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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Perseus Since: Nov, 2009
#173551: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:04:33 PM

I'm not convinced that the second coming of Jesus Christ himself could have "defused" the brewing shitstorm of the time.

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#173552: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:05:37 PM

[up] Neither am I, which is why I don't think Obama was a bad President. Just tragic, since basically everything good that he's done is going to get washed away, and it's not clear if there's anything he could've done to stop it.

edited 9th Feb '17 6:07:29 PM by CaptainCapsase

Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#173553: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:07:07 PM

I think Cap's doing some conclusion jumping about how history will see things. And he also appears to be assuming that dismantling his health care stuff is a thing that's definitely going to happen, which I'd say is a tad premature.

Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#173554: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:08:15 PM

When historians use the word "great" to describe a leader it is usually in terms of their lasting impact relative to the challenges they faced (and even I'm probably being a bit loose with it). It's not like Cap is saying Obama wasn't good and definitely not that he's saying he was bad.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#173555: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:08:28 PM

[up][up]Yeah, unless Cap has a friggin' Oracular Head or Crystal Ball telling them what the future holds...

edited 9th Feb '17 6:09:01 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#173556: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:10:32 PM

I cant give Obama "Great" status either, mostly because of his indecisive dithering in the Middle East. I give him "Very Good" on domestic policy, however.

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#173557: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:10:55 PM

[up][up] Even if healthcare doesn't get shredded, it takes an extraordinary amount of optimism not to expect the Trump era to obliterate a large chunk of Obama's positive legacy. We don't know what the future holds even if it is set in stone (and I tend to think it is because that's the worldview most compatible with our contemporary understanding of physics), but I find it extraordinarily unlikely that Trump will fail to dismantle Obama's positive legacy in its entirety; he's been vested with more power than pretty much any President in the past 50 years by virtue of his party's total control of government.

edited 9th Feb '17 6:13:19 PM by CaptainCapsase

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#173558: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:12:25 PM

Eh, I'll leave it to future generations to decide whether Obama should be considered a "Great" President or not. For that matter, I'll let them decide what "Great" means.

But as far as I'm concerned, he did a damn fine job.

Disgusted, but not surprised
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#173559: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:16:08 PM

[up] My own reckoning is that it will take a miracle to salvage Obama at this point. Leftist intellectuals have been pointing to democracy being in decline for years, and now that Trump's been elected, their centrist and center-right counterparts have been looking back and realizing that the warning signs have been here for a long while, and are cursing themselves for failing to see what should have been obvious.

edited 9th Feb '17 6:16:55 PM by CaptainCapsase

Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#173560: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:16:17 PM

I think there's a possibility that Obama will be remembered as Great in contrast to Trump- the standard narrative might end up being 'Obama set the country down the right path, but then Trump came along and ruined it, and that's why everything went to shit'.

Which would be oversimplified and in some ways misleading, but that's nothing new as far as standard historical narratives go.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#173561: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:19:28 PM

[up] Obama may go down in history as an inspiration, while Trump may go down in history as a warning.

Disgusted, but not surprised
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#173562: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:24:14 PM

That's assuming people don't come to the (correct in my opinion) conclusion that it should have been blatantly obvious to policymakers that liberal democracy was at the verge of a crisis well before Trump descended from the golden escalator, especially considering leftists (among them Bernie Sanders) were screaming bloody murder about an impending descent into oligarchy. But that's hubris for you.

edited 9th Feb '17 6:25:04 PM by CaptainCapsase

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#173563: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:24:50 PM

Hindsight does tend to be 20-20...

Disgusted, but not surprised
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#173564: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:25:37 PM

[up] It's not just hindsight though; a lot of people (mostly those left of center left) were trying to warn policymakers about this before it was too late. Unfortunately, as was the case with Cassandra, nobody cared to take those warnings seriously until the crisis was in progress.

edited 9th Feb '17 6:28:04 PM by CaptainCapsase

Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#173565: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:27:54 PM

Those people were almost wrong though. It wouldn't have taken much to swing the election in Hillary favour, at which point 'delay the shitstorm by four years' becomes the worst case scenario. Less Cassandra and more the boy who cried wolf.

edited 9th Feb '17 6:29:44 PM by Gilphon

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#173566: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:28:48 PM

I still think a lot of it was due to many policy makers realizing the warnings had merit...and ignoring them because they wanted an oligarchy.

Disgusted, but not surprised
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#173567: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:31:09 PM

[up][up] You say that, and yet large scale trends in history don't work like that. Trump isn't an isolated phenomena, he's part of something happening around the world, and it wouldn't have ended if Clinton had won. Perhaps she would've been able to defuse it, at least in the United States, but she'd face even more of an uphill battle than Obama in doing so, and that's assuming she actually genuinely recognized the threat rather than dismissing it.

edited 9th Feb '17 6:35:21 PM by CaptainCapsase

CenturyEye Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign? from I don't know where the Yith sent me this time... Since: Jan, 2017 Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?
#173568: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:32:38 PM

Twas probably too late by the time it got to President Obama.
[nja]
President Obama got hit with the full force of generations worth of reactionary effort. There are none equal to that task. It takes many...

However, he held off well, now, and his time will have lasting effects. He certainly proved that a liberal platform could win—provided one gets people out to vote. Just by existing he proved the USA's majority opinion on matters of culture, at least by anecdotal evidence. The LGBT persons who saw such expansion of their rights aren't likely to go quietly back to the days when they had to meet secretly in night clubs in constant fear of police harassment and Aids was called GRID. An entire generation grew up with him as President, and the effects of that are unpredictable, but Gen Y hate Trump beyond all measure. (If only we voted more). His appointees to the federal judgeships will be there long after his departure. He showed that Bush and Trump aren't the sole faces of the USA.

TL:DR—President Obama's policies. in terms of laws on books and attitudes on the federal level, might be gone, but he has viable legacies in terms of a culture, the change in the overton window, civil service, and simply being a civil and intelligent contrast to Trump. In that I mean, a change form President Bush to Trump might not have highlighted what we lost quite so severely...(The scientists lining up to run for office might instead be boarding planes to Germany).

edited 9th Feb '17 6:35:08 PM by CenturyEye

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives
Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#173569: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:39:11 PM

[up][up]Yeah, I'm really not convinced by that. I'm not convinced said wave would've had the momentum to last another four years after a defeat on the largest stage in the world. And I'm super not convinced large scale trend work like how you're presenting them either- all the evidence said that Trump winning was the less likely outcome. Like, he had 1-in-4 odds of winning.

IFwanderer use political terms to describe, not insult from Earth Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
use political terms to describe, not insult
#173570: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:40:29 PM

I'd say that Obama has the potential to be remembered as a great president, but it all depends on two things:

  • How much of his legacy does Trump manage to erase.
  • How much do future politicians use him as a reference point.

Also, for all the worries about oligarchy, remember the Republican base is dying out, the millenial generation is trending far to the left compared to older ones and the Trump administration might just be the wake up call for it to understand the importance of voting and that both sides are not the same. (A possible point in favor of that interpretation).

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#173571: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:40:39 PM

[up][up][up] That's a rather fatalistic view of the world, I must say. So what you're saying is that we're living in the best of all timelines? I disagree with that notion. I don't even think it was too late to stop Trumpism in 2016, though that genuinely would have required a mass movement with the backing of the party.

[up][up] Trump winning was unlikely, but Trumpism was something that policymakers really should have seen coming.

[up] If America doesn't become a illiberal democracy, that'll be more a testament to Trump's incompetence than anything else. There's no indication he respects democratic norms, and no indication the GOP is willing to defy him to any real extent. He's in a position of power that most Presidents could only dream of.

edited 9th Feb '17 6:44:22 PM by CaptainCapsase

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#173572: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:42:06 PM

Also, the negative fallout from Brexit and Trump might make other countries think twice about populism. Support for EU exit plummeted since Leave won in the UK, and the electoral situation in France and Germany is looking up. Even in Canada, the Conservative "primary" seems to favor relative moderates (both in format, they use rank ballots, and in the fact that the Trumpesque canditates have strong but limited support bases).

Maybe Trump was the shock the world needed?

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#173573: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:43:29 PM

[up] Trump was not the shock the world needed to get back on track in the same sense that Adolf Hitler was not the shock needed for capitalism to collapse and be displaced by socialism. That's accelerationist logic, and it almost always ends badly.

edited 9th Feb '17 6:43:48 PM by CaptainCapsase

Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#173574: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:45:01 PM

France and Mme Le Penn are likely to be the test of that theory.

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#173575: Feb 9th 2017 at 6:45:49 PM

[up] France's election are the test of whether 2017 is remembered as the year the EU collapsed; there are many, many more Trump imitators out there. The EU isn't going to survive the decade, if you want my opinion; the only way it makes it is if the southern European countries are forced at gunpoint to remain in the EU by France and Germany, and that's not significantly better than the alternative, since that puts us right back into 19th century geopolitics.

edited 9th Feb '17 6:49:15 PM by CaptainCapsase


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