what are barack obama's flaws?

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.

thing abt political buyer's remorse is that it's gnna be eg "is pretty good writer" which we will look back on and say OMIGOD WHY DIDN'T WE SEE THIS SOONER

(as of now, i don't know why it'll be this either -- JUST MARK MY WORDS, his flaw will be something you currently and justifably consider a good quality)

J.D. – Dreams From My Father is even better.

is this like MARK MY WORDS BUSH WILL LOSE IN 04

MARK S MY WORDS

an economic conservative

won't say when he'll get us completely out of Iraq

carried water for Joe Lieberman

considers Israel STALWART (probly not cuz they use old men to spy on us)

doesn't seem to believe in his own timid healthcare plan

I remember being pretty little (maybe 5?), and being shocked--SHOCKED!--to hear from my mom that President Reagan (the only president I'd known, and thus THE PRESIDENT) didn't give a shit about homeless people.

when i was little i was shocked that the president couldn't just kill someone he disagreed with. "why not? he's the PRESIDENT!"

btw dukakis visited my school when i was in eighth grade; he made some sort of education speech in a basement room (the largest we had in the school). we all lined up on either side of the hallway leading there, and we were told to show a lot of respect, and i think we were all encouraged to clap for him as he strode between us. it was thrilling

gore also visited my school, in tennessee, a few years later - somebody tried to get me to ask him during the q&a section if he voted for gulf war i on account of his dad voting against the vietnam war and then getting booted out on his ear by the voters - i didn't do it

MARK MY WORDS SOMEONE WILL HAVE LOST IN 2004 <--- this is the level of certainty we are lookin at

Mark S, it's a total truism that if a person gets fired from a job, it's usually for something the employer vocally deemed an asset when hiring. 'We like your individuality' becomes 'you're too individual'.

Dreams From My Father is not just 'even better', it's absolutely fucking stupendous:

"My mother laughed once more, and once again I saw her as the child she had been. Except this time I saw something else: in her smiling, slightly puzzled face, I saw what all children must see at some point if they are to grow up - their parents' lives revealed to them as separate and apart, reaching out beyond the point of their union or the birth of a child, lives unfurling back to grandparents, great-grandparents, an infinite number of chance meetings, misunderstandings, projected hopes, limited circumstances. My mother was that girl with the movie of beautiful black people in her head, flattered by my father's attention, confused and alone, trying to break out of the grip of her own parents' lives. The innocence she carried that day, waiting for my father, had been tinged with misconceptions, her own needs. But it was a guileless need, one without self-consciousness, and perhaps that's how any love begins, impulses and cloudy images that allow us to break across our solitude, and then, if we're lucky, are finally transformed into something firmer. What I heard from my mother that day, speaking about my father, was something I suspect most Americans will never hear from the lips of those of another race, and so cannot be expected to believe might exist between black and white: the love of someone who knows your life in the round, a love that will survive disappointment. She saw my father as everyone hopes at least one other person might see him, she had tried to help the child who never knew him see him in the same way. And it was the look on her face that day that I would remember when a few months later I called to tell her that my father had died and heard her cry out over the distance."

usually a total truism <--- this the level of certainty we are aiming at