is handing the country back to the opposition Reaganite party, with the only lasting accomplishment a couple of homosexual issues no one really cares about. His mind is unable to handle the pain and is desperately embracing any rationalization he can find, in this case that he was hornswaggled by a closet Republican. Padded rooms to come.

Mr. P,

Thou dost have a fertile imagination.

Occam's toothbrush: The simpler explanation is he has two kids and he is rapidly closing in on the big 4-0.....

Of course, some may prefer padded rooms......

Actually my politics have always been pretty Liberal in the strictest sense of the world. I am pro-free markets, big on social liberty, and think the government should provide some basic safety net, and that the government has a role in regulating markets to the degree that monopoly is a bad thing for a free society. You see that particular aspect play out in many cases. Like being a contractor and having one client who can bankrupt your business by pulling out of their contract with you. It goes much further than which team you ra ra for in the mostly irrelevant elections.

If anything has changed it has been how I view politics as an endeavor. I don't really have a lot of hope of affecting political change from a place of activism, but I have met allies in the city bureaucracy for various enterprises we are engaging in. In otherwords, strictly supporting candidates in the hope they will go my way is not as important to me as it is to have competent folks in government with which you can do business.

Part of the reason I don't come to this forum much is because I don't actually think the arguments about what is a real liberal or what is a real conservative are all that fun or interesting.

[Enki]

I see the thread I started got merged into a giant megathread.

That's another one of the main reasons I stopped coming here. It's too confusing to wade through all of the unthreaded conversations when you throw conversations into a big megathread.

So I won't be responding to this anymore and I will try to remember that the moderation schema here is totally broken to a point that it simply requires too much effort to wade through the garbage to find direct replies to me. The inefficiencies inherent in the moderation schema make what is already a time waster waste about 3x as much time as it would otherwise. I can't afford that.

Back to work.

See you guys in three months or something.

[Mr. Perfect]

I see Tinker and I agree on something. The megathread thing has to stop. I will note that Tinker was an early proponent of the idea. But it has become an impediment, clearly.

[Mr. Perfect]

Part of the reason I don't come to this forum much is because

The entire reason you don't come to this forum anymore is you can't say anything without directly contradicting what you used to say in the past.

[Mr. Perfect]

I see Tinker and I agree on something. The megathread thing has to stop. I will note that Tinker was an early proponent of the idea. But it has become an impediment, clearly.

Actually if someone can help me out IIRC it was Tinker's idea.