Why Obama is "a historic success"
October 8, 2014 1:08 PM Subscribe

"Am I damning with faint praise? Not at all. This is what a successful presidency looks like. No president gets to do everything his supporters expected him to. FDR left behind a reformed nation, but one in which the wealthy retained a lot of power and privilege. On the other side, for all his anti-government rhetoric, Reagan left the core institutions of the New Deal and the Great Society in place. I don't care about the fact that Obama hasn't lived up to the golden dreams of 2008, and I care even less about his approval rating. I do care that he has, when all is said and done, achieved a lot. That is, as Joe Biden didn't quite say, a big deal." Paul Krugman (previously) writes "In Defense of Obama" for Rolling Stone.
posted by jbickers (304 comments total) 33 users marked this as a favorite

It seems way, way too early to declare a verdict on a sitting president.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:12 PM on October 8, 2014 [6 favorites]

Yes, there's a lot of "this could be great," but Krugman poses his piece as the response to the "trash talk [Obama receives from the] left, right and center." It doesn't seem like an effort to pin down Obama's legacy now, but rather defend what Krugman sees as undeserved criticisms.

Related, in a way - NPR: FDR Was The Last Great President. Let's Never Have Another -- Aaron David Miller, on Barack Obama, a historic president — but not a great one.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:16 PM on October 8, 2014 [5 favorites]

Shucks, I guess he deserved that Peace Prize after all.
posted by michaelh at 1:17 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ctrl-F "NSA"

One handwavey mention.

Sorry, not going to give Obama credit for hanging some new curtains on the Republic when the foundation is rapidly crumbling.
posted by entropicamericana at 1:17 PM on October 8, 2014 [31 favorites]

With the political situation he was dealing with, it's amazing he managed to go to the bathroom without some oppositional idiot grabbing the toilet paper out of his hand.
posted by HuronBob at 1:19 PM on October 8, 2014 [55 favorites]

With the political situation he was dealing with, it's amazing he managed to go to the bathroom without some oppositional idiot grabbing the toilet paper out of his hand.

Which could be said of Clinton and Bush, and which will be said of every president after.
posted by resurrexit at 1:21 PM on October 8, 2014 [6 favorites]

Shucks, I guess he deserved that Peace Prize after all.

Sorry, not going to give Obama credit for hanging some new curtains on the Republic when the foundation is rapidly crumbling.

It might be possible that there's some room between "absolute failure/tyrant" and "flawless savior". Krugman clearly isn't arguing that Obama is perfect.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:22 PM on October 8, 2014 [32 favorites]

Ctrl-F "NSA"

Ctrl-F "whistleblower" and "journalist" each rack up an unsurprising zero.
posted by pan at 1:27 PM on October 8, 2014 [19 favorites]

Sorry, some things just shouldn't get a pass, Sangermaine.
posted by entropicamericana at 1:27 PM on October 8, 2014 [9 favorites]

" It's hard to get excited about a policy of not going to war gratuitously, but it's a big deal compared with the alternative."
posted by paper chromatographologist at 1:28 PM on October 8, 2014 [5 favorites]

Which could be said of Clinton and Bush, and which will be said of every president after.

There appears to be some some objective indication that Obama/Democrats have faced unusually high levels of obstruction.

I'd be happy to look at any evidence you have for your apparent equivalence argument, though.
posted by weston at 1:31 PM on October 8, 2014 [62 favorites]

So, IIRC, Obama basically won the Nobel Peace Prize for not being George W. Bush?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 1:32 PM on October 8, 2014 [5 favorites]

So, IIRC, Obama basically won the Nobel Peace Prize for not being George W. Bush?

Yes, transparently so. The Obama administration was apparently angry at being given the award.
posted by Sangermaine at 1:33 PM on October 8, 2014 [7 favorites]

Cool story, Krug.
posted by bicyclefish at 1:34 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

My big problem with Obama is the way he didn't even try for justice after the 2008 Wall Street giga-theft. He just did whatever Timmy Geithner and Larry Summers said was best.

"Free money for the crooks who caused this mess? Ok, if you say it's the only way, Larry."

I remember John Stewart at the time asking why--if we could just print money on demand for Wall Street--we couldn't just print money and give it directly to homeowners? I have yet to hear an answer to that. I'm probably being naive, but I think such a populist action would have taken a lot of the energy out of the Tea Party before it took over Congress.

It will be years before we really understand the damage caused by Obama's fecklessness.
posted by General Tonic at 1:36 PM on October 8, 2014 [32 favorites]

Related, in a way - NPR: FDR Was The Last Great President. Let's Never Have Another -- Aaron David Miller, on Barack Obama, a historic president — but not a great one.

Any discussion of FDR and LBJ has to include a mention of their titanic majorities in both houses of Congress.

This President is exactly as powerful as we let him be. When we don't turn out and don't stay engaged in mid-term elections, it is our fault he is unable to pass things.

As for the NSA and related issues? That doesn't affect the everyday lives of anyone. A nice flag to plant, though.
posted by Ironmouth at 1:43 PM on October 8, 2014 [13 favorites]

Krugman doesn't even see "undeserved criticisms", filthy light thief . In this piece he prefers "trash talk" and "bashing".
posted by doctornemo at 1:45 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

"he has defended the prerogatives of the NSA and the surveillance state in general." How about "expanded and aggressively defended" those prerogatives.

(On preview: what entropicamericana and pan said).
posted by doctornemo at 1:48 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

The Democratic majority was a majority in a much looser coalition than the Republicans. There were a lot of Democrats who opposed harsher measures on Wall St, and even a lot of Democrats who had to be seriously cajoled to accept even the watered-down version of the ACA. It wasn't a supermajority that gave much lee-way.
The Left is powerless because lefties keep losing elections, particularly the smaller, local elections that create your political utility players. Until there's a critical mass of Congressional reps and Senators who are as proudly left as Southern Congresscritters are right, you could elect President Marx and it wouldn't make a difference.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 1:49 PM on October 8, 2014 [21 favorites]

I had hoped for a Jimmy Carter but would have settled for a Bill Clinton. What I did not want is a tarted-up George Bush, with some better speechwriters and a higher IQ. Some of the things going down in the executive branch (I won't attempt to hold him accountable for much outside of it) are reprehensible no matter what party is in charge. No amount of HOPE or CHANGE will fix that.
posted by adipocere at 1:50 PM on October 8, 2014 [8 favorites]

The Democrats had a supermajority

a) Wasn't a supermajority.
b) Blue Dog Democrats basically fucked Medicare for All, torpedoed the public option and almost sunk the entire ACA.
posted by Talez at 1:51 PM on October 8, 2014 [26 favorites]

Apocryphon: The Democrats had a supermajority.

Sigh. Again: Debunking the Myth: Obama's Two-Year Supermajority
posted by tonycpsu at 1:51 PM on October 8, 2014 [34 favorites]

Obama is better than W.
posted by wrapper at 1:52 PM on October 8, 2014 [3 favorites]

resurrexit: Which could be said of Clinton and Bush, and which will be said of every president after.

Sorry, no; I'm calling BS on your BSABSVR logic.

Clinton was harangued for nearly every detail, it's true, but not to the degree Obama is. The substantial increase in threats on the POTUS' life is one traceable statistic.

Bush was criticized for presenting false data - arguably known to be false to insiders, that is, lying - as a reason for sending thousands to die in a war. Bush was criticized for being egregiously, provably worse than other presidents in specific ways - taking far more vacation time, praising the works of his appointments as they failed, etc. The criticisms weren't based on lies, as when the Right says Obama takes much more vacation than previous POTUSes. They weren't over insignificant matters. They weren't race-based. He had a Texan accent; he wasn't picked on for being a southerner. He was an Ivy leaguer; neither party picked on him for that sin (unlike Clinton and Obama).

Every president is criticized, but the Right has a multibillion$ media agency dedicated to promulgating hateful lies about Obama. Bush never faced that. And it wasn't quite as powerful in Clinton's days - certainly not at first.
posted by IAmBroom at 1:52 PM on October 8, 2014 [45 favorites]

It really comes down to the fact that Obama is black. Being black the only way he could get the trust of the right-wing Wall Street/big economic players is by being obsequiously status quo. Regardless of what people dream, he had to get the big financial players to trust him or we would have seen the equivalent of what happened in the 50s when a black person moved into the neighborhood. (Heavy snarkasm) He could not play hardball with the financial system.
The other major right wing institution he immediately sought to appease was the military. He kept Bush's Secretary of Defense in power.

He chose these two major appeasements to get through other changes. (Health Care initiative, getting out of Iraq, etc.)

He is a calculating pragmatist. He may have been something else if he had a friendlier Congress.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:53 PM on October 8, 2014 [7 favorites]

Obama is better than W.

I don't think anyone disputes that. But he could be so much better.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:53 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

Which could be said of Clinton and Bush, and which will be said of every president after.

False equivalence. I'm no Obama cheerleader, but Obama has faced obstructionism from the other party at levels not seen since the Do-Nothing Congress of 1947-1949.
posted by blucevalo at 1:56 PM on October 8, 2014 [8 favorites]

Clinton faced two government shutdowns to Obama's one (so far), though.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:58 PM on October 8, 2014

Obama was also the one trying to block over-the-counter sales of the morning after pill:

"Mr. Obama had expressed personal concern about making the drug more broadly available last year and offered support to Kathleen Sebelius, his secretary of health and human services, when she blocked a decision by the F.D.A. that would have cleared the way for nonprescription distribution to all girls and women regardless of age. He said that as the father of two young girls, the idea of making the drug available to them without a prescription made him uncomfortable. "
posted by I-baLL at 1:59 PM on October 8, 2014

But he could be so much better.

That's the thing for me. I didn't expect much out of Clinton because he was an DLC Democrat and definitely didn't expect anything good out of Bush, Jr. but I really thought that Obama was going to be different. I'm happy with a lot that he's done but as you say, he could have been so much better.

The sad thing is, I can't think of too many possible candidates for president would even have the potential to be better.
posted by octothorpe at 1:59 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

I agree with Paul Krugman and I think Obama is the most successful Democratic president in my lifetime. Of course, it's not over yet. He could piss even more sections of people off and be the most successful president ever!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:00 PM on October 8, 2014 [6 favorites]

The sad thing is, I can't think of too many possible candidates for president would even have the potential to be better.

Honestly, I think the American political culture is too poisoned between partisan polarization, the ignorance of the electorate, the weakness of the Democrats, to allow real deals to be made in good faith.

Which isn't to say that democracy/republicanism is doomed! I just think we need a new Party System with new faces and ideas. And fortunately, that will be inevitable as slowly the older generations pass on and the next generation assumes the mantle in the future. Assuming we make it to there.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:02 PM on October 8, 2014 [3 favorites]

Apocryphon: Clinton faced two government shutdowns to Obama's one (so far), though.

If you're going to keep moving the goalposts like this we're not going to get anywhere. Besides, the shutdown under Obama threatened the global economy by going to the brink of defaulting on our debts, while the shutdowns under Clinton did not. They were two totally different circumstances, so trying to compare the raw numbers of shutdowns is meaningless.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:03 PM on October 8, 2014 [11 favorites]

The thing that annoys me is the compromise. Obama compromises even when he doesn't have to. He'll compromise, get shafted by the pugs, compromise again, get shafted, compromise again, get shafted... they'll tell him they will vote if he just compromises, then he compromises and they don't vote the way they said they would. Then, as if to add insult to it, they say he "refuses to compromise."
posted by sonic meat machine at 2:07 PM on October 8, 2014 [11 favorites]

Part of that is he has to pre-compromise with the conservatives in his own party to have any credible threat of holding his ground in negotiations with Republicans. He couldn't have said, for example, that single payer was his opening bid in 2009, because Republicans could have pointed to at least half a dozen, probably more Senate Democrats who wouldn't have been comfortable defending single payer in their next election. At that point, the GOP doesn't have to do much negotiation to get what they want, and it takes an alignment of the planets just to get a weak, incremental step forward past the filibuster threshold.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:11 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

Apocryphon: Obama is better than W.

I don't think anyone disputes that.

Welcome to America! Since this is obviously your first time here, you'll want to avoid watching Fox News, or reading any Murdoch-owned print media, in order to preserve your... interesting... ideas.
posted by IAmBroom at 2:12 PM on October 8, 2014 [11 favorites]

My big problem with Obama is the way he didn't even try for justice after the 2008 Wall Street giga-theft. He just did whatever Timmy Geithner and Larry Summers said was best.

It seems like after Hillary lost the primary, Obama was induced (however it came to pass) to hire much of the Clinton Political Machine, and it was that staff of Triangulating MotherFuckers who have most squandered Obama's potential. As he has replaced them, things have improved. But the Democratic Establishment - and particularly the Clinton Democratic Establishment - is dominated by idiots like Geithner. The sooner we co-opt them, the better.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 2:12 PM on October 8, 2014 [5 favorites]

I meant I don't think anyone disputes it in this comment thread, on MetaFilter.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:14 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

As for the NSA and related issues? That doesn't affect the everyday lives of anyone.

Yet...
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:18 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

Paul Krugman's deliberate choice to omit specific and very controversial sections of Obama's history (ceding healthcare reform to insurance companies, ceding Wall Street reform to bankers, ceding illegal eavesdropping reforms to the NSA and telecoms) only serves to decimate his own argument.

Obama came into office with a public mandate that was unseen in decades, and no amount of obstructionism that followed — which really only began two years after being elected — can change basic facts about the decisions he made, which only he could have made.

He may well turn out to be a better president than W., but only in a very certain, narrow reading of what a Presidency is about — historians often promote narrow readings of history. In a number of other important ways, however, he has unbelievably proven worse.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 2:20 PM on October 8, 2014 [14 favorites]

The biggest problem with Obama was that his 2008 campaign was just too good. He and his were able to convince a broad, not terribly political, audience that it should have "Hope" and that he was the bright new agent of "Change." Obama did a brilliant job of convincing many, many people that he was different that the normal candidate and that the political landscape was going to shaken up for the better once he got into office. People believed him and suddenly there was grassroots campaigning from people who didn't think they cared about politics. People did care, and they voted him in.

Its just like when you're teased for six months about how great the new iPhone is going to be and you cannot wait to get one - when you finally do; it turns out to be just another phone. Buyer's remorse was huge with Obama. I'm not sure anyone knew what they thought he was supposed to be, but it certainly wasn't just another same old President caught in the same old political quagmire. That's not what they were being sold. They were being sold "change" and "hope," and were sold very well.

And so now it is all just a little bit more cynical and sadder. Because now we know that either (a) we will never get fooled like that again, or (b) we will.
posted by rtimmel at 2:20 PM on October 8, 2014 [23 favorites]

The other major right wing institution he immediately sought to appease ....

Implying that there were only two such institutions. Let's remember that insurance industry, and all those torturers, eh?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 2:26 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

a lungful of dragon: Obama came into office with a public mandate that was unseen in decades, and no amount of obstructionism that followed — which really only began two years after being elected — can change basic facts about the decisions he made, which only he could have made.

Green Lanternism lives on, I guess. Can I have an invite to your alternate universe where a "mandate" is enough to overcome a filibuster? Beat him up all you want for not putting bankers in jail and the domestic surveillance stuff, which he had more direct executive control over, but there was no prayer of a healthcare bill that didn't prominently involve the private sector.

A "mandate" doesn't change the fact that members of congress only care about what their election prospects look like the next time around, not what the President's approval rating is when he takes office.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:28 PM on October 8, 2014 [20 favorites]

Also, there's nothing in here about murdering people from the sky with no legal justification.
posted by sonic meat machine at 2:29 PM on October 8, 2014 [6 favorites]

As for the NSA and related issues? That doesn't affect the everyday lives of anyone.

O R L Y?
posted by entropicamericana at 2:31 PM on October 8, 2014 [9 favorites]

Obama is better than W.

Best read in the light of the first words of this post. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful, but even taking unprecedented legislative obstructionism into account his walk is markedly different from his talk.
posted by George_Spiggott at 2:32 PM on October 8, 2014 [3 favorites]

Any discussion of FDR and LBJ has to include a mention of their titanic majorities in both houses of Congress.

And didn't BHO have one too, at one point? What did they do with it?

ACA, the first major reform of healthcare since Medicare. Not happy myself that it wasn't single payer or didn't have a public option, but it did expand Medicaid vastly and took a lot of nastiness out of health insurance (pre-existing conditions and recission, to name two big ones).

And "at one point" is right. Democrats held a brief 60-member supermajority, once for a month and a half and later for four months and change. And their caucus depended upon two independents and several "Blue Dogs" who were adamantly opposed to the public option due to their major campaign funders.
posted by Mental Wimp at 2:33 PM on October 8, 2014 [10 favorites]

For the anti-Obama crowd, who do you think would have done a better job than Obama, given the circumstance? Someone who was actually electable...
posted by graphnerd at 2:34 PM on October 8, 2014

Worked for Bill: never considered quitting. Worked for Obama one half term. Clinton appeared to try and do what he had said. Obama...the most charitable thing I can say is...not so much. A guilded W seems not far off the mark. End wars? Start wars. End torture? Defend torture. Level the economic playing ground? Suck up to corporations. If this is a good president, God forbid.

Obama is unfairly condemned by people who should appreciate him because of race. Conversely, he is defended by people who should roundly denounce him for the exact same reason. Whole thing seems silly.
posted by umberto at 2:35 PM on October 8, 2014 [5 favorites]

That doesn't affect the everyday lives of anyone.

The NSA deliberately subverted the NIST encryption standards on which much internet security is based, has pressured vendors to backdoor widely used hardware, has broadly identified, exploited, and refused to disclose serious vulnerabilities in commonly used applications, and has cost the US economy tens of billions of dollars post-Snowden. And that's just for starters.
posted by ryanshepard at 2:35 PM on October 8, 2014 [18 favorites]

Also, there's nothing in here about murdering people from the sky with no legal justification.

They feel they have a legal justification. That it hasn't been tested in court and that you disagree with it are both fine points - and to be clear, I agree with you - but that doesn't address the fact that one does exist.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 2:36 PM on October 8, 2014

There were a lot of Democrats who opposed harsher measures on Wall St.

... and I'm sure Wall Street's campaign contributions had nothing to do with that. After all, quid pro quo is illegal, y'know.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 2:40 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

There were a lot of Democrats who opposed harsher measures on Wall St,

Prosecutions to enforce laws already on the books would have required the cooperation of precisely none of them. There were no prosecutions because these people are fellow members of Obama's class, and he doesn't believe that the same laws that apply to normal people should apply to them.
posted by 1adam12 at 2:42 PM on October 8, 2014 [8 favorites]

HEALTH CARE: there's only 1 doctor in my entire county who takes Medicaid, and he's under disciplinary review by the state medical board. if you are poor, your doctor is an understaffed underfunded medical clinic. this is in 'blue' massachusetts. the market for non-specialty medicine is collapsing. has ACA made things worse? who knows, it's barely even been implemented yet. but there is a crisis right now and it is, at best, an incremental reform.

FINANCIAL REFORM: banking is controlled by 5 TBTF banks. again, there is a crisis in banking and even if you are charitable towards Geithner/Summers et al, "finanical reform" has been baby steps. what happens when you have the next financial collapse. is the Fed really going to unwind Citi or is it going to be TARP II?

ECONOMY: 100% of the economic gains during the Obama presidency have gone to the top 10%.

NATIONAL SECURITY: We are still at war in Afghanistan and Iraq and now Syria. War forever!

But there's an election coming so everyone clap louder.
posted by ennui.bz at 2:49 PM on October 8, 2014 [16 favorites]

I've said this before on Metafilter, and probably more than once, but I owe my life to Obama. I was diagnosed with colon cancer this year, and I got it treated, all thanks to the ACA. I was always pro-Obama, but when a guy is responsible for a program that literally saves your ass, you'll pretty much love him forever.

When he was elected, I knew he was going to do stuff that would disappoint me. He's an American politician, and even if he set out with the purest heart in the world he'd still have to get dirty sometimes. But the man is an intelligent and reasonable adult, which automatically puts him miles ahead of the scum who were in charge before he came along. And I think a lot of folks on the left (I'm looking directly your way, Jon Stewart) don't give the Republicans nearly enough blame for being such obstructionist swine. Every positive damn thing that Obama has gotten through has been the result of a knock-down, drag-out fight with the conservatives.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:59 PM on October 8, 2014 [60 favorites]

ennui.bz: But there's an election coming so everyone clap louder.

I don't see what assessing Obama's performance has to do with any future elections given that he's not going to be on the ballot again.
posted by tonycpsu at 3:00 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

On the other side, for all his anti-government rhetoric, Reagan left the core institutions of the New Deal and the Great Society in place.

Reagan is famous for lowering taxes for the wealthy and borrowing money to cover the difference. Ending a program would have required political skill, hard work, and angering most people.
posted by Brian B. at 3:00 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

It would be one thing to claim Obama is all THAT bad, but Krugman says Obama is one of the most consequential and most successful presidents in American history. What the actual hell?
posted by king walnut at 3:00 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

As for the NSA and related issues? That doesn't affect the everyday lives of anyone. A nice flag to plant, though.

I'll defend Obama on a lot of points, and I got most of my baseline desires for elected officials (mildly technocratic centrist-ish competent governance) from him. And I'll even go so far as to say that I think Glenn Greenwald is not entirely trustworthy when it comes to accurately representing what's going on.

I still think "that doesn't affect the everyday lives of anyone" is a pretty vacuous rebuttal.
posted by weston at 3:01 PM on October 8, 2014 [9 favorites]

The damage that Obama did to the words "Hope" and "Change" - the amount of cynicism he has created in an entire younger generation of voters who turned out in droves to vote for the guy the first time around - that, I fear, will have a far more lasting impact than anything he's done or not done in office.

Has he been "a historic success"? Oh, for some (very wealthy) folks, undoubtedly. Not most of us, though.
posted by mstokes650 at 3:12 PM on October 8, 2014 [10 favorites]

Prosecutions to enforce laws already on the books would have required the cooperation of precisely none of them. There were no prosecutions because these people are fellow members of Obama's class, and he doesn't believe that the same laws that apply to normal people should apply to them.

The rule of law can be defined as a system in which the laws are public knowledge, are clear in meaning, and apply equally to everyone.
posted by bukvich at 3:13 PM on October 8, 2014 [3 favorites]

You can still argue that single-payer would have covered more people at lower cost – in fact, I would. But that option wasn't on the table; only a system that appeased insurers and reassured the public that not too much would change was politically feasible. And it's working reasonably well

Let's be clear: The financial crisis should have been followed by a drastic crackdown on Wall Street abuses, and it wasn't. No important figures have gone to jail; bad banks and other financial institutions, from Citigroup to Goldman, were bailed out with few strings attached; and there has been nothing like the wholesale restructuring and reining in of finance that took place in the 1930s. Obama bears a considerable part of the blame for this disappointing response.

Did you even read the article?
posted by Lemurrhea at 3:13 PM on October 8, 2014 [14 favorites]

John McCain, Sarah Palin
Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan

Yeah sorry, I'm never going to be regretful that Obama is president.
posted by cashman at 3:16 PM on October 8, 2014 [79 favorites]

It would be one thing to claim Obama is all THAT bad, but Krugman says Obama is one of the most consequential and most successful presidents in American history. What the actual hell?

It's Krugman. His number one concern for the past eight years has been the danger of real, Worse-Than-The-Great-Depression economic collapse following the crash. That didn't happen, and the not-happening happened under Obama's watch.

Reasonable people might disagree as to whether that was a serious risk, and if it was, whether Obama's actions are what mitigated it. But if Krugman really is right (and on macroeconomic issues, he certainly is more knowledgable than any of us), it's easy to see where he's coming from.
posted by graphnerd at 3:18 PM on October 8, 2014 [21 favorites]

Like millions of others I voted for Obama's speeches and am still waiting for that guy to take office.

But there's this defense of him that wells up from the back of my mind that says that the America he took control of is a crazy train and the best he can hope for is to keep it from going off the rails: steering it just isn't an option.
posted by George_Spiggott at 3:22 PM on October 8, 2014 [8 favorites]

Are we going into "preserve the legacy" mode already?
posted by Xeiliex at 3:24 PM on October 8, 2014 [3 favorites]

we couldn't just print money and give it directly to homeowners?

We made loans to banks. A lot of short term, low rate loans through the discount window, but what would you or I do with a two week loan?
posted by jpe at 3:32 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

For the anti-Obama crowd, who do you think would have done a better job than Obama, given the circumstance? Someone who was actually electable...

Elizabeth Warren.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:34 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

As for the NSA and related issues? That doesn't affect the everyday lives of anyone.

Besides having an effect on ongoing terrorism cases?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:36 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Okay, that's too much of a longshot. How about... Jon Huntsman.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:38 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

The damage that Obama did to the words "Hope" and "Change" - the amount of cynicism

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that people learn to read politicians skeptically.
posted by jpe at 3:40 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Elizabeth Warren.

Where did she get the time machine so that she could go back in time and run for President before she'd even run for the Senate in 2012 or had any other experience with elected office?
posted by Justinian at 3:44 PM on October 8, 2014 [11 favorites]

I don't see what assessing Obama's performance has to do with any future elections given that he's not going to be on the ballot again.

Simply for mathematical reasons the Dems are likely to lose congressional seats in the November election. Our corrupt political media is going to report this as a referendum on the Obama presidency.
posted by ennui.bz at 3:45 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

As for the NSA and related issues? That doesn't affect the everyday lives of anyone. A nice flag to plant, though.

You can't open your mouth about the NSA without being completely wrong, can you?
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 3:58 PM on October 8, 2014 [15 favorites]

we couldn't just print money and give it directly to homeowners?

It has its problems, but the Emergency Economic Stabilization act was an expedient solution for an immediate problem. In brief, the banks were bust so nobody could get credit and the economy was tanking. Solution: give loans to some banks that they will pay it back with interest in a few years. This is easy to administer and would have the desired effect very quickly.

Distributing money to millions upon millions of homeowners would have been a much slower, administratively difficult, and roundabout way to achieve the goal. They would have to create an organization to essentially act as a massive home mortgage company. I can't say how it would even be done or if the details could be agreed upon. Who gets the benefits, why, how, and under what terms? Will they pay it back and who is monitoring this? It sounds like a political and administrative nightmare that would take forever while depression sets in. Something like the old Home Owners' Loan Corporation could work in addition to the bailout, but as an immediate solution I don't see it being effective.
posted by Winnemac at 4:00 PM on October 8, 2014 [6 favorites]

Okay, that's too much of a longshot. How about... Jon Huntsman.

If you don't think a Huntsman administration would have been a slightly less progressive version of Obama's, I don't know what to tell you.
posted by graphnerd at 4:07 PM on October 8, 2014 [9 favorites]

Sotomayor and Kagan.

*drops mic*
posted by Talez at 4:07 PM on October 8, 2014 [23 favorites]

A white WASP lady couldn't even pass the primary and you think the US would have elected 2 of them? And a jew and a puerto rican to boot?

i'll have whatever you're smoking plz
posted by poffin boffin at 4:11 PM on October 8, 2014 [8 favorites]

Solution: give loans to some banks that they will pay it back with interest in a few years.

The backdrop to the crisis was the question of whether it was a solvency crisis (Krugmans position) or a liquidity crisis (Geithners position). If the latter, you just provide some bridge financing and wait.
posted by jpe at 4:11 PM on October 8, 2014

The 30-ish and younger demographic isn't just a little bit more cynical - we don't actually believe in the traditional political process the way older generations do. Not after this. I don't know what that leads to, if it leads to anything, but I think we're fully disillusioned.
posted by naju at 4:14 PM on October 8, 2014 [11 favorites]

I'd be surprised if enough young people can be mustered up for a Hillary Clinton vote at all, for example. I predict record low numbers.
posted by naju at 4:16 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'd be hard to persuade that she's even to the left of Obama.
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:18 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Huntsman had ideas!
posted by Apocryphon at 4:18 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Obama came into office with a public mandate

Mandates don't exist. They're just PR puffery.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:24 PM on October 8, 2014 [3 favorites]

Having been of voting age since Reagan was president, I have what is probably not a very mainstream opinion: by any reasonable definition, Obama is a moderate Republican. His first inclination is to look for market-based solutions. Given that - and the fact that actual Republicans have become strident obstructionist libertarians - I think that Obama has been a reasonably successful president. As a (as Howard Dean described himself) Democrat from the democratic wing of the Democratic party, I am almost wholly unsatisfied, though.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 4:26 PM on October 8, 2014 [13 favorites]

Yeah! Ideas that only mustered 33 votes in the Senate and came from someone who knew damn well he'd never have the opportunity nor the responsibility of enacting them!
posted by graphnerd at 4:27 PM on October 8, 2014

This is what a successful presidency looks like.

If by successful you mean murderous and bloody. 247. That's how many children Obama has killed with drones; the ones we know about anyway. That's a little over 12 Newtowns. Also, this number doesn't tally the countless others he has maimed for life. He has been an utter moral failure as President.

Not to mention letting the torturers get off scott free. Of course he's better than Bush, but who fucking cares. Even Harding was better than Bush.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 4:33 PM on October 8, 2014 [7 favorites]

by any reasonable definition, Obama is a moderate Republican.

By definition (reasonable or otherwise), wouldn't a "moderate Republican" have to be a Republican?

John McCain is (on many things, at least), a moderate Republican. Lindsey Graham is a moderate Republican.

Mainstream politics are very far to the right of what progressives want. Obama has certainly acted as a pretty centrist Democrat, I'll give you that. But regardless of if he's liberal enough, his administration has been demonstratively more progressive than any Republican elected in 2008 would have had.

Not to mention letting the torturers get off scott free. Of course he's better than Bush, but who fucking cares. Even Harding was better than Bush.

It's a two party system. The choice is always just better or worse. So I care.
posted by graphnerd at 4:34 PM on October 8, 2014 [5 favorites]

There are a lot of "Obama shouldn't have..." judgments (having to do with drone strikes and the NSA and so forth) that I'm inclined to agree with or at least give consideration to.
Most "Obama should have..." judgments seem to me like they're not taking into account the existence of the Republican party/Fox News. Fight the real enemy, people. You don't need to prove how progressive and independent-minded you are by attacking the president for not controlling Congress and the media.
posted by uosuaq at 4:37 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

"A white WASP lady couldn't even pass the primary and you think the US would have elected 2 of them? And a jew and a puerto rican to boot? "

I believe the mic drop was for getting those two on the Supreme Court.

"Mandates don't exist. They're just PR puffery."

But how will men get to know each other without them?

"If by successful you mean murderous and bloody. 247. That's how many children Obama has killed with drones; the ones we know about anyway. That's a little over 12 Newtowns. Also, this number doesn't tally the countless others he has maimed for life. He has been an utter moral failure as President."

Over his presidency, about 306 people have died from lightning strikes. I think the drones are morally dubious and do undoubtably kill innocent people, but comparing it to 12 Newtowns just invites other comparisons to put the number in perspective.
posted by klangklangston at 4:40 PM on October 8, 2014 [15 favorites]

But how many children has Obama saved by his policies?
posted by humanfont at 4:41 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Or to put it another way, it's "murderous and bloody" only if you don't compare it to any other U.S. presidency ever.
posted by klangklangston at 4:42 PM on October 8, 2014 [13 favorites]

Those are two sad paragraphs below the "Social Change" heading in the article. His failure to lead even from behind on issues like marriage equality and marijuana reform is depressing. But such are the gridlock and toxicity of American politics that I'm not entirely persuaded that his leadership would be a net benefit. He himself is perhaps the least divisive president in generations but his mere existence stokes the Scorched Earth destructive character of the right that first flowered under Clinton. I can't help but think that his taking a position would have succeeded mainly in raising funds for the opposition.
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:50 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

I understand using the President as a shorthand for the entire administration, but why would anyone who's lived through the last six years be so hung up on the President as a person? Look, Obama's signature accomplishment will be in an area that he showed zero interest in prior to his taking office. In the primary he even staked out a disingenuous anti-mandate position.

Politicians are fundamentally politicians. What's in their souls tends to be of limited importance.
posted by leopard at 4:52 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

We needed a great man and we didn't get it. The fact that he wasn't quite as bad as others would have been won't be remembered by history.

Dan Froomkin: Obama Makes Bushism The New Normal.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 5:07 PM on October 8, 2014 [5 favorites]

I would like to team up with Krugman and go on a Kenysian crime spree.
posted by angrycat at 5:15 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

Murderous and bloody is not an unfair description, and if you don't believe that he's committed crimes against humanity himself you'll have to admit that he's at least complicit in such crimes by sheltering the monsters of the preceding administration.

BUT he got elected while "black". Twice.

If he makes it to the end of his term without being assassinated, that will be another baby step forward for the United States. Next, perhaps a female president. Then, later, a gay president. The rest of the world will surely count America among the grown-ups when you have elected an atheist black lesbian as your head of state. However, that may be a few generations away -- and I increasingly doubt that civilization will endure that long.
posted by fredludd at 5:18 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

Over his presidency, about 306 people have died from lightning strikes. I think the drones are morally dubious and do undoubtably kill innocent people, but comparing it to 12 Newtowns just invites other comparisons to put the number in perspective.

Except that one is an act of god and one is an act of murder. A better comparison would be something of the same category like comparing how many children Obama has killed with say the president of Norway or, if you want to be more fair, the leader of Russia or China.

Or to put it another way, it's "murderous and bloody" only if you don't compare it to any other U.S. presidency ever.

Yes, you are correct that "murderous and bloody" is kinda the specialty of U.S. presidents. But I do disagree that this somehow absolves Obama of the innocent blood on his hands. A moral failure is still a moral failure regardless of what other presidents have done.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 5:20 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

cashman: "John McCain, Sarah Palin
Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan

Yeah sorry, I'm never going to be regretful that Obama is president."

That's the problem, isn't it? No matter how terrible the Democrats can be, they don't hold a candle to the bug-nuts Republicans for sheer awfulness. Yeah, I'd love to see a left-wing takeover of the Democratic party but as long as the only viable alternative is the party that thought that Sarah Palin could be a heartbeat away from the presidency, I'll keep pulling (the virtual) "D" lever.
posted by octothorpe at 5:22 PM on October 8, 2014 [8 favorites]

No matter how terrible the Democrats can be, they don't hold a candle to the bug-nuts Republicans for sheer awfulness.

Sad but true
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 5:28 PM on October 8, 2014

A better comparison would be something of the same category like comparing how many children Obama has killed with say the president of Norway or, if you want to be more fair, the leader of Russia or China.

Yeah, I think I'll take Obama over Putin any day.
posted by graphnerd at 5:35 PM on October 8, 2014 [3 favorites]

>Someone who was actually electable...

>Elizabeth Warren.

She's indisputably electable. On Metafilter. I think 'in a national Presidential election' was what was meant, though.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 5:51 PM on October 8, 2014 [5 favorites]

Yeah, I think I'll take Obama over Putin any day.

You're totally missing the point.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 5:56 PM on October 8, 2014

You brought up Russia and China. Obama has clearly and obviously been better on human rights or any other reasonable metric than the leaders of those nations.
posted by Justinian at 6:07 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

I don't see what assessing Obama's performance has to do with any future elections given that he's not going to be on the ballot again.

Pretty much every GOP candidate from top to bottom in my red state is running a political ad which, among other actually relevant things, mentions Obama and in particular that "job-killing Obamacare". Amazingly, someone running for so random a job as County Navel-Gazer feels obliged to declare that if they're elected they're going to work to shut Obamacare down--despite the ACA having little or nothing to do with the position they're running for.

The wingnuts will be running on Obama's name for at least another decade or two. Too bad he can't trademark it so they'd have to pay him for the privilege.
posted by fuse theorem at 6:08 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

For the anti-Obama crowd, who do you think would have done a better job than Obama, given the circumstance? Someone who was actually electable...

Sen. Ron Wyden.
posted by Apocryphon at 6:10 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

Sometimes I think about how half the country completely lost their marbles when Obama was elected, and how he's been damn near branded the anti-christ for proposing a moderately conservative healthcare plan...and then I think of what would have happened if he had come into office and immediately started throwing White men into jail.

And then I just laugh and laugh.
posted by billyfleetwood at 6:18 PM on October 8, 2014 [15 favorites]

I'm probably being naive, but I think such a populist action would have taken a lot of the energy out of the Tea Party before it took over Congress.

The Tea Party was in large part launched with a Rick Santelli screed against the very idea of giving homeowners any help at all, so this is doubtful.
posted by aaronetc at 6:23 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

Maybe I am just an Obamabot but I agree with Krugman. The problem Obama has is the same problem every president has had going back to Truman- they don't just lead countries, they lead an empire. And until that empire is dismantled, we'll have the same problems with violations on personal privacy, intimidation of whistleblowers, wars in other countries under the guise of "police action", and the death of civilians as collateral damage in those police actions. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich could be elected co-presidents and there would still be the same issues because it goes beyond the president, it's the system.
posted by bgal81 at 6:24 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

Obama himself looked like quite the long shot candidate for a while there too, but a skilled campaign at the right time can work wonders. I wouldn't count Warren out entirely, but it's way to soon and I have no idea if she is even interested.

President Obama came in with massive popularity and a supermajority in Congress. He squandered these things on a health care bill that people hated across the board. I'm not even getting into judgements of the quality of the bill, but the failure to sell it to the public was catastrophic. How he can be so good at persuading people to vote for him but so terrible at persuading people on other topics remains the biggest mystery of his presidency to me. Angering the public is not a great way to protect seats.

On foreign policy he initially had me on his side with the withdraw from Iraq and ordering the successful bin Laden mission. Cleaning up those left over messes should have allowed us to start on a different path, but as the years have drifted on intervention seems to be coming back into style. I just can't support a President that wants us to be the world police anymore, and if it means I don't vote for Democrats, fine.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:32 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

You brought up Russia and China. Obama has clearly and obviously been better on human rights or any other reasonable metric than the leaders of those nations.

Citation needed. But, yes I brought them up in the context of making comparisons. Either way, bloody and murderous is still bloody and murderous regardless of whether the leaders of authoritarian regimes are worse on human rights or not.

So far we have in defense of Obama's butchery:

"He's better than 'W'."
"He's better than Russian and China."

Okay, but he's still a murderous bastard by any sane measure.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 6:43 PM on October 8, 2014

I'd be surprised if enough young people can be mustered up for a Hillary Clinton vote at all, for example. I predict record low numbers.

this 26-year-old for one is extremely fired up to vote for imperialism & neoliberalism or even worse imperialism & neoliberalism in 2016. hell yes
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 6:44 PM on October 8, 2014 [8 favorites]

Even Harding was better than Bush.

Well, if we're going to compare Presidents from drastically different eras, I wonder if anyone who lived under Jim Crow would agree.

And that's another thing, Obama didn't have to just deal with the negative racism of the Tea Party crowd but the "positive" racism of his own supporters who expected him to be America's Black Friend/Magical Negro and fart rainbows. He still had Blue Dogs, Republicans, and the military industrial complex to contend with. And when he turns out to be human, and even worse - a politician- he's suddenly the worst Democratic president ever and only slightly better than Dubya. Seriously?

Forgive me if I don't believe a white male would have been judged similarly. I blame it on my cynical nature and a clear memory of the last five presidential elections.
posted by bgal81 at 6:46 PM on October 8, 2014 [5 favorites]

A guilded W seems not far off the mark....

umberto, I'm curious. Did you really mean guilded, as in unionized?
Or did you perhaps mean gilded, as in gold-plated?
I think maybe you meant gelded, as in emasculated.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:50 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

...what would you or I do with a two week loan?

I'd give myself a nice fat bonus. $3 million ought to be fair.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:53 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

AElfwine Evenstar, every single American President has been a murderous bastard. At some point you may want to consider the possibility that this is some sort of systemic issue, not a bunch of individual moral failings.

The idea that Obama should have sold the health care bill better is fairly silly. Healthcare has been an issue for decades, if it just took a good speech to get everyone on board why wasn't anything done earlier?
posted by leopard at 6:55 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

It was an issue yeah, and the Republicans did a better job messaging to voters on that topic. The policies in Obamacare where not considered pure evil socialism until the Republicans, in a fit of silliness, told people that they were. They were generally regarded as conservative alternatives to socialism.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:04 PM on October 8, 2014

To be fair, William Henry Harrison probably wasn't a murderous bastard. I don't think a month was enough time for that in those days.
posted by bgal81 at 7:12 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

and a supermajority in Congress.

What? Where did you get that from?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:14 PM on October 8, 2014

Universal health care has been an issue since the Truman administration, since well before Obama was born. At some point the reality of American politics has to be given more weight than this notion that history advances through inspirational speeches and skillful messaging.

If Obamacare is just a conservative alternative to socialism, then what on earth were Americans been living with before?
posted by leopard at 7:14 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

As for the NSA and related issues? That doesn't affect the everyday lives of anyone.

Speak for yourself, Ironmouth.
posted by anemone of the state at 7:16 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm just gonna move on here leopard because that response is not really engaging with my actual comment.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:18 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

In retrospect, Paul Krugman calling Obama's presidency a "historic success" is going to look a little bit like the Right Brothers singing "Bush Was Right".
posted by anemone of the state at 7:21 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

At some point you may want to consider the possibility that this is some sort of systemic issue, not a bunch of individual moral failings.

Oh it's definitely systemic, but that doesn't preclude individual culpability for ordering acts of violence. I am sorry, but with all due respect, this is horrible moral reasoning. I mean if we follow your argument to it's conclusion Bush wasn't really that bad either. He was just a failed artist with daddy issues. It was the system that invaded Iraq and cluster fucked the Middle East for the next several decades, right?

I can't believe we have people trying to whitewash the murder of children. It was wrong when Bush II did it, it was wrong when Clinton did it, it was wrong when Bush I, it was wrong when Reagan did it, and guess what it's still wrong when Obama does it leader worship notwithstanding.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 7:28 PM on October 8, 2014 [5 favorites]

Hillary would have been a better choice. Funny how things turn out. Obama's insularity and inability to lead will help Hillary to shine in 2016. I don't think Hillary would have done a LOT better, but America wouldn't have been saddled with the "Obama mystique" and all the fawning media apologetics every time Obama goofed or screwed up.

Obama has done some good things - he at least started up the national health care scene; he has supported gay rights (but didn't lead on that issue). He took a courageous stance against te NRA. He has tried to do a number of good things that the TeaDolts have blocked. He has been hated for being a black man, having to endure hateful, unreasonable vitriol that approached political lynching status.

That said, he screwed up the ACA effort (he could have crushed the private insurance industry when he had votes, and a mandate) - instead, he went behind closed doors - and he let the bankers literally get away with murder. He has presided over pathetically weak prosecution of the financial sector - aided by ex-bank defender Eric Holder, his AG. He has been the most opaque POTUS in decades, and has helped to speed the disappearance of civil liberties. He has screwed with medical marijuana and legalizing drugs. He has waffled on immigration for Latinos while cozying up to serial liar Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.US PAC re: raising H1B quotas (thus, betraying American workers). He has not stopped the revolving door (even though he promised to). He has done zip to get money out of politics; something he said he would work on. He has been unidirectional in foreign policy (but credit for restoring some of the lost prestige caused by his lying, goofball, wannabe predecessor, George Bush.

Last, all the suckers who saw Obama as a liberal progressive were just confirming their own biases. He was surrounded by Bill Clinton's operatives from day one, and played really dirty politics in the primaries - manipulating the race card and letting his hypocritical female base lambaste Hillary in ways that should have made any true feminist cringe - but they didn't cringe; instead, they piled on. Hypocrites!

So, this POTUS has been a kind of sad karma trip for the Left. Obama was never - and is not now- a natural leader. He would have been better as SCOTUS.

Lets see what happens next.
posted by Vibrissae at 7:33 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Except that one is an act of god and one is an act of murder. A better comparison would be something of the same category like comparing how many children Obama has killed with say the president of Norway or, if you want to be more fair, the leader of Russia or China."

Well, no, not really, but if you have accurate numbers of the foreign civilians killed per year by each country, I'd love to see it.

And the point of the comparison was to show how small that problem is in absolute numbers relative to other concerns. For example, the LAPD has killed more people in roughly the same amount of time (314 from 2007 through 2014, according to Youth Justice LA).

But as I was looking to specifically call up figures of the total number of civilians killed under Obama drone strikes (specifically through the BIJ numbers, widely seen to be the most reliable), I have to question your contention that "247" children were killed under Obama. The only claim I see made with that number is here, saying that there have been 247 children killed since 2001 in drone strikes. Given that the BIJ reports roughly 273 civilian casualties total under Obama's drone strikes, and that the civilian casualty rate has dropped precipitously (even as drone attacks have increased), Obama's policies certainly seem to be making a positive difference — the BIJ highlights two attacks on madrassas, one under Bush that killed at least 68 children and one under Obama that killed between nine and 16 people total.

And when looking at pre-drone campaigns, in the two months of NATO action in former Yugoslavia, as few as 489 and as many as 528 Yugoslav civilians were killed.

Honestly, a lot of complaints about drone strikes seem to come from the stealthy nature of the drone strikes, treating them like the vague "toxins" of woo medicine, where the emotional affect of a surprise, unpreventable attack gives more weight than they should have.

I'm not thrilled about Obama's record on drones or the NSA or a bunch of other things (e.g. net neutrality), but using them to describe Obama as if he's uniquely bloodthirsty seems hyperbolic at best.

"Yes, you are correct that "murderous and bloody" is kinda the specialty of U.S. presidents. But I do disagree that this somehow absolves Obama of the innocent blood on his hands. A moral failure is still a moral failure regardless of what other presidents have done."

U.S. presidents? Very few presidents, or heads of state, emerge without anyone charging them of being murderous and bloody. And while it doesn't absolve him, it does point out that in the context he's being evaluated in, he's better than the vast majority of his predecessors. Ignoring that doesn't make your argument stronger.

"Citation needed. But, yes I brought them up in the context of making comparisons. Either way, bloody and murderous is still bloody and murderous regardless of whether the leaders of authoritarian regimes are worse on human rights or not."

Seriously? I mean, comments like those make it hard to take you seriously, but OK. Freedom House's 2014 rankings, or you can wade through CIRI's data yourself and see that in nearly every category, the U.S. outranked Russia and China.
posted by klangklangston at 7:41 PM on October 8, 2014 [14 favorites]

I don't really see how you can criticize Obama for being "surrounded by Bill Clinton's operatives from day one", because, don't get me wrong, it's totally valid. But you can't then say "Hillary would have been a better choice" based on that.

Because I'm not seeing a world in which Obama gets Bill's Band back together, but somehow Hillary doesn't.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:41 PM on October 8, 2014 [9 favorites]

"President Obama came in with massive popularity and a supermajority in Congress. He squandered these things on a health care bill that people hated across the board."

AAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGG
posted by klangklangston at 7:43 PM on October 8, 2014 [7 favorites]

Alright, I'm sold that the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank do help. Ain't clear how much credit Obama deserves there, well Krugman mentioned that Obama's negotiation efforts almost hobbled the Affordable Care Act, but hey.

In fact, I'll provisionally accept that Obama handled congress as well as possible given the Republican's insanity, which the Clintons' probably contributed to by moving the Democrats rightward.

I'm pissed that Obama hasn't kept his own house oriented towards justice. There is simply no redemption from the fact that Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined, and prosecuted fewer financial criminals than Reagan or either Bush. John Kiriakou being imprisoned in inexcusable. Instead Obama lets off the torturers.

Jimmy Carter isn't remembered as the most successful president, but the man has integrity, a sense of justice, and a moral compass. Jimmy Carter pardoned over half a million men who evaded the draft during Vietnam. I have a dream that Obama will pardon our non-violent drug offenders, but so far Obama has granted clemency more rarely than any modern president. Also, Jimmy Carter has vehemently attacked Obama's drone murders and complicity in torture : NYT 2012, HuffPo 2014.

At minimum, we need pardons for both the whistleblowers Obama prosecuted, especially Kiriakou, and non-violent drug offenders. Anything less leaves Obama a cynical political beast deaf to how history remembers him.

We're transforming into a much more transparent society, so all these whistleblowers like Snowden, Kiriakou, Manning, etc. will be remembered as heroes of a stature that some future president will pardon them, if only posthumously. Amusingly Jimmy Carter defended Edward Snowden, saying the NSA spying has compromised our democracy.

Also, Anyone who works as a system administrator is impacted by NSA spying, especially since they would happily blackmail you for cooperation.
posted by jeffburdges at 7:50 PM on October 8, 2014 [10 favorites]

if you don't believe that he's committed crimes against humanity himself you'll have to admit that he's at least complicit in such crimes

Well, in January you can join in with the Republicans when they impeach Obama. I mean sure, they'll have different motives, but think of the joy of coming together in unity!

Then after they nail Biden (in between repealing the ADA and reinstating DOMA), you can look forward to a year or so of John Boehner as president as lead-up to taking the Presidency in 2016. And then all that will be left well be too wait for some Supremes to die.

A bit harsh maybe, but if Obama is a war criminal, than that's what deserves to happen.
posted by happyroach at 7:56 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

I can't believe we have people trying to whitewash the murder of children. It was wrong when Bush II did it, it was wrong when Clinton did it, it was wrong when Bush I, it was wrong when Reagan did it, and guess what it's still wrong when Obama does it leader worship notwithstanding.

FDR dropped bombs on cities in Germany and Japan, and I would guess over a million kids died as a result, may five or ten million depending on how you count. But if we're going to second guess, we should probably specify exactly what makes it wrong, considering that the world is widely deemed a safer place after Germany and Japan were defeated.
posted by Brian B. at 7:58 PM on October 8, 2014 [3 favorites]

but using them to describe Obama as if he's uniquely bloodthirsty seems hyperbolic at best.

Have I claimed that he's uniquely bloodthirsty? He's not uniquely bloodthirsty, but he is bloodthirsty.

Freedom House's 2014 rankings

I think you mean "CIA front Freedom House's 2014 rankings".

CIRI's data

Does this data include violations pertaining to conducting military operations in foreign countries? Sorry, don't have time to check them out. Either way I'm willing to concede that Russia and China are worse in many respects, but again I don't think that is the slam dunk defense of Obama's/America's behavior that you think it is.

So we aren't as bad as two openly authoritarian regimes....whoop de fucking doo....I am not impressed. We can, should, and need to do better.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 7:58 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

"President Obama came in with massive popularity and a supermajority in Congress. He squandered these things on a health care bill that people hated across the board."

AAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGG

1. I didn't say anything about two years.
2. The supermajority was ended as your article notes with the election of Scott Brown who of course made ending the supermajority to stop the affordable care act a major part of his campaign.

The supermajority was not a myth and better messaging surrounding Obamacare could have possibly prolonged it. It's frustrating because it means Obama's most major accomplishment was a Pyrrhic victory in some ways. The votes should have been there for more of his agenda.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:59 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'll summarize myself : Obama has happily acted as a figurehead for well establish ideas whose time had come and gone, like healthcare. Obama has not actually lead anything though. Instead he simply allows the bureaucrats to pursue their projects be it healthcare, drone strikes, militarizing our police, or evil little vendettas ala whistleblower prosecution, with apparently zero moral guidance. In short, he played congress' little political games, but he did not actually do his own job! At least nothing like we'd hoped for a "scholar of constitutional law".
posted by jeffburdges at 8:00 PM on October 8, 2014 [3 favorites]

Obama is the leader of all Americans, not just the nice ones. As a representative of the people, I'd say he's doing an OK job at holding back the blood-thirsty and hateful (which seems to have a majority in this country) and thus depriving the war profiteers of a little bit of profit.

As a transformational leader, or executive with the power to change rather than suppress/represent, he is a flop.
posted by cell divide at 8:05 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

we should probably specify exactly what makes it wrong

So now we are whitewashing carpet bombing? Jesus the ends don't always justify the means. The carpet bombing was not necessary to win the war and therefore unnecessary and immoral. Yes Japan and Germany were bad and yes they started the area bombing campaigns, but again that does not automatically make our turn in kind somehow moral or justified.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 8:06 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Drinky Die: 1. I didn't say anything about two years.

You said he "came in with ... supermajority Congress." He didn't. He briefly had a couple of periods of supermajority, but he came in with 55 Democrats and 2 Independents, one of which was Joe Lieberman. He didn't get a supermajority until July 7, 2009, lost it a month later, got it back a month later, and lost it once gain four months after that.

And even leaving Lieberman out of the equation, he had the Lincolns and Nelsons and Landrieus to deal with. The idea that he could have just used "messaging" to convince Arkansans, Nebraskans, or Louisianans to back a more socialized version of healthcare reform is simply ridiculous.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:12 PM on October 8, 2014 [7 favorites]

Wall Street Busted AGAIN For Stealing Billions From The Public
posted by jeffburdges at 8:18 PM on October 8, 2014

a lungful of dragon: At what point is it okay to hold a President accountable for their actions? I admit being troubled by our current Great Leader's repeated and systemic insistence to Move On from the previous Great Leader's numerous and bloody mistakes. I admit I do not relish getting the same lecture from the Next Great Leader and his or her followers.

Perhaps you could drop the Sarcastic Capitalization and Use of a Title Most Commonly Understood to be a Reference to the Dictator of North Korea? That'd probably make it easier to take your question seriously.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:29 PM on October 8, 2014 [5 favorites]

Screw this, I'm going back to the food posts.
posted by bgal81 at 8:31 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

The carpet bombing was not necessary to win the war and therefore unnecessary and immoral.

Don't forget nuclear bombs. And if you're defining immoral as unnecessary, then it wasn't immoral so long as the leaders thought it was necessary, as though magical-surgical bombing was an option. Hitler was developing many secret weapons, and time was not taken for granted. I also doubt that so many air crews and aircraft were risked because they thought it was an unnecessary strategy.
posted by Brian B. at 8:33 PM on October 8, 2014

At what point is it okay to hold a President accountable for their actions? I admit being troubled by our current Great Leader's repeated and systemic insistence to Move On from the previous Great Leader's numerous and bloody mistakes. I admit I do not relish getting the same lecture from the Next Great Leader and his or her followers.

Unless the executive acts in concert with the legislative branch and are actually acting driving the agenda of the executive you can't really hold the executive accountable for lack of action. The reason you're able to put a whole heap of the shit on Bush was because he was basically setting the agenda for congress for a lot of his term and congress explicitly implemented his shitty policies.
posted by Talez at 8:34 PM on October 8, 2014

Seriously? I mean, comments like those make it hard to take you seriously, but OK. Freedom House's 2014 rankings, or you can wade through CIRI's data yourself and see that in nearly every category, the U.S. outranked Russia and China.

Freedom House is primarily funded by the US government and has been criticized by both conservative and left-leaning scholars for its neoliberal bias and kid-glove treatment of the US and its allies.

A good recent example is the 2010 ed. of Countries at the Crossroads, where they note that de jure discrimination against women is widespread in Saudi Arabia, that it sentences citizens to beheading in sharia courts, jails dissidents, and that it has never been led by democratically elected officials - and then make a bunch of wan, neutered recommendations for improvement that address none of these issues.

You have to pry behind worldwide governance indicators and look at the funding - Freedom House's rankings have much more to do with US realpolitik and image burnishing than any objective assessment of the state of freedom and democracy in a ranked country.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:38 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Whoopi Goldberg: You know, I got my EGOT on a bet too. That's why Arlen Specter had to change parties.

Tracy Jordan: You created the Super Majority?

Whoopi Goldberg: Mmm.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:39 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

You said he "came in with ... supermajority Congress." He didn't.

He had a super majority early in his term. Fair? Lieberman was the Democratic VP nominee not so long ago, so I don't really accept that he doesn't count as one anymore just because he had a falling out with the left.

The idea that he could have just used "messaging" to convince Arkansans, Nebraskans, or Louisianans to back a more socialized version of healthcare reform is simply ridiculous.

It's also not an idea I have suggested here. Maybe convince the people of Massachusetts, a state he won in 2008 with a 25.8% margin of victory, not to vote out his supermajority because of a moderate national version of their own state healthcare law? Within reason.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:40 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

Drinky Die: It's also not an idea I have suggested here. Maybe convince the people of Massachusetts not to vote out his supermajority because of a moderate national version of their own state healthcare law? Within reason.

You're seriously blaming the backlash at "death panels" and the like on Obama personally? Do you not assign any responsibility to the people who were on the offense for a full year telling people the bill was going to kill their grandma? What could have Obama have done differently?
posted by tonycpsu at 8:44 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

Like, be specific. How could he have sold it in a way that would have had Martha Coakley beat Scott Brown?
posted by tonycpsu at 8:44 PM on October 8, 2014

(And seriously, read Charles Pierce on how horrible a campaign Coakley ran and how lukewarm a candidate she was. Sometimes it's not all about the POTUS.)
posted by tonycpsu at 8:45 PM on October 8, 2014

I feel that I've addressed all those points already to the extent I intend to, so moving along once more.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:48 PM on October 8, 2014

Right. "Messaging." That says it all.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:50 PM on October 8, 2014 [3 favorites]

Obama is responsible for killing a lot of people - it is certainly true. But I would like to point out that every single President of the United States from George fucking Washington on down has been responsible for killing a lot of people. In the context of history, and that's what we're talking about here, Obama hasn't done too badly.
posted by tommyD at 8:52 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

He had a super majority early in his term. Fair? Lieberman was the Democratic VP nominee not so long ago, so I don't really accept that he doesn't count as one anymore just because he had a falling out with the left.

You don't accept that leaving one's party of political origin sends a message that one doesn't intend to vote down that party's line?
posted by lumensimus at 8:53 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm okay with carpet bombing and nuclear weapons use during WWII because the president errors on the side of saving American lives when he doesn't actually know what's necessary. And I'm not terribly bothered if impressing the Russians entered into his calculations either.

We're condemning Obama for the drone murders, not prosecuting banksters, and pardoning, whitewashing, or even condoning torture because that's all grossly immoral in ways that cannot be justified by the fog of war and actively counterproductive to U.S. interests. Just plain old indefensible.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:57 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

You don't accept that leaving one's party of political origin sends a message that one doesn't intend to vote down that party's line?

He lost a primary in 2006 so the party kind of left him if anything, but he continued to caucus with the Democrats and call himself an "Independent Democrat" until his retirement. In 2010 he was a major ally with Obama on the DADT repeal. There are a lot of Democrats who don't vote the straight ticket that haven't done as much for the party as him. I'm not his biggest fan because he the main example of the type of foreign policy Democrat I abhor but, but I would call him a Democrat.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:02 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Aelfwine Evenstar,

If your point here (and I think in reading it fairly) is that military action–no matter how limited–makes the President a "murderous bastard", then your problem is with the Presidency and not Obama. And beyond that, your problem is with modern society as a whole.

If you're saying that W, Clinton, HW, Reagan, et. al. are morally evil, then really all Presidents are irredeemably evil. And so the entire conversation is meaningless, especially in the context of a thread about the relative success or failure of his administration.

You know what's not evil about Obama? He didn't let us get dragged into an all-out war in Libya. There were huge pressures to do exactly that. And based on McCain's behavior when that was really happening, I have zero doubt that, had someone else been occupying the office, we would have entered another actual War there.

So yeah, there are very legitimate and troubling aspects about the use of UAVs in this administration. And there likely isn't ideal, or even proper, oversight in their use. But at least we've avoided starting another war that would easily claim hundreds of thousands more lives.
posted by graphnerd at 9:37 PM on October 8, 2014 [3 favorites]

He had a super majority early in his term. Fair? Lieberman was the Democratic VP nominee not so long ago, so I don't really accept that he doesn't count as one anymore just because he had a falling out with the left.

It may be another four or five decades before we get that opportunity again.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:37 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Historically competent may have been a better angle.

Historically a president? Maybe? Present?

Historic success seems over the top.

Saddled with a difficult Congress and opposition, and unable to overcome them while also unwilling to use the tools available to advance other than centrist, Capitalist, goals.

In other words, a US President. A black one, so that's historic. Although his blackness has not been his agenda (while it has been the agenda of some of his opponents).

It was sad when OFA was left to wither and the money came and took over. But it was inevitable.

Heck. You don't get to be president by being Howard Dean or Ron Wyden. Carter did it, but it took Nixon to demoralize the system and allow an outsider to sneak in for a term. Even still, to this day he remains History's Greatest Monster, even though he made craft beer possible (and also the need for knee defenders; even Carter is compromised).

Historically, Obama sat in the Oval Office. Historically, his lame duckness began when he won his second term.

We're already talking about his presidency in the past tense, even his defenders, like Paul Krugman.
posted by notyou at 10:56 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

rtimmel: Its just like when you're teased for six months about how great the new iPhone is going to be and you cannot wait to get one - when you finally do; it turns out to be just another phone. Buyer's remorse was huge with Obama. I'm not sure anyone knew what they thought he was supposed to be, but it certainly wasn't just another same old President caught in the same old political quagmire. That's not what they were being sold. They were being sold "change" and "hope," and were sold very well.

As someone who turned 18 just in time to vote the first time around, i think there's a pretty simple way to explain it.

If you're going to sell yourself that way, i'm not naive or stupid for holding you to a higher standard than the average person who just goes "i'm going to do the job, and i'll do these few things".

Pretty much, i think people get chided for expecting more than normal from him when he advertised himself as better than normal. Extraordinary claims resulting in unusual scrutiny even from his direct supporters is not some disconnected or more importantly unreasonable thing.

And, by that metric, he's a complete fucking failure. And something like a supermajority of my peers now basically completely disbelieve the system could, or would ever work.

This entire generation is never going to turn out to "rock the vote" like that again.
posted by emptythought at 11:01 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

If your point here (and I think in reading it fairly) is that military action–no matter how limited–makes the President a "murderous bastard"

No, that's not my point. Illegal military action is what I am talking about. Military actions that violate human rights.

then really all Presidents are irredeemably evil.

I don't know if I would go that far, but all of them in my living memory have been.

And so the entire conversation is meaningless, especially in the context of a thread about the relative success or failure of his administration.

Just because most people think that president's killing large amounts of innocent people is all part and parcel of a successful or unsuccessful administration would seem to me to be a fairly urgent conversation to be having at this late date in history.

I am curious if you guys would give Bush and Reagan the same pass you are giving Obama?

He didn't let us get dragged into an all-out war in Libya.

How did that work out for the Libyans? or the Malians?

But at least we've avoided starting another war that would easily claim hundreds of thousands more lives.

Except for the war we just started against ISIL. Not to mention the various shadow wars Obama has been prosecuting throughout his presidency. But of course I don't suppose most Americans can be arsed to inform themselves of what we've been up to in places like say Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 11:21 PM on October 8, 2014

Obama is clearly the best president since FDR, our second-greatest president. I, too, am disappointed by dashed expectations. But there's a hell of a lot of nuance people are missing in the accusations about the ACA being a gift to insurers (it's not) and Dodd-Frank being written for the benefit of the banks (it should have been better, but it, like the ACA is just about as good as we could get past the conservative Dem senators).

Obama managed to get a hell of a lot of good done in the face of scorched-earth opposition.

Here's what I fault him for:

1. Drone strikes all over the world when we weren't certain we were hitting Al Qaeda leadership.
2. Surging Afghanistan.
3. Not leaning on Holder to keep him from prosecuting whistleblowers.
4. NSA wiretapping.

Those are serious sins. Even with them, he's the best president of my lifetime, and probably will remain so.
posted by persona au gratin at 11:38 PM on October 8, 2014 [12 favorites]

"Have I claimed that he's uniquely bloodthirsty? He's not uniquely bloodthirsty, but he is bloodthirsty."

…and yet, he's killed fewer civilians than the previous two administrations.

"I think you mean "CIA front Freedom House's 2014 rankings"."

Did you mean to make an argument that wasn't an ad hominem? Also, where was the cite on that number of children killed again? If you're going to dismiss things based on weak sourcing, given that the only place I can turn up that number is in a misleading context, I'd like to see how those numbers were derived.

"Does this data include violations pertaining to conducting military operations in foreign countries? Sorry, don't have time to check them out. Either way I'm willing to concede that Russia and China are worse in many respects, but again I don't think that is the slam dunk defense of Obama's/America's behavior that you think it is."

The description was two links in:

The CIRI dataset contains information about government respect for a wide range of human rights. The selection of the particular rights in the CIRI dataset does not imply that these rights are considered to be more important than other human rights. Rather, these are the rights for which we have reliable and systematically available information across time and space. CIRI includes measures of the practices of governments that allow or impede citizens who wish to exercise their:

Physical integrity rights--the rights not to be tortured, summarily executed, disappeared, or imprisoned for political beliefs. The scores of these variables can be summed to form a statistically valid cumulative scale (Cingranelli and Richards, 1999; Richards, Gelleny, and Sacko, 2001).

Civil liberties such as free speech, freedom of association and assembly, freedom of movement, freedom of religion, and the right to participate in the selection of government leaders. The scores of some of these variables can be summed to form a statistically valid cumulative scale (Richards, Gelleny, and Sacko, 2001).

Workers’ rights

Rights of women to equal treatment politically, economically, and socially.

If you're willing to concede that they're worse in many aspects, why did you bring them up? Are you contending that Russia is less likely to abrogate due process for its citizens? Or that they're less implicated in killing civilians e.g. in Ukraine?

It's not a slam dunk, it's pointing out that you made a poor, hyperbolic argument.

"So we aren't as bad as two openly authoritarian regimes....whoop de fucking doo....I am not impressed. We can, should, and need to do better."

Like the CIRI dataset demonstrates amply, we are doing better. We're part of a large clump of Western democracies that are at the upper end of the scale (tied with the 7th highest score, though IIRC we're the 32nd country from the top); China and Russia are at least one standard deviation lower.

Your comparative framing is unlikely to advance a positive case.

"Freedom House is primarily funded by the US government and has been criticized by both conservative and left-leaning scholars for its neoliberal bias and kid-glove treatment of the US and its allies."

1) Freedom House rankings positively correlate with other respected democracy indices.
2) That "conservative" complaint is actually a pretty good argument in favor of the Freedom House.

"You have to pry behind worldwide governance indicators and look at the funding - Freedom House's rankings have much more to do with US realpolitik and image burnishing than any objective assessment of the state of freedom and democracy in a ranked country."

So, the only way that this would become a criticism sufficient for rebuttal is if the systemic bias of Freedom House was enough to cause a substantial difference in the relative rankings of the U.S., China and Russia. As Freedom House correlates with other indices highly, and since I gave another source (which has even greater detail in their methodology), it doesn't seem like an ad hominem argument from funding bias should be persuasive.

"No, that's not my point. Illegal military action is what I am talking about. Military actions that violate human rights."

That's inconsistent. Legal military action often violates human rights too. Further, "illegal" is a bad standard due to one of the things you're complaining about. Obama's drone killings are of dubious legality, but assume that he's tried and found to be acting within U.S. law. I can't imagine you feeling that the killing of civilians in these drone attacks is therefore justified.

"Just because most people think that president's killing large amounts of innocent people is all part and parcel of a successful or unsuccessful administration would seem to me to be a fairly urgent conversation to be having at this late date in history."

I pointed out earlier that for a country of over 300 million, the numbers of innocent people aren't all that large compared to other governmental killings. And given that Obama has decreased the rate of innocent people being killed, if he's bloodthirsty he's pretty ineptly bloodthirsty.

"I am curious if you guys would give Bush and Reagan the same pass you are giving Obama?"

You can't see even a quantitative difference there?

"How did that work out for the Libyans? or the Malians?"

What, did you have tickets to Qaddafi's New Years Eve party?

"Except for the war we just started against ISIL. Not to mention the various shadow wars Obama has been prosecuting throughout his presidency. But of course I don't suppose most Americans can be arsed to inform themselves of what we've been up to in places like say Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines."

Yeah, yeah, you've got the secret truth that matters more than anything else. Why not just copypasta WAKE UP SHEEPLE
posted by klangklangston at 11:41 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]

And had Hillary been elected, our foreign policy would have been much more fucked than it is. She'll likely be the candidate of the neocons in 2016.
posted by persona au gratin at 11:42 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

It's not a slam dunk, it's pointing out that you made a poor, hyperbolic argument.

Which part was hyperbolic? I am not exaggerating the number killed. I quoted the number from memory, but I'm sure if you take the time you will probably find number is now higher as I haven't checked on the current tally for over a year. I mean that's just children. Not to mention the scores of innocent adult civilians killed, and the practice of automatically labeling any male over a certain age killed in attacks as a "militant." Also there's the problem that by their own admission they don't even know who they are killing most of the time.

Yeah, yeah, you've got the secret truth that matters more than anything else. Why not just copypasta WAKE UP SHEEPLE

It's not secret and is all fairly well documented. The only difference is that cable news isn't spewing about it 24/7.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 12:04 AM on October 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

because that's all grossly immoral in ways that cannot be justified by the fog of war and actively counterproductive to U.S. interests

Which is why I prefer liberals calling those shots, because I assume it would be much worse otherwise. Kennedy had a difficult time avoiding nuclear war, it wasn't as easy as people think. And I'm sure he would have retaliated if provoked, which was required to prevent it.
posted by Brian B. at 12:19 AM on October 9, 2014

Sometimes I wonder whether I was watching the same Obama campaign as everyone else. I never got the sense that he was depicting himself as some super-lefty. I got the strong impression at the time that he was campaigning as someone who would reach across the aisle, compromise, etc. in contrast to the unilateral actions taken by the Bush-era GOP. It wasn't that he was going to heal the nation by enacting the agenda of the left, so much as he would heal the political process by making it more thoughtful and pluralistic. And... that's pretty much what he tried to do (including the year-long deliberation on ACA), until it became evident that it wasn't working for him.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 12:29 AM on October 9, 2014 [11 favorites]

And had Hillary been elected, our foreign policy would have been much more fucked than it is. She'll likely be the candidate of the neocons in 2016.

With respect to foreign policy, Clinton II has already expressed opposition to Obama's lack of decisive use of force. Those who want more global violence and tax revenues directed to arms dealers will be interested in voting for her.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:34 AM on October 9, 2014 [4 favorites]

The big tell will be how he gathers his moneys after leaving office...
posted by Fupped Duck at 12:57 AM on October 9, 2014

With the possible exception of Jimmy Carter, for whom I mostly just felt a little sorry, I've loathed every single US president, in various ways and to various degrees, since I knew there was such a thing -- let's call it the very early 1970s -- except Barack Obama.

But Obama has disappointed me more than any other. I continue against my own better judgement to genuinely like the man, to the extent such a thing is possible. I feel like an idiot for doing it. I suspect he is trapped in a system whose depths of intractable malevolence he had not anticipated, but perhaps that's just me wanting to put a palatable face on it for myself.

My own fault for getting sucked in, a last gasp of hopeful naive credulity before I hit the full stride of cynical dotage, perhaps. A shame to feel so foolish for letting it happen to me, but so it goes, inevitably, with politics and politicians.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:40 AM on October 9, 2014 [8 favorites]

Which isn't to say he was anything but the best choice available to Americans.

The horror of it is that every other choice was so much obviously and ridiculously worse, and one shudders to think what will happen the next time around, or the next, should there be an absence of at least one candidate who isn't an utter and complete shitshow.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:46 AM on October 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

Serious question. Who is there who can run for the nomination against Clinton? Warren has said that she won't run and I'm struggling to come up with another name.
posted by octothorpe at 4:20 AM on October 9, 2014

Serious question. Who is there who can run for the nomination against Clinton? Warren has said that she won't run and I'm struggling to come up with another name

Rahm Emanual!
"Better The Reptile You Know ..."

Seriously? Jerry Brown?
posted by Chitownfats at 4:31 AM on October 9, 2014

Then after they nail Biden (in between repealing the ADA and reinstating DOMA), you can look forward to a year or so of John Boehner as president as lead-up to taking the Presidency in 2016.

Whatever it is that you're smoking, I don't want any of it.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:33 AM on October 9, 2014

Obama is clearly the best president since FDR,...

This is the most begged question I've seen this week. It is not at all clear that Obama is our 2nd-best President. It is not even clear that he's a good President. That is what we're all arguing about, isn't it? If what you say was clear, Krugman would not have written his column, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:39 AM on October 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

Seriously? Jerry Brown?

I like Brown but he's 76 years old. I was hoping for someone younger than 60 to run.
posted by octothorpe at 5:30 AM on October 9, 2014

It seems way, way too early to declare a verdict on a sitting president

Nonsense. I knew George W. Bush was a miserable failure by the end of 2001, and subsequent events have done nothing at all to change that impression.
posted by Gelatin at 5:33 AM on October 9, 2014 [3 favorites]

Sometimes I wonder whether I was watching the same Obama campaign as everyone else. I never got the sense that he was depicting himself as some super-lefty.

I also remember in 2008 that Obama was getting a lot of endorsements from Republicans, as the Wikipedia entry Republican and conservative support for Barack Obama in 2008 attests. Obama was often praised back then for being more "conservative" in temperament than the more erratic and voluble McCain.
posted by jonp72 at 6:01 AM on October 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

He didn't let us get dragged into an all-out war in Libya.
How did that work out for the Libyans? or the Malians?

I just want to make sure I'm understanding: Are you of the opinion that he should have gone into an all-out war in Libya?
posted by Flunkie at 6:05 AM on October 9, 2014

For the anti-Obama crowd, who do you think would have done a better job than Obama, given the circumstance? Someone who was actually electable...

Elizabeth Warren.

Even if Elizabeth Warren might be a viable candidate now, there is no way Elizabeth Warren would have been a viable candidate in 2008. There was no Consumer Financial Protection Bureau then, and Warren was just a Harvard law professor at the time, not some populist firebrand.
posted by jonp72 at 6:14 AM on October 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

And had Hillary been elected, our foreign policy would have been much more fucked than it is.

I dunno, probably would have ended up about the same. She did run the Obama foreign policy for the first term after all. We were getting out of Iraq either way. She might be more of an interventionist but I doubt she would have started another Iraq level mess.

Serious question. Who is there who can run for the nomination against Clinton?

Biden will probably give it a shot, but the gaffe machine narrative on him is very well established and not totally without cause. A few other reasonably credible names that have been floated are Booker, Cuomo, Warner, O'Malley, or Schweitzer.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:30 AM on October 9, 2014

Serious question. Who is there who can run for the nomination against Clinton?

Bill Richardson would get my vote in a heartbeat.
posted by buggzzee23 at 6:39 AM on October 9, 2014

Everyone is forgetting about Sherrod Brown. Yeah, white guy, but he's as close to a died-in-the-wool progressive as you can get and still have a chance at the big prize in this day and age. He could lock down Ohio in the D column, so maybe he's more "top of the VP short list" than 2016 contender, but I would love to have him in there during the primaries to at least push Hillary to the left.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:13 AM on October 9, 2014 [3 favorites]

I like Brown but he's 76 years old.

octothorpe: True. Then, I'd be interested in whoever might have captured Brown's
interest or enthusiasm.
posted by Chitownfats at 7:20 AM on October 9, 2014

False equivalence. I'm no Obama cheerleader, but Obama has faced obstructionism from the other party at levels not seen since the Do-Nothing Congress of 1947-1949.

Actually, the Do-Nothing Congress of 1947-1949 passed over 900 bills (cite). The current 113th Congress is projected to pass 251 laws by the time they finish (cite), and they could quite possibly pass fewer than that.
posted by jonp72 at 7:30 AM on October 9, 2014 [9 favorites]

Again, I'm baffled by the search for the right saint to lead us to the promised land in 2016. If we had gone through this exercise back in 2006, anti-Iraq-war community organizer Obama wouldn't have looked like a bloodthirsty monster in the pocket of Big Banking, and then a bunch of people would have been really enthusiastic about anti-poverty champion John Edwards. How did that work out for everyone?
posted by leopard at 7:32 AM on October 9, 2014

bunch of people would have been really enthusiastic about anti-poverty champion John Edwards. How did that work out for everyone?

A bunch of people were really enthusiastic about Edwards then.

Funny thing is - if Edwards were a republican, he'd still have a career - look at Vitter, Gingrich, Guiliani, etc etc etc.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:04 AM on October 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

Firstly, nobody knows how history will judge President Obama. It will obviously depend on what happens in his last two years (duh!) and subsequently: if the ACA and Dodd-Frank expand & get more teeth, what happens with the economy over the next few years, what happens in the Middle East & Asia over the next few years, if his political coalition endures & what the political environment of the time is like, etc. All we can do is make our best judgments based on current information, which judgments obviously will largely reflect our current approval of the Presidency.

Secondly, even the greatest presidents were morally compromised, and all had weaknesses. All of them. Anyone who exercises power has to be, and the weaknesses are most obvious at the time. (Both Lincoln & FDR are prime examples; Lincoln's prosection of the Civil War eas very harshly criticized until it became clear the Union would win & FDR's second term was no picnic, until the World War took over.) Often, there are no good choices. Moreover, even the most talented leaders are mostly constrained by circumstances and the rest of the government, even within the executive branch. The historical examples are there for anyone who cares to look, some of which have been mentioned.

Thirdly, I believe that while the reality of the situation is obviously important for governance & error correction, and politics is messy, what's important for purposes of political rhetoric is perception. After Obama is out of office (and only then -- in the meantime continue holding his feet to the fire), liberals will be wise to emphasize his rhetoric and aspirations rather than necessarily the reality and compromises he made. In a sense & in a limited way, rewrite history. That will go far to change the political tone.

For instance, as Krugman pointed out, President Reagan didn't necessarily do all that much to further conservative goals, especially after the initial tax cut & eviseration of the unions. However, the Conservative Movement used his Presidency to completely change the political landscape over the subsequent generation. Liberals can do the same with President Obama after he is safely out of office, whatever the reality.

(I.e., for liberals, don't be bitter and dwell on his many weaknesses and mistakes after he is out of office. Instead, define his legacy in a more liberal direction, instead. Strengthen the ACA & Dodd-Frank, use his hesitation to use the military as a goal, emphasize empirical rather than dogmatic governance, etc.)

Finally, my feeling and educated guess is that as the years progress, he will be considered amongst the second tier presidents after the Big Three, similar to Jefferson, Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower (the latter IMHO). Another scenario is that he is similar to Johnson & Clinton: did some good and even great things but tragically flawed. But, to circle back, only history will tell.
posted by JKevinKing at 8:10 AM on October 9, 2014 [9 favorites]

One more thing: I always LMAO at least on the inside to hear Republican praise of President Clinton. (And I remember my father saying the same thing about President Kennedy.) As if I have no memory. (And, yes, many don't.) If in 20 years I hear any praise of Obama from a Republican (assuming it's still there and similarly constituted) instead of laughing I might gag.
posted by JKevinKing at 8:18 AM on October 9, 2014 [3 favorites]

I do think Obama will define the coming political era. That's why I think he will be considered more significant than, say, Clinton, the First. It will be important to define his legacy.
posted by JKevinKing at 8:24 AM on October 9, 2014

This is maybe ageist but I remember in my twenties being as mad at Clinton as some people on the left are as mad as Obama. The Clintons lost the support of several early poverty-rights supporters, and Clinton dismantled the existing welfare system, which meant in practice that a lot of poor people were hurt.

I mean, Clinton and Obama are different people, but I remember the same almost religious enthusiasm I had for Clinton until that soured to the point that voting for Al Gore seemed almost a tedious exercise.

But then we got George W. and it was like oh right there are a lot of fucking evil idiots in my country.
posted by angrycat at 8:44 AM on October 9, 2014 [4 favorites]

I meant that FDR was our second-best president. Obviously Obama isn't our second-best president. But he's our best since FDR.
posted by persona au gratin at 8:50 AM on October 9, 2014

angrycat: Right. The left hated Clinton. DOMA. Welfare gutting. "Superpredators." General triangulation. Then Bush came to power and he didn't look so bad.
posted by persona au gratin at 8:53 AM on October 9, 2014 [3 favorites]

Homer: Imagine, lying in a deposition in a civil lawsuit.
Marge: That's the worst sin a president could commit.
Homer: There'll never be a worse president.
Marge: Never.
Homer: Never.

posted by Talez at 8:56 AM on October 9, 2014

Then, I'd be interested in whoever might have captured Brown's interest or enthusiasm.

My favorite thing about Jerry Brown is when he dropped out of the race against Clinton and was asked if he'd be endorsing him, his WTF response was, "No!! I've just spent the last year telling people they shouldn't vote for him. That hasn't changed just because I'm not running."
posted by Room 641-A at 9:04 AM on October 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

A bunch of people were really enthusiastic about Edwards then.

Yeah, I know that a lot of people were thrilled about Edwards. And a lot of people were also thrilled that a black community organizer who had publicly opposed the Iraq War was taking on Clinton. As I said, how'd that work out for everyone?

So what's the lesson learned? I guess we need to look for somebody else with a good resume and a nice biography who has made some very good points about the issues we care about. If we elect that person, then we definitely won't be bitterly disappointed that he or she turns out to be the leader of an expensive war machine who doesn't really take any strong actions against powerful wealthy interests. Oh no, not this time.
posted by leopard at 9:25 AM on October 9, 2014

It really comes down to the fact that Obama is black.

That's been my theory, but I'm not so sure any president won't face the same issues going forward.

Political animosity exceeds racial hostility according to research:

To find out whether partisan attitudes predict non-political behavior, Iyengar and Westwood examined how 1,000 people viewed the resumes of several high school seniors competing for scholarships. Some of the documents included racial cues – "president of the African American Student Association" – while others had political ones – "president of the Young Republicans."

Those findings showed that race mattered. African-American participants showed a preference for the African-American candidates 73 percent to 27 percent. Whites showed a modest preference for African-American candidates, as well, though by a significantly smaller margin.
However, partisanship made a much bigger impact than race on how people thought about others. Both Democrats and Republicans selected their in-party scholarship candidate about 80 percent of the time even when the candidate from the other party had stronger academic credentials.

The two sides just have too many areas of disagreement on issues that are viewed as beyond compromise. Abortion is one example where neither side is going to give in, and for understandable reasons. It makes people dislike the other side because it is seen as either taking a life or denying women basic human rights, these aren't issues you can just kumbaya away by complaining about partisanship which is all the media and so-called centrists seem to have as an answer.

Ending the filibuster would be my long term solution here. Let the elected officials govern, for better or worse, and the voters can judge them on the results.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:37 AM on October 9, 2014

Kirth Gerson: This is the most begged question I've seen this week. It is not at all clear that Obama is our 2nd-best President. It is not even clear that he's a good President

Alright, I was trying to avoid getting sucked into the Presidential ranking parlor game, but since I think a lot of people fall into the trap of forgetting how bad so many of our Presidents have been, let's do this.

First, let's note the fact that Krugman's thesis was not that Obama was particularly "good", just that he has been "consequential and successful." The distinction, of course, is that a President can be consequential and successful, but if you don't like the things they accomplished, you wouldn't rate them as "good."

So, to assess whether Obama's been "good", let's say a position in the top third qualifies as good, the middle third is average, and the bottom third is poor. We've had 44 Presidents, so if you can name 15 better ones, then Obama's not good.

So... who you got?

Let's start with the no-brainers: Washington and Lincoln. Both are in the no doubt about it first-ballot Hall of Famer category in both being "good' and "consequential and successful" presidents. Thomas Jefferson is often ranked in the top five as well, but his case is far more complicated. Still, applying the "we were a much different nation back then" curve, he got a lot of things done in his two terms, and people liked him.

At this point, lefties would generally put FDR either among or just below those three, and I think in their more honest moments even a lot of conservatives would agree that he at least belongs in the top 10. They may not like what the New Deal programs have become, but historians are in near universal agreement that his policies helped pull the country out of the Great Depression. Like Lincoln, it's hard to imagine what the United States would have been without his leadership, and though I think he gets more credit for what his ideas have become instead of what they were when he was in office, it's really hard to argue he doesn't belong in the top five.

Similarly, conservatives would probably angle for putting Theodore Roosevelt high on the list, and there's even a fair amount to love about him from the liberal point of view. Hard to imagine Teddy very far outside the top five in terms of accomplishments and overall benefit to the country.

So that's five that I think a vast majority of us (including Krugzilla) would agree were more consequential and successful than Obama, and at least a plurality would say were "good" Presidents. Let's throw Truman and Wilson in there as capable but flawed Presidents who got a lot done, some of it good, some of it quite bad, but generally have to be described at least as very consequential and successful.

At this point, names like Jackson, Polk, and Eisenhower get thrown around, and we're thus well outside the realm of no-brainers for being "good" presidents.

Jackson oversaw a massive genocidal campaign against Native Americans, but by the standards of the time, that's just kind of what Americans did, so he tends to get a major break for that. As far as I can tell, historians view him fondly because he increased the power of the Presidency and staved off a states' rights / nullification / civil war scenario for a while. Consequential and successful? I guess. Good? Hell no.

Polk is perhaps an even more complicated case than Jackson. He's known primarily for increasing the size of the country by stealing it from Mexico. Historians give him credit for accomplishing nearly everything he set out to do, and if that's your barometer, he certainly did that. Again, consequential, and successful, but hard to say "good" unless you're grading on a very steep curve to correct for the difference between what Americans considered good in the 19th century and what we would consider good now.

Eisenhower... Moderate conservative (for the times, anyway.) Was very popular. Accomplished a lot domestically. Gets too much credit for a lot of things that he was dragged kicking and screaming into. Still, I'm comfortable putting him in the top 10.

So on my "good" list so far, I have the big three, the Roosevelts, Wilson, Truman, and Ike. I'd also grudgingly accept Jackson and Polk in the top ten of consequential/successful Presidents.

I guess we have to talk about JFK and LBJ at this point. Kennedy's stock has been sliding in recent years, deservedly so in my opinion. It's really hard to evaluate a President on a partial term, and though he got the ball rolling on some things that Johnson eventually accomplished, I find it hard to rank him highly on being consequential and successful as a President. He had a large Democratic majority, but for whatever reason, couldn't push things across the finish line. I really can't justify having him in the top third based on what he could have done.

LBJ, on the other hand, finished a lot of what JFK started domestically, and much more. Alas, Vietnam was... Vietnam, and he is justifiably penalized for that. Lots of good, lots of bad, but ultimately I think he barely makes my top 10 in "good" presidents, and probably slots behind Jackson and Polk in the consequential/successful ranking. I get why people would penalize him even more for Vietnam, but I also think people forget how many important things he did domestically.

James Madison and John Adams are generally regarded more for their contributions as founding fathers than as presidents, while James Monroe wasn't as central as a founding father, and also had a mixed bag of a presidency. These guys tend to be ranked in the low teens by historians, and that sounds about right to me on the consequential/successful axis. Hard to rank them on the "good" axis because the country was so different back then, so many of their "accomplishments" look different to us now.

I've named fifteen names so far, so that rounds out the top third. Do any other Presidents belong ahead of them? Conservatives would probably say Reagan, liberals might argue for Clinton, and both of them accomplished a lot, but whether you call them "good" probably has more to do with your first principles than anything else. Are there other any names that belong on this list? Carter was probably the greatest human being to hold the office in modern times, but failed to take advantage of a Democratic Congress, resulting in one disappointing term. Ford was another mediocre one-termer.

So is it really that outrageous to suggest that Obama belongs in the conversation for the top 15?
posted by tonycpsu at 9:37 AM on October 9, 2014 [7 favorites]

The catastrophe of the Middle East will irreparably damage Obama's legacy. I haven't heard any great ideas about what he could have done differently, but it appears he is presiding over an absolute disaster. The situation with Ukraine is not great either. Fact is Obama has zero respect from any international leaders. I think this perception is unfair and probably racist, but it hinders his ability to be effective.
posted by Golden Eternity at 9:50 AM on October 9, 2014

I haven't heard any great ideas about what he could have done differently, but it appears he is presiding over an absolute disaster.

Pull out and stay out, as he originally said he was going to do. And almost sort of did. Until he didn't.

In any event, it's too soon to judge the career, but given the state of the fisc and the direction of same, I don't think history is going to be kind to him.
posted by IndigoJones at 9:54 AM on October 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't buy for a second that Obama faces steeper opposition than Clinton did, not for one second. Obama had the birth certificate nonsense, which was baldly racist, but they accused Clinton of murder. I'm old enough to remember the Ken Starr witch hunt, but I haven't seen anything like that happen to Obama. Clinton was impeached for the love of god, and he faced an entirely republican legislature post 1994, none of which Obama has had to deal with as of yet. Clinton didn't even get a vote on his healthcare agenda, but Obama was able to enact his weak-tea, Frankenstein health care legislation. The only real metric you can point to is cloture votes, but Bush faced more cloture votes than Clinton as well, so I see it as more of a trend in political tactics than something specifically to do with Obama.

Obama the president isn't Obama the candidate, that's all there is to it. He lied to make us feel that he would at least attempt to help average Americans, keep us out of unnecessary wars and undo some of the damage the Bush security apparatus did (read: Guantanamo/Torture). In that he's just another politician so no one should be surprised. The very sad truth is no president post Bush will be a great or even a good president, because they will be presiding over America's decline. That he does less damage than his GOP opposition is far from high praise.
posted by Colby_Longhorn at 10:05 AM on October 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm old enough to remember the Ken Starr witch hunt, but I haven't seen anything like that happen to Obama.

Give it a few months. We'll be swearing in President Boehner by this time next year.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 10:20 AM on October 9, 2014

I don't buy for a second that Obama faces steeper opposition than Clinton did, not for one second.

Oh come on. There's so many links upthread showing that the opposition has been factually, measurably worse. We can debate whether it's because of race or just higher partisanship and polarization (and it's probably both), but the scorched earth opposition is worse than the Clinton era.

I have no doubt the Republicans would have impeached Obama by now if they could find the slightest shred of substance to hang their hat on in his squeaky-clean presidency. ("Beghaaaaazi!")

I, for one, am in the Krugman camp - I was never sold on Hope and Change, but I'm impressed with how much Obama did get done in spite of the most fact-free, irresponsible, scorched earth tactics of the opposition. And yes, there's plenty of room - PLENTY - to be disappointed by what he did and didn't do. More war, more bombing, more spying, no consequences for bankers ... I see all that, and compare it to Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan, and I'm okay with the trade off.
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:24 AM on October 9, 2014 [4 favorites]

My fondest hope at this point is that a three years from now, Ruth Bader Ginsburg goes into well deserved retirement and attends the ceremony where President Hillary Clinton swears in Barack Hussein Obama as our next Supreme Court justice.

I will personally buy popcorn for everyone in this thread.
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:27 AM on October 9, 2014 [7 favorites]

compare it to Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan, and I'm okay with the trade off

So first off as I said "That he does less damage than his GOP opposition is far from high praise" - I would avoid comparing him to a bunch of GOP wingnuts; we've all heard the lesser of two evils argument, but it doesn't scream "Successful Presidency".

The examples of obstruction above mention cloture votes, which I am aware of. BTW the 110th congress appears to hold the record, and that was before Obama took office. It does seem to be an increasing trend.

The death threat thing is crazy, but loony right-wingers are nothing new - Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building because there was a democrat in office, I haven't seen that happen in the past 6 six years, maybe that's an NSA success story, I don't know.

IMO Obamacare sucks, it doesn't do enough to address the core problem, which is everything in our system costs too much. That said it was Obama's baby and he got it passed, Clinton didn't have anything close the that kind of opportunity. Clinton sucked too, sure, he was basically a rubber stamp for the right-wing (Welfare, DOMA, Gramm-Leach), but he was so busy fighting right-wing attacks from a republican controlled legislature that I'm not even sure what his agenda was.

The premise here is Obama is a successful president, one of the best. It seems that even those defending that position say, "Well, he's not great, but he could have done more if the tea party would have let him." On this I call bullshit - Clinton had easily as stifling a domestic political atmosphere, it just resulted in less cloture votes because they were unnecessary due to legislative control by the GOP.
posted by Colby_Longhorn at 11:00 AM on October 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

He said that as the father of two young girls, the idea of making the drug available to them without a prescription made him uncomfortable

Aw that's so disappointing to read. "As a father of a young girl, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of them making decisions for themselves". WTF is that about?
posted by Hoopo at 11:02 AM on October 9, 2014

" On this I call bullshit - Clinton had easily as stifling a domestic political atmosphere, it just resulted in less cloture votes because they were unnecessary due to legislative control by the GOP."

…except that your own invocation of cloture votes shows this isn't to be true.
posted by klangklangston at 11:18 AM on October 9, 2014

i swear there was an election tread from 2000 where people were talking about how shitty clinton was, and there wasn't much of a difference between gore and w, so why bother voting, nader, etc. obviously that was a funny (?) thread to read in hindsight. i hope this thread doesn't turn out the same way.
posted by fingers_of_fire at 11:40 AM on October 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

Obama's most unforgivable error was to bail out Wall Street and then turn his back on Main Street.

When he passed his weak stimulus bill, he immediately turned around and said "My work here is done" and stated that the country's most important issue was reducing deficits. Reducing deficits! While 10 million workers were still without a job. That's a Republican theme.

He also showed cowardice when he refused to help underwater mortgage homeowners. There are no excuses that could be blamed on Congress. In the original TARP bailout, there was $50 billion specifically allocated to mortgage relief. He had the money in his hands. He didn't need to beg for it. He simply refused to spend it.

And the reason why is he was afraid of Rick Santelli. Remember that Santelli's famous rant on the floor of the Chicago Exchange, the one credited with the creation of the Tea Party, was all about the "loser" homeowners and government handouts to them. Obama was afraid of the political fallout of helping homeowners, so he refused to do it, even though he had the money.

Obama also refused to use government-owned Fannie and Freddie to provide homeowner relief. Many homeowners had jobs and were paying their mortgages, but were unable to refinance to the much lower new interest rates that everyone else was getting just because their loan was underwater. He could have directed the government agencies to qualify these responsible homeowners for lower rate mortgages. He didn't need Congress' approval to do so. He refused because he was afraid.

These programs wouldn't just help homeowners. They would help everyone in the economy, by reducing debt burdens, stimulating the economy and increasing jobs. Obama didn't do what would help the economy recover because he was afraid of Tea Party backlash, an unforgivable display of cowardice.

None of these failures can be blamed on Congress. He had the ability to act and chose not to.
posted by JackFlash at 12:02 PM on October 9, 2014 [10 favorites]

That strongly implies that the Do-Nothing Congress was gridlocked in the same way as the 113 -- that it was hard to pass any legislation. But Truman didn't call it the "Do-Nothing Congress" because it literally did nothing -- it passed plenty of laws, as you note.

I'll grant that the number of laws passed is not necessarily an indicator of good government, but I still think it's relevant that the current congress is actually at least 3 times as obstructionist as another congress that is cited by historians and pundits alike as a paragon of obstructionism.
posted by jonp72 at 12:11 PM on October 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

When he passed his weak stimulus bill, he immediately turned around and said "My work here is done"

None of these failures can be blamed on Congress. He had the ability to act and chose not to.

Do you even remember the massive shitfight over the first stimulus bill? The only reason it even got passed was that three republican senators (Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter) stuck their necks out for it.

There was going to be no second stimulus bill. There was barely even a first.
posted by Talez at 12:16 PM on October 9, 2014 [3 favorites]

IndigoJones: In any event, it's too soon to judge the career, but given the state of the fisc and the direction of same, I don't think history is going to be kind to him.

Yeah, those record-breaking yearly gains are gonna bite him in the ass for sure.
posted by IAmBroom at 12:17 PM on October 9, 2014

There was going to be no second stimulus bill.

That isn't the point. The point is that he immediately adopted the Republican position that deficit reduction was the most important issue. That meant that any hope of any kind of new spending was off the table, not even up for discussion. In fact, he wanted to cut Social Security. That's unforgivable when millions were still out of work and had lost their retirement savings.
posted by JackFlash at 12:21 PM on October 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

In fact, he wanted to cut Social Security.

It is somewhat striking that the Republicans were so obstructionist that they didn't even let him do that.
posted by leopard at 12:54 PM on October 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

In fact, he wanted to cut Social Security.

Saying he wanted to cut Social Security is probably going too far. I'm uncomfortable enough with the fact that he was even willing put it on the table. (And I agree completely that adopting the Republican frame of cutting the deficit was a blunder of the highest order, especially when his own predecesor demonstrated amply that Republicans don't care about deficits when a Republican is in the White House and cutting taxes.)

But, I wonder if the so-called "grand bargain" talk wasn't a ploy to point out that Republicans did not, in fact, care about the deficit so much as tax cuts. By claiming to be willing to put Social Security cuts on the table, he gave the Republican an opportunity to demonstrate that they would never, ever countenance raising taxes, especially on the rich, and so they did, and how.

My problems with this theory are that I think such a ploy may have been too early in the emergence of his realization that the Republican Party hasn't dealt with him in good faith for the duration of his Presidency (you can't say the same about Bush; whatever opposition he faced, he got his war, and his tax cuts, and Congress looked on his administration's incompetence over 9/11, the Iraq war and the economy with far too benevolent an eye).

But there's an elephant in the room that I think ties into both Obama's belated realization about Rebublican hostility and others' poerceptions of what he could accomplish, and that's that many people -- and, I think, certainly Obama for a time -- seem actually to believe in the myth of the so-called "liberal media." If Obama was putting up Social Security as a rope-a-dope to demonstrate that it's Republicans who will never compromise, it depends on having an honest -- let alone liberal -- media to report such an obvious fact, and if that's so he was bound for disappointment. Even-the-liberal NPR is still wedded to the narrative of the "disastrous Obamacare rollout" in between bouts of inviting Republicans on to discuss what they think about the economy (although their scaremongering about Ebola seems at least a little less intense than cable news).

There is no liberal media. In a way, that fact should be empowering to Democrats -- they'll be dishonestly portrayed as socialist commie atheist muslims no matter what they do, so they might as well embrace a traditional Democratic agenda at least. (It wouldn't hurt to build up a narrative of Republican lunacy; after all, the conservative project to make "liberal" a dirty word has been so successful that even they don't use it any more, in favor of "socialist" and the like.) But in an atmosphere when even-the-liberal NPR gives Republicans a platform to tell verifiable lies with nary a whimper of protest, I think it's also naive to pretend that Obama could have held out for Medicare for all, swell as that would have been, and that's discounting Faux News entirely.

Anyway, the reason I think Republicans are howling so much is that, for once and only once, Bill Kristol was right -- as he pointed out in his infamous memo when Clinton proposed health care reform, once it's passed it's here to stay, and will inevitably be associated with Democrats. Even this year Republicans know that running on a platform of taking away people's health insurance is a non-starter, and it isn't going to get any better for them in the future. They lost big with Obamacare and they know it -- and their own derisive term is going to associate that loss with their hated political enemy forever.
posted by Gelatin at 12:58 PM on October 9, 2014 [6 favorites]

JackFlash: That isn't the point.

It might not be "the point" but it is in fact context that make your complaints, while there is some truth to them, ultimately moot.

The point is that he immediately adopted the Republican position that deficit reduction was the most important issue. That meant that any hope of any kind of new spending was off the table, not even up for discussion. In fact, he wanted to cut Social Security.

Incorrect. He offered to include deficit reduction as part of a "grand bargain", and also offered to include the very minor but also very unnecessary chained CPI adjustment to Social Security. Why he chose to do these things is a topic of much debate, but without access to the meeting minutes with his cabinet members, ultimately unknowable, so people simply assume away the parts that aren't knowable -- "O-bots" assume he was just playing politics, "Firebaggers" assume he wanted to cut social security, etc.

This is usually where critics will say "well, when we don't know the facts, you judge him on the public position he takes, and since he talked about deficit reduction and offered to cut SS, you go with Occam's razor, QED." This is, of course, a gross simplification of how Presidential politics work, because without knowing what he was asking for in exchange for putting those items "on the table", we can't know if it was a good deal or not. It's easy to deride gamesmanship and "eleven-dimensional chess", but it's a real thing that Presidents have had to do for a very long time.

I frankly think talking up deficit reduction publicly and putting chained CPI on the table was foolish, (for reasons that, on preview, Gelatin articulates very well) but I don't believe for a minute that he really wanted to reduce SS benefits without getting something as good or better out of the deal. And on the deficit, the American public is scared of numbers that end in "trillion", especially when you connect them to China, so Presidents have to pretend they care about the deficit even when they know it's of minor importance when the economy is in the shitter.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:12 PM on October 9, 2014 [4 favorites]

It is somewhat striking that the Republicans were so obstructionist that they didn't even let him do that.

It's not really that surprising since social security is so popular with their voters. They even ran campaign ads against Obama based on this sort of thing. If anything they rope-a-doped him on the issue.

It might not be "the point" but it is in fact context that make your complaints, while there is some truth to them, ultimately moot.

You really need to stop ignoring what people are actually saying so you can instead argue against something else. Just say what you want about the possibly of more stimulus without pretending JackFlash said anything relating to it.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:43 PM on October 9, 2014

Yeah, those record-breaking yearly gains are gonna bite him in the ass for sure.

Yep, the economy's going great!
posted by entropicamericana at 1:59 PM on October 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

Drinky Die: You really need to stop ignoring what people are actually saying so you can instead argue against something else. Just say what you want about the possibly of more stimulus without pretending JackFlash said anything relating to it.

First sentence in the comment:

When he passed his weak stimulus bill, he immediately turned around and said "My work here is done" and stated that the country's most important issue was reducing deficits.

The rest talks about the disastrous handling of HAMP and the failure to use Fannie/Freddie as backdoor stimulative measures -- I completely agree with those criticisms. However, I interpret the part I quoted as a zero-sum argument -- that somehow because Obama was talking up deficit reduction, he couldn't possibly do any more to stimulate the economy. That's nonsense! Not only does it assume that his public statements about what he wants matter more than what he's actually doing in private, but even assuming arguendo that he did think deficit reduction was #1, he could have also done all of those things, not dropped the ball on HAMP, etc. and still worked on a plan to reduce the deficit.

If that's not how the comment was intended, I apologize, but I was responding to the argument as I read it. If you read it differently, that's fine, but I'm arguing in good faith here based on my understanding of what was said, not simply trying to knock down straw men.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:13 PM on October 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, if you want to ignore all of Obama's speeches about government needing to tighten its belt just like households, in defiance of all economic sense, and pretend his speeches don't mean anything, then just look at his actions. He wrote an executive order freezing the wages of federal workers. Congress didn't make him do that. He did it on his own, at a time when more spending on federal wages was the right thing to do.

And don't casually dismiss his failure on mortgage relief. It was even crueler than you might imagine. He deliberately strung homeowners along, telling them that in order to maintain eligibility for future assistance, they needed to keep up with their payments to the banks. So, many people struggled along, futilely emptying their savings accounts and retirement accounts, and when the banks had finally squeezed out the last drop of blood, Obama said "You f'ed up. You trusted me" as they were throw out of their homes.
posted by JackFlash at 2:57 PM on October 9, 2014

A few other reasonably credible names that have been floated are Booker, Cuomo, Warner, O'Malley, or Schweitzer.

I think we should turn this around a bit; which candidate do we want to be the one that Metafilter accuses of totally betraying them?

I mean I'm disappointed that Elizabeth Warren won't be the first female president to have totally and utterly betrayed Metafilter, but we have to work with what we have.

i swear there was an election tread from 2000 where people were talking about how shitty clinton was, and there wasn't much of a difference between gore and w, so why bother voting, nader, etc. obviously that was a funny (?) thread to read in hindsight. i hope this thread doesn't turn out the same way.

That would imply people learn from experience. Anyway, let's check back in this in a couple years when we see President Cruz appoint a new Supreme Court justice, while folks on Metafilter run around like chickens with their heads chopped off, screaming "How could this happen? HOW?"
posted by happyroach at 3:40 PM on October 9, 2014 [3 favorites]

I think we should turn this around a bit; which candidate do we want to be the one that Metafilter accuses of totally betraying them?

Clinton will likely win the nomination and Presidency, I don't expect much of a betrayal narrative because everybody has a good idea of who she is and how she will govern ahead of time.

Obama's actions are viewed as betrayal because all that was known about him, for the most part, was a stellar campaign in 2008 and people found it easy to fill in the blanks with their own idealism. He wasn't who some people thought he was, and others simply don't think he governed as competently as he campaigns.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:56 PM on October 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

"When he passed his weak stimulus bill, he immediately turned around and said "My work here is done" and stated that the country's most important issue was reducing deficits."

This is patently untrue. He has repeatedly said that more public spending was needed — he even campaigned on the American Jobs Act that many called a second stimulus. And if you can find a citation for him saying that the most important issue was deficits, I'd appreciate seeing it.

"He also showed cowardice when he refused to help underwater mortgage homeowners. There are no excuses that could be blamed on Congress. In the original TARP bailout, there was $50 billion specifically allocated to mortgage relief. He had the money in his hands. He didn't need to beg for it. He simply refused to spend it. "

That's not actually true — disbursements of that fund required a detailed plan to be submitted to Congress who then had 15 days to approve or deny it. Within the homeowner assistance fund, there are two programs — one called Making Home Affordable, which is for refinancing and has been extended through 2016, and one called Hardest Hit, which is direct disbursements to states for homeowner assistance programs based on unemployment. That has been extended through 2017.

I agree that more should have been done, and that more still should be done, but you're wrong about the details there.
posted by klangklangston at 7:13 PM on October 9, 2014 [3 favorites]

And if you can find a citation for him saying that the most important issue was deficits, I'd appreciate seeing it.

Surely you are joking. The pivot from stimulus to austerity was immediate. In his 2010 State of the Union, just a few months after the start of his stimulus program: "Families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same ... Starting in 2011 [the 2011 budget actually starts in 2010], we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years ... Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don't ... And if I have to enforce this discipline by veto, I will." That sounds like a serious deficit cutter to me, including his first veto threat, and starting immediately, while tens of millions still were without jobs. And in fact, he immediately froze federal wages, signing an executive order.

This "families tightening their belts ... the federal government should do the same" stuff is straight from the Republican playbook and the exact opposite of what counter-cyclical economic policy should say. That's a policy of austerity. To the contrary, government must spend more, not less, when consumer spending contracts.

disbursements of that fund required a detailed plan to be submitted to Congress who then had 15 days to approve or deny it.

The HAMP program was authorized by the 2008 TARP bailout and authorized the Treasury to facilitate loan modifications. Obama needed no other Congressional authorization to proceed. The program was very ineffective and a puzzled Elizabeth Warren grilled Treasury Secretary Geithner about when the program would start helping homeowners. Geithner blurted out "We estimate that they (the banks) can handle ten million foreclosures, over time. This program will help foam the runway for them (the banks).”

Geithner was saying that he wasn't managing the program to help homeowners. He was managing it to help the banks. He was worried that if all 10 million defaulted at once, it would crash the banks. To prevent that he used HAMP to dangle a carrot to entice homeowners to continue paying their mortgages to spread out the defaults and soften the landing for the banks. The bureaucracy strung people along for months and years, requiring them to resubmit applications up to a dozen times, meanwhile draining their life savings and retirement accounts. Many were ultimately refused and lost their homes. Most of the people would have been better off to default in the beginning, preserving their savings accounts. Instead millions of homeowners were ground up and used as "foam on the runway," in Geithner's words, to cushion the banks.
posted by JackFlash at 8:49 PM on October 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

The Resilient Success Of The Obama Presidency

also btw, here's krugman on the GFC/great recession (reviewing martin wolf's new book) -- Why Weren't Alarm Bells Ringing? -- in part arguing that while you can blame crony capitalism (the rot runs deep) it may be more of a symptom to a harder-to-pin-down disease:

If the secular stagnationists are right, advanced economies now suffer from persistently inadequate demand, so that depression is their normal state, except when spending is supported by bubbles. If that’s true, bubbles aren’t the root of the problem; they’re actually a good thing while they last, because they prop up demand. Unfortunately, they’re not sustainable—so what we need urgently are policies to support demand on a continuing basis, which is an issue very different from questions of financial regulation.

Wolf actually does address this issue briefly, suggesting that the answer might lie in deficit spending financed by the government’s printing press. But this radical suggestion is, as I said, overshadowed by his calls for more financial regulation. It’s the morality play aspect again: the idea that we need to don a hairshirt and repent our sins resonates with many people, while the idea that we may need to abandon conventional notions of fiscal and monetary virtue has few takers.

geithner, while at the new york fed, should've known, but didn't, what was going on (or wasn't paid to...) and i think it's becoming clear now that we could have nationalized the banks, but the point i want to make is that because geithner, summers, bernanke, et al. didn't know what was going on -- if they had, the crisis would have never have gotten as far as it did -- so it's hard to blame obama for taking their lead after coming into office and trying to prevent a second great depression; if obama had somehow found the intestinal fortitude to nationalize the banks and listened to romer instead of summers on the stimulus, he might be up for sainthood in the liberal pantheon by now :P

so there were policy mistakes at the time (clearer in retrospect); it's not like they were easy calls by any stretch, but as a president i voted (and stood in the cold of his first inauguration ;) for they were calls i wished he'd made! like clinton and albright on rwanda then, or perhaps syria/iraq now... containment-plus? that said, if you look at the emerging capital regime coming into place under yellen -- granted provisionally, so far -- i think it show's they're learning and adapting at least, which i give obama credit for!

anyway, in conclusion then, altho i wish obama'd done more (or less) on any number of issues that have already been mentioned -- net neutrality, NSA, CIA torture, drone warfare -- that i'm disappointed by (if not appalled at) on the big things that i wanted him elected for that he's delivered on: the supreme court and, actually, foreign policy; mostly by not being mccain admittedly, but not going to war with iran and with the possibility of putting its nuclear program in a 'safe box' like sullivan says is pretty huge in my book, the 'pivot' to asia we'll see about but it's not (yet) the cold war that rumsfeld seemed so eager to provoke early on in the bush administration pre-9/11 + i think he's deftly handled putin, which is kind of satisfying i have to say... and so any progress on the domestic policy front in the face of depression and a sustained and ruthless opposition, which is where the real blame and disillusionment should lie, is a cherry on top even if the ACA was mostly written by insurance lobbyists. it's not like obama is some sort of supergod king or anything.

oh and btw, seconding Apocryphon! everybody needs to google ron wyden; wyden/franken 2016 :D
posted by kliuless at 9:41 PM on October 9, 2014 [5 favorites]

"And if you can find a citation for him saying that the most important issue was deficits, I'd appreciate seeing it.

Surely you are joking. The pivot from stimulus to austerity was immediate. "

If it was so immediate and dramatic, surely you can provide a citation for Obama saying that the most important issue was deficits, not merely one of the issues.

This "families tightening their belts ... the federal government should do the same" stuff is straight from the Republican playbook and the exact opposite of what counter-cyclical economic policy should say. That's a policy of austerity. To the contrary, government must spend more, not less, when consumer spending contracts."

While I agree with you on that, this is not the claim you made prior.

"The bureaucracy strung people along for months and years, requiring them to resubmit applications up to a dozen times, meanwhile draining their life savings and retirement accounts. Many were ultimately refused and lost their homes. Most of the people would have been better off to default in the beginning, preserving their savings accounts. Instead millions of homeowners were ground up and used as "foam on the runway," in Geithner's words, to cushion the banks."

The bureaucracy was due to foot-dragging on the part of the banks. The banks were being cushioned to some extent, but that's because the HARP program relied primarily on forcing the banks to actually act in their own self interest and not foreclose if they were likely to lose money by doing so. That's what the GAO report concluded, and given that areas with higher participation saw fewer overall foreclosures along with less loss in housing value, claiming that most of the people would have been better off defaulting from the beginning is not supported by evidence.

It sounds like you bought a lot of the Fox News propaganda even as you approached it from the left, and that you haven't updated your position as more information came in. There are still plenty of things to critique about the program and about Obama's economic policies in general, but you're wrong in the particulars.
posted by klangklangston at 10:32 PM on October 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think that some of the deficit obsession was a way to appease the Very Serious Persons in DC who just Knew we needed a Grand Bargain. (Our press corps is so fucking small-minded and stupid. Anyway.). I also think that Obama wasn't listening to the right people in 2010. Remember Recovery Summer? Obama and his advisors were convinced that this would be a V-shaped recession/recovery. But Krugman and DeLong (and Summers!) knew that after every other financial crisis in history, the recession/recovery was long and U-shaped. To Obama's credit, once he realized this, he moved away from deficit obsession and back to (small-bore) stimulus. Of course the House wouldn't move on that.

As I said above, I have serious criticisms of Obama. But so often those on the left, in their zeal to condemn him, totally miss nuance and extenuating circumstances. The careful thought that MF usually does so well largely goes out the window. (Though klang and tonycpsu do a fine job of it in this thread.). And I get it. I feel burned, too. But I really do want to evaluate him as he is, and I think it's important to get the context and details of his decisions right.
posted by persona au gratin at 12:23 AM on October 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

Obama Signals Opposition to ‘Fast Lanes’ in Support of Net Neutrality
posted by jeffburdges at 9:52 AM on October 10, 2014 [3 favorites]

JackFlash: And if you can find a citation for him saying that the most important issue was deficits, I'd appreciate seeing it.

Surely you are joking. The pivot from stimulus to austerity was immediate...

Wow. You not only didn't refute the claim with your numerous citations, you changed your argument in the 2nd sentence.

We get it; you hate Obama. Good for you.

Unfortunately, the search for the Perfect Liberal Candidate destroys support for The Most Liberal Candidate, and since the US' entire political structure runs on 2-party, R vs D voting, our divided liberal voting = conservative wins.
posted by IAmBroom at 10:06 AM on October 10, 2014

IAmBroom: Unfortunately, the search for the Perfect Liberal Candidate destroys support for The Most Liberal Candidate

I'll stop linking to this when it stops being relevant.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:24 AM on October 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

The way some people talk we already found the perfect candidate, Barack Obama whose presidency has no flaw not caused by somebody else.

I'll stop linking to this when it stops being relevant.

Wow, what a condescending piece of crap link. Democrats need to grow the fuck up and take responsibility for the failures of the campaign their candidate ran in 2000. Barack Obama had no problems getting the votes of people skeptical of the two party system in 2008, including myself, because he ran a great campaign.
posted by Drinky Die at 10:30 AM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

The way some people talk we already found the perfect candidate, Barack Obama whose presidency has no flaw not caused by somebody else.

I don't know who "some people" are, but a majority of the defenses of Obama in this thread have contained some version of "there's a lot I don't like about him, but..." and then an explanation of systemic factors, GOP obstruction, etc. Contrast this with the pure Green Lanternism coming from "some" on the other side, where systemic impedements are merely things that can be overcome through the magic of the bully pulpit, "messaging", and what-not. In their telling, Joe Lieberman and Blanchle Lincoln were just begging to make a deal that could have gotten us a public option or Medicaid expansion, but Obama Didn't. Even. Try.

Yes, Obama has scored plenty of own goals, and many people including myself have acknowledged them. But hey, why let that get in the way of a narrative where political constraints can be overcome with more willpower.

Democrats need to grow the fuck up and take responsibility for the failures of the campaign their candidate ran in 2000.

How so? Many of them supported other candidates in the primaries, but because the two party system is a thing that exists and isn't going away, they voted for the most liberal of the two choices in the general election. Simply voting for a candidate means you endorse everything they do from that point on?
posted by tonycpsu at 11:03 AM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

You not only didn't refute the claim with your numerous citations, you changed your argument in the 2nd sentence.

I'm assuming that you don't know the meaning of the word austerity. It means cutting government spending and freezing federal wages -- federal "belt tightening" -- all of which Obama promoted back in 2010. That is a Republican theme and Obama eagerly adopted it in his first State of the Union Address. That was an unnecessary and unforgivable error in the midst of the worst recession in seven decades.
posted by JackFlash at 11:09 AM on October 10, 2014

"eagerly"?

I've criticized Obama's adoption of the Republican deficit framing as "a blunder of the highest order," but saying that he did so "eagerly" is a bit much.
posted by Gelatin at 11:16 AM on October 10, 2014

And I'd point out again that the so-called "liberal media" got there first with the adoption of the "deficit oh noes!" framing, forgetting entirely what happened to the deficit when Republicans controlled both Congress and the White house. (Hint: It didn't go down.) Yes, Obama was foolish to adopt that framing, as Paul Krugman pointed out at the time. But note that the topic of this post is Krugman's praise of Obama.

Democrats should have exactly one line about the deficit: "Republicans are only opposed to deficits when a Democrat is in the White house."
posted by Gelatin at 11:22 AM on October 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

"eagerly" is a bit much.

That he did it at all is a travesty and has contributed to the misery of millions of Americans, effects that are still being felt today and will for decades.
posted by JackFlash at 11:24 AM on October 10, 2014

The way some people talk we already found the perfect candidate, Barack Obama whose presidency has no flaw not caused by somebody else.

I don't know who "some people" are, but a majority of the defenses of Obama in this thread have contained some version of "there's a lot I don't like about him, but..."\

You're requesting a nuanced treatment of your comments after you posted that link? Gimme a break.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:32 AM on October 10, 2014

Drinky Die: You're requesting a nuanced treatment of your comments after you posted that link? Gimme a break.

I didn't see this tangent as a referendum on any particular comment I made, but as a discussion of whether the perfect is the enemy of the good in a two-party system. I'm don't know why you're taking the TBogg link so personally, but to answer your question, no, I do not see how posting a link critical of third party voters in 2008 has any bearing on how you or anyone else should read comments from people who don't apportion blame for bad policy in the precise way you do.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:45 AM on October 10, 2014

That he did it at all is a travesty

I'm on record as basically agreeing with you here, but...

and has contributed to the misery of millions of Americans, effects that are still being felt today and will for decades.

What? How? The stimulus was too small, and Obama was foolish to have adopted Republican deficit-reduction framing, but Congress appropriates money, not the President. Are you claiming that Republicans would have refrained from obstructing additional stimulaus spending if not for Obama's rhetorical choices?

I contend that there was no way the Republicans were going to allow additional stimulus spending to be enacted -- for one thing, if it worked, it'd be yet more evidence that their entire worldview is fatally flawed -- regardless of what Obama did or said. What, exactly, could Obama have done to enact additional stimulus over the objections of fair-weather friends like Joe Lieberman, let alone the Republicans?

Speaking of rhetoric, Democrats should be pointing out, over and over, that the deficit shrinks as the economy improves. Republican policies don't work -- as Kansas is learning -- and Democratic ones do. But for them to work, they have to be enacted, and Republicans have made it their mission to prevent Obama from doing so. We need to hear more than Green Lanternism to support claims about what Obama should have done otherwise.
posted by Gelatin at 11:55 AM on October 10, 2014

In addition, Obama seems to have learned his lesson, anyway; here he is last year calling for more infrastructure spending (let's thank the so-called "liberal media" for allowing Republicans to make "stimulus" a dirty word too) and challenging the Republicans on their obstructionism.

Of course, little came of it, but that's the point -- all Obama can change is his rhetoric; thanks to the Republicans the results are largely the same.
posted by Gelatin at 12:01 PM on October 10, 2014

IAmBroom took Jack's comments in this thread and reduced them to:

We get it; you hate Obama. Good for you.

Unfortunately, the search for the Perfect Liberal Candidate destroys support for The Most Liberal Candidate, and since the US' entire political structure runs on 2-party, R vs D voting, our divided liberal voting = conservative wins.

An aggressively condescending mischaracterization of his contributions to the thread. You backed him up with a link that took that and multiplied it by about a hundred. You describe these contributions as just, "a discussion of whether the perfect is the enemy of the good in a two-party system." And you expect other people just to be like, okay, no problem? Come on, man. You are engaging in extremely frustrating tactics in this thread. If you don't like being accused of thinking Obama is perfect when you don't believe that, don't accuse other people of demanding the perfect when they have claimed no such thing.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:02 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'll stop linking to this when it stops being relevant.

Awful, condescending link, but it does serve to remind people why the Democrats deserve to lose the midterms.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:06 PM on October 10, 2014 [3 favorites]

Speaking of rhetoric, Democrats should be pointing out, over and over, that the deficit shrinks as the economy improves.

If the history of the Clinton experience is any guide, Democrats aren't going too get much credit for this even if the deficit reduction is ever acknowledged by the public. A lot of times the narrative I hear is all the credit for that goes to the Republican congress who bravely shut down the liberal spending president. We can guarantee they will attempt to run on that at least, because they don't have many other options. Eventually, "We hate Obamacare," is going to be read as, "We want you to lose your health coverage," and even conservative voters aren't going to be on board.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:10 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Democrats aren't going too get much credit for this even if the deficit reduction is ever acknowledged by the public.

Worse yet, if memory serves me correctly, opinion polls indicate many people think the deficit is going up. I wonder whose fault that is...
posted by Gelatin at 12:15 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

...but that's part of the point: Republicans constantly pound the deficit drum (at least while a Democrat is in the White house). You're right that Clinton doesn't get enough credit, but part of the reason is that Democrats don't present a unified message. As I've said, I suspect part of the reason is that they themselves believe in the myth of the liberal media.
posted by Gelatin at 12:18 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Drinky Die: An aggressively condescending mischaracterization of his contributions to the thread. You backed him up

Yeah, see, you'll note that I didn't quote the part where he made it about JackFlash's purported hatred for Obama, which I agree is a bit of a cheap shot that assumes facts not in evidence. I do, however, think there's a lot of sentiment here, built on top of an incomplete understanding of the facts, that overstates Obama's culpability in many areas, which has led to people (including you earlier in the thread) making a larger point about Democrats generally not doing enough to earn their vote, despite the facts that (a) Obama isn't all Democrats, and (b) in most cases, the alternatives were (or will be) far worse on all of the issues people are taking Obama to task for.

This, and the part of IAmBroom's comment that I quoted, got me thinking about that TBogg post, and yeah it's harsh, but I don't think it's unfair. People who wish away the fact that lesser of two evils voting is the only rational strategy in the absence of a credible third party option are simply delusional. That's how I feel, and if that offends your sensibilities to the point where you feel you can't even read my comments without thinking I'm acting in bad faith, then we can just drop this tangent so it doesn't cause any more hard feelings.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:06 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Gelatin: Democrats don't present a unified message. As I've said, I suspect part of the reason is that they themselves believe in the myth of the liberal media.

I think it's simpler than that: Democrats aren't unified to begin with. Will Rogers was right. Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu -- they all actually believe(d) the deficit hype. It doesn't even depend on a belief in the media being liberal, which frankly I think most of them all recognize isn't the case now (if they ever thought it was to begin with.)
posted by tonycpsu at 1:09 PM on October 10, 2014

"I'm assuming that you don't know the meaning of the word austerity. It means cutting government spending and freezing federal wages -- federal "belt tightening" -- all of which Obama promoted back in 2010. That is a Republican theme and Obama eagerly adopted it in his first State of the Union Address. That was an unnecessary and unforgivable error in the midst of the worst recession in seven decades."

I'm assuming that you think somehow that saying "austerity" demonstrates that Obama said the most important issue was deficits. As far as I know, he did not. Which is why I was asking for a citation on that — saying something is the most important issue is different from including it in a list of other priorities.

"Awful, condescending link, but it does serve to remind people why the Democrats deserve to lose the midterms."

"With the way my face is looking, my nose deserves to be cut off. That'll teach it!"
posted by klangklangston at 1:46 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yeah, see, you'll note that I didn't quote the part where he made it about JackFlash's purported hatred for Obama

You quoted a comment that was all about that and added no context whatsoever.

people (including you earlier in the thread) making a larger point about Democrats generally not doing enough to earn their vote

I made some comments that weren't that detailed because they have been argued in detail a hundred times on this site and nobody gets their mind changed. You apparently really, really wanted to do it again so you triple posted demanding a reply. Since I declined you have been snarkily quoting the word "messaging" over and over, in what I can only assume is an attempt to troll me into that argument. I'd rather not. I'd rather you just accept that some people are going to disagree with you on Metafilter and you don't really have to argue with them or mischaracterize their points or post links to aggressively condescending commentary on what you perceive is happening in the thread. You can get by without saying other people in the thread are delusional, for real!

There are really interesting topics to discuss about this presidency and the future of the presidency without scorched Earth debating to the death on intractable opinions.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:01 PM on October 10, 2014

"With the way my face is looking, my nose deserves to be cut off. That'll teach it!"

Don't know what to tell you, other than hippy punching didn't work in the 2000 election, didn't work in the 2010 election, and from the polling data, probably won't work in 2014, either. Consider asking if belittling people for legitimate concerns is working in your best interests. Or not; I'm not here to convince you, either way.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 2:02 PM on October 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm assuming that you think somehow that saying "austerity" demonstrates that Obama said the most important issue was deficits. As far as I know, he did not.

I can only assume you are just being deliberately obtuse. Obama had a simple choice. He could continue government spending, which would be good for the economy or he could freeze government spending, which would be bad for the economy. Congress did not force him to choose. He voluntarily chose austerity, signing an executive order to do so. There could be no clearer choice, a binary choice. He decided that reducing the deficit was more important than helping the economy and helping U.S. workers.
posted by JackFlash at 2:07 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

President Obama Makes Vague Meaningless Statements About Net Neutrality, Patent Reform And Copyright Reform
posted by jeffburdges at 2:31 PM on October 10, 2014

"Don't know what to tell you, other than hippy punching didn't work in the 2000 election, didn't work in the 2010 election, and from the polling data, probably won't work in 2014, either. Consider asking if belittling people for legitimate concerns is working in your best interests. Or not; I'm not here to convince you, either way."

… yes, hippy punching was the only thing that had any effect on turnout or campaigns in 2000 and 2010. (Wait, are you saying it did work in 2004, 2006 and 2008?)

Saying that the Democrats deserve to lose the midterms because of what you call "hippy punching" is inane and works against the interest of the purported hippies. Hence cutting off your nose to spite your face. And basing whether you vote for a Democrat on how I treat you is also inane — you're not voting for me. In short, people aren't punching you for being a hippy, they're trying to snap a little sense into you after hearing yet another pouty, misinformed bit of counter-productive nonsense.

"I can only assume you are just being deliberately obtuse."

So… you don't have a source for that.

"Congress did not force him to choose."

That was actually a part of the fight to avert a government shutdown in 2010, and after Obama agreed to freeze federal pay, the budget to avert the shutdown enshrined that in law. See contemporary reporting here. I agree that it was a mistake, but portraying it as a binary where he chose deficit reduction over helping the economy is a massive over-simplification. (It was also a policy favored by a majority of Americans at the time.)
posted by klangklangston at 3:06 PM on October 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

That was actually a part of the fight to avert a government shutdown in 2010, and after Obama agreed to freeze federal pay, the budget to avert the shutdown enshrined that in law.

You've got your revisionist timeline off by a year. Obama proposed the spending freeze in his State of the Union address in January, 2010. Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House. Harry Reid was Majority Leader. There was no eminent shutdown. Obama didn't "agree to freeze federal pay." He was the first one to propose it. And he wasn't forced into it by Congress. He did it on his own by signing an executive order.

That wasn't his only notable deficit cutting action in his January, 2010 State of the Union. He pledged to sign an executive order forming the loathed Simpson-Bowles Commission, both of whom had previously stated their commitment to cutting Social Security and Medicare and who subsequently formed the "Campaign to Fix the Debt." Obama signed this executive order two weeks later after it had been rejected by his own majority Congress. Again, not only wasn't he forced to do that, he did it in defiance of Congress. That's some serious commitment to deficit reduction.
posted by JackFlash at 4:13 PM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

The deficit had ballooned to historic levels in 2010. Maintaining low interest rates and ensuring continued borrowing capacity by the Treasury forced Obama's hand. The deficit was also a significant concern for swing voters and portions of the Democratic coalition.
posted by humanfont at 5:39 PM on October 10, 2014

"You've got your revisionist timeline off by a year. Obama proposed the spending freeze in his State of the Union address in January, 2010. Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House. Harry Reid was Majority Leader. There was no eminent shutdown. Obama didn't "agree to freeze federal pay." He was the first one to propose it. And he wasn't forced into it by Congress. He did it on his own by signing an executive order."

Well, no. He mentioned an overall freeze on federal spending (you're moving the goalposts again) in his state of the union — the same one where he called for a second jobs bill over and over, which you seem to have missed — but didn't enact the wage freeze until after the 2010 elections, when the Dems lost the majority in the House. And again, as it was tied to a continuing resolution from the House, it was very much part of the overall 2011 shutdown arc. His speech is here.

But I'm glad you've abandoned your other mistaken claims.

"That wasn't his only notable deficit cutting action in his January, 2010 State of the Union. He pledged to sign an executive order forming the loathed Simpson-Bowles Commission, both of whom had previously stated their commitment to cutting Social Security and Medicare and who subsequently formed the "Campaign to Fix the Debt." Obama signed this executive order two weeks later after it had been rejected by his own majority Congress. Again, not only wasn't he forced to do that, he did it in defiance of Congress. That's some serious commitment to deficit reduction."

Yes, he did, and creating that commission was a mistake (it was bipartisan in name only and full of the usual gang of idiots). But setting up a commission (whose recommendations no one adopted) is not the same as a serious commitment to deficit reduction, it's a desire to be seen as doing something bipartisan about the deficit. It was also an incredibly popular issue, one that most Americans are still misinformed about.
posted by klangklangston at 6:02 PM on October 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

Kobane: The anatomy of a disaster

It is too late, too late to save Kobane. But its fall will bring to the fore, once again, the tragic failure of the Obama administration in Syria. When one contemplates the amount of criticism directed at Obama over his shifting Syria policies from his former senior cabinet members, including two secretaries of defense, one secretary of state and one director of the Central Intelligence Agency, one sees the enormity of the failure. Even the deliberative and cautious former president Jimmy Carter, criticized President Obama for waiting too long to intervene in Syria, and for giving ISIS the time to build its capabilities and strengths. One would hope that the tragedy of Kobane would lead to a serious re-assessment of the President’s strategy, and that the lives lost will not have been lost in vain. One would hope...

ISIL has grown from nothing to take over a huge swath of territory in Iraq and Syria on President Obama's watch, and is still going. We dumped ~$90B in training and arms to the Iraqi army and reconstruction that has somehow found itself to be far more useful to ISIL than Iraq. Much of this also happened under Obama's watch. Our strongest "allies" in the region (Saudi Arabia and Turkey) have been out-maneuvered at every turn by Iran it seems. It is a stupendous disaster that negates what otherwise might have been a historic success. There may have been limited options available to him, but I don't think history will look kindly on this. I do think his engagement with Iran will be a plus, but that remains to be seen.

I'm not confident his ISIL strategy will work that well. So we're going to drop 10-20 bombs a day on ISIL for two years? More than likely ISIL will figure out how to move, spread around, and shield their assets enough to retain significant strength.
posted by Golden Eternity at 2:06 AM on October 11, 2014

The Democrats had a supermajority. They were coming in clean after eight years of Bush. And they still bungled that. Sure that's more of a criticism of the party in general, but there certainly was a time where they had a mandate and GOP opposition wasn't as significant.

Any discussion of FDR and LBJ has to include a mention of their titanic majorities in both houses of Congress.

And didn't BHO have one too, at one point? What did they do with it?

First, they never had a supermajority. During FDR's time they held 75% of all the seats.

In 2008 they had 57 seats in the Senate and a thin 35 (out of 435 seats) majority.

But what did they get passed?

Obamacare
Stimulus--saving millions of jobs, compare Europe
Financial Reform
Ending DADT
Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
Saving the Auto industry.

those, especially the ACA are titanic achievements. FDR could not get a national health care plan passed. LBJ tried as well. Both failed. Obama, with far smaller majorities, succeeded.
posted by Ironmouth at 9:14 AM on October 12, 2014 [5 favorites]

There is absolutely no way to win with Syria, and while I wish we had been doing more relief efforts, the only way to save Kobane (or a lot of the other territory) is with an invading troop force. That can't be the U.S. Blaming the U.S. for not invading Syria to halt ISIS/ISIL is insane in the face of the cost there.
posted by klangklangston at 11:28 AM on October 12, 2014

Invading Syria would probably be insane. The blame is for allowing our allies to build up ISIL to the point where a full scale invasion is the only way to defeat them, and not doing anything to stop them before it was too late. This could have included:

- Creating serious consequences for Turkey for opening their bordet to Jihadists.
- Assasinating Bagdadhi and ISIL's top leadership a long time ago.
- Having a plan ready to use Peshmerga forces, drones, and US airpower to at least try to stop ISIL if they invaded Iraq, rather than "not wanting to be Iraq's airforce." For $30B we could have insured better preparation.
- Arming the Peshmerga more directly rather than through Iraq's beurocratic money pit.
- Arming and protecting Rojava clandestinely so it could effectively defend more territory (so long as Turkey continued to allow ISIL free access to its border).
- Many people say an armed and funded FSA could have taken control of the opposition.

I dunno, I think doing nothing to stop ISIL has turned out to be the wrong strategy.

The YPJ/G is only asking for a safe corridor to Turkey, or to fly in supplies and reinforcements if Turkey's allegience with ISIL can't be broken. I think it's insane that we refuse to grant them this.
posted by Golden Eternity at 4:04 PM on October 12, 2014

EXCLUSIVE: Elizabeth Warren on Barack Obama: "They protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. And it happened over and over and over"

Elizabeth Warren Rejects Thomas Frank's Green Lanternism

What I find noteworthy, however, is that Warren utterly rejects Frank's attempt to invoke the Greeen Lantern theory of the presidency, defined by Brendan Nyhan as "the belief that the president can achieve any political or policy objective if only he tries hard enough or uses the right tactics." Frank is obviously a fundamentalist believer in this theory (and would clearly like Warren to be our Green Lantern). But Warren is having none of it:
[...]

posted by tonycpsu at 5:41 PM on October 12, 2014 [2 favorites]

What's the alternative in Anbar and Syria? Another trillion dollar occupation with tens of thousands of US soldiers trying to nation build.
posted by humanfont at 6:50 PM on October 12, 2014

I disagree with Elizabeth Warren for quasi-blaming the voters for not pushing Obama into fighting Wall St. We cannot engage the whole society over every stupid detail.

We'll happily fight over new problems like environmental pollution, civil rights online, etc. We all know however that our society addressed exactly this sort of financial malfeasance with Glass–Steagall but we got Dodd–Frank this time.

I'm okay with limited victim blaming for not fighting hard enough when fracking gives them cancer, or just contributes to global warming by burning more oil. I'd fucking like our president to prosecute enough Wall St executives so that fewer people lost jobs in our next recession.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:03 PM on October 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Max Sawicky: Krugman, trolling. . .

Paul Krugman does great work, but he's still capable of bullshit. Exhibit Today is his gloss on a remark by Cornel West about the president:

There's a different story on the left, where you now find a significant number of critics decrying Obama as, to quote Cornel West, someone who "posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit." They're outraged that Wall Street hasn't been punished, that income inequality remains so high, that "neoliberal" economic policies are still in place. All of this seems to rest on the belief that if only Obama had put his eloquence behind a radical economic agenda, he could somehow have gotten that agenda past all the political barriers that have constrained even his much more modest efforts. It's hard to take such claims seriously.

This is some tired anti-progressive treacle. PK debunks criticism by exaggerating it. The main line of criticism of Obama is not that he has declined to employ his magical rhetorical powers to get everything the left wants, nor is the left ignorant of the constraints Obama has faced. You can't very well celebrate the president for great accomplishments - and I agree with a lot of the substance of PK's subsequent discussion - at the same time you insist he has been constantly blocked. My responses to these memes are here, in assorted pearls of wisdom.

It is true that Obama posed as a progressive. He still does! As for Wall Street not being punished, is that not the case? Who has been punished? When it comes to big-time financial and war criminals, the president has said "We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards." When it comes to small fry, it's terminate with extreme prejudice. PK acknowledges this himself later in this very article. Even when the left is right, it's wrong.

Scott Lemieux: The Obama Administration Has Numerous Failures. The ACA Isn't One of Them.

On the big fucking deal of health care, PK tries to get the best of both sides of the argument. He acknowledges the left criticism of relying on health inscos to fill the coverage gap, then implies that the stupid left doesn't understand a single-payer plan would not have gotten enough votes to pass. What the not-actually-stupid left really wanted and had a right to expect was the inclusion of some kind of public option, which was arguably not a manifestly disabling feature from a political standpoint. And even if it proved to be so, there is no reason to make a rhetorical virtue in the form of bogus celebrations of "the market" out of a political necessity.
First of all, sad as it is the single-payer argument isn't a strawman. There are otherwise very smart liberals, not just on the intarwebs somewhere but in the New York Review of Books, that we could have had single payer had Obama only Bully Pulpited the Overton Window Under the Bus on Steroids. (There's a variant of the argument that concedes that single payer probably wasn't viable, but Obama should have made it his opening bid, on the theory that if you walk into an Audi dealership and offer $500 for their best car they have no choice but to sell it to you for $1,000.)

But I agree that the more common critique was the failure to include a public option. On that, two points. First of all, a public option was worth trying, but I don't agree that it was a magic bullet that would have transformed the ACA from hopeless neoliberalism to real progressivism. The public option passed by the House would have had, at best, a minor impact on the exchanges. It was not the road to nationalizing the health care industry. But the policy merits are moot, because it's pretty obvious that the votes even for the weak House version weren't there in the Senate. I don't know how anyone could see how Lieberman acted and still think that it could have gotten 60 votes. Max doesn't even try to outline what leverage Obama had over the many Senate Democratic opponents of a public option, which given how such conterfactuals tend to go is probably for the best.

...

On a final point, on the ACA I continue to reject the idea that it reflects "neoliberalism." As always, missing from these arguments is the Medicaid expansion. As far as I can tell, none of Obama's critics from the left would disparage the original Medicaid that covered a fraction of a fraction of the poor as "neoliberalism," and yet a Medicaid that covers everyone within 138% of the federal poverty line is not seen by Obama's left critics as an accomplishment worthy of any particular note. The focus is on the exchanges, suggesting that had Obama (like Great Society Democrats) just done nothing for the uninsured who don't qualify for Medicare or Medicaid he would somehow be more progressive than he was because he used more regulated and subsidized markets to insure people. This doesn't make any sense. If the U.S already had single payer or national health, you could call it "neoliberal" reform. If single payer could plausibly have passed, you could call it "neoliberal." But given the actually existing status quo ante, it's not "neoliberal" in any sense. When Obama touts it a a major progressive achievement, he's not just doing what any politician would, he's right on the merits.

posted by tonycpsu at 12:33 PM on October 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

What's the alternative in Anbar and Syria? Another trillion dollar occupation with tens of thousands of US soldiers trying to nation build.

Yeah, it's kind of too late to do much now without participating in a lot of death and destruction. I suspect Obama will try to support the Shia and Iranian militias by providing weapons and air support. I don't know what the chances are of getting Sunni tribal leaders to fight against Daesh under those conditions. Not too good I would think.

As far as his legacy of standing by while Daesh took over a huge portion of Iraq and Syria, I think President Obama's decision to cosign Soleimani's second appointment of Maliki as Prime Minister of Iraq even though Maliki lost the election is one thing historians will look at closely.
posted by Golden Eternity at 1:39 PM on October 13, 2014

"- Creating serious consequences for Turkey for opening their border to Jihadists."

Opening the border to Jihadists was part and parcel of supporting Syrian rebels against Assad.

- Assasinating Bagdadhi and ISIL's top leadership a long time ago.

"Assassination" isn't a magic wand, and assassinating leaders isn't necessarily an effective way to eliminate forces, i.e. many of the Sunni grievances would still exist without Bagdadhi (and I can't imagine that his name hasn't been on the list for a drone strike since his Al Qaida days).

- Having a plan ready to use Peshmerga forces, drones, and US airpower to at least try to stop ISIL if they invaded Iraq, rather than "not wanting to be Iraq's airforce." For $30B we could have insured better preparation.

The invasion was a relative surprise and moved quickly. It was something that seems unexpected by pretty much every regional player. While it's prudent to plan for surprises like that, faulting us for not making better preparations when none of the locals made better preparations is a little silly.

- Arming the Peshmerga more directly rather than through Iraq's beurocratic money pit.

Arming the Peshmerga directly would likely precipitate the collapse of Iraq. Obama (sagely/cynically) doesn't want to be the President under whom Iraq collapsed.

- Arming and protecting Rojava clandestinely so it could effectively defend more territory (so long as Turkey continued to allow ISIL free access to its border).

That would provoke Turkey against us — Turkey fears armed Kurds across the border (semi-legitimately).

- Many people say an armed and funded FSA could have taken control of the opposition.

Those people are living a fantasy where former Mujahideen never blew up the World Trade Center.

The Free Syrian Army was always at best a loose congregation of various groups, many of whom are now part of ISIS/ISIL. Given what we know, there was no effective way to arm just the good guys and arming everyone who was against Assad would include arming ISIS/ISIL.

Of the things you propose, the only really reasonable one would have been scrambling US jets to help repel the blitzkrieg of ISIS/ISIL in Iraq (attacking columns are easier to deter with airstrikes than dug-in sieges). And when that was going on, Malaki was still sputtering about trying to preserve his kleptocracy.

I really do wish there was a better way for us to support the FSA and I wish they could have coalesced more effectively. But all of the US options with Syria were bad ones, including the whole "red line" nonsense about the chemical weapons. Assad's a war criminal and I hope he ends up on a lamppost, but the U.S. was not (and should not) be in a position to be responsible for the fate of the FSA or anti-Assad forces. Embargo the shit out of him, provide non-combat support to anti-governmental forces (from medics through food, water and shelter, as well as easier visas out of the area), but there's not a tremendous amount of good that comes from direct involvement in Syria. If you can make the case, I'm sympathetic to the notion, but as far as I can tell this is something that is like 80 different proxy wars going on right now mostly between Sunni and Shiite partisans but also internal battles between different Saudi, Qatar and UAE factions. Bombing runs won't accomplish much overall but with all the other local players engaged in opaque sectarian power plays, getting involved more directly just promises to be another quagmire.
posted by klangklangston at 2:55 PM on October 13, 2014 [1 favorite]

The invasion was a relative surprise and moved quickly.

We probably need to give the NSA more spying powers and increase the CIA budget.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:01 PM on October 13, 2014 [2 favorites]

The invasion and blitzkrieg was a surprise for other regional powers too, so I don't know how much there actually was to know before it happened. That's part of what makes militias so successful is that they're fast to mobilize — Al Bagdhadi has reportedly been intentionally mimicking the Mongol Horde's hit and run tactics.
posted by klangklangston at 6:33 PM on October 13, 2014

The invasion and blitzkrieg was a surprise for other regional powers too, so I don't know how much there actually was to know before it happened.

Huh, how many hundred billions did they spend on their own intelligence systems? We might be overpaying if we only got the same late pass, "OOPS, they are conquering everything!" report.
posted by Drinky Die at 7:52 PM on October 13, 2014

Is your mental model of intelligence services one that because the U.S. pays a lot for theirs, they should know every development in the world before those directly affected, including those nations with authoritarian and draconian secret police whose citizens are directly funding some of ISIS's activities? I think you might be attacking a straw man.
posted by klangklangston at 9:58 PM on October 13, 2014

With how much we pay, I expect very near that, yes.
posted by Drinky Die at 9:17 AM on October 14, 2014

Opening the border to Jihadists was part and parcel of supporting Syrian rebels against Assad.

This is a historically bad plan.

The invasion and blitzkrieg was a surprise for other regional powers

But there was no excuse for them to be surprised:

Special Report: How Mosul fell - An Iraqi general disputes Baghdad's story

In late May, Iraqi security forces arrested seven members of militant group Islamic State in Mosul and learned the group planned an offensive on the city in early June. Gharawi, the operational commander of Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, asked Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's most trusted commanders for reinforcements.

With Iraq's military overstretched, the senior officers scoffed at the request. Diplomats in Baghdad also passed along intelligence of an attack, only to be told that Iraqi Special Forces were in Mosul and could handle any scenario.

Arming the Peshmerga directly would likely precipitate the collapse of Iraq. Obama (sagely/cynically) doesn't want to be the President under whom Iraq collapsed.

A more insightful analysis would have concluded that Iraq had already collapsed. Since Baghdad was blocking support from getting to the Pesh Merga it would have been justified. There was no other choice.

That would provoke Turkey against us — Turkey fears armed Kurds across the border (semi-legitimately).

Turkey's treatment of the Kurds is probably as bad if not worse than Apartheid in South Africa in some ways. It has only moderated somewhat because the West demanded it for Turkey to be part of NATO and have any chance of joining the EU. The international view of the Kurds in Turkey as "terrorists" completely ignores the atrocities committed by Turkey on the Kurdish people. Perhaps there are reasons (Russia) that we can't lose Turkey as an ally, but there is serious reason to question whether they have ever been worthy of any trust all.

Those people are living a fantasy where former Mujahideen never blew up the World Trade Center.

The Free Syrian Army was always at best a loose congregation of various groups, many of whom are now part of ISIS/ISIL.

So instead our plan is to open the border to actual jihadists? WTF? This is even more reason that we should now be openly and officially supporting the YPJ/YPG and the PYD. Let the truly moderate Syrians join the YPG. This has already happened to some extent in Kobane
posted by Golden Eternity at 11:05 AM on October 14, 2014

I don't want to get in the way of what's been a very interesting exchange about ISIL with a more horse-racey political story, but I think this development down in the Kentucky Senate race is worth noting, not only for the fact that the Minority Leader in the Senate feels the need to lie through his teeth to try to stay alive politically, but also because the thing he's lying through his teeth about is Obamacare, and he's lying through his teeth about it so he can be seen as preserving Obamacare benefits for his constituents.

Say what you will about the efficiency of the private plan exchanges versus a public option or single payer, but it's certainly making a red state Senate race more interesting.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:56 AM on October 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Missouri Official Meant 'No Ill Intent' When She Called For Military Coup
posted by tonycpsu at 12:54 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

"This is a historically bad plan."

Almost as bad as "Let's arm the FSA! Surely this time there will be no blowback!"

But there was no excuse for them to be surprised:"

That article doesn't support your contention that the invasion and blitzkrieg were an expected outcome, i.e. not a surprise.

"A more insightful analysis would have concluded that Iraq had already collapsed. Since Baghdad was blocking support from getting to the Pesh Merga it would have been justified. There was no other choice."

That's silly. If you read the article you linked, there was blunder after blunder in the defense of Mosul. And arming a separatist force in an allied country is a great way to lose that ally.

"Turkey's treatment of the Kurds is probably as bad if not worse than Apartheid in South Africa in some ways. It has only moderated somewhat because the West demanded it for Turkey to be part of NATO and have any chance of joining the EU. The international view of the Kurds in Turkey as "terrorists" completely ignores the atrocities committed by Turkey on the Kurdish people. Perhaps there are reasons (Russia) that we can't lose Turkey as an ally, but there is serious reason to question whether they have ever been worthy of any trust all."

I'm not sure what you're arguing here. Turkey has been terrible to the Kurds (and Armenians). The international view is pretty cognizant of that, but needs Turkey for staging bases. Arming the Kurds would be detrimental to that relationship.

"So instead our plan is to open the border to actual jihadists? WTF? This is even more reason that we should now be openly and officially supporting the YPJ/YPG and the PYD. Let the truly moderate Syrians join the YPG. This has already happened to some extent in Kobane"

1) The FSA overlaps with actual jihadists. You can't arm one without arming the other. 2) Those are not our borders, so we have about zero legitimate input in whether or not they should permit the flow of anti-Assad fighters. 3) U.S. support is not an unalloyed good for anti-Assad militia groups.

You (and Drinky Die above) seem to have both bought into a view of the U.S. as much more powerful and effective than it actually is, with much less recognition of the chaos and complexities of regional power plays. It's hubris.
posted by klangklangston at 5:11 PM on October 14, 2014

You (and Drinky Die above) seem to have both bought into a view of the U.S. as much more powerful and effective than it actually is,

No, I'm just apparently not as super enthusiastic about throwing billions of dollars into a bonfire as you are.
posted by Drinky Die at 5:18 PM on October 14, 2014

My local school system can't afford nurses. But whatever, KKL, you gots people to blow up.
posted by Drinky Die at 5:24 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

"This is a historically bad plan."

Almost as bad as "Let's arm the FSA! Surely this time there will be no blowback!"

I'm not sure what you are arguing here. It seems we both agree allowing Daesh and other Jihadists to poor across the border into Syria was a bad plan. I think it should reflect negatively on Obama's record. I guess you are arguing there is nothing Obama could have done about it. I'm not so sure.

Some people I respect a lot say very early on there was a truly moderate group of FSA, including former Syrian armed forces, that could have taken control of the resistance away from the Jihadists, but I share your skepticism.

And even still, the idea that we are going to support any group that ultimately wishes to invade Damascus and overthrow Assad would be disastrous, imo. This seems to be something Turkey is intent on doing. The FSA would have to agree to a truce with Assad giving them local autonomy. Damascus is the one peaceful area of Syria and includes a few million people, none of whom want to see an armed invasion funded by Turkey overthrow Assad - as much as they may see him as a monster. The only reasonable way for Assad to go, is for him to be overthrown from within Damascus.

I see this as more reason to support the PYD as their only goal is to carve out secular, democratic autonomous cantons in Northern Syria. They aren't really a threat to anyone else - though they are perceived as a threat by Turkey. The best thing for Turkey, it seems to me, would be to make a peace agreement with the Kurds giving them autonomy in Turkey as well.

That article doesn't support your contention that the invasion and blitzkrieg were an expected outcome, i.e. not a surprise.

The article says they had intelligence of a planned "offensive" and "attack," Considering Daesh was in Syria at the time, it seems the attack would come from there. Is this just semantics? Or, I guess our intelligence agencies suffer from poor imagination.

That's silly. If you read the article you linked, there was blunder after blunder in the defense of Mosul. And arming a separatist force in an allied country is a great way to lose that ally.

The Pesh Merga are not a separatist force they are the armed forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government. The Iraqi government had agreed to fund them and was violating those agreements. Although I guess one of the biggest (if not the biggest) blunders the article mentions is Maliki's initial refusal to allow the Pesh Merga to help in the fight even though they offered multiple times. Perhaps arming them better wouldn't have made that much difference with the initial invasion, but it would've been helpful now. If the US were more involved in the situation they perhaps could have insured better planning on the part of Baghdad and Erbil.

Arming the Kurds would be detrimental to that relationship.

Arming the Kurds in Syria, not Turkey. We have a base in Erbil. Considering Turkey's support for Daesh, and their record with the Kurds, perhaps we should question our relationship with them. The secular, democratic Kurds in Rojava have shown unmatched willing and ability to fight Daesh and could eventually become a worthwhile ally in the region.

Those are not our borders, so we have about zero legitimate input in whether or not they should permit the flow of anti-Assad fighters.

We should have some leverage over Turkey considering we have allowed them into NATO and supply them with the weapons they use to kill Kurds. I doubt Obama and Kerry have used it very effectively.

You (and Drinky Die above) seem to have both bought into a view of the U.S. as much more powerful and effective than it actually is ...

No, I just think we could have done far better with the amount of resources we have put into the region during Obama's administration.
posted by Golden Eternity at 6:31 PM on October 14, 2014

"No, I'm just apparently not as super enthusiastic about throwing billions of dollars into a bonfire as you are."

Oh, I see your problem. You're pretending to reply to me but are really having some sort of idiotic monolog. That's why it doesn't actually match up with my comments, despite quoting them.

"My local school system can't afford nurses. But whatever, KKL, you gots people to blow up."

You and the guy who said, "An aggressively condescending mischaracterization of his contributions to the thread" should get together and sort out whether you want to be an asshole or you want to be someone who whines about other people being assholes.
posted by klangklangston at 6:53 PM on October 14, 2014

klang, drinky die, please chill out and move on from bickering with one another.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:21 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

"I'm not sure what you are arguing here. It seems we both agree allowing Daesh and other Jihadists to poor across the border into Syria was a bad plan. I think it should reflect negatively on Obama's record. I guess you are arguing there is nothing Obama could have done about it. I'm not so sure."

I don't think that Obama had as much control over it as Turkey, Iraq, Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia had. But neither Iraq nor Turkey are (nor should be) client states. I don't think it reflects that poorly on Obama, no.

"Some people I respect a lot say very early on there was a truly moderate group of FSA, including former Syrian armed forces, that could have taken control of the resistance away from the Jihadists, but I share your skepticism. "

I think there were, but I don't think that they had a real shot at toppling Assad without significant (Western) assistance, and with the way Syria has aligned itself with Russia and China, that would have been a flashpoint waiting to happen. And given the funding models, I think that the moderate parts of the FSA and youth uprising could have influenced the overall coalition, but the jihadists are the ones getting the cash from our nominal allies in the Gulf.

"And even still, the idea that we are going to support any group that ultimately wishes to invade Damascus and overthrow Assad would be disastrous, imo. This seems to be something Turkey is intent on doing. The FSA would have to agree to a truce with Assad giving them local autonomy. Damascus is the one peaceful area of Syria and includes a few million people, none of whom want to see an armed invasion funded by Turkey overthrow Assad - as much as they may see him as a monster. The only reasonable way for Assad to go, is for him to be overthrown from within Damascus."

I think you're largely right about Turkey, though I'm not sure how much of an actual endgame they have planned and how much of it is just regional power jockeying based in substantial part on distracting from local economic issues. I don't think that a truce with Assad was going to be possible once he started dropping barrel bombs and Syrian officials started getting blown up by car bombs.

"I see this as more reason to support the PYD as their only goal is to carve out secular, democratic autonomous cantons in Northern Syria. They aren't really a threat to anyone else - though they are perceived as a threat by Turkey. The best thing for Turkey, it seems to me, would be to make a peace agreement with the Kurds giving them autonomy in Turkey as well."

I agree that's likely the best outcome, especially for Turkey in the long run, but their government is trying to deal with multiple local scandals and a flailing economy by engaging in a mixture of religious populism and good ol' xenophobia, so I don't know how much the U.S. can do on that front in the short term.

"The article says they had intelligence of a planned "offensive" and "attack," Considering Daesh was in Syria at the time, it seems the attack would come from there. Is this just semantics? Or, I guess our intelligence agencies suffer from poor imagination."

More that the general m.o. of IS up until then was hit and run raids with little concerted effort to take whole cities. Even the IS fighters cited in the article didn't expect to hold more than one neighborhood for a couple of days. The invasion and blitzkrieg was a surprise to everyone in the region, in large part because no one expected the Iraqi army to crumble the way it did.

"The Pesh Merga are not a separatist force they are the armed forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government. The Iraqi government had agreed to fund them and was violating those agreements. Although I guess one of the biggest (if not the biggest) blunders the article mentions is Maliki's initial refusal to allow the Pesh Merga to help in the fight even though they offered multiple times. Perhaps arming them better wouldn't have made that much difference with the initial invasion, but it would've been helpful now. If the US were more involved in the situation they perhaps could have insured better planning on the part of Baghdad and Erbil."

The Peshmerga are the militia of an independent Kurdistan and the more military might they're able to command, the more immanent the independence of Kurdistan becomes. The autonomous region isn't a longterm solution and as soon as Kurdistan breaks off, the rest of the regional powers will buck the central Iraqi authority too. Maliki could have prevented much of the success of IS by taking the Kurds up on their offer, but it would have had the effect of hastening the dissolution of Iraq. IS is opportunistic and Iraq is a tremendous opportunity due to internal divides.

"Arming the Kurds in Syria, not Turkey. We have a base in Erbil. Considering Turkey's support for Daesh, and their record with the Kurds, perhaps we should question our relationship with them. The secular, democratic Kurds in Rojava have shown unmatched willing and ability to fight Daesh and could eventually become a worthwhile ally in the region."

Kurdistan isn't represented in Sykes-Picot and arming Kurds in one part is effectively the same as arming them in another. We should question our relationship with Turkey, but it's already very fraught after the Iraq War, which they were strongly (rightly) against as something that would destabilize the region and would lead to increased calls for Kurdish independence. Especially with Russia on the other side, we need them more than they need us right now. The cooling has mostly been from their end, giving us less leverage to point them toward our interests.

"We should have some leverage over Turkey considering we have allowed them into NATO and supply them with the weapons they use to kill Kurds. I doubt Obama and Kerry have used it very effectively."

And we get a lot of air bases and staging grounds for our Middle East adventurism. They're in NATO but the current Turkish administration is much less pro-western than his predecessors. Until our adventures in Iraq, we could have given two shits about the Kurds and we still label a lot of their independence movement "terrorist organizations." Hell, we still don't recognize the Armenian genocide because of our relationship there. For a long time, they were a secular ally in the region that we propped up with massive military spending. With the end of the Cold War that's waned and we have much less leverage in general.

"No, I just think we could have done far better with the amount of resources we have put into the region during Obama's administration."

It's possible, but given that no one predicted the invasion and that we've been continually surprised due to dubious intelligence in the region for at least 60 years, I tend to bet against the U.S. intelligence services knowing enough information enough in advance to really do much about it.
posted by klangklangston at 7:39 PM on October 14, 2014

(I love you klang, sorry.)
posted by Drinky Die at 10:04 PM on October 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

...and he's lying through his teeth about it so he can be seen as preserving Obamacare benefits for his constituents.

And, Mr. Repeal and Replace, it's the core of the law: no pre-existing condition exclusions, no rescission, exchanges, and community pricing.
posted by Mental Wimp at 7:16 AM on October 15, 2014

The Boston Herald editor who approved the use of an offensive political cartoon featuring President Obama and a reference to watermelons asked for forgiveness on Wednesday for what she called "the dumbest thing I've ever done."
posted by tonycpsu at 12:27 PM on October 15, 2014

Oh wow. Respect for an uncompromising apology but what is that cartoon even trying to say? Seriously, have I missed some news story that makes it even make sense? I must have.
posted by Drinky Die at 12:31 PM on October 15, 2014

I'm guessing the recent spectacular failure of White House security.
posted by entropicamericana at 1:11 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

From the The Boston Herald editor who approved the use of an offensive political cartoon featuring President Obama and a reference to watermelons asked for forgiveness on Wednesday for what she called "the dumbest thing I've ever done." link:

On the night in question — the night the cartoon appeared on a page proof, the proof was not left in the proper bin. No senior news editor ever saw it.

Uh, huh. And how is it that your dog had access to your homework?
posted by Mental Wimp at 1:44 PM on October 15, 2014

Why would failing to solve conflict in the Middle East have much of a bearing on Obama's legacy?
posted by humanfont at 6:38 PM on October 15, 2014

Just in the general "Turkey and Kurds are dubious allies" derail: Turkish forces bomb the PKK after alleged PKK border raids.
posted by klangklangston at 8:51 PM on October 15, 2014

Why does Turkey bombing and killing Kurds make Kurds dubious allies? Seems kind of like blaming the victim in this case.

Why would failing to solve conflict in the Middle East have much of a bearing on Obama's legacy?

I think he deserves blame for letting Iraq fall to pieces with large portions of it going to Daesh. Ignoring Iraq and letting Iran take the reigns has had disastrous results. After 911 we were supposed to prevent save havens for terrorists and under Obama half of the ME has become one. It is hard to put the blame directly on him, but the US has a lot of influence in the region, and it doesn't seem he has used it effectively until it was too late.
posted by Golden Eternity at 10:14 PM on October 15, 2014

I think he deserves blame for letting Iraq fall to pieces...

Surely you mean blame for not putting Humpty back together again.
posted by Mental Wimp at 8:30 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Why does Turkey bombing and killing Kurds make Kurds dubious allies? Seems kind of like blaming the victim in this case."

The PKK allegedly was shelling Turkish border outposts prior to getting bombed, and to succeed against IS, we need both of them to work together and not use IS as an excuse to engage in tit-for-tat attacks.

"I think he deserves blame for letting Iraq fall to pieces with large portions of it going to Daesh."

Since people have been predicting the breakup of Iraq as an inevitable consequence of the 2003 invasion, it seems tendentious to blame Obama for that. The Sykes-Picot agreement has always been unstable and can only be enforced by murderous strongmen. Even beyond that broad structural problem, things like the disbandment of the Iraqi army as part of de-Baathification irreparably damaged both the capability of the Iraqi army and the cohesion of Iraq as a coherent nation. Bush broke Iraq and it has never been a functional state since then (though it was far from a model nation prior). Blaming Obama for that is myopic — you might as well blame him for the collapse of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.
posted by klangklangston at 10:34 AM on October 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Congratulations, Dinesh D'Souza. Your Work is Done.

On Tuesday, Keith Ablow, the house psychiatrist at Fox News, went on Fox's radio affiliate and ranted for twelve minutes in a way that Josh Marshall correctly characterized as "Fox 'Doc' Goes Full Stormfront":
Dr. Keith Ablow, a member of the Fox News Medical A-Team, on Tuesday said that Obama won't protect Americans from Ebola because "his affinities" are with Africa, not the U.S. "He's their leader."

"He has it in for us as disappointing people. People who've been a scourge on the face of the Earth," Ablow said on Fox News Radio's The John Gibson show. "In his mind, if only unconsciously, he's thinking, 'Really? We're going to prevent folks suffering with illnesses from coming across the border flying into our airports when we have visited a plague of colonialism that has devastated much of the world, on the world? What is the fairness in that?'"

"How can you protect a country you don't like? Why would you?" Ablow asked....
Ablow said of America, "We don't have a president."
"We don't have a president?" Gibson asked.

"We don't have a president who has the American people as his primary interest, who believes the country has Manifest Destiny and has been a force for good," Ablow insisted.

The Fox News doctor went on to speculate that Obama had only been elected because Americans were victims of Stockholm Syndrome....
[...]

All I can think is that Dinesh D'Souza can go off to his community confinement center with his head held high.

Four years ago, D'Souza published a Forbes cover story titled "How Obama Thinks," which accused President Obama of imbibing the anti-colonialism of the father he barely knew and building his entire worldview out of that anti-colonialism. "For Obama," D'Souza wrote, "the solutions are simple. He must work to wring the neocolonialism out of America and the West."

When D'Souza wrote this, and published a book with the same argument called The Roots of Obama's Rage, many conservatives were appalled.

[...]

And now the D'Souza thesis is so much a part of the right-wing narrative that Ablow can invoke it without even naming its originator. To right-wingers, it's no longer a strange but curiously compelling argument made by that D'Souza fellow -- it's accepted fact. It's been thoroughly worked into the Obama master narrative on the right.

Bravo, Dinesh. The well is fully poisoned now. You did what you set out to do.

posted by tonycpsu at 11:24 PM on October 16, 2014 [2 favorites]

Since people have been predicting the breakup of Iraq as an inevitable consequence of the 2003 invasion, it seems tendentious to blame Obama for that.

If breakup was inevitable, then Obama should have worked harder for a smoother breakup and stable Sunni leadership. However there may have been a chance to salvage Iraq early on after the surge and the Iraqi Spring, if Obama would have asserted himself ahead of Iran and stood up for Sunni interests.

Western governments opted to cede leadership to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey in providing financial, political, and military support for the opposition - even though they have done so in ways that directly undermine Western interests in preventing sectarian radicalization and political fragmentation on the ground.

At a time when US influence and assistance was most needed, President Obama ceded it to Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Iran with disastrous consequences.

This podcast illustrates really well how insane it was to let Turkey and Qatar lead the (jihadist) opposition in Syria: Qatar and Turkey: How did it go so wrong so fast?
posted by Golden Eternity at 6:14 PM on October 18, 2014

If breakup was inevitable, then Obama should have worked harder for a smoother breakup and stable Sunni leadership. However there may have been a chance to salvage Iraq early on after the surge and the Iraqi Spring, if Obama would have asserted himself ahead of Iran and stood up for Sunni interests.

But what is the mechanism by which this could have been accomplished? Are there some explicit steps that could have been taken? What would asserting Obama ahead of Iran look like in terms of concrete actions? Ditto standing up for Sunni interests?
posted by Mental Wimp at 6:50 PM on October 19, 2014 [1 favorite]

Vote all you want. The secret government won’t change
posted by jeffburdges at 7:43 AM on October 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Blaming Obama for that is myopic — you might as well blame him for the collapse of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

OH I WILL. That and these runny eggs.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:00 AM on October 23, 2014 [3 favorites]

What would asserting Obama ahead of Iran look like in terms of concrete actions? Ditto standing up for Sunni interests?

I am not an international relations expert obviously, but it is seems to me whereas MetaFilter is usually highly critical and skeptical of most things, when it comes to President Obama's foreign policy he gets a free pass in spite of a lot of self-evidently poor results: Iran replacing the US as the strongest influence over Baghdad, handing over US strategy in the middle east to Turkey and Qatar with disastrous consequences including Daesh taking of huge swaths of Iraq and Syria and beheading and killing thousands of people in the process, abandoning the FSA, the Kurds in Syria, and the Yezidis and Camp Liberty in Iraq, Assad's genocide in Syria including hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced and possibly many more in the near future if the violence reaches Damascus. And then seemingly expended a lot of effort on things that have absolutely no hope of going anywhere like an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan - or maybe that was just propaganda. It really annoys me how the Department of State has become a joke again under Kerry. He is like America's Baghdad Bob - little of what he says has any bearing on reality. The default conclusion from the Left without any critical analysis seems to be that there is nothing the US President could have done to have a positive impact on any of this. Anything the US does to intervene only makes things worse or is possibly even part of a conspiracy to help the defense industry sell more gunpowder or raise the price of oil, or whatever. Any questioning of these conclusions is met with laughter, maybe rightfully so in my case as I am admittedly kind of an idiot, nevertheless it seems to me the Left is doing itself a huge disservice by neglecting foreign policy and failing to challenge the assumption that there is nothing more that can be done by the US to improve these situations and thereby the future we leave the our grandchildren.

It would probably take fifty years or so before a full assessment of Obama's foreign policy could be made that takes into account the long term outcomes of his actions or inaction and that includes necessary declassified information. It's hard for me to believe, though, that the consensus opinion will be that it was a historic success. I guess time will tell. In any case, it does seem to me he has been handed an extremely complex and difficult situation and has had little public support to get more involved.

With the little that I know these are things that come to mind as far as what he could have done to bring about better results:

- Supported Allawi ( a moderate Sunni) form a government after he beat Maliki in the 2010 elections, or at least fought for better Sunni representation. Instead the decision was made in Tehran in Soleimani's office, where Maliki was selected as Prime Minister with the understanding that all US troops would be out of Iraq. The US seems to have been absent from this negotiation process altogether even though we provide a huge amount of financial and military support to Baghdad, most of which is lost to corrupt beaurocrats.

The Back-Room Deal That Explains The Chaos In Iraq

The Americans knew that Suleimani had pushed them out of the country but were too embarrassed to admit it in public. “We were laughing at the Americans,” [a] former Iraqi leader told me, growing angry as he recalled the situation. “Fuck it! Fuck it!” he said. “Suleimani completely outmaneuvered them, and in public they were congratulating themselves for putting the government together.”

[Allawi] told me that Vice-President Joe Biden called to tell him to abandon his bid for Prime Minister, saying, 'You can’t form a government.' Allawi said he suspected that the Americans weren’t willing to deal with the trouble the Iranians would have made if he had become Prime Minister. They wanted to stay in Iraq, he said, but only if the effort involved was minimal. “I needed American support,” he said. “But they wanted to leave, and they handed the country to the Iranians. Iraq is a failed state now, an Iranian colony.”

What We Left Behind - An increasingly authoritarian leader, a return of sectarian violence, and a nation worried for its future.

- It looked like he was handed a huge opportunity to have a positive impact on the ME with the Arab Spring and may have squandered it. Perhaps the US could have provided better support to help them turn their protest into stronger political movements.
- Insured the Iraqi tribes were paid for their support of the Iraqi government and opposition to Al Qaeda and Daesh after the "surge." If Maliki refused to do it (which he did), perhaps we could have found a way to do it directly or imposed bigger consequences on Maliki for refusing to do so.
- Help develop a national guard that would have allowed the Sunni Tribes to defend themselves and their interests against Daesh and Al Qaeda.
- Create real consequences for Maliki for barrel bombing Sunni civilians. Ditto for Shia and Iranian militias killing civilians, and for other oppression of Sunni minorities, and for refusing to end corruption in the Iraqi military and bureaucracy. This could include withdrawing military support and imposing sanctions on oil sales, or whatever.
- Do more to help the Baghdad government stop the daily suicide bombings in Baghdad.
- If relations between the Sunnis and Baghdad could not be improved, he could have worked to help facilitate a stronger security arrangement between the Sunnis and the Kurds.
- Helped put together a legitimately moderate and strong FSA. The FSA has been an absolute disaster.
- Put pressure on Iran to stop supporting Assad and help find an alternative government that could make peace with the FSA. Pressure on Iran could include reactivating sanctions and ending the nuclear negotiations.
- Created real consequences for Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey for supporting Al Qaeda and Daesh.
- Helped Saudi Arabia more effectively counter Iran by helping to organize Sunnis politically.

I would say the general mistake of Obama's foreign policy was sacrificing US and global long term interests in order to build or retain coalitions with dubious partners like Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia and improve relations with Iran. Instead the US should have done more to strengthen true allies who are working towards the same goals of upholding human rights, building peace based on representative government, protection of minorities, providing education to all citizens, and other similar values. This could include people like the Kurds, Israel, Tunisia, and the "democratic" movements including the Arab Spring within many ME countries: Egypt, Iran, Syria, Libya, and Turkey, and Ukraine in Eastern Europe. There are a many examples where Obama seems to have abandoned allies because of their perceived insignificance, including the truly moderate FSA groups in Syria - however small they may be, the Kurds in Kobane who were almost wiped out by Daesh and were only given support after massive global public outcry, Camp Liberty in Iraq, etc. And I tend to think this is a mistake. He also was late to address innocent civilians killed by drone strikes

Overall I am very fond of Obama. I grew up in all-white area of North Shore Chicago and encountered more than a bit of racism. My parents voted for Reagan, but they ended up campaigning for Obama, something they had never done for any other political candidate, and lost more than a few friends in the process. I voted for him both times and will always cherish the experience of seeing Obama elected and holding office. It is a shame he has had to deal with the GOP in congress or his presidency could have been so much better it seems to me. I also went to school in Iowa and confronted a bit of racism there as well, but it was Obama's victory over Hillary in the Iowa straw poll that catapulted his campaign, and I love Iowa for that. Nevertheless, it looks to me like he's made mistakes in foreign policy in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe. His failure to come to the aide of Kobane and the Yezidis sooner really bothers me and has changed how I look at foreign policy. I'm starting to come around to the idea that he should have intervened in Syria much sooner perhaps by forging a legitimate FSA. But I don't have enough information, or probably acumen, to form great opinions on it. It interests me though, and I think Obama's foreign policy decisions should be challenged.

Doubling Down on Disaster in Syria

Moshe Ya'alon interview
posted by Golden Eternity at 3:10 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

"I am not an international relations expert obviously, but it is seems to me whereas MetaFilter is usually highly critical and skeptical of most things, when it comes to President Obama's foreign policy he gets a free pass in spite of a lot of self-evidently poor results: Iran replacing the US as the strongest influence over Baghdad, handing over US strategy in the middle east to Turkey and Qatar with disastrous consequences including Daesh taking of huge swaths of Iraq and Syria and beheading and killing thousands of people in the process, abandoning the FSA, the Kurds in Syria, and the Yezidis and Camp Liberty in Iraq, Assad's genocide in Syria including hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced and possibly many more in the near future if the violence reaches Damascus. "

I'm not necessarily a foreign policy expert either. I took a couple of classes in it, but I don't think that's given me more than a couple of frameworks to examine things in. That said… A big reason why you're not seeing the criticism here is because you're out of consensus with regard to both the descriptive and normative views of American power.

For instance, it is totally reasonable for Iran to have a large influence on Iraq's politics. I'd disagree that it's the strongest influence over Baghdad, but it's the country right next door that shares a tremendous amount of culture, economics and religion. They're much closer to Iraq in pretty much every way than the U.S. is, and the complaint about them having more influence over Iraq is because we don't like Iranian policy. Likewise, Turkey and Qatar are much more involved in these conflicts by reasons of geography and culture. In any other situation, it would be totally normal for regional powers to have more local influence.

Even further, when you get into the litany of complaints about the Iraqi government, those are largely domestic issues. While Iraq was functionally a U.S. protectorate for a few years, that level of colonialism is not a good idea for the 21st century. It involves too many judgments made from a distance based on external interests, especially when part of Obama's campaign was pulling back from Iraq.

I am far more interventionist than most posters on MeFi. But I recognize that the overarching American influence is incredibly costly to maintain and not necessarily a positive, sustainable option for global harmony.

Fundamentally, you over-estimate the amount of influence that the U.S. has and discount the complexities of internal Iraqi politics in favor of a reductionist American Superman theory, and with that you also overstate how much the U.S. should be involved in the domestic politics of another nation. I had hoped that the U.S. would intervene more in Syria before it mushroomed so horribly out of control, but I also recognize that it would have been very difficult and would have required a lot of political capital with uncertain results (I mean, even now when we're trying to arm the PKK, we're seeing those weapons turn up with ISIS).

We have had enough client states. I'm not going to complain too much about Obama choosing not to have another client state in Iraq.
posted by klangklangston at 4:01 PM on October 23, 2014 [1 favorite]

If Iran's regime wasn't so despotic I would agree with you. Iran has instigated sectarian conflict in Iraq as they have done throughout the Middle East in their attempt to form a Shia Crescent between Iraq and Syria, effectively acting on imperial ambitions that could cause the ME to explode. Turkey has similar ambitions. The Iranian regime is extremely brutal and anti-democratic. Stonings and acid attacks against women are a common occurrence as well as other crack-downs against human rights activists and supporters of democracy. I think Kissinger makes good points that regimes like Iran's that oppose the system of international norms and laws that have helped prevent major conflict since WWII, are a detriment to preserving "world order" and should be opposed. Obama's decision to try to work with Iran is probably a mistake. We should support the Green Movement and democratic movements within Iran and oppose Iran's imperial ambitions rather than facilitate them.

Iraq was given to Obama as a client state. Obama could have done more to insure we left it in good standing rather than handing it over to Iran. I don't think the suggestions I made overestimate US influence. Many of them we are doing now; doing them earlier could have prevented the crisis and saved thousands from death, rape, and enslavement. Neglecting Iraq may turn out to be way more expensive then maintaining influence would have. We probably have already spent ~$1B and the war supposedly could go on for thirty years. If Iraq were prepared and willing to fend off Daesh, or more attention on Syria had prevented them from growing so powerful in the first place, a lot of money could have been saved in the long run.

General Dempsey to the Rescue - How America’s top military leader dragged Obama back into Iraq

the Kurdish leader grew angry, telling Kerry that the United States had “failed to meet its commitments” to arm the Kurds—with the result that the weapons ISIL were using, including American weapons captured from Iraqi stores, were much more lethal than what his troops employed.
[...]
The three (most important leaders of Iraq's Sunni community), along with a wider group of supporters opposed to Maliki, had also developed an extensive proposal that included a list of grievances against Maliki and a political program for addressing them. The five-page paper, which was forwarded to me by this same Anbar leader, accused Maliki of launching an “authoritarian/sectarian revenge campaign” against Iraq’s Sunni community. At the heart of the proposal was a demand that the United States abandon its support for Maliki and support the establishment of a Sunni “National Guard” with “an enduring command structure” that could not be undermined from Baghdad. But the appointment of a U.S. adviser to oversee the effort was key.

It's easy to say this in hindsight, but this stuff should have happened long before Daesh became so powerful. Obama's insistence on Maliki's removal before providing airpower was a strong move though, and I've read some news that Sunni tribes are now fighting against Daesh with our help.
posted by Golden Eternity at 10:24 PM on October 23, 2014

Stonings and acid attacks against women are a common occurrence...

Stoning to death was blocked as legal punishment by Khomeini's order in 1981.[31] The Iranian judiciary officially placed a moratorium on stoning in 2002.[32] In 2005, judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimirad stated, "in the Islamic republic, we do not see such punishments being carried out", further adding that if stoning sentences were passed by lower courts, they were overruled by higher courts and "no such verdicts have been carried out."[1] In 2008, the judiciary decided to fully scrap the punishment from the books in legislation submitted to parliament for approval.[33] In early 2013, Iranian parliament published official report about excluding stoning from penal code and it accused Western media for spreading "noisy propaganda" about the case.[34]

As for stonings and acid attacks against women by non-governmental agents, they are no more common in Iran than they are in Pakistan, Syria, or Somalia, for that matter. The constant demonizing of Iran vis-a-vis US allies and other countries is a systematic attempt to drum up war against them. It's not hard to see the pattern.
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:59 PM on October 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm glad they've stopped stoning women to death for adultery. Hopefully the acid attacks for improper modesty will stop someday as well. The acid attacks are often perpatrated by the Basij, "a paramilitary volunteer militia established in 1979 by order of the Islamic Revolution's leader Ayatollah Khomeini," who are also participating in the genocide in Syria. The sponsorship, support, and participation in literal genocide in Syria, which started out as a crackdown on democracy similar to what Iran did to the Green Movement in Tehran, is probably the most damning activity of the Iranian regime and should give Obama pause about cooperating with them. At least in this one case, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps appears to have participated in a stoning as well: RED STAINS ON A WHITE SHROUD

I'm certainly not suggesting going to war with Iran, but I think we should more actively oppose them politically especially as they try to gain footholds in other countries and cause havoc.
posted by Golden Eternity at 1:30 PM on October 24, 2014

...actively oppose them politically especially as they try to gain footholds in other countries and cause havoc.

Hmmm. What country does this remind me of?
posted by Mental Wimp at 8:50 PM on October 24, 2014

I'm certainly not suggesting going to war with Iran, but I think we should more actively oppose them politically especially as they try to gain footholds in other countries and cause havoc.

Which specific policies would you advocate beyond those the US is already doing? The US is doing a lot. It is a bit like suggesting we get Lebron James for our inturmural basketball team.
posted by humanfont at 1:35 PM on October 25, 2014

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