what are barack obama's flaws?

his 1995 position was well known in 2004.

has gotten way better at bullshitting (see odious New Mexico refugee detentions piece in last Sunday's NYT Mag, as he makes mewling sounds about migrant children)

a reminder that obama is good at alienating allies outside the middle east too:
http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/americas-frustration-with-south-korea/

Almost as nauseating apologizing for "collateral damage" as he is for causing it, ain't he?

As always, it depends upon the apology and what's behind it. Maintaining an empire through military force is always pretty nauseating. Somebody said back a few centuries ago (I could track down the quote, if necessary) that 'the ruler who cannot dissimulate his feelings cannot rule for long'.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/07/14/obama-i-m-like-nixon-reagan.html

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/07/15/opinion/15friedman1web/15friedman1web-videoSixteenByNine1050.jpg

pres obama: *don't look at his jowls don't look at his jowls*
thomas friedman: in my book the world is flat--
pres obama: i read your weakass book, jowlface
*shit*

obama describing a globe w his hands there; tom not buying it

has advisers who say

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/17/us/politics/with-high-profile-help-obama-plots-life-after-presidency.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Ideally, one adviser said, a person in Kenya could put on a pair of virtual reality goggles and be transported to Mr. Obama’s 2008 speech on race in Philadelphia.

.. do you not reckon they might be interested?

they can watch it on their phones like everyone else

Mr. Spielberg held the president spellbound, guests said, when he spoke about the use of technology to tell stories.

Flaw: likes vodka "martinis."

after three of them, he starts saying "Thatsh a Shmith & Wesshon, and you've had your shix."

so TRUMP is his fault now too

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/opinion/sunday/from-obama-to-trump.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

in a way though this idiot is right. if O hadn't burned captain combover so mercilessly at the white house correspondents' dinner all those years ago, maybe captain combover wouldn't have been as motivated to enter the ring?

that's a feature, not a bug

keep in mind he gets to do exactly the same thing, over and over again, a few months from now, when he endorses his successor and gets into the campaign

I agree that the next one will be worse.

http://theweek.com/articles/621947/why-ill-miss-obama

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obama-waives-ban-on-aiding-regimes-that-use-child-soldiers/article/2536609

I would guess they have already been breaking that for a while given the involvement in Yemen.

really, giving a medal to Kissinger is admirably consistent

imho restricting the ability of the President to conduct foreign policy by legislating static lists of named countries is a stupid way of doing business and will produce exactly these results every time

It's so thoroughly bizarre to denounce Obama for his foreign policy when that's one of the incredible progressive highlights of his time in office. Do people not remember what our global reputation was when he took office?

I think he's been way worse on education policy and cybersecurity but there the bar for modern Presidenting is low to nonexistent

Libya and our involvement in the Arab Spring scream "progressive foreign policy" but I couldn't call it a success.

Obama has the best foreign policy of any American president in a loooong time, but that is a low bar. Also, he inherited a world in financial breakdown, which has made for a lot of upheaval these 8 years. He hasn't always handled that upheaval very well, and the drone program is a big blemish, but. Could have been a lot worse. Will be a lot worse, with either Clintons hawkishness or Trump/Sanders complete cluelessness at the helm.

unceasing drone war also progressive, tho in a different sense

http://i0.wp.com/www.ghostcultmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/artificialbrain-800x800-400x400.jpg

http://i0.wp.com/www.ghostcultmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/artificialbrain-800x800-400x400.jpg

I'm not the foaming Iraq-totally-has-WMDs-you-guys tool of the MIC that I was in 2003 but I don't believe the demands of statecraft in the foreseeable future are ever going to allow for a truly "progressive" foreign policy wherein everybody gets along except the bad guys and nobody ever has to be blown up

It's also important to recognize that intervention and adventuring are never going to have better than a coin flip chance of being even relatively successful at not making stuff worse; Obama did recognize this and by most accounts has done an excellent job keeping the US out of "stupid shit" where others have all been pressing for boots on the ground etc

we flipped the coin in libya, ukraine and syria

'It's also important to recognize that intervention and adventuring are never going to have better than a coin flip chance of being even relatively successful at not making stuff worse;'

This is obviously untrue.

relative to what is probably a question that needs answering there.

sub "proceeding idiotically from lies, hubris and bad intelligence" for "intervention and adventuring", and coin-flip odds look good

I don't believe the demands of statecraft in the foreseeable future are ever going to allow for a truly "progressive" foreign policy wherein everybody gets along except the bad guys and nobody ever has to be blown up

― bothan zulu (El Tomboto), Wednesday, May 11, 2016 6:13 AM (58 minutes ago)

don't think this is what we typically mean by "progressive foreign policy"

think he means "progressively worse"

pimps for mega-trade deals in commencement speeches

back in Deporter of Women and Children mode

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-immigration-raids-20160512-snap-story.html

wtf is going on here

I think he's been a good president overall, would take a third term. Still something rubs me the wrong way about his hemmy-hawy answers to questions, like when he's trying to sound folksy and intellectual at the same time and his voice gets all caught up in his nose and jaw. I think he has a touch of the same "insincere" quality that Hillary has worse, and this may contribute to the right's dislike of him, though there are more obvious reasons why the right dislikes him. The only thing GWB was really any good at was seeming like himself.

late examples may also just be a sign of the fatigue of the presidency, perhaps a touch of mild depression or a feeling of having to go through the motions.

yes he seems increasingly more weary and beaten down with every shooting. which is kind of what I would want in a President. I do think he's been a great president. I am frustrated by the lack of progress in some respects but I think he's done what he could given how much internal opposition he faces on basically everything he tries to do, I've never seen anything like it.

i'm confused and upset by his immigration enforcement actions and the fucking drone strikes, i don't get how it squares with what he says he wants to achieve in the world

I think he sees himself as a logical centrist, and therefore drone strikes to him are a middle ground between sending troops in which could result in more deaths to both civilians and US troops; and doing nothing which, while keeping the US from being involved with directly killing civilians, will allow extremists to terrorize and kill civilians and others around the world

I don't think drone strikes and immigration enforcement are things he has to square!

But I think he would make an argument for it squaring with what he wants to achieve in the world, if he had too

yeah, the video that prompted my post was also very much in that "logical, reasonable middle ground" style, where he first bent every which way to assure the audience no one wanted to take their guns, then brought in an appeal to facts and data and science and an analogy about cars and various car-related policies (drivers' licenses, airbags, etc.), and finally expressed that a sensible regime could be created of letting all the hunters and sportsmen and self-defenders keep the guns they like while getting them out of the wrong hands. Hard to argue with, but a little bit lacking in feeling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8TwRmX6zs4

If nothing else Obama is definitely the funniest president we've had in my lifetime

that event is the ur-moment of trump's candidacy; you can see him seething with resentment (he even starts rocking back and forth) as obama mocks him

I'd point it to the moment where Obama says, "all kidding aside, obviously we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience..." and the audience cracks up, clearly he's thinking "I'll show them all"