Is Obama the most polarisng President in your liftime?

RiverDad said:

Obama is, without a doubt, the most polarizing President of my lifetime.

Look at what he did with ObamaCare - all previous social welfare schemes (SS & Medicare and the lesser ones) received bipartisan support. ObamaCare was passed strictly on Democratic votes. All of those town hall meetings which showcased the protests - nothing like that was evident in the past.

Bush doesn't even come close - his big black mark was the Iraq War and plenty of Democrats voted for that.

In terms of polarization, Obama is in a class of his own.

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There are certain things you have to put outside of "polarization," else everything would fall under that umbrella. 1)Accusing the other party of being at fault for a key piece of legislation passing or not passing, or the other party for having a solution that's bad. That sort of partisan bickering is eternal -- it's not going anywhere. 2)One party passing a piece of legislation that the other side disapproves of. Really? Cause if that's "polarizing" then, once more, your problem is not with polarization but with the party that you don't belong to being in power.

In order to fit under polarizing, I think you have to focus on deliberate attempts to paint the other party not just as wrong minded, but as deliberately so, as I said before, enemies of the country.

Cardinal said:

There are certain things you have to put outside of "polarization," else everything would fall under that umbrella. 1)Accusing the other party of being at fault for a key piece of legislation passing or not passing, or the other party for having a solution that's bad. That sort of partisan bickering is eternal -- it's not going anywhere.

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Passing legislation declaring March 15, 2014 to be "Celebrate Honey Bee Day" and passing legislation which puts 1/6th of the US economy under government control and strips people of choices in their medical care are not simply different in degree, they're very different in kind and effect.

Your attempt to disqualify pertinent criticism fails. Look back on how Medicare was passed under Johnson, look back on the Civil Rights Act. Were these passed on straight party-line votes?

In order to fit under polarizing, I think you have to focus on deliberate attempts to paint the other party not just as wrong minded, but as deliberately so, as I said before, enemies of the country.

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This is a nonsensical formulation that you have to float in order to make your prior point defensible.

What you're describing is not polarizing, it's treasonous.

RiverDad said:

Passing legislation declaring March 15, 2014 to be "Celebrate Honey Bee Day" and passing legislation which puts 1/6th of the US economy under government control and strips people of choices in their medical care are not simply different in degree, they're very different in kind and effect.

Your attempt to disqualify pertinent criticism fails. Look back on how Medicare was passed under Johnson, look back on the Civil Rights Act. Were these passed on straight party-line votes?

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I think you're confusing cause and effect. Are bills that polarize passed on party lines, or are they passed on party lines because our government is polarized?

RiverDad said:

This is a nonsensical formulation that you have to float in order to make your prior point defensible.

What you're describing is not polarizing, it's treasonous.

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It's extreme but it's not treasonous. Also remember that I included Obama's "guns and bible" quote as polarizing, because rather than acting as representative of the whole country, he outright dismissed at least 30% of the country as altogether irrelevant and foolish. As Bush II did with his "you're either with us or against us", or Romney did with his 47% remark.

Barack Obama is the first president in my lifetime that I can recall who wantonly stuck a wedge in the economic divide and also blatantly took a stand on only one side of race issues. While other presidents have been divisive when it comes to party issues Obama has been divisive on issues of basic American values.

*sigh* What is it with people and these poorly stated polls?

It should be:
Yes
No (one or more Presidents were worse before him)
It's the same no matter who is President

opendebate said:

I know people will get their panties in a twist over this comment but I think you are right. Last week my partner was at the grocery story near our home and some man in line behind him starting going off about Obama. This began over a comment about there not being enough registers open. The guy started complaining about that and somehow it was Obamas fault. Then I was at the same store by myself and a woman was charged tax on an energy drink and she got all enraged about it and blamed it on Obama. I'm standing there thinking WTF is going on? I have never seen anything like this towards a President and it's so completely disconnected from reality that it is hard not to think that, for people like that anyway, something else is at play for them.

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I live in one of the reddest of the red states, and I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like that. :lol:

I would occasionally see "impeach Bush" graffiti when he was still in office, however

Cardinal said:

I think you're confusing cause and effect. Are bills that polarize passed on party lines, or are they passed on party lines because our government is polarized?

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The polarization doesn't materialize at the moment of the vote, it's there during the process leading up to the vote. What materializes during the vote is the degree of polarization. Public polls before the health care reform debate began showed that it was very low in priority - people wanted action on the economy and jobs. The decision to go with health care began the polarization. It intensified with those town hall meetings. It went into overdrive with all of the skullduggery and bribery and dirty tricks and hinky voting procedures. It went into orbit on the straight party line vote.

Eisenhower sending troops down to Little Rock was polarizing but not to the degree of Obama's actions - Ike had support across party lines, Ike wasn't imposing government presence into EVERYONE's lives. Look at the Hobby Lobby case, the nuns who are suing - this is draconian stuff.

It's extreme but it's not treasonous.

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Polarizing ≠ enemies of the country.
Treason/traitor = enemies of the country.

Your definition is far outside the scope of this issue.

Well, I really didn't pay attention to the political situation before Obama became president so I couldn't say.

Higgins86 said:

Question is mainly directed to the American posters, Obama brings out some strong emotions from both sides of the US political spectrum. So the question is pretty simple do you think Obama has created a bigger gap between the American left and right or is it still business as usual?

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of course not, bringing people together is actually what got him elected twice.


Now him being elected has made some cry babies cry even louder and cry babies are what gets covered in the news no matter how they identify themselves

but the fact is, percentage wise, he got more moderates/independents and conservatives/republicans to vote for him more so than any other democratic president for the last 30 years


he makes the NUTBALLS extra mentally retarded and crazy but normal people are about the same and more together

No.
Obama is a right wing moderate. The people that caused the polarization were idiots like this

Ben K. said:

With the advent of the internet, I think each subsequent president will be thought as the most polarising ever. I think the person in charge has little to do with the polarisation.

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I agree with this.... too many people get their news from political porn sites: Internet based news designed to pitch you exclusively on the ills of the other party; designed to titillate your ears with things that play upon your worst fears with half-facts and half-truths all to get your blood pressure up. Too many tend to shop for their news based upon what they want to hear or based on finding news that just reinforces their beliefs.

It seems fewer and fewer people actually challenge themselves intellectually by researching issues independently. You see it here. People, on both sides of an issue seem to simply reiterate things they hear on political porn sites. Rarely to you see a post with a "I didn't know that" or "thanks for the information; I see it differently". More often than not you see posts that support positions based upon articles or links to political porn sites. Even the evidence, in those rare cases here where people actually post such, is tainted. You would expect people on this site to want to learn, but no we just get polarizing shout downs with the lines clearly drawn and rarely crossed.

In the old days of news, you had but few options and those options tried to play things down the middle. There once was a commitment to journalistic integrity. Journalists in the pre-Internet (and pre-cable) era did not try to make the news or have 4 hours of prime-time editoralizing... they reported the news. Now, its easy to opinion shop: just hear what you want to hear. The Internet CAN be a powerful source of information OR a powerful reinforcer of prejudice. Far too many use it for the latter.

TheDemSocialist said:

No.
Obama is a right wing moderate. The people that caused the polarization were idiots like this

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I disagree. The polarization was caused by the pundits idiots like these are controled by.

I also wouldn't call President Obama a moderate or right-wing. The one thing I can hopefully say I maintain is my credibility, something nearly all of the right-wing pundits have decided to flush down the toilet in the interest alarmism, political tribalism and polarization. Obama is in fact a liberal on most issues but there have been other liberals in government before. At the same time his policies do tend to remind me most of Presidents W. Bush and Reagan.

Patriot Act - NSA monitoring
Record deficit - Record deficit
Corporate bailouts - Corporate bailouts
GITMO - GITMO
Increase the debt ceiling - Increase the debt ceiling
Odd relationship with the Saudis - Odd relationship with the Saudis, just not as odd with Obama

In my politically conscious lifetime every President going back to Nixon... possibly excepting Ford... was polarizing in their own way. With the exception of the Nixon pardon, I don't recall anything controversial regarding Ford's tenure in office.

Much of the polarization for any President is simply the nature of politics and the office. Whomever is in office, the other party feels obligated to thwart them and be contrarian. But, if you think about it, this is how we have it set up and how we want it. No candidate or party gets elected by agreeing with the incumbent or opposition. They get elected by convincing the voting populace that the person and/or party in office right now is evil incarnate and our last desperate hope is to elect them as a replacement.

upsideguy said:

People, on both sides of an issue seem to simply reiterate things they hear on political porn sites. Rarely to you see a post with a "I didn't know that" or "thanks for the information; I see it differently". More often than not you see posts that support positions based upon articles or links to political porn sites. Even the evidence, in those rare cases here where people actually post such, is tainted. You would expect people on this site to want to learn, but no we just get polarizing shout downs with the lines clearly drawn and rarely crossed.

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Let me guess, this doesn't describe you.

I agree with you to a point. Yes, there is lots of linking to biased sources. The problem is that there are few unbiased sources available, so there really isn't a solution available to fix this problem.

The problem that develops is when posters on a debate board feel that a link or copy/paste is all that is needed to make their argument. Those who go beyond a copy/paste and make a case for a position neutralize your criticism for now you can engage with them on the basis of ideas and arguments rather than bashing each other with appeals to favored authorities.

In the old days of news, you had but few options and those options tried to play things down the middle.

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What alternate universe did you just pop in from? Those old Cronkite days were plenty bad in terms of biased reporting, it's just that they had a stranglehold and so their liberal bias looked like it was middle of the road. Test this yourself. Find some polarizing event. Say the 1964 Civil Rights Act passage. Can you find Cronkite or Brinkley or Huntley talking about how nasty and awful and disgraceful the passage of this legislation was while also acknowledging how great, inspiring and hopeful the new reality was? I've never heard of any reports like that - maybe some folks who lived through that era could recount their memories of how that news played out on TV.

There once was a commitment to journalistic integrity. Journalists in the pre-Internet (and pre-cable) era did not try to make the news or have 4 hours of prime-time editoralizing... they reported the news.

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This I agree with. Their bias was far more subtle. They exercised it by lies of omission. They'd shape their stories to comport with their liberal bias but wouldn't interject themselves into the news. That was certainly preferable to the current modus operandi of journalism.

Higgins86 said:

Question is mainly directed to the American posters, Obama brings out some strong emotions from both sides of the US political spectrum. So the question is pretty simple do you think Obama has created a bigger gap between the American left and right or is it still business as usual?

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It has nothing to do with Obama himself. It's just partisan politics as usual. He has a (D) next to his name so thus he is infallible to the left and a communist, fascist, baby-eater to the right.

Obama is spiritually and Biblically challenged.

Obama - America's Most Biblically Hostile U.S. President

Obama – America

RiverDad said:

-It's easy to convince people that Obama is/was a socialist when he ran for early office under a socialist party banner.
-It's easy to convince people that Obama is a terrorist sympathizer when he is as thick as thieves with a convicted terrorist.
-It's easy to convince people that Obama is a closet Islamic radical when he instructs the director of NASA that his primary mission is to make Muslims in the ME feel good about themselves.

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Thick as theives with a convicted terrorist.

I'm sure you're talking about Bill Ayres, the 1960s radical. I'm not going to defend Ayres but by the time Obama met him he was treated as a community leader in the City of Chicago, was apponited by the mayor's office to serve on a commision to improve the public schools and was awarded the recognition of Citizen of The Year. Obama cannot change history and in life we encounter people who have done and said things with which we disagree. You take the same standard the pundits applied to Obama in 2008 and most of us would have to quit our jobs based on the pasts of our co-workers and most Presidents in recent history should have never been elected.

Instructs the director of NASA that his primary mission is to make Muslims in the ME feel good about themselves.

President Obama obviously understands the complexities of the War on Terror better than most right-wing pundits. In my limited study of Middle-Eastern perceptions in the wake of 9-11, I learned that the concept of "honor" is huge in their culture and likely contributed to the factors that motivated the 9-11 terrorist attacts. We have to share the planet with the culture that producted the 9-11 terrorist attacks and for the time being benefit from them having as friendly as possible attitudes toward us. I have no way of knowing for certain but based on what I've learned about the Middle-East, Obama's diretive to the NASA administrator to stroke the egos of the Middle-East is all about creative diplomacy with a people who think the War on Terror is code for War on Islam. Of that people many are likely to feel complled to "defend of honor of Islam" by flying passenger jets into American office buildings. Stroking the egos of people who are willing to die and kill Americans over pride doesn't mean the President of the United States of America is a closet Muslim extremist. It simply means he has an overall stategy to defend and protect the American people while we work to lessen our dependency on fossil fuel.

RiverDad said:

-It's easy to convince people that Obama is/was a socialist when he ran for early office under a socialist party banner.

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Which he didn't.

RiverDad said:

-It's easy to convince people that Obama is a terrorist sympathizer when he is as thick as thieves with a convicted terrorist.

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Which he isn't.

RiverDad said:

-It's easy to convince people that Obama is a closet Islamic radical when he instructs the director of NASA that his primary mission is to make Muslims in the ME feel good about themselves.

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Which he didn't.

Maybe if you didn't uncritically except such utter horse****, you wouldn't be so painfully misinformed.

Smeagol said:

Thick as theives with a convicted terrorist.

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Look, the honorable thing for you to do is to acknowledge that there is a reasonable basis for the critics' complaints. Instead you try to obfuscate away the charges.

If Mitt Romney was palsy walsy with former KKK Grand Dragon David Dukes anyone who tried to erase away or explain away the connection would be doing what you're doing and you wouldn't buy into that snake oil effort for a second.

The people who criticize Obama for his ugly past are not out of line - there are grounds for those criticisms. You have every right to disagree with the judgments reached, with the severity of the judgments, but to pretend that they're groundless is astonishing.

TheDemSocialist said:

No.
Obama is a right wing moderate. The people that caused the polarization were idiots like this

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Agreed. I'm not an Obama fan by any means, but calling him a socialist is quite ignorant. The population at large has no idea what socialism actually is.

RiverDad said:

Look, the honorable thing for you to do is to acknowledge that there is a reasonable basis for the critics' complaints. Instead you try to obfuscate away the charges.

If Mitt Romney was palsy walsy with former KKK Grand Dragon David Dukes anyone who tried to erase away or explain away the connection would be doing what you're doing and you wouldn't buy into that snake oil effort for a second.

The people who criticize Obama for his ugly past are not out of line - there are grounds for those criticisms. You have every right to disagree with the judgments reached, with the severity of the judgments, but to pretend that they're groundless is astonishing.

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They're not criticizing Obama for HIS ugly past, the Ayers controversy was an attempt to criticize Obama for the ugly past of a co-worker. We can do the guilt by association thing but a lot of people get included who I'm sure the pundits would rather not judge by that standard.

TeleKat said:

Agreed. I'm not an Obama fan by any means, but calling him a socialist is quite ignorant. The population at large has no idea what socialism actually is.

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By your standard then, calling a dog a dog and a cat a cat also qualify as quite ignorant statements:


Here we have two pieces of documentary evidence which clearly show his membership. This isn't a "he said this, no I didn't" type of charge.

I said no. GWB was pretty polarizing also. Much of the perceived polarization stems from the organization of the right, 24 hour news channels, and the internet. These new tools allow both sides to ratchet up the drumbeat of propaganda and the right in particular has been effective at it since 2000. Even going back to the republicans killing the McCain presidential campaign in S. Carolina, they will eat their own (that was a shameful performance, never pinned on the RNC, but clearly the repub machine wanted GWB and not McCain). Media allows the propaganda to reach an elevated level.

Gathomas88 said:

I live in one of the reddest of the red states, and I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like that. :lol:

I would occasionally see "impeach Bush" graffiti when he was still in office, however

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yeah, it was weird. I tend to think some people just wait around for something to direct their pre-existing rage at.

I saw a lot of disgust and frustration, even anger at Bush and Clinton but not like this.

Higgins86 said:

Question is mainly directed to the American posters, Obama brings out some strong emotions from both sides of the US political spectrum. So the question is pretty simple do you think Obama has created a bigger gap between the American left and right or is it still business as usual?

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The answer to your question is yes, but only to those born since November 2008.