To my total lack of surprise, the government under Obama is more secretive than it was under Bush.
Obama has always been just another politician. Always. And that cuts both good and bad, depending on your point of view and the issue in question.
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Yes Obama made a series of promises that he almost all broke. It is in short: Obama talks a good game.
Which leads me to believe that Obama made a huge career mistake seeking the Presidency (or at least seeking it so early). The Senate has need of good speech makers (especially leftist speech makers now that Ted Kennedy has passed), and that seems to be both Obama’s highest talent and his passion.
He should have stayed in the Senate where he could give daily speeches and not done anything else, which is what he is basically doing as President.
It’s not like people weren’t warning about Obama’s style of leadership, if you can even call it that.
He accomplished absolutely nothing as a Senator. The man voted ‘present’ something like 180 times, and he has continued to vote ‘present’ as POTUS.
In truth I’d say the President has accomplished quite a lot, and in fairness I’d say that every President probably spends more time giving speeches than anything else. Including even Presidents who aren’t all that good at it.
Did this President’s early supporters expect more than he delivered? Did he even allow them to think he would do things he knew he probably wouldn’t? I’d say that’s probably a fair criticism.
I suppose whether Obama has accomplished much depends on how you define “accomplishment.” By my reckoning he has accomplished less and promised more than any President of my lifetime. The only significant legislative “victory” he has had so far has been the pork-laden “Spendulus” bill which Obama promosed would keep unemployment below 8% and which has become an object of scorn as it added nearly a trillion dollars to the deficit while Obama’s press hacks, administration lackeys and Obama himself made laughable claims of “jobs saved” that eventually became so ludicrous that even his own economists eventually had to admit they were just made up shit.
I know you want to play the “I’m so fair” card by painting Obama as “just another politician” but I’m not buying what you are selling. Obama is the most virulent partisan President in my lifetime, the most incompetent President in my lifetime, the most untruthful President in my lifetime and, so far, the least succesful President in my lifetime. In that sense I have to say that Obama is truly something “special” as a President and he deserves acknowledgement of those unique qualities he has shown so far.
I know you want to play the “I’m so fair” card by painting Obama as “just another politician” but I’m not buying what you are selling.
Meh. You spend so much time in my head, could you start paying my bills for me?
The funny part is, it IS true that “he’s just another politician” has a tendency to send some Obama worshipers (and he surely has them) into spasms of rage at my greivous insult of The One. Whatever. I was pretty calm about his election even though I didn’t vote for him, because that was already my assessment.
Indeed, his youth and inexperience, and his background as nothing but a party-line back-bencher with good speechifying skills, pretty much guaranteed he’d be surrounded by seasoned and experienced pros and would mostly do whatever they told him to do. Prediction so far on the mark as I see it.
The two Presidents who did the most talking out of both sides of their mouths–in my lifetime so far–were Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. In terms of number of promises, Bill Clinton still takes the cake; the man fired off so many off-the-hip promises and boasts it was ridiculous (remember all his “this is the most X administration in history” remarks? It turned into a running gag).
The nature of the Presidency, especially in the modern era but even going back to George Washington, is such that it is virtually impossible to govern very far from the center, but with partisan leanings being critical.
Probably the least partisan President of my lifetime was Jimmy Carter, and he was a colossal failure.
Just Google up “George Bush’s broken promises” for a litany of supposed Bush lies and broken promises. This is an easy game to play. My own view of our current Temporary Occupant of the White House is that he’s made some rookie mistakes and embarrassed himself a few times, he’s had some successes and failures, but he’s largely followed through with the agenda he ran on. Whether you like that agenda or not being irrelevant. But I may be wrong; history will be the judge.
I’m actually wondering what the successes were that you see; I’m assuming that you aren’t counting “continued the Bush policy on X”.
Well there’s certainly been a lot of that. He’s managed to stay the course successfully in Iraq and while Afghanistan is still a nightmare it always was and will be for some time.
For another perspective, you can see this article. Surely you won’t agree that they are all successes because you won’t like all these things, but they are arguable as successes from his perspective, and from the perspective of many others.
There is a trick that comes when you only read partisan press that bashes the President; pretty soon all you see is the negativity, and that skews your perspective. It happens to everyone, good bad and otherwise.
Dean, I read plenty from both sides of the Obamagasm divide. I still maintain that Obama is objectively the least effective, least competent and least truthful President in my lifetime, and that absolutely includes Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon.
In fact if you really want to get down to it, it is much harder to find something Obama told the truth about than something he lied about.
Yes, this is a more egregious sin since Obama rode into town on a virtual white horse of purity and light, but even forgetting that he promised to be the most truthful and transparent President in history, his tsunami of truthlessness is breathtaking in both quantity and quality.
Again, this is by design. Obama lies because he must lie to get his agenda passed. If he told the truth about his goals he’d never have been elected. The more people learn about him, the more they dislike him. The more he talks, the less people listen.
At this rate Obama is going to go down in history as the single most incompetent and ineffective President in history. He will replace Jimmy Carter as the “joke” President.
And you know what? That’s the optimistic view of Obama. The pessimistic view of Obama is that he will be the President who will go down in history as the man who made America irrelevent.
Which some would say is his true goal.
Dean, are you aware that FIOA “reforms” was listed as one of the “successes” in that article?
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