What do YOU think of the current occupent of the White House?

[Erebethor]

I'm curious, what do YOU think about Obama? No, not what the political commentator said last night on Big Talk, YOUR opinion. Do you think he'll be good at being the leader of one of the currently most powerful countrries in the world? Do you think he can't hold a candle to Bush? (Idiot if you do.) Do you think closing Guantanamo was a good idea? Do you reckon he'll just be average? Are or you Captain Apathy?
Ereb

[Gildan]

Heh, you really should not bias your poll questions and commentary in an internet poll that has no value  .

[Leon]

Candidate Obama repeatedly and publicly spoke out against the violations of our
Constitution perpetrated by the Bush Administration. It is my hope that these recommendations
will help to ensure that President Obama follows through and rolls back those excesses, and
restores the checks and balances that have made our nation strong. There remain numerous
questions about the Bush Administration’s misdeeds, many of them described in the text that
follows, and the more these facts are uncovered and aired, the stronger they will make our
democracy.
———————————

Snipet from this document.  http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/printers/110th/IPres090113.pdf

In response to the post, I would say that whether he does or does not act on these recommendations, as paraphrased above, this will be a benchmark for his value as as the leader of one of the most powerful countries in the world.

Already he has backtracked on several issues I am aware of.


Leon

[Grumble]

Considering Bush was the worst president in the history of our nation, exploded the national debt, invaded a foreign country for no reason which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and the displacement of millions more, eroded our rights through the patriot act, allowed big business to destroy our economy through lax enforcement if not outright ignoring of regulations, and even found time to kill a puppy or two... I gotta ask.. is this a trick question?

Even if Obama turned out to be a serial murderer hed be a better president then W.

<smiles>  Well you DID ask!

[Kaid]

Asking if he will be better than bush is setting the bar for success very very very low. Overall I think he will wind up doing better but given how crappy the economy was when he got office I doubt he or anybody else elected this cycle will get more than 1 term in office.

[Steeloak]

I predict that by 2012, it will be damn near impossible to find anyone who will admit they voted for Obama.

[Gildan]

I predict that by 2012, it will be damn near impossible to find anyone who will admit they voted for Obama.

And I predict he will be elected president again in 2012.  Poll numbers are pretty damn compelling despite how difficult the current economy is.  And yes, I still admit I voted for Bush in 2000 (terrible choice) - not sure what your point is tbh.

[Brakk]

Steeloak, Your prediction may be true for your circle of friends, but I have no problem finding Bush haters who admit to voting for him right now.  Mostly because the democrats took a vacation in 2004 and didn't run a candidate, instead they ran on a 'not bush' platform with no ideas of their own.  I can also find people in sight of my office cubicle who still think he was a great president, and those who wish him bodily harm.

It is going to be a hard term for any president to get re-elected, Americans are in a pretty judgemental mood right now in terms of disliking our politicians.  Too many years of low approval ratings with Bush, too many scandals, nobody wants the bailouts (but many fear we will be worse off without it) and both parties ended up doing it.

What Obama has on his side is that the economy has always been pretty cyclical, and whoever happens to be in office on an upswing gets credit.  If the economy swings up in 2-3 years, many will believe it is because of the president, even though very few of our presidents have really had that much effect on the economy.  Just like Bush gets blamed for the bad economy when it is really the effect of 20 years of whittling away at safeguards to prevent this type of thing.  Just like Bush gets blamed for failed levies, even though every president since the 60s rejected the exact same proposal to rebuild them, the storm just happened to hit on his watch.  He can be blamed for much of the reaction to it though.

Anyway, I hate politics because true believers in either side seem to me to be suffering some form of mental retardation where they can only see faults in those who have a different letter in parenthesis after their names, even though almost all of those in office are clones of the same sleazeball.

[Erebethor]

I want do do Biology so I can study chimps. My dad wants me to study politics. "Politicians, monkeys, same difference" he said. "Dad, chips are apes, because they don't have tails, and for a bunch of other reasons" I replied. "Politicians come somewhere as a form of jelly fish, not actually doing any thinking themselves, but allowing tiny cells that make up their body to do it for them."
Ereb

[Navith]

I think Bush qualifies as both a chimp and a politician then.

Lord help us if another Bush tries for the white house in 2012.  That family needs to go away.

Obama inherited the Bush legacy, and it will take more than his presidency to fix it (even if he is in for 8 years).

It's like deforestation.  What Bush did in 8 years, will takes decades to fix.

Proudly never ever voted for a Bush, and will NEVER be ashamed to admit I voted for Obama.

[Kwee]

This, to me, is a perfect example of why we deserve the leaders we get.   Our president isn't meant to be the latest winner of some American Idol poll.  He is supposed to be the considered, rational and careful administrator of our Constitution.

We've frittered that away.  Writing over a hundred years ago, Alexis deToqueville - a French guy who saw how democracy led to tyranny and mob-equality, wrote, in one of his final chapters, "What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear."  :

Tocqueville envisioned a ruling power that would be "absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild," one that keeps its subjects "in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances. What remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?"

Tocqueville didn't use our contemporary term, the nanny state, but he described it with some precision, and a wry detachment. The soft tyranny he envisioned "covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes and stupefies a people…"

"I have always thought," he added, with his usual insight, "that servitude of the regular, quiet and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people."

The entire *idea* of who is better, Obama or Bush, just begs the question, "Do you understand Federalism and this nation?"  The answer is pretty darned clear.  Most of us do not.

[Steeloak]

First, according to Rassmussen Polls 3 months into his term & Obama's approval rating is only 2 points higher than his disapproval rating  and the trend is not good for him - hence my comment.

Second, I am no fan of Bush either.  I think he was good on the war, bad on spending & big govt - no conservative in my opinion. 

Third - I agree with Brakk on the nature of politicians - a pox on both their houses.  I disagree on the nature of politics - when there are 2 diametrically opposed systems of belief about how the world should be organized you do not want people to hold hands and sing kumbaya - you want the the people who are wrong to lose. 

Finally, Kwee nails it again - we have long been in a soft tyranny and are on the verge of tipping over into a hard tyranny - nearly every constitutional protection against the power of the state has been breached and the rest are hanging by a thread - but most people aren't even aware this is the case. 

[Gildan]

First, according to Rassmussen Polls 3 months into his term & Obama's approval rating is only 2 points higher than his disapproval rating  and the trend is not good for him - hence my comment.

Sorry, I'm a poll junky so let me correct you here.  The strongly approve/strongly disapprove margin has closed to single digits according to Rasmussen (it was at 2% the other day, at 6% today - daily polls are junk), the approve/disapprove difference is 10-15% on any given day versus 35% in January.  However, let's look at a conglomerate of all the polls, since all polls have bias (they all weight  responses differently, if you really want an explanation PM me, it's too boring to read for most people) over at pollster.com - in January it was 65/25 now it 55/35 so a clear 10% loss/gain.

To be blunt when he took office, Obama's approval rating was overly inflated because he was not Bush (pretty hard to replace the least popular president ever).  There was no way on earth he would stay that high for very long.  Instead see if the current numbers hold steady - approval has been between 55 and 60 for the past month, disapproval has had an upward trend  since the election and does not appear to be done rising but has a natural ceiling somewhere around 45% unless approvals start trending down again.

[Navith]

Heh, I don't trust ANY polls.  Don't tell me 1000 people represent the opinion of 200 million.   

[Gildan]

Heh, I don't trust ANY polls.  Don't tell me 1000 people represent the opinion of 200 million.   

Proper polling is surprisingly accurate.  And actually it's closer to 850ish people to get a solid sample in the US.  The problem is, it's very easy to bias a poll inadvertently.  That's why it's a bad idea to rely on any single poll to try and prove some point.  There was a recent poll that said 40% of America thinks socialism is good.  Here's the problem, socialism is such  broad concept and has a very different meaning to just about everyone making it an amazingly useless poll.