I promised Zeb that I would start a new topic…but one topic ONLY.
(The response to this thread should be interesting).
VERY early in his young Presidency…even before the inauguration was cleaned up…Obama was faced with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
While the right was screaming “LET THEM FAIL! LET THEM FAIL!”. (From banks to the Auto Industry…how soon “Detroit” forgot…); he has his young cabinet put their heads down, and tackle a crisis that was bringing the World’s financial institutions down with them.
It was tough…it was dirty…it was imperfect…yet he only gets “credit” (like a nut kicking)…for killing Bin Laden???
What was the young President doing during those months when the finances of the World were going down a Bottom-Less Drain…and the Right’s answer was simply “Let 'em Fail!”.
I guarantee Zeb and others that he wasn’t tweeting out about it being a “Right-Wing Conspiracy just to Keep the Black Man down!” or with being treated like “The worst of any President ever!”
If the comparison is how did other presidents behave in similar situations to Trump then the answer is going better. Trump is essentially destroying the essence of the Presidency being a job for grown up adults.
His behavior is indefensible. Someone could like his policies (assuming one can deal with the crazy inconsistencies and minute by minute wonderings about him) but to me no one can even attempt to proclaim that every other President before him has been better at being someone people should look up to and respect.
I’d just like to point out that it isn’t a “right wing” position to let failing companies fail. That’s a big part of the free market. Companies that create value for the market succeed, only so long as they create value.
The banks made bad loans and securitized them and sold them to suckers. They should have gone the way of savings and loans. Nobody saved Packard, AMC or dozens of other car companies that went under. And that’s good. Companies that fail do so for damn good reasons.
As far as criticizing Obama… What for? He was a politician, and he acted like one. I disagreed with him on many things. But if you want to talk about adda boys he deserves, he is the reason we have Trump. I can sum up the Obama recovery in one graph:
I am NOT suggesting “Atta-Boys” for President Obama…nor that people should be having orgasms over the Job he did.
By the same token; to suggest that he did “nothing”…and people (like Zeb) are already making this list of the great accomplishments of Trump…is disingenuous at best.
In terms of “recovery”…I will say it again:
The World was faced with; and “survived”; the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
I don’t want to “Hi-Jack” this thread and send it down a “Rabbit Hole”…but “Free Markets” is a Theoretical Construct…in the sense that with the exception of Farmer’s Markets, Bazaars and Yard Sales…there is rarely a “free-flow” of Goods and Services.
Well every theory of economics is theoretical because you can’t model and predict the dynamic choices of billions of people. Marxism and Keyne’s early theories have never existed in their “pure” state either. I guess to be semantically correct it’d be Free-er market. That is a huge derail as you’ve pointed out.
I’ll take less government intervention and power for $100 Alex. Every time.
As far as Obama’s legacy: ACA, doubled debt, making the Middle East even worse. He can blame the situation… and even rightly so in some instances. But he doesn’t look good.
A president’ s success or failure in the minds of the unwashed public is often 100% the economy. Presidents have massive power over the economy but even they can’t fight global business cycles and trends. So if you get a 4/8 year term where the cycle is pointed down, you get a bad legacy. That’s why Hoover/Carter/Obama are scapegoats and Reagan/Clinton are heroes. That’s how the cookie crumbles.
Trump is an absolute goober. But if the arrow is pointed up for his first four years he’ll get a second term.
I think a lot of this is going to be on the outcome of the Ocare repeal. While I agree, wholeheartedly, that the most memorable thing a POTUS can do is leave a better economy, that won’t matter if his grass roots supporters lose their HC.
People like to think that socialized HC benefits mostly the left and rarely the right. Those people have also clearly never lived in a poor right leaning area.
Tbh I see it as a great assumption. But since Fiscal Conservatism doesn’t exist at a federal level anymore, I’m happy to see the GOP burn down.
People like to think Trump’s grass roots supporters are diehard no matter what. Since most of my family and virtually everyone I knew for the first ~12 years of my life are Trump’s grass roots AND are on (mostly) some form of socialized HC, republicans will be in for a rude awakening IF Ocare ever sees a repeal.
What I always find interesting about this is that Obama, more or less, did what Republican President would have done (and had already started doing). In fact, many critics on the Left accused (and still accuse, as they consider his legacy) Obama of exactly that - the bailout went to Big Business and Wall Street, not the little guy on Main Street.
I’ve always appreciated your even-handed criticism of President Obama.
NO President gets this stuff completely right (except Reagan, of course)…and Obama made his share of mistakes.
But to turn around and say 1) he did “nothing” (“except” kill OBL) and 2) to already begin a list of all of these “amazing” Trump accomplishments is, quite frankly…raw and unadulterated bullshit…
Completely agreed. Obama was never the socialist demon of the Right’s paranoid fantasies, but nor is he is the liberal champion contending for a spot on Mt. Rushmore. His presidency was mixed with some accomplishments and a lot of disappointments, and the biggest disappointment is a lack of accomplishments. Much of that is because he was never a good student of how politics works.
But he deserves credit where credit is due, and he successfully navigated the country through the Great Recession. He made mistakes in doing so, especially in the recovery aspect, as pointed out by the Right and the Left, but he held it together during the crisis, and he deserves credit for that.
Oh heck Mufasa you and I both know the many Obama failures. But what has surprised me is that the only thing you could come up with to launch your great defense of the failed Obama Presidency is the bailout. And if I am not mistaken (and I could be) wasn’t GW Bush and company offering up the same solution? Um…are you saying that you think Obama is a great President because he helped bailout a few companies?
Ready for my incredibly long list of why Obama was a complete failure or should I wait for dramatic purposes?
