Is Barack Obama a good leader?

Savage: Really? You like Teddy? He was a bit heavy handed at times and toed the Imperialistic line too boot. But I can agree he was a fairly good president.

As for President Obama. Just another politician who fails to deliver as much as he promised. Typical politician really.

I don't think its fair really. Everyone expected him to be some sort of magical country fixer.

He's doing his damn best considering ALL the things going against him. Natural disasters, all this middle east fun, and a congress that is one half batshit insane and one half impotent.

And hey, DADT is gone, so thats something.

edited 24th Apr '11 3:41:54 PM by Thorn14

Don't ask, Don't tell? yeah, no sheard tears of its passing, unless your in the Westboro Baptist Church.

edited 24th Apr '11 4:01:20 PM by joeyjojo

I don't think he's that bad. He's his own man with his own problems, and while I'm a little tired of the "Obama vs Bush" arguments, I'll throw in a little something.

The way I see it, Obama appeals to an extreme that is opposite of that of GWB. Bush won the presidency because he appealed to Americans' feelings of fraternity and intimacy. He's the guy you invite to your BBQ to have a cold beer with and talk sports. Obama was elected, among other reasons, for his sense of logic and reasoning that supersedes notions of emotional appeasement or affective investment for its own sake. We had a cowboy for a president when we needed a number cruncher, and now we have a very calculating and methodical man trying to calm down a nation of people who want the quickest, easiest solution. And no, I'm not an Obama "apologist". God, that gets old...

As many social commentators have put it, and in high school parlance, we traded a jock for a nerd. Obama is very intelligent, but he's not very charismatic, and his reputation for being relatively passive is worsened, somewhat ironically, by his propensity to tell Americans what they don't want to hear. I don't think President Obama should be the whipping boy for an entire country that needs to get its act together, and I will say the same for Bush. The guy wasn't too bright, but remember that this is a representative democracy, and in many ways the leader is a reflection of the people, for better or worse. In a sense, we have no one to blame but ourselves when it comes to national decision making, not just with presidents, but with anyone in all sectors of government.

edited 24th Apr '11 5:16:04 PM by Aprilla

Actually, GWB did not win a plurality of votes in the first election, so I decline to blame myself for that.

I could cycle the blame all the way back to the people that invented the electoral college before I got around to myself.

I'm not talking about votes. I'm talking about generally allowing someone like that to take a position of power when we could have - if we REALLY wanted to - remove him by force. As the saying, no form of government is a fortress, and I'm tempted to believe that complacency is one of the greatest reasons why we let politicians get away with misdeeds. If conservatives don't like Obama so much, they could really go about removing him from his office if they were determined and organized enough. We've never had a president ousted via a coup or anything like that, and while I'm not supporting that course of action, it would be incorrect to take this whole "can't do anything about" stance toward the placement of public servants.

I stand corrected...Someone apparently didn't like JFK or Lincoln, and we now how those stories end. Not to mention Reagan.

On the other hand, I see your point. The electoral college is pretty screwed up.

edited 24th Apr '11 5:34:48 PM by Aprilla

Well, unfortunately the Mencken solution is not yet the law of the land, so I'll decline on that option.

And Bush wasn't? Bush 43 went to Yale and was a fine student. They don't let idiots into Yale no matter how much money you front. And Bush let the people see his transcripts to prove it. The stereotype of "Bush = moron who could forget to breathe" is not only Blatant Lies but it is outright offensive.

Obama on the other hand never let anyone know anything and has kept it all secret.

Bush went to Yale and was a mediocre student.

I agree he's not monkey-stupid like everyone seems to think he is, but he wasn't terribly bright for the president of the United States.

Thread Hop, no.

Whatever, Tom. I don't think he's smart. You do. Someone says "the Republicans did this". You shoot back with "well, the Democrats did that." Yawn.

Basically what Black Humor said.

edited 24th Apr '11 5:41:49 PM by Aprilla

tom: Bush wasn't any better about secrets. Who was it who got the patriot act going oh yeah right bush. And Obama hasn't bothered to kill it off either. Both of them are on my shit list.

^^^^ And Obama is? All Obama can really do is speak eloquently. He doesn't know shit about the military or economics or foreign relations or anything important about what it means to be President and the responsibilities that entails.

Maybe if he was actually intelligent he wouldn't surround himself with useless advisers and yes-men.

edited 24th Apr '11 5:43:22 PM by MajorTom

Transcripts aside because they mean shockingly little except for how mature and organized you were in your 20s, I'm amused by the concept of Obama not being charismatic as his personal charisma is what helped him get elected. It also shows from the amount of first time voters he was able to drum up to work and vote for him in the primary and the election. I think in a lot of ways we're experiencing something kinda predictable, we elected a young politician we knew little about, he's at times acted unprepared and in the end a lot of us didn't know where he actually stood on a lot of issues. Simple rhetoric carried him far because he struck a chord at the time, it made him sound pretty leftist because a lot of the country was feeling that way right after the recession hit, in reality we really didn't know who he was or what he would do.

Didn't Bush run three companies into the ground before becoming president?

His organizers made him out to be charismatic, but that was borrowed momentum from his constituents and those who took a positive interest in him as voters - like me, for instance. In terms of actual performance as a president - after the election - he seems to shrink under commentary from his opponents on both the Republican side and on the Democrat side.

edited 24th Apr '11 5:46:40 PM by Aprilla

: Uh, yes? Dude used to be a professor.

In fact, dude has been much better at not doing anything stupid than Bush was. He's had trouble making stuff he wants to happen happen, but nothing he wants to happen is a bad idea.

: Being able to deliver a speech well is not the same as being charismatic.

If Obama was truly charismatic he would've been able to negotiate much better than he has.

edited 24th Apr '11 5:54:55 PM by BlackHumor

Bargaining is about more than simple charisma but also about having the things to negotiate, one of the problems with being a young politician is you have less cache and favors owed.

He's a bit long winded but he was able to get a lot of people motivated to vote and be active who hadn't been motivated before or typically weren't that's worth credit. Now the double edge to that sword is a lot of these people haven't been as persistently active meaning his power in the electorate shrunk once the election passed.

You know what, I really stopped giving a shit about politics a while ago.

I believe that he's a decent leader now, that may change in the future, but right now, I'm not going to see him as an evil/poor/unintelligent person. Because the people voted for him. Think he isn't a good leader? Vote him out, it he's still reelected, well that tells you of what the majority thinks right?

A good president is one who allows America to become better in your opinion, for whatever reason, a good leader is one who does it on purpose in a reliable fashion. Bush wasn't really a leader at all, but a silly little finger puppet for Karl Rove, another similar pair would be Ronald Reagan and Edwin Meese (at least Bush wasn't retarded/senile in office.) Bush I & Nixon were actual Republican leaders.

An example of a proactive leader who did a good job in my opinion would be FDR, he picked fights, won them, and was enormously popular as a result.

I can't help but get the impression that every possible action Obama could have taken would not only have led to Major Tom criticizing him, but led to Tom feeling justified in doing so. The man was screwed. As it is, the only thing I'm really pissed at him over is taking so long to get into Libya, and I can at least acknowledge that he had to rally support first.

I have a fear that the intervention in Libya is too little to make a difference but too much not to be involved, but that's politics for you.

The problem fundamentally is that Presidents are expected to have a strong domestic agenda and will be punished at the polls if they don't, but actually the President has very little control over domestic issues at all. He has the veto. He has control of the Federal bureaucracy and Federal regulations. Aside from that, all he can do is encourage.

Little wonder that almost all Presidents get sucked into foreign adventure, diplomacy and war; it's where they can do the most. On the world stage, the President is a big man; at home, he's a weakling.

So anyone who wants to be President is forced to lie.

And the problem in Congress is that the Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for all of a few weeks, in actual fact, and some of those votes were very shaky.

I don't think the issue with Obama is “do his opponents like him?”, the answer is obviously negative, given that they're his opponents. The issue is when he does stuff like laud single-payer during the campaign, and then carefully avoid uttering the S word when the healthcare debate actually came to the fore during his administration. That's cowardly, especially since public opinion was overwhelmingly behind it and the Republicans had no legislative power.

@Eric: For all everyone jokes about it, Bush was not anyone's puppet. Most of his decisions were based on a great deal of advice from others in his administration just like any other president. Can we please start at least being fair to the guy?

Same with Reagan; he wasn't at all senile during his presidency.

EDIT: Also Obama's position on single payer is more complicated than you imply.

edited 25th Apr '11 4:22:47 AM by BlackHumor

Not true. Problem is, he hasn't tried much that I would approve of. When he ordered the Navy to rescue that captain off Somalia, I approved. When he dithered about on Afghanistan and tried to appease everyone (and failed) I didn't approve.

If he were at least an actual leader, I wouldn't hold many things against him as strongly. But he's been anything but. He dithered about for months over Afghanistan, he shied away from action over North Korea first when they did another nuclear test, then when they sank that South Korean warship and the coup de'gras when they shelled Yeonpyeong Island last November. Not once did he show an ounce of leadership and take command of the situation.

Then it gets worse on his domestic stuff. He promised and stated "If we pass this stimulus bill quickly, unemployment will never rise above 8%". He had us buy that bullshit and it still failed miserably. In the time the stimulus was enacted, we've had not only a net loss of jobs, but a massive expansion of our debt with nothing to show for it and a chronically high unemployment rate that really is only dropping because people are giving up looking for work.

Were he an actual leader he would have slammed Congress at the first sign the stimulus was failing and began proposing new ideas at the very least. He didn't do so, he merely went "but we misgauged the economy" and other deflective shite.

In all sincerity, there are a lot of things I disagree with previous Presidents about, but of the last 6 present company included, there are only 2 whom I feel are not leaders. (Carter and Obama. At least Clinton when forced with the realization that he's not going to get what he wants automatically can actually lead.)