what are barack obama's flaws?

too cool

yeah, basically

Born in the wrong country at the wrong time.

Both Hillary and McCain would be "good" Presidents, especially in comparison to the current Commander-In-Chief, but neither of them are in the same league as Obama.

Oh yeah, he's also an elitist, as the children of single moms tend to be.

Wife seems like a dick.

Better writer than every single last one of his critics and most of his supporters.

Dave Matthews endorsement.

Trick move in pickup b-ball is to fake to the right, plow in hard to the left. No symbolism there at all.

i actually wish people would take this thread seriously; i didnt realize it wasnt about electability & i think the answer is probably the same either way (we dont know yet), but even tho im behind the guy 100% & have been for months my gut says myself & probably a lot of people here are gonna be dissatisfied with him 4-8 years down the road. a discussion of concrete reasons why this might be so seems worthwhile to me

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

thank u deeznuts i am serious about like actual clintonesque character defects not more empty lolz how everybody except us is superficial & racist

what elmo and tom said, basically--the dude comes across as too trusting in america's ability to be smart about shit

not good at speaking for 10 second clips on the 6 o clock news

hard to say but i think he believes his own hype at this point

messiah complex (likely to evolve into martyr complex)

yeah what max/tombot/elmo said fourthed.

might not be able to tame congress and end up like Clinton in 1994

Also a bit of what deez said - I'm worried he's setting himself up to disappoint everyone.

has convinved people like me to be largely uninterested in this question

He has a bit of this tendency to come off like "I fully understand this problem because I've read many essays about it." Which makes me like him and wince at the same time.

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

It's hard to see how staying in Iraq is helping to prevent domestic terrorism. Even McCain wants to close Gitmo. I doubt civil liberties will go all the way back to pre-9/11 status, and not sure if Obama is even suggesting that they should

has convinved people like me to be largely uninterested in this question

-- gabbneb, Wednesday, April 30, 2008 8:55 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

shock of shocks

what elmo and tom said, basically--the dude comes across as too trusting in america's ability to be smart about shit

-- max, Wednesday, April 30, 2008 8:48 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i really want to believe this is true, but it sounds the kind of bs that be lipped by his supporters - his flaw is that he's TOO right about everything? ill take that.

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 (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

this is more lol gwb put u in a jackpot sry!

i am really curious as to what hes gonna do w/the gitmo dudes who we have evidence against thats inadmissible due to torture tho

i wonder about his ability/willingness to get his hands dirty and wrestle things to the ground. saying you're willing to talk to iran/hamas/whoever is all well and good, but if you go into those situations you have to go in saying, "here's the deal: you can get this and this, you can't get this and this, and we're going to have to fight about this and this -- but if the fight goes on too long, you get nothing." the bushies have been terrible at that stuff, so it's not like the bar is set particularly high, but it would be nice to have someone who can actually get some things done. (wouldn't have to be him personally, but he'd need some hardball players around who knew how to do that.) (same applies in dealing with congress, obviously.)

deex -- i didn't say he's overly correct, but i think he may be presumptuous that America will be eager or grateful about implementing the changes he wants

also I am dead serious that his uh um uh tic that he has when you can tell he's thinking on his feet is really not reassuring at all

he actually comes across as a guy who would be an absolute expert at that kind of stuff to me tipsy

yah he def should cut that out xp

nodding slowly and looking thoughtful is the way to go

his uh um uh tic that he has when you can tell he's thinking on his feet

this doesn't bother me so much -- it's campaign season and he has to be excruciatingly calculating about his diction. when he speaks off the cuff he gets in trouble, but really only because he running for office

or alternatively quit being so optimistic about your fellow humans that you keep getting surprised by shit, like Wright dropping an atom bomb on you on national television

xp Still, I think Hillary is a better extemporaneous speaker.

his almost musical hand-gesture of 'conducting' a discussion / 'putting a fine point' on an argument

it's like the new bubba remote

I don't think Tom's point is that Obama is going to cause terrorism to happen, just that when it does he's going to look bad.

you guys all seem to think obama waaaaaaaaay less pragmatic than i do, i guess

I actually HOPE he's more cynical and pragmatic than I'm giving him credit for.

eh tom did begin his post w/"foreign policy naivete." soo...

I don't think Tom's point is that Obama is going to cause terrorism to happen, just that when it does he's going to look bad.

-- Hurting 2, Wednesday, April 30, 2008 9:18 PM (9 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

isnt this precisely cuz its easy to paint him as a pussy/pushover, which you guys all seem to be buying into?? i think hes far from either of those things. and i dont mean to draw this into electability issues, just that im more interested in what might be lurking behind the 'optimist' facade

i mean, this guy is naive?? he comes across as a freaking borderline genius to me

The Bush adminstration has done so much to restore if not empower the executive branch that I doubt President McCain, Clinton, or Obama would be so eager to rescind those powers -- why would you?

I wish he was an atheist -- with his oratorical skills he could do lots for the millions of us who want to hear a convincing defense of godlessness put to theists. And yet, and yet, I suspect he IS less of a god-fearing man than he pretends. Something about his preternatural coolness bespeaks a kind of deism.

might not be able to tame congress and end up like Clinton in 1994

Can't see that happening. He's got too many friends there already on both sides. Senators apparently luv the dude.

xp Still, I think Hillary is a better extemporaneous speaker.

unless you ask her about bill's position on nafta and she goes into that uncomfortable cackle that's soooo painful to watch.

just a little armchair psychoanalysis, let's all be cool

its funny how everyone buys the optimist/naivety package - its a symptom of dumb cynicism - those two really dont have to come together

in fact i bet that obama is closer to the optimist/cynic model

its funny how everyone buys the optimist/naivety package

^^^. The right wing has been all "SEE? SEE? AUDACITY OF HOPE MY ASS!" the last couple of weeks; they've accepted the narrative that Obama is a New Kind of Politician. To me he's "new" only in that he understands the importance of words and is uncommonly quick-witted.

yeah i dunno if thats directed at me or not but i agree -- im not saying i dont believe the guy isnt genuinely optimistic, but i def dont believe he's remotely naive, like not even remotely remotely xps to jhoshea

not directed at u in the slightest deez

paranoid/optimist ^^^ lol

More on Obama & civil liberties: he voted to make permanent all but two of the PATRIOT act provisions that had been originally passed with an expiration date - so not exactly a wide-eyed innocent on that front.

i mean, this guy is naive?? he comes across as a freaking borderline genius to me

Early on I thought he came off as naive when he said that having lived abroad was a foreign policy credential. Like not only naive for thinking that (which he might not have, really), but naive for thinking it sounded good.

i really don't think disappointments with an obama presidency will be with character flaws per se.

something that occasionally makes me uneasy about his campaign rhetoric is that he'll elide the differences between kinds of identity, most problematically ethnic and economic identities. being Latino isn't really like being rich even though there's a fair degree of mystification cast over class as culture in this country. i don't really know where i'm going with this; it fits his overall message well to talk about the poor/rich divide as bridgeable, but that's a divide that economic policy should be targeted at eliminating or at least bringing closer, it's not like the problem is, oh if only poor people and rich people could just sit down over coffee and talk.

which i'm sure he knows and in part he's hemmed in by the landmine that is talking about class in America.

"My favourite things" is a very canon choice (?)

this might be a dumb question, but what does "songs from my administration" mean in this context?

You call it "a promised land playlist" and yet the Springsteen song on it is.. "The Rising."

Curious.

map room jams

A bad Stevie Wonder song balanced by a great one. Still triangulating even out of office.

brooks and dunn are ass

^^^ wrong

In the sense that ass is good, wrong.

Boot Scootin' Boogie would've been the better brooks and dunn pick.

like to think of o head bopping to lose yourself as he orders a drone strike on a village

so is anyone gonna post whatever this is here

"My favourite things" is a very canon choice (?)

Yes, but that could mean a whole bunch of things. It's not Abbey Road. It's not Dark Side of the Moon or Led Zeppelin IV or Thriller. (I was going to add "It's not even Kind of Blue," but then I see that's next.) And it's a president. Geez!

what does "songs from my administration" mean in this context?

Found that puzzling too. Maybe he means drawn from his annual playlists?

so is anyone gonna post whatever this is here

the list of songs is in an image that he has paid a graphic designer to lay out, embedded in the tweet

I would like to offer my apologies to ass, that was unfair of me

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/52/21/74/5221745d5bdea89f51db1c1eae962249.gif

Putting your playlists in alphabetical order is either laziness or next-level-Oulipo curation.

even music fanatics do that though. never understood it

Keeps the Beyonce stans from rioting at the merest hint that you ranked her behind Brooks & Dunn.

the great crime here is that it's in alphabetical order with The Beatles under T!!!!

and even then out of order!

so it's in not-alphabetical order and alphabetical order... at the same time? How awesome is that?!!

Just to be clear, we're talking about the musical tastes of an ex-President of the United States, as revealed in a publicity press release on the eve of a book release for which he was probably given a seven-figure advance, as if it weren't carefully crafted to ensure its appeal to the greatest number of people, while offended the fewest potential customers, while not tarnishing his "legacy" in any way. That list probably got passed by a dozen marketing people and close advisors. And who cares what he listens to?

^ that's a fucked up sentence, grammatically, but it says enough to be understood.

even music fanatics do that though.

who

Barack, ya basic

it'd be cool if obama had early '00s ilm taste in music and his list was like MBV and manic street preachers and a few britney singles

A bad Stevie Wonder song balanced by a great one.

they're both great

ALways thought Freddie Freeloader was the only track that could be dropped from Kind of Blue. Good to see it's someone's favourite, I guess.

Logged onto Apple Music this morning to stream Agharta while I worked and it's clearly the day's most-played Miles track

Mr.Obama, sir, please play one of the creepier outtakes from Aphex Twin's masterpiece SAWII while ordering a drone strike.

"In honor of my book hitting shelves tomorrow.."

that's what i like about him so much, he's always so generous towards himself.

"in honour of my book hitting shelves, in states where people would both buy a book by a Muslim Kenyan communist and where bookshops are still open..."

Ive always felt like he probably has pretty OK taste in music for a global supercelebrity who likely never gets any alone time whatsoever to listen to or think about music, and that simultaneously he doesnt know anything about these playlists until after they're published

He's plugging a book, yes. I liked this a lot, but I'll leave it to the usual suspects to explain how phony it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jWjk5zA12U

Fine enough review.

https://newrepublic.com/article/160285/obama-promised-land-trump-biden

Osita Nwanevu on the new book and, by extension, Biden

Obama appears now to be a better judge of Mitch McConnell. “I’m enjoying reading now about how Joe Biden and Mitch have been friends for a long time,” he told Goldberg. “They’ve known each other for a long time. I have quotes from Biden about his interactions with Mitch McConnell. The issue with Republicans is not that I didn’t court them enough. We would invite them to everything: Movie nights, state dinners, Camp David, you name it. The issue was not a lack of schmoozing. The issue was that they found it politically advantageous to demonize me and the Democratic Party. This was amplified by media outlets like Fox News. Their voters believed this, and over time Republicans became so successful in their demonization that it became very difficult for them to compromise, or even be seen being friendly.”

What Obama doesn’t acknowledge outright here is that denials of this reality—the insistence, for instance, that Joe Biden’s personal relationship with McConnell means something—are coming from Biden himself. In a speech Monday, Biden dismissed doubts about a return to bipartisanship under his administration. “The refusal of Democrats and Republicans to cooperate with one another is not due to some mysterious force beyond our control,” he said. “It’s a conscious decision. It’s a choice that we make. If we can decide not to cooperate, then we can decide to cooperate. I believe this is part of the mandate from the American people—part of the mandate they gave us. They want us to cooperate. They want us to deliver results. And the choice that Kamala and I will make is that we’re going to do that.”

Biden’s always lacked Obama’s eloquence, but he’s ably performing here something Obama always excelled ⁠at—an attempt to mystify the forces at work in American politics, framed as a demystification. The hard, stubborn reality we all ought to man up and recognize, Biden tells us, is that teamwork makes the dream work. But Obama is publicly expressing doubts about this political mode that Biden has yet to betray—all while denouncing political dishonesty and fakery in the Trump era.

https://newrepublic.com/article/160285/obama-promised-land-trump-biden