Why Is It So Hard to Be Objective About the President?

[DaveT]

Like all politicians -- like all human beings -- Barack Obama has both positive and negative attributes. In some areas, he has infuriated me, while in others I reflect on how lucky we are to have won the elections of 2008 and 2012. But a very large number of the posters on this board cannot seem to cope with ambivalence -- we must either worship at the altar of 11th Dimensional Chess Grandmastery or we must condemn him at every opportunity for his many un-progressive stances. What's worse, it often becomes a debate about predicting what he will do next. Those of us who are critical of him tend to attack him in advance for what we expect him to do. Many of his fans offer the equally preposterous line of thinking that everything he touches will eventually turn to progressive policy gold in time.

You saw a very good example in the recent affair in Syria. Some people say that he tried but failed to start a war, while others say that he cleverly attained a foreign policy triumph without going to war. While the story was still unfolding, there was a furious debate about what he would do next -- and with very few exceptions, his critics expected a Bush-type of war while his fans cheered him on through all the twists and turns.

Trying to avoid the pre-judging of events, I had this to say about the Syrian bullshit:

I doubt that Obama will get us into the Syrian War, not because I have any faith in his anti-war bona fides, but because it would be even stupider than the last two stupid wars. Nothing to gain, much to lose and politically disastrous, no matter what.

If he does start such a preposterous miltary adventure, all doubts about him should finally be resolved. His mixed record has undeniable plusses and his defenders have my respect, even as I disagree with them. But this combination of mass slaughter and geopolitical folly would clinch the case against him.

Conversely, if the President manages to hold the neo-con war hawks at bay, and avoids going to war, I will tip my hat and add a major plus mark on my personal ledger -- which now has far more big red minuses. The consenus on this thread seems to think it is going to happen, in spite of that 9% poll result.

I'm not so sure about that.

[link:http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3554684|]



Although I remain a critic on a wide variety of the President's efforts, I do tip my hat and I am grateful for him for fending off the rush to war coming from the usual array of Neo-Cons warmongers. A major plus, in my opinion. It does not tip the overall balance in my opinion, but I am not about to gainsay or minimize the result. If we had a GOP President, we would be occupying Damascus by now, and I am grateful to Obama for avoiding that idiotic war.



Speaking of idiocy, in our idiotic culture, all that is ancient history now. Today we are obsessing over the next right wing offensive -- the effort to shut down the Federal Government. Within the confines of this "news" story, I support the President wholeheartedly. I might quibble with minor details of how he is waging the political fight, but at least now he is treating it as a political fight. And, in general, his is doing a very effective job in rallying the country AGAINST the Tea Party.

Finally.

But I cannot pretend that the previous four years of appeasement did not happen. He should have been relating to them this way from the very start of his presidency. And I am not being a Monday morning quarterback. His admitted failure to defend the Affordable Care Act and to counterattack the GOP for lying about it was the direct cause of the blow out election of 2010. Occasionally, you will see the opinion expressed that "voter apathy" created this monster that took over the House and then Gerrymandered itself into perpetual power. And, that is not altogether false. But it is at best an incomplete assessment of how 2010 played out.

The President spent those first two years courting the Republicans in a forlorn search for the post partisan universe that he and his team pretended to believe they lived in. The progressive base of the Democratic party saw nothing worth fighting for and did not not bother to vote, and now the Republic is facing a Constitutional Crisis due to the outcome of that miserable midterm election. At both the Federal and State levels, we now have a gaggle of lunatics firmly entrenched in public office with very little prospect of getting most of them out.

Here is what I had to say on another message board in 2011 as Obama caved in to the last episode of Tea Party extortion in 2011;

It was absurd for Obama to consent to "negotiations" over the debt ceiling as part of long term economic and social policy deliberation in the first place. He could have said from the start that he would not allow the GOP to play games with our economy. That would have isolated the Teabaggers at the outset. They could have used their formidable media support system to attack Obama for it, but the question would have been simple enough for any citizen to understand, regardless of information level. The GOP would be threatening to harm the country if they could not get their way.

Instead, Obama happily entereded into "negotiations" with the blackmailers, and thereby muddied the waters on what could have been a clear cut question of outrageous misconduct by his political opponents. Once that "negotiation" got under way, a nearly infinite array of political issues got tossed into a single pot, and the poll results at the top of the thread show how the public hates the whole program.

As I started this thread, I was only looking at the substantive policy questions. I was outraged that the "negotiation" was taking place, as Paul Krugman was quoted upthread, between two positions that are both far to the right of public opinion. Presumably, the Democrats are trying to appease the Teabaggers because of the leverage that they have with this threat to destroy the economy if they can't get their way. But that leverage is nothing more than a gift to the Teabaggers bestowed by this incredibly bad President.

Furthermore, that giving of that gift is a much bigger blunder for the future of the Republic than the prospect of default. As serious as default would be, now the tactic of blackmail has been added to the accepted and acceptable tactics for the Congress, like the filibuster. Whenever the debt ceiling is approached again, 218 Members of the House of Representatives can threaten to destroy the economy if they don't get whatever is on their mind that week -- say, an overturn of Roe v. Wade; or repeal of the Environmental Protection Act; or a National Order of Deportation of all illegal immigrants.

Giving into extortion always encourages more extortion.

So I was wrong about the issue -- instead of abortion or immigration or the environment, it is health care. But it is obvious that Cruz and the rest of the Tea Party blackmailers believe that the President will cave in again, just as he did two years ago.

I am very happy to see that the President is fighting back and doing it effectively. I expect him to win this fight and I will tip my hat again if he can bring this thing to the happy conclusion of thoroughly humiliating his opponents. After all is said and done, we progressives should care more about the issues than about vindicating our preconceived notion of how good or bad a President he is.

He is the only President we have and the only Democratic President we have. I am glad when he does good and I am pissed off when he does bad.

Why don't more progressives look at it that way?

[DireStrike]

1. I look at it exactly that way.

"I am glad when he does good and I am pissed off when he does bad."

I am often pissed off.

I also don't believe he was trying to "Fend off" the push for war. Maybe he didn't push as hard as a bloodthirsty republican would have, but that's hardly running defense.

And I don't believe he is standing up for any issue this time. He is standing up for procedure. He doesn't want his legacy to be "first president who allowed the opposition party to blackmail him into submission." He strongly believes in the institution of the government, and thinks this is bad for it. I don't think Obamacare has much to do with it - he has been quite willing to compromise key aspects previously.

I'm glad he's finally standing up, but I am skeptical that he has even learned the right lessons.

[DJ13]

2. Same here

I think a large part of the disappointment comes from his campaigns, where he sold himself as being far more liberal than he actually is.

[4now]

3. Obama derangement syndrome