Keep spinnng, Yoda. You make it sound like Obama is such a failure that is why his numbers are falling. Yea, right. Moderates are "waking up." To what? That they were wrong to elect him? Aren't you just a tad bit overstating it?
That would be overstating it if I had said it, sure.
I think they're "waking up" to the fact that he's not a transcendent figure, and that he's not going to change "politics as usual." He's going back on inconvenient statements, contradicting himself, and offering virtually no meaningful compromise. He's another politician, surprise surprise.
I also think people are starting to realize that the policies he's suggesting (and implementing already, in a few cases) are not really new ideas; they're pretty standard Democratic fare.
There are many reasons for numbers to go down. Of course they are going down. Obama is now in the first months of his job and finding that there isn't easy solutions to the problems. I'll go with another theory: Americans are quick to judge, fickle as hell, and want quick solutions. That is an impossible dream.
I don't agree that Americans are quite as fickle as you say, and I think they understand that things like this take time. I don't think they expect it to change overnight (well, the moderates didn't. I'm sure some of the Obamaniacs did). But it's not an "impossible dream" to suggest that things should be better now than they are, and that we should have something more to show for our
trillions of dollars in spending.
And it's not as if Obama didn't encourage such optimism at every turn, either. It shouldn't surprise him to learn that when you say "Yes We Can" over and over again, people might kinda get their hopes up. I realize this does not constitute a promise that everything will reverse course immediately, but he has certainly invited more expectation than most candidates.
Obama got his stimulus package, after all, and it was specifically designed to work quickly. I think we're seeing very marginal improvement, but I don't think it will last. Do you honestly feel comforable predicting that his policies will spark a genuine, sustained improvement? Do you have doubts that it will work?
Yoda, I think you are making an assumption here. Not sure the exact things you are referring to, but in the example of his backing off the Iraq pullout and the policy being similar to Bush's, you do not take into consideration that not everything Bush did is hated by Democrats. And you sure do talk like he's broken every campaign promise. Not so. Some have not been taken up as yet, some are being stalled, some have happened. It's only July, for chrissakes.
I don't think I talk like he's broken every campaign promise, I talk like he's broken quite a few, and the ones he's broken were largely ones that he emphasized repeatedly.
Sure, not everything Bush did is hated by Democrats. I'm not referring to policies of his they like, I'm referring to ones they hated. Gol's posted some interesting links about how Obama's Justice Department has already laid claim to far more sweeping power and authority than Bush's ever did (apologies if I'm mistaken on some of the details; it was a month or two ago). That certainly isn't a Bush policy that Democrats liked.
For the simple fact that I'm running on five hours sleep and am already in the middle of several more arguments than I should be, I'll ignore the Reagan jab. But if you ever wanna go 12 rounds on his legacy, you know I'm game.
All too happy to do it. You, me, playground after school, etc.
Guantánamo Bay -- Well, this is one big MESS that Mr. Bush got us into, eh? And it's apparent that it is not an easy problem to fix. In my view, this is a case of a President attempting to fulfill a campaign promise, but once in office, realized there were problems that don't find an easy solution. I'm fine with him continuing to look at this. But I agree that it should be closed. I'll wait to see what the final solution turns out to be. Of course, this is one of the reasons I hated Bush so much. This was incredibly dangerous to do and against my morality. We created people that could hurt us, so where do we put them? This may be the worst thing I've ever seen a government do.
Yes, make sure to preface most of the comments about Obama's reverals with something about how Bush got us into it. That'll blunt their force.
Obama was very, very specific about what he was going to do with Gitmo. What does he know now that he didn't know then, I wonder, other than that he's become the President? It's not "easy" in the sense that it's not that politically popular. But I don't think there's anything stopping him from doing it, other than his own fear of political backlash. That's not a good excuse.
EDIT: I'd like to add that my belief is we follow the Constitution and if someone is released that goes on to hurt us, we will have to suffer the consequences. We must not give up our moral center or our principles in an effort to keep us safe. We created this mess and we will suffer because of it. We move forward, do the right thing, and hope for the best. There is nothing else we can do.
That's a perfectly valid position. It's also one that I don't think Obama would
ever admit, assuming he believes it.
The Constitutional arguments about detention are not as clear-cut as critics suggest. Many claim, when you get right down to it, that they think it violates the "spirit" of the Constitution more than the actual language of it. And the whole thing is turned on its head a bit by the fact that we're dealing with a largely unorganized force. A lot of rules and customs about warfare are starting to look a little outdated in light of the kinds of insurgencies we find ourselves up against.
And, though this example doesn't prove anything, it's worth noting that Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeus corpus during the Civil War. There's a precedent and an argument to be made for these things under certain select circumstances of threat. It's a tricky area.
Iraq -- I gather Yoda is referring to this as a broken campaign promise. I also gather Yoda would be even more upset if Obama listened to his fringe constituents and pulled out quickly.
Yes, absolutely. I'm simultaneously glad he's reversed himself, and surprised that many of his supporters are willing to overlook it. This is another area where he was
very specific. 16 months, 16 months, 16 months. He hammered on it over and over again. I think he even argued with Hillary that it was specifically important to have a set time. Obviously that deadline hasn't hit yet, but he's made it pretty clear he's not using a firm timetable any more.
He's not. Am I frustrated here? Yes. But once again, a MESS that Bush got us into. A dangerous mess and one that doesn't have an easy solution either. I think Obama and his advisors are on the right track: we have to tread carefully but I really believe there is no solution. We can't stay forever and when we do leave, Iraq will fall into more chaos because they refuse to work together. That's what happens when fringe religious elements and tribes won't work together. But I do like that diplomacy is honored in this Administration, unlike the last one.
I think they're handling it reasonably well, too. Kudos for admitting you're frustrated with it, though.
By the by, one can think Obama inherited a lot of problems and still come to the conclusion that he hasn't handled them well. The real question in each instance is why he's reversed himself. I don't think I buy the idea that he learned some crucial secret once entering office that changed his mind.
Health Care Reform -- well, well. I like Obama's ideas here. Streamline the paperwork, work toward efficiency, let cheaper medicines come into the country, and realize that the "richest country in the world" is a shameful example in this area. Reform MUST happen. Too much is at stake here. Affordable healthcare must be out there for ALL Americans. I think this is a problem that will not find a quick solution. I'm fine with lots of discussion here as to how to reform our broken system. But compromise must happen on the part of the conservatives. I'm not sure that is possible and if not, that's a crying shame.
If you can show me a single example of a government program even a fraction of this size that hasn't more or less taken over our budget and grown beyond all reason and purpose, I'd be surprised. Our budget is crippled by entitlement programs, and before we reform them, we're going to add another?
Regardless, the administration hasn't been particularly honest about this program. It's been presented as actually saving us money, or at least having no significant cost. The Congressional Budget Office has been utterly contradicting them on this front, and smaller examples we have of somewhat similar systems (like Romney's in Massachusetts) show that these programs routinely cost double the amount they're expected to. And we're doing this in a deep recession?
Re: "shameful." I don't think our lack of nationalized healthcare is shameful. Why would it be? This is about what is actually better at providing better care to more people. That's the goal for everyone, right? Whether or not other countries use one method or another is irrelevant, except to be used as possible case studies. America is the only country that does a lot of things, and some of them are things we should be proud of. I don't think the argument that we should have national healthcare because France and England and Canada do is an argument at all.
Stimulus -- Not sure how I feel about this one. More needs to be done.
The problem is that spending money doesn't create greater wealth, which should be a pretty self-evident thing when you think about it. Even if it did, the stimulus became a massive gravy train almost immediately. We've seen dozens of news stories about the bizarre ways in which it's being spent. It was very poorly conceived and, somehow, even more poorly executed. Suffice to say, I'm not in favor of another.
Let's pick just one example from it, for now: unemployment benefits. Obama has increased unemployment benefits as part of an overall plan to increase hiring. But increasing unemployment benefits raises the unemployment taxes businesses have to pay, which means it costs more to hire an employee than it did before. So he's increasing the cost of hiring in the process of trying to increase hiring. You don't need to be an economist to see the problem here, and there are other examples of contradictions where business gets squeezed in the name of economic growth.
Global Warming -- Must be acknowledged to exist. Reform is needed and not just knee-jerk reactions that say it is nothing more than "climate change." Science should be embraced, but I'm not against more and more analysis. I'm not even sure the state of all this with regard to Obama's current stance. It might be an issue that is taking a back seat right now. But whatever, I do know Obama's desire for more green companies and jobs (a promise he is working on right now) and a goal of energy reform is NEEDED.
I'm for more analysis, too. Tons of it. We're talking about the shifting of trillions of dollars over decades. It's a huge deal, and not something to be undertaken lightly.
Regarding green companies/jobs. Gol and I have touched on this in another thread, but there are many problems with these ideas. The biggest being that such policies assume that Obama knows with any kind of certainty what the energy sources of the future are. He assumes they are wind and solar and the like, but this is not a fact, and giving one of them government backing will undeniably obscure how viable they really are. I'll repeat myself from an earlier conversation with Gol to illustrate: All of us are smarter than some of us. The best way to find the energy sources of the future is to encourage innovation in general, not to marry ourselves to a single administration's best guess at the moment.
Transparency -- I'm disappointed in this a lot. Not sure why Obama is backing off this. I wish I understood why.
Appreciated.
My speculation as to why is that being President is just really, really hard, and the possible costs of revealing things greatly outweighs the value of keeping the promise. I think Obama's am ambitious, calculating guy, and isn't above those sorts of judgments. I think this has been true of every modern President.
Now I'll say something you'll probably hate: I think this is one issue in which McCain might have really followed through on. I know things like "transparency" and "accountability" are almost always the first promises to go, but Mac has an awfully convincing history of really following through on that kind of stuff, even when it's caused a lot of people to hate him. I'm sure he would have gone back on other things, and call it wishful thinking if you like, but I think he might have actually followed through on this issue.
Sotomayor -- She's okay. Of course, the silliness surrounding the Republican's constant badgering of comments she made made for silly theatre.
Do you not think those comments are wrong, or do you not think they were meant seriously?
Closed Thread
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