what are barack obama's flaws?

my quibble with Morbz over his characterization of Obama as a "snake-oil salesman" lies in the fact that by 2008 it was pretty clear from all of the best evidence (e.g., his voting record, his books, and who was giving him money to run for office) that Obama wasn't going to be much different than (Bill or Hillary) Clinton. (i don't really care much about what any of these bozos say on the campaign trail and i pity those who do.) Rockefeller Republicanism a la Bill Clinton may have been a defensible position in the 1990s, when the US wasn't at war, the economy was doing well and some of the damage done to working Americans during Reagan-Bush years was slowly being undone. by 2008 - with the US in two costly wars and on the brink of a global economic depression - something much bolder was needed. that "something" sure wasn't going to come from the GOP, and all that was left was the hope that Obama et. al. would put aside their New Democratic weak-tea and remember the party's New Deal/Great Society tradition. one can be disappointed that such hopes were in vain, but how can anyone be surprised that the Obama Admin. has turned out the way it has?

snake oil:

"I will close Guantanamo"

"Main Street > Wall Street"

"curb renditions, military trials"

I don't see how its a "serious indictment" any more than it would have been of any other 20 century prez post fdr

I don't think it's hard to find presidents who've been more pro-active than Obama. (In circumstances more favorable to being pro-active, I'd argue, though many don't accept that.) I think Sullivan describes Obama's mindset accurately.

Dubya and his minions led, whether you think he was the chief or the front man

lots of presidents lead. the only kind of president that hasn't led since fdr is a democratic president. even johnson more "presided over" than "led" escalation in vietnam, although the moral distinction is probably trivial.

I always thought escalation was very much LBJ's doing--or am I just accepting the Oliver Stone version of history?

The following is lifted from this piece:

More damaging to LBJ's standing, however, was his escalation in Vietnam. "I knew from the start," he told a writer, "that...if I left the woman I really loved--the Great Society--for that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home." But, fearing that Republican conservatives would hurt the Democrats badly if he withdrew from Vietnam without victory, he made a resolution. "I will not be the first president to lose a war," he said...He had sent 550,000 U.S. troops to South Vietnam by 1967, a vast increase from the 16,000 that had been there when he succeeded to the presidency in November 1963.

my quibble with Morbz over his characterization of Obama as a "snake-oil salesman" lies in the fact that by 2008 it was pretty clear from all of the best evidence (e.g., his voting record, his books, and who was giving him money to run for office) that Obama wasn't going to be much different than (Bill or Hillary) Clinton. (i don't really care much about what any of these bozos say on the campaign trail and i pity those who do.)

True. Partly we like to carp. That his foreign policy would mimic the worst of Bush's was obvious in the spring and summer of 2008. But I did not expect Obama to in some cases accelerate the worst of Bush's National Security State: rendition, the pursuit of whistleblowers, its cravenness re the trying of terrorism suspects. Similarly, I was disgusted by his courting of Wall Street types, but didn't foresee the surrender on the Bush tax cuts.

LBJ definitely has to shoulder the brunt of the blame for escalation in vietnam. i wonder what the country would look like today if he'd stayed out and focused all his political capital on passing the great society. maybe the biggest 'what if' in u.s. history, after reconstruction.

while a lot of signs pointed straight to obama being clinton-lite at best, i admit i had held out some crazy hope that he'd rise to the occasion, FDR-style. at the very least i didn't expect an actual constitutional scholar to wind up embracing the bush-cheney-yoo view of executive power.

In my case I also underestimated the liberalness of the last Congress, but even more than Clinton and Obama, senators and representatives have inched rightward since Reagan and Bush clobbered them twenty years ago.

* no "but"

i haven't read through this read but i think the way this question is posed and when is really profound. it really does seem to reveal how much obama, despite not having governed very much, was at one point a vessel for progressive hopes (owing to his associations and community-organizer background).

foreign policy naivete. biggest thing that worries me about him by far. if he gets elected, pulls us out of iraq, closes gitmo, and restores civil liberties to their pre-9/11 status, and then ta-da something actually blows up, how many times is he going to say "uh um" during the press conference in which he capitulates to the chickenhawks in both parties screaming for his head

― El Tomboto, Wednesday, April 30, 2008 4:45 PM (3 years ago)

haha

so ... if you're talking about presidential leadership on 'bad ideas' dont you guys think the recent war is a 'bad idea' & arent you blaming obama for that? bad ideas = obama is leading, good ideas = hes not the leader

its the same as it was for LBJ

everyone is just out to get him it's true

thats ... not at all what i said

my point was this weird 'leadership' vs 'overseeing' dichotomy that was set up is being used selectively. LBJ was a dem leader because he 'led' us to war, but obama is not because he wasn't at the forefront of doma repeal, he just 'oversaw' it. its just selective history -- regardless of what i think of obama or lbj it just strikes me as a lazy differentiation

I agree. A president is responsible for his rhetoric, provable influence on Congress, and the bills he signs.

Besides bills and public statements the most obvious way of showing a president's influence is in the judges he appoints.

yeah to say "well of COURSE he's done all this" is gabbnebism, as the vintage post by naively optimistic El Tomboto (!) proves. I was making a gasface at all the jubilation the night this guy was elected, and I didn't think he'd be this reactionary on war & civil liberties, Assassin-in-Chief or not.

i guess... the other likely options would have been worse...?

^DNC motto

btw hearing this bomber talk about Quality Time with the Kids on the radio last weekend made me want to punch his face

yeah to say "well of COURSE he's done all this" is gabbnebism,

No it's not, you halfwit. You're getting tiresome. You claim to read yet can't acknowledge when he deserves credit for, say, the legitimizing of visitation rights and openly pushing for the end of DOMA? Seriously, Morbs, you revere movies yet are unable to reconcile ironies in history and ambiguities? Look at our beloved LBJ, the war criminal.

I don't have any problem admitting that Dubya saved thousands of lives in Africa with his AIDS policies.

you guys need some of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WPtEGOp5rI

come on now, awwwwwww, everybody

is there a german word for real things outrunning every metaphor for them?

gabbneb was an ideologue of the center. I love you, Morbs, but you're an ideologue, period -- an ideologue seeks proof for judgments he's made a long time ago. As much as I admire Greenwald and company, they're not as adamantine as you, or as smug.

I wouldn't have time to seek proof. It's shoved under my nose 24/7.

do you need a hug?

The only things I've been wrong about since deciding what the Democrats are, in 1984, are trivial matters.

I've never fucking loved LBJ.

You're getting tiresome.

How's the climate there btw?

LBJ sent thousands of Americans to their deaths needlessly, and, worse, as you reminded us, he knew already it was needless. He also refused to prosecute Nixon for espionage after discovering that he was subverting the Paris peace talks in '68. Heinous! Yet LBJ is responsible for the greatest expansion of the welfare state you and I will ever know. What's so wrong with holding pros and cons at the same time? The test of a first-rate intelligence, etc.

i have a feeling that tombot is not as starry-eyed about Obama now as he was way back when. he doesn't post all that often anymore, though, so i can't say for sure. but seeing as he clearly always took under consideration the facts and circumstances and not necessarily a pre-set ideology before he posted, i think that he's been as mugged by reality as the rest of us.

i've been an Obama skeptic from the start, but more in the Paul Krugman "i don't always like what he's saying and i don't think his approach is the correct one, but i'll reserve judgment till i see how this plays out" vein.

You, me, aerosmith, kevin k, and a couple of others have watched Obama carefully for three years, and admittedly, we're often harsher on people who voted for him. But this I-told-you-so shit is fucking boring.

to some extent this is the paradox of power, right?

that said was uncomfortable tonight hearing obama use phrase "took out" to refer to OBL's assassination.

Exactly. And it's weird trying to play the role of historian when the present is still unfolding.

Generally, when pols do the right thing, it's for the wrong reasons. LBJ's social policies might've been his stab for secular sainthood.

Right, but as you've admitted yourself, look not to intentions.

Look, I'm sure I'll be back to posting look-what-Obama's-done-now links tomorrow, but I can't be honest with myself and deny that Obama's been Coolidge, i.e. responsible for not a single piece of meaningful legislation in three years.

I had a Tanzanian student a few years ago who said the sudden opening of a clinic in 2004 saved his HIV-infected mom's life; she got free antiretroviral treatment. He didn't know shit about politics or history, but I knew Dubya's commitment to fighting AIDS in Africa was at least partially responsible; and I would be a blackguard not to admit it.

Generally, when pols do the right thing, it's for the wrong reasons. LBJ's social policies might've been his stab for secular sainthood.

― already president FYI (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, June 22, 2011 8:06 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

so what? what are the right reasons? who the fuck cares?

i think that there's enough evidence for someone who thinks that LBJ enacted his social policies for "the right reasons" to make that conclusion. dude was a schoolteacher who taught poor Latino students in Texas during the 1930s before he entered politics after all.

but yeah, does it really matter WHAT his "real reasons" were? or the "real reasons" for any politician?

what are the right reasons? who the fuck cares?

I guess the people who are fans of the politicians they vote for.

Alfred, you're making the nabisco mistake; I post here to vent, not to perform Serious Political Analysis. No interest in that.

off-topic: this is not my Field but it was my understanding that lbj had been interested in domestic anti-poverty reform since he was like five years old. anyway yeah of course he is responsible for vietnam escalation; the buck stops there. i guess the distinction i was making was that johnson's vietnam policy seems to have come more from exasperation, hawk advisers, and texas macho, whereas the expansion of the security state and the invasion of iraq were actual goals of the bush admin, the same way attacking the depression by Trying Everything was an actual goal of fdr's.

and many (if not most) people are more like Alfred's Tanzanian student than us Internet politics nerds. after the office of my parents' right-wing dickwad of a US Representative helped them out of a tight spot, there wasn't shit i could do or say to persuade them to vote for said dickwad's opponent. and i can't blame them for standing behind that guy either.

Nah, dlh: LBJ was a fervent believer in the National Security Sate.

my only point re: lbj is that lbj did not go into office thinking YOU KNOW WHAT I WOULD LIKE MY ADMINISTRATION TO BE REMEMBERED FOR? AN ENDLESS NIGHTMARISH JUNGLE WAR THAT IRREVOCABLY MANGLES THE EMPIRE'S IDEA OF ITSELF, whereas rumsfeld and cheney had been pining after iraq forever and basically proceeded as they had intended as soon as they found a pretext. and that this is a difference between presiding over (and of course being totally responsible for!) events and Leading them: being overtaken by history vs. driving it. this is not a moral argument at all.

I thought you studied JFK.

IN THAT DOCUMENT

BOWWWWWWWW

LAY THE VIETNAM WAR.

JUST GIT ME ELECTED AND AH'LL GIT YA YER DAMN WAR

also do you think even LBJ knew what the fuck his motives were? does anyone? what is this war in the heart of nature? why does nature vie-- oh, wait, came over from the terrence malick thread. sorry.