Capitol Hill Blue Forums Capitol Hill Blue Opinions CHB Columnists Let's face it: Obama is a failure

[quote=Harvey3 please share with us some specific elements you perceive comprising the, "difference in concept" and "principled approach to governance" of the incumbent administration? [/quote]

NWP may have different views on the issue.

One matter of change is to appoint people who have qualifications beyond their political connections.... fore example Bush wanted to appoint Harriet Meyers to the supreme court and the horse show judge to run FEMA, and Alberto Gonzales to be the Attorney General.... the primary qualification for all of them was political.... and IMO Obama has looked towards trying to find people who actually have some qualification for the post beyond their political views.


Further, IMO Obama has actually tried... and continues to try to achieve some level of bipartisanship. The effectiveness of that efforts has been largely defeated by republicans who will only accept bipartisanship where they remain in control. But, it is hard to imagine anyone who would make the claim that Bush made any serious effort at bi partisanship. Instead the Rovian method seemed to be... find a wedge issue and drive hard as possible,

In foreign affairs, the Obama change has been to try to negotiate rather than dictate to other nations.

There are a few differences for you, Harv

Ardy, I am going to send you a PM.

[quote=Harvey3 please share with us some specific elements you perceive comprising the, "difference in concept" [/quote]

And further on the point
The Obama administration seems to be of the opinion that the government can and should do something to save manufacturing jobs in the USA,,, which is a change,

Obama seems to be of the opinion that ordinary people should also receive assistance in this difficult time.... mortgage assistance, extended unemployment, medical care coverage for people who lost their jobs, changing the rules of creditcards, extending medical care benefits for children, trying to reduce the number of people without medical insurance in this country. All of those are differences in concept from bush and republican administration....

Note... it does not mean that you will like all those ideas or think they are effective. But that is a different question than whether or not differences in concept actually exist between Obama and non-Obama.

Stop it, it was a joke.

Will you guys stop eating your young? This is your ultimate wish, a liberal black guy being elected President of the United States and all you guys do is make excuses for him. At least when GW was in office Republicans defended his honor up till the very end, you guys are throwing Barry O under the bus 9 months into his term.

I really do believe that he just wasn't ready for the job. All the wishing in the world will not make up for inexperience.

Let's see here:

Interstate Highway System - Eisenhower (R)
Normalized realtions with China - Nixon (R)
Fall of the USSSR - Reagan (R)

Welfare - Roosevelt (D)
Bay of Pigs - Kennedy (D)
Cuban Missle Crisis - Kennedy (D)
18% inflation - Carter (D)
BJ's in the oval office - Clinton (D)

and GWB was ready?

sure he was. didn't you keep a running list of his accomplishments:
Invaded sovereign nation (R) (Bush)
Admitted all pretexts for said invasion were lies (R) (Bush)
Outed an active covert agent of the CIA (R) (Bush)
Presided over the economic collapse of the world economy (R) (Bush)
Established policies that encouraged nuclear weapons and missle programs in 2 of the 3 nations of the evil empire (R) (Bush)

Given that this is the yard stick for a successful president, it follows that Obama is a failure. He hasn't accomplished any of those things!

Isn't this back and forth about which President did or did not do what just what those who hold real power use to keep themselves in power? Politics isn't scored this way. The real scoreboard always shows Team People losing by a large margin.

Where is LBJ in the list? How about the 1964 Civil Rights Act. That wasn't an insignificant acheivement...was it?

I have to sit in idle thought at Nixon's acheivement that you posted regarding him "normalizing relations with China". Have you ever listened to any subtantial portions of the Nixon tapes? He would have cut his mother's throat to gain any advantage he deemed important to him personally or politically. He proved himself to be a living contradiction to our very idea of a Repubic form of government.

By the way...China, even in Nixon's days...wasn't stupid and foresaw economic opportunities in the U.S. While China persisted in maintaining its hardcore communist image...and controlled its people under such ideologies, the political structure was clever enough to know that they had to join in on the world economic bandwagon. Ask a lot of U.S. product distrutors who couldn't wait to get their hands on "equal quality, cheaper cost products produced by. China would have made the move...if Nixon hadn't.

Tim...do you really give Reagan credit for the "Fall of the USSR"? I've heard that hype for 25 years. Hell, I voted for the guy, not once but twice. But, I don't buy the USSR thing. I didn't when it happened.

The USSR was doomed to fail long before Reagan because of sheer economic reasons. Their failure was but an international incident waiting to happen. Their monetary and economic system crashed. It crashed not because of just the U.S., but because they isolated themselves from the world via their constant threats of global destruction and imperalistic proliferation of communism. The world wasn't going to tolerate another attempted global overthrow like Hitler intended to perpetrate. Reagan just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I'm sorry...Reagan's little, "Gorbachev, tear down those walls." speech...along with the Star Wars threat didn't bring down those walls.

BJ's in the Office..hmmmm, apparently those BJ's helped Clinton relieve enough stress so he could begin to formulate how to be the only president in modern history to balance the national budget. Was it just a false...politically contrived illusion of a sound balancing of the budget...perhaps. But it wasn't anywhere near as damaging as the phoney "happy days are hear again ecomomy" that emerged after Clinton's departure.

I voted for every Repubican President from my first year to vote...which was for Goldwater. But that stopped with George W. Bush. My relationship with any political party ended with GWB. And it remains to be that way today. I'm anti-political party. I'm anti-conservative/liberal philosophy. In my eyes...they only divide our nation for purposes of self-interest and gain.

And about GWB...Im a native Texan. When GWB entered the Gov's race, it was disturbing. But after living with his governorship and he upped the ante to run for president, I was more than disturbed. There was zero way I was going to support his potential idiocracy to be perpetrated on the entire nation, much less a single state. I'll never regret not voting for him. I did, however, spend my votes in 2000 and 2004 for Libertarian candidates, which I clearly knew had no chance of winning, but I felt that I had met my duty as a citizen to cast a vote.

You say Republicans defended GWB's honor up to the end. Is that a possible reason that both the House and Senate took major blows over the next election periods? I dare say his accomplishments...I don't want to remember.

I find it truly difficult to identify any "honor" displayed during GWB's terms.

But way more important to me, Tim. We can endlessly post negative BS about every politician on both sides of the isle, and still overlook the obvious...why in the hell are we able to consistently list negative after negative about either side...when these creeps are suppose to be on the side of We The People...and be actively involved in our general welfare in a way that is a product of joint efforts made possible by debate and compromise?

These jerks have pitted you and I and others against each other over their world of self-interests and gains!

Let's just have another civil war...and get all of this insane BS out of our systems. But in the end...I hope like hell we come out with the wisdom to publicly execute all of our Washington crooks who have swindled our country and killed our kids all for the sake of self-interest.

By the way.... let's say that 270 days is the benchmark for sucess or failure... then look at a few examples...


Churchill?
Gen George Washington?
Lincoln?

Let's evaluate each of them as sucess or failure based upon the first 270 days.... any takers?

Or, consider the much debated issue of achieving systemic change. In that context let's copnsider FDR. Certainly a president who effected lots of significant systemic change. And how much of that came in the first 270 days?

Jack Welch is considered a great business leader for what he did with General Electric. So, go back and look at what he accomplished in 270 days.