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Is Obama a good president?[W:577]

Is Obama a good president?


  • Total voters
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Too soon to tell, to be honest, but I chose average. Obama is neither so far the best nor likely to be the worst. He is a good speaker, is well educated and intelligent, but he does not seem to be able to control even his own party in congress or manage to select very good help to run the executive functions of the federal govt. I would grade him a D so far.

Interesting, "well educated and intelligent" BUT which makes him not educated or intelligent for the job, he may be a book worm but has no common sense or has never run a lemonade stand, meaning he is not educated or intelligent to be the president. He is actually and idiot and I would rank him at the bottom of the barrel.
 
What about the top 3 president out of those 11 that you experienced?

1. Eisenhower 2. JFK 3. Reagan 4. Clinton I added a fourth as I constantly debate myself who is 3 or 4. But being a military man, Reagan usually wins over Clinton although since Clinton ended up balancing the budget to within 17 billion in his last year, that makes it hard for me. I mean being a Perot man and all.
 
being a Perot man and all.

I'm old enough to understand that reference. The 1992 presidential election was the most entertaining election of my lifetime. Ross Perot was buying 1 hour slots in prime time on all the major networks. Some people believe that Perot was the only reason that Clinton won the election. They fail to forget that Bush 1's legacy is "Read my lips. No new taxes." He turned on the Republicans and sided with the Democrats. I'm sure Perot could have stayed home to count his money instead of running for president but he was pretty pissed at Bush 1 for lying to the rich.
 
I'm old enough to understand that reference. The 1992 presidential election was the most entertaining election of my lifetime. Ross Perot was buying 1 hour slots in prime time on all the major networks. Some people believe that Perot was the only reason that Clinton won the election. They fail to forget that Bush 1's legacy is "Read my lips. No new taxes." He turned on the Republicans and sided with the Democrats. I'm sure Perot could have stayed home to count his money instead of running for president but he was pretty pissed at Bush 1 for lying to the rich.

Perot was pissed at the massive debt being run up by Bush the first. The exit polls showed he, Perot drew relative even from both parties. Yeah, it is an old wifes tale blaming him for Bush the first loss.
 
For an habitual, inveterate liar whose actions as president are doing potentially irreparable harm to the Constitutional balance of powers, threatening our very freedom and liberty, and despite the divisiveness, racism, and blatantly overt anti-American and socialist agenda.... meh, he's not doing too bad of a job.

Heaven help us though if he gets any better doing what he's been doing.
 
There hasn't been a good Pres in the last 50 years.
 
Obama is a great President, Father and Husband. A hero to this nation who bleeds red white and blue and follows the constitution to the letter because he believes in limited power, accountability and transparency. We can only be so lucky to have this legendary man as our President, who loves this nation, our traditions and ideals...
 
I'm sure this will end in a proper and dignified manner.

He's been as bad as about every one in recent memory. I can't see why everyone seems so intent on labeling him as the worst.
 
Obama is a great President, Father and Husband. A hero to this nation who bleeds red white and blue and follows the constitution to the letter because he believes in limited power, accountability and transparency. We can only be so lucky to have this legendary man as our President, who loves this nation, our traditions and ideals...

LOL you're post is about 4 months early
 
He's been as bad as about every one in recent memory. I can't see why everyone seems so intent on labeling him as the worst.

ObamaTaxCare like the NEW DEAL can cause lots of problems long after this clown is out of office
 
ObamaTaxCare like the NEW DEAL can cause lots of problems long after this clown is out of office

Still doesn't make him the worst, or even that much closer to the worst. :shrug:
 
Still doesn't make him the worst, or even that much closer to the worst. :shrug:

presidents who impose stuff that continues to cause problems are "worse" than those merely incompetent like Carter or Harding. FDR was very effective in getting his socialist agenda passed but his destruction of the tenth amendment causes many of the problems we have today. Obamataxcare could be a malignancy for decades
 
presidents who impose stuff that continues to cause problems are "worse" than those merely incompetent like Carter or Harding. FDR was very effective in getting his socialist agenda passed but his destruction of the tenth amendment causes many of the problems we have today. Obamataxcare could be a malignancy for decades

I stopped reading at "socialist agenda".
 
I stopped reading at "socialist agenda".

you don't think the NEW DEAL was the biggest step towards socialism this country experienced in its first 160 years
 
you don't think the NEW DEAL was the biggest step towards socialism this country experienced in its first 160 years

The New Deal was meant to put workers back to work. It did not empower workers. It wasn't socialist.
 
presidents who impose stuff that continues to cause problems are "worse" than those merely incompetent like Carter or Harding. FDR was very effective in getting his socialist agenda passed but his destruction of the tenth amendment causes many of the problems we have today. Obamataxcare could be a malignancy for decades



All right, I understand the relative importance of Amendment X, but I cannot understand why anybody believes that Amendment X is such a vital part of America's government that the "destruction" of it "causes many of the problems we have today." If that's true, why wasn't Amendment X able to do anything about the myriad problems President Roosevelt was attempting to address?
 
yeah, i forgot to add gay civil rights in there.

there were points in the 2012 race where i thought he could lose. phoning in that first debate really hurt him, but the 47 percent thing was just too much for Romney to get past.

I don't understand why anybody thought the 47% remarks were, well, relevant to the 2012 election. I had been following the poll numbers fairly closely at the time and detected absolutely no shift in the polls after that remark. By the time it was made, the independents and Republicans who ended up voting for him had already fully agreed with him about the parasitic nature of the 47% (indeed, it's been a conservative talking point for years at this point) and the Democrats and independents who disliked that remark had already made up their minds that Mr. Venture Capitalist Romney simply wasn't their man.
 
One thing I hear a lot is that President Obama didn't "meet expectations." He's been a "disappointment." I followed his campaign fairly closely since the primary battle battle with Mrs. Clinton and don't really understand why anybody's disappointed in him who wouldn't already be disappointed about "socialism" and all that jazz.

I mean, clearly Americans knew that electing a black guy wasn't going to take care of the racial issues we spent the last 400 years developing with one another, right? That would have been an absurd expectation.

Were Americans expecting someone who would never lie to them or sugar-coat the truth? I should hope not, since I've seen no indication in my lifetime that the voters actually want to hear the truth.

Were Americans expecting someone who was going to gut the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act entirely? That'd be an odd expectation since there are some good parts of it, such as expediting the sharing of information regarding suspected terrorists and criminals between the C.I.A. and F.B.I. It would also be an odd expectation since getting the government out of our lives also generally makes it easier for terrorists to slip through the cracks. Would the same people who are angry at the President for declining to scale back the powers granted to the executive be perfectly okay with the occasional terrorist attack stemming from the government's full and unequivocal respect of your civil liberties? I highly doubt it. (Yes, I do believe the wide spying powers that the N.S.A. has has prevented at least one terrorist attack; I live four blocks away from the prevented terrorist attack I have in mind.)

Maybe people are angry at the President for not scaling back the debt more. That's another odd expectation since America has been juggling a trade deficit for some time (we're all aware of the necessary implications regarding public and private sector debt-loads when there's a trade deficit, right?) and especially since Americans have this professed love of the Constitution (with whom, does anyone recall, does the "power of the purse" rest, according to Article I?).

If you ask me, I think President Obama has done a decent job. I'd answer "yes."

I heavily distrust the N.S.A. and the wide powers granted to it and the C.I.A. and similar agencies, but America hasn't suffered any major terrorist attacks under his watch, which, presumably, means that those agencies are doing more or less what they're designed to do. The President's first and foremost obligation is to the protection of the American People from foreign invasion or harm, and he has done that job well.

I would have preferred for the ARRA to have spent more time and money on things like vocational training and human capital development (the only real way to fix America's economic problems, imo) and less on tax breaks, but tax breaks are usually a good idea during recessions, and anybody paying attention knows you're only going to get so much through the Congress these days.

I would have preferred he spent no time whatsoever trying to increase the tax rates on the highest brackets (we should wait until 2016 or thereabouts to contemplate such measures), but since the Republicans have become obsessed with the debt (i.e., the not-the-biggest-issue-facing-the-American-economy and ultimately a massive and destructive political distraction), I don't know if he had a good way around that.

There's no doubt that President Obama has engaged in his fair share of political nonsense, but looking at the American People and the ease with which they confound themselves (for instance, most Americans poll as wanting to cut the deficit, but the vast majority of Democrats, independents, and Republicans all disagree with cuts to Medicare, Social Security, and the Armed Forces, i.e., give or take 75% of the budget), I've always found that an absolutely laughable criticism directed at just about all politicians. It's like the wife who gets angry at her husband when she asks if her behind is fat and he's stupid enough to answer honestly.

Anyway, it looks to me like the guy did the best he could in difficult circumstances. GDP is up, unemployment is down, and America looks to be relatively safe from war and terrorism. Seems to me he's done his job. Whether he gets a C+ or an A- means very little to me. He either did his job or he didn't.
 
Obama is good, but not great. He, like most of the Democratic party right now, is afraid to stand up for liberal ideals. He had good ideas, but the left is too eager to compromise. But he's been a skilled negotiator and gotten some things done in the face of insane adversity. So yeah, points for trying, but not a great score for not succeeding.

Policy-wise, Nixon wasn't a bad president.

He was if you were black or a woman. He was most notably against racial integration of schools.
 
Obama is good, but not great. He, like most of the Democratic party right now, is afraid to stand up for liberal ideals. He had good ideas, but the left is too eager to compromise. But he's been a skilled negotiator and gotten some things done in the face of insane adversity. So yeah, points for trying, but not a great score for not succeeding.



He was if you were black or a woman. He was most notably against racial integration of schools.

Couldn't wait to drag out the deck of cards, eh?
 
I don't know about this string ending proper and dignified, but I would say this current president is about average for the presidents I have known and experienced since Eisenhower.
PHP:
You know you're getting old when one can remember 11 presidents and was born under the 12th.
I would rank Bush the second and Obama in 7th and 8th place out of the 11 I experienced. They, both of them would only be ahead of Nixon, Ford and Carter. This is my opinion




Well I can top that, I can remember quite well 12 of the 13 presidents who have lived in the White House since the start of WWII.

I was born in 1943 and I really don't remember FDR, but I do remember Truman and every president since him quite well. It's too soon to evaluate either Obama or G.W. Bush properly right now, but I am going to guess that in the future Obama will be somewhere in the lower middle of the rankings and Bush will be mighty close to the bottom.

Of course that's just my guess based on how things look right now.

Obama might sink or rise and so might Bush.

We'll just have to wait and see.
 
I'm sure this will end in a proper and dignified manner.

Obama has been an extremely weak executive and ineffectual party leader. No one should recognize this more than liberals and DNC supporters, being that he wasted an immense amount of political capital following the 2008 election
 
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