Obama's Failures

A lawyer defended someone who did something bad like breaking the law. This was so shocking nobody thought it was worth making a big deal about the first time he ran for president.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

There's that ol' media-based circular logic: if people didn't make a big deal out of it, or didn't do their due diligence in examining the candidate, it is therefore automatically not a big deal.

Work on that logic, chap.

There's that ol' media-based circular logic: if people didn't make a big deal out of it, or didn't do their due diligence in examining the candidate, it is therefore automatically not a big deal.

Work on that logic, chap.

No, that is not what I do. But it has become real clear your attitude is Mitt can do no harm, but if Obama breathes funny, watch out! I have been following the main media stories of the moment and they are not about a slum landlord defended by Obama and don't regard what we currently know about the deaths in Libya to be monumental failures of the Obama Administration. That is not where the media focus has been. You want equal time for mistakes? Fine, but they haven't been equal time in media impact.

Lawyers defend bad people.

Do you really believe anybody cares at this point Obama defended a slum landlord?

Lincoln defended bad people also.

Mitt can do plenty of harm; I've got lots of problems with them. But Obama's already screwing up the job he's running for. And since you don't post anything about that, I'm going to. Simple as that. You can try to defend it if you like, but I expect that without the transparent fallback of complaining about his opponent, you'll probably find it rather difficult.

This is the whole point. The lack of media focus is part of the complaint. Pointing to it isn't a defense of anything.

This also isn't accurate, anyway. First, you didn't breathe a word of question or complaint about the schizo communications after the Embassy attacks, or ask one question about it. Nor did you say anything about their total walkback of what they've been saying about it being coordinated all week long. So even your choice of want to talk about within stories is selective.

Second, you're just talking about the last two weeks, not the campaign as a whole. There've been tons of other things in the media negative for Obama that you don't go near with a ten-foot-pole; not a single employment report, cost-benefit analysis' of the stimulus, unemployment records set, trillion-dollar deficits, gunrunning, stonewalling, etc. All of these have been in the news prominently at one point or another, and you've never spoken a word about any of them. So it's ridiculous that you would try to pretend that your focus is just a reflection of what's in the news. That's not even close to true.

So, I'm going to keep posting about all those stories you ignore. Feel free to try to defend them. And, if you're feeling generous, you can helpfully explain why you've never mentioned them before.

Sure do.

It's crazy how quickly and lazily you fall back on perception. Protip: if your response to a criticism is that you don't think people care, you don't actually have a response.

That said, Obama sure seems to think his opponent's job is newsworthy, and doesn't seem to think just doing that job well is any kind of defense. So, he can live and die by that same principle. Either people just do their jobs well and can't really be held accountable for what that entails, or not. Can't have it both ways.

Here's a great example of a very serious failing. This administration has had tons of messaging failures and general gaffes, and most get very little coverage. Sometimes this makes sense, because gaffes aren't really that important (though there's pretty much always a huge double-standard on this point). But there are a few big, glaring issues that I don't think Obama has much of an answer for. They're clear, inarguable screwups on issues that really matter, not just for political purposes. This is one of them:


Fast & Furious
The Fast & Furious gunwalking program. For those who don't know (which is quite a few people, because it's stunning how little coverage it's gotten relatively to how messed up it is), this is a program wherein the DOJ deliberately gave guns to Mexican drug cartels in hopes that they could them trace them back to them when they were caught.

Shockingly, this give-assault-weapons-to-drug-dealers plan didn't go all that smoothly. They lost track of tons of the weapons, and one of them was used to kill a United States border agent.

Naturally, this sort of stuff got people's attentions. Hearings were held; Attorney General Holder was called to testify, at which time he seems to have probably lied about his knowledge of the program. Bare minimum, he gave false testimony and the Administration (in what is apparently a bit of a pattern of administrative cross-talk) gave conflicting accounts of things. More on the contradictions here.

Congress subpoenaed more documents to investigate this contradiction, and Obama invoked Executive Privilege to deny them access. At which point scads of Democrats who excoriated Bush for invoking it, suddenly defended the idea, even using the same talking points:



But wait, it's worse: by invoking Executive Privilege, Obama contradicts Holder implicitly. Holder said Obama and the Executive Branch had no knowledge of this. However, you can only invoke Executive Privilege to protect communication between the Executive and others. How can it be privileged information for the Executive AND something that had nothing to do with him? Oops. But the media didn't talk about this much, so I guess it's magically not a story. Nice of them to triage this stuff for us.

Ultimately, 14 underlings went down, but the documents have not been provided and the contradictions haven't been explained. Congress ultimately held Holder, the sitting Attorney General, in Contempt (that's a big deal). Holder has kept his job, amazingly.

Oh, and just for good measure, he made sure to imply his critics were racist for investigating his role.

You said before it was shocking.

That is not the same as Obama criticizes Romney's job performance, so let's point out things he has done.

Okay: it's shocking that he would criticize Romney's job performance given the kinds of things he did as part of his job.

That isn't exactly a new story.

I don't recall Romney making a big deal about it.

Your interpretation of some of the facts are skewed, but if you think it is important to highlight it, go ahead.

I am not going to play tit for tat and bring up all the Romney stories I haven't mentioned.

But you go ahead and talk about all the terrible things Obama has done.

We'll see if that makes any difference who gets elected in November.

I didn't know anything about it. I actually am a little shocked. Guess I shouldn't be, but I am.

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#31 on SC's Top 100 Mofos list!!

Crap, you're right. I forgot to check the Statute of Limitations on Hypocrisy.

Cool, thanks, I will. I might not have enough time to list them all, but I'll try.

I hate to break it to you, but nothing any of us say will change who gets elected in November. Obama doesn't become magically right about anything if he wins, nor proven wrong if he loses.

The Fast & Furious debacle is a debacle no matter what happens in November, no matter who in the media covers it, and no matter how many people on message boards whistle and turn their head when it gets brought up.

President Obama Falsely Claims Fast and Furious Program “Begun Under the Previous Administration”

He's done this several times now.

No, nothing either of us says matters. What is news matters. And what is news has been Romney's unprecedented attempt at using a national tragedy to take a swipe at the President and bonehead remarks he made privately compounded by bonehead comments he made to defend it.

It is hypocrisy because I didn't bring up the gun thing? That thread was about the campaign and that has not been an issue. I have been bringing up things that have become a campaign issue.

Yo were certainly free to bring it up if you wanted to.

What's news matters in a completely self-fulfilling way. If the media covers something, that "matters" in the sense that it will affect the election. And if they give a scandal short shrift, that matters for the same reason. That's different than saying it "matters" in the sense of being significant or important. Failing to make this distinction leads to the kind of circular reasoning you keep trotting out, where things aren't important simply because they're not news, and if they're not in the news they must not be important. Try to spot the ridiculously elementary logical error.

The U.S. government handing out assault weapons to drug cartels, losing track of them, having them kill a border agent and then stonewalling investigations and contradicting themselves when questioned about it, is a big deal. That matters. It matters if everyone covers it, and it matters if no one covers it. If your only response is about coverage, then congratulations, because you've just a) made my point for me and b) admitted you don't have a substantive response.

I guess I have a different set of priorities on what should be newsworthy. Personally, I think a mess like F & F is more important than focusing on more trivial things like who's winning the campaign game. I have a different way of looking at it, unconcerned with how anything affects images, polls, ect. or calculating public opinion while dismissing important things as "old" or "irrelevant" or whatever.

That attitude is part of the problem, the notion that these things are only important insofar as they affect politicians, while armchair analysts abstract and debate issues in terms of election cycles.

Wait, so campaigns should be more about dull, substantive things like policies and results rather than exciting, gossipy things like how people come off, how charismatic they are, how things look or sound, or who can make people believe they care more?

What a curious notion, sir! Please tell me more of this strange new approach to politics.

It has been covered. And it has not made an impact on the election.

The public decides what is important.

And at the moment it is 47 percent.