what are barack obama's flaws?

Friends With Money is good

haha i remember seein pictures on the news of the available candidates (= nixon, humphrey, wallace) and thinkin THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME ie UGLY, i shall vote for NONE OF THEM

i was 8 and my policy analysis stands

I was one of three kids (out of 25 or 30) in my 5th-grade class who voted for Dukakis in a mock election. I was also the only white kid who did so.

the Hitchens book ethan mentioned has a fairly detailed indictment of Clinton's war on welfare, if you get past the author's breathless rhetoric.

yeah if he would chill with how clinton is the worst man in history who violently rapes every woman in sight its actually a substantive policy critique from the left

i was pro-clinton in 2nd grade because my parents told me to be so

and im pro-obama now because my college tells me to be so

if im lucky i wont ever have to make a decision in my life

i voted bush in my fourth grade mock election because my dad voted republican. ;_;

i would have been mean to you as i was instructed to be mean to bush supporters by my parents

you wouldn't even have been alive! it was bush v. dukakis.

:( i would have been 3

Yeah, elementary-school mock elections are just a handy way for teachers to assay the political opinions of their students' parents.

challenging opinions

I remember a surprising amount of support for Perot in 9th grade, though.

i voted for dole as a joke ;)

good joke dude

i vote for dole pineapples

i felt bad for him like when he fell and his shriveled up arm that he got from war heroism

are you going to send a sympathy vote to john mccain? i guess he hasn't fallen yet.

if he falls then maybe - hes way less pitiful than dole - but most people are

arm not working at all > arm not working above shoulder

exploring the contours and lines there which were uniquely Obama's.
exploring the contours and lines there which were uniquely Obama's.
exploring the contours and lines there which were uniquely Obama's.
exploring the contours and lines there which were uniquely Obama's.
exploring the contours and lines there which were uniquely Obama's.
exploring the contours and lines there which were uniquely Obama's.
exploring the contours and lines there which were uniquely Obama's.
exploring the contours and lines there which were uniquely Obama's.
exploring the contours and lines there which were uniquely Obama's.
exploring the contours and lines there which were uniquely Obama's.

i liked carter in 80 cuz of georgia, root for the home boy (80 was a big year for georgia in general) and also cuz the only ronald i knew was ronald mcdonald and who in the world would vote ronald mcdonald for president. i was SHOCKED when he won.

jj ty for bringing this thread back to the real issues

mcdonald/grimace 08

i argued for carter in my 6th-grade presidential debate in 1980. i was 11. i have no idea what i said, but i remember being pwned by the girl who was repping for john anderson (brainy cute girl named dee-dee, with big glasses; i had a secret crush on her). i remember her going off about "now we've got these gas prices and hostages everywhere!"

wow you grew up in a doonesbury strip

my brother supported Bush when he was 4 because he liked shrubbery

xpost it felt more like peanuts.

tipsy you could have killed her on "these gas prices everywhere" -- anderson was proposing a 50¢ per gallon gas tax

lol curtis is that true

now i feel like i let jimmy down.

LOL at 'job in muppet museum'; people who spend any time hating on me clearly need other occupations besides this - I spend zero time on hating you. Really. Also it's just American ickleboys of a certain vintage, nobody else gives a shit.

Pragmatism over Obama should probably rule the day. I've gotta say I've got major empathy for a single-parent/child of divorce guy who worked his arse off for scholarships; remember 'bittergate' (agh) was friendly fire from an On the Bus person and perhaps rich schmucks really threatened by such a possibility for dialogue on class, so put the boot in, at least once this broke. I would not be at all surprised, they like the general public to stay stupid and obsess over trivialities.

Can remember supporting Carter when I was eight; neighbour kid wrote to him with pointers for dealing with getting bullied by GOP and wangled invite to the inauguration (same kid is now radical left minister). HATED Reagan because by this time a) political grandmother went all Body Snatchers/ 'that broken down cowboy actor' whenever he was on TV b) Iran hostages freed on day of inauguration looked fishy as fuck even to 11-year-old me.

never underestimate the shrubbery vote

http://content.ytmnd.com/content/0/f/8/0f86da785ddaf8004a05a12d0a3dd38d.jpg

^ ban

In Kindergarten I voted for Ronald Reagan in the school election. When my (liberal) parents asked why, I said "He lost the debate, so I wanted him to win something."

100% true jhoshea!

not so surprising that these sorts of thought patterns run in my gene pool

I remember writing something about Clinton being a 'kneejerk liberal' in my 6th grade journal when he was reelected. I attribute this to my Dad always listening to Imus when I was having breakfast in the morning.

As for Obama, I'm in the "He strikes me as too intelligent to be as naive and optimistic as he comes off" camp. I really do think it's a campaign tactic, if you look at the more hawkish spots on his record you know he's not all teddy bears and rainbows.

my earliest political memory is of my mom saying something disparaging about Carter while he was running for office, I must have been 4? I remember liking CArter when he was president because he was the first president I was conscious of. I remember when Regan won pretty clearly; we already had a political cartoon on our refrigerator with a crying indian on it with some quote of his about breaking treaties; I remember when he won, I went and wrote "sucks" after his name.

Rolling Stone-reading pre/early adolescent that I was I was pretty politically savvy through school UP until college; as guessed above, I was just happy a democrat had finally won and tuned out and drank for several years instead. As a result I came out of the Clinton years with the impression that things had gone pretty okay and really one looked back on it critically in the past few years and seen the issues. Obviously still better than the years that followed though.

obama's major flaws, for me:

--fairly skimpy record for most of his state senate career
--endorsed mayor daley for re-election, as well as one or two of his cronies (i know i know politics as usual but EWWWWW)
--a bad offhand speaker, if the debates are any evidence
--a bit too willing to believe that his fellow politicians are decent well-meaning folks at heart (way worse than "overconfidence in the electorate's willingness to assume civic responsibility," which i can't parse at all -- how does he do that?).

by being the favored candidate of people who would rather dismiss democracy as a concept than believe anything actually negative about their boy

people who would rather dismiss democracy as a concept

i am stupid and slow

explain this to me please.

maybe not now cause i'm off for the night but i'm flummoxed as fuck by that clause.

yeah, wtf?

I dunno, I generally figure the "electorate's" "civic responsibility" is to vote for the candidate they prefer

gotcha.

stuff i like about obama:

--writes own speeches
--pretty good writer (the audacity of hope is surprisingly readable for an i-wanna-be-president book, tho my eyes must've broke from glazing over during the vague-as-fuck foreign policy chapter)
--even-tempered guy (i.e., neither a wimp nor a tantrum-throwing egomaniac like mccain -- or, frankly, bill clinton)
--a "moderate" in the carter sense, not the clinton/centrist sense

i know "writes own speeches" seems like a minor point but think about it this way: if every candidate had to write his own speeches, 9 out of the last 10 presidents wouldn't have won shit.

foreign policy naivete

This applies to every president for the last 30 years apart from, possibly, Bush 41.