Captain Cheesestick

So - nice and easy. Do you think he's done a good job or not?

nethead

I don't think the answer is as simple as a yes or no, well for me it isn't anyway.

Captain Cheesestick

Yeah I know. Thought it would be interesting what people think regardless of his opponent next year.

sir_eccles

I lean towards yes but as you say it isn't black and white.

He was certainly dealt a bad hand at the start of the game and it does seem to me as if the other players at the table don't want to even lay a bet.

He's playing a dangerous game of letting the Republicans just filibuster any progressive legislation such as jobs bills rather than trying to be more forceful.

Uncle Ebenezer

Nay.

cindyabs

Me neither. I didn't vote for him and he still hasn't won me over. To be fair, I'm not seeing anyone else amongst the front runners from the other sideteam that thrills me.



I've always wondered what the election winner thinks after they start getting briefed on this and that etc. I mean they've spent the campaign saying, I CAN DO THIS TO CHANGE THINGS, ALL I HAVE TO DO IS CLICK MY HEELS TOGETHER THREE TIMES........ and then reality sets in, and they think: Uh oh.

SultanOfSwing

This is a hard one - isn't it?

On one hand, I think he's a smarmy, arrogant prick who has no balls and I'm sick of the sight of him. On the other hand, what if someone like Rick Perry won instead? I honestly wish the Democrats could offer up another option, or we could get a decent independent.

For all his crap about the gold standard, I have to confess, Ron Paul is looking like a better option for me, personally

I'm tired of hearing the 'oh it's not his fault' - I know Bush made a giant mess of things, but are you telling me after almost 4 years, we're still no better off and we really think he deserves a second term? Sorry, I'm not buying it.

sir_eccles

I recall near the end of Bush's first term despite all the crap he was doing, all his supporters saying "you don't change horses mid stream" etc etc.

I am fully expecting the very same people to say "we must change horses mid stream" etc etc.

SultanOfSwing

I wasn't a supporter of Bush, we should have changed horses mid stream in 2004. I think we should probably think about it now, too - the problem being, is there a horse in the race who's worth switching to?

I'm not so sure.

Sally Redux

Yay (if that mean yea).

Octang Frye

Wow, you're naive. Republicans filibustering the jobs bill?
a) It didn't pass the Dems. They rejected it, because it's bullshit.
a) The bill was never meant to pass. It's political cover so that next year he can say he tried to do something and can blame his "enemies".

I support a lot of the OWS protestors gripes, but when I see that 50% of them want to reelect this cretin - and indeed so many of you here - I just facepalm. I can't believe the level of reality disconnect.

Most of you here worshipped at the altar of arch-not-very-nice-person Steve Jobs (I notice no comments from you when Dennis Ritchie died last week - one of the co-fathers of C and UNIX). But even Jobs said Obama was a one-term president.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1...n_1022786.html

When he finally relented and they met at the Westin San Francisco Airport, Jobs was characteristically blunt. He seemed to have transformed from a liberal into a conservative.

"You're headed for a one-term presidency," he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them.

Jobs also criticized America's education system, saying it was "crippled by union work rules," noted Isaacson. "Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform." Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year.

zargof

What we need is another Clinton in the White House. Hell at this point I'd even take Chelsea.

Captain Cheesestick

He took on a cluster****. I hate this crap about how everything went wrong the day after he started. Still, it's not the same problem that is sinking Europe and his methods of recovery are to throw government money at stuff without any results to show for it. But don't tell me John McCain wouldn't have done much the same.

Still, he ballsed it up with the first stimulus (and the "I won" nonsense that went with it) and a health insurance reform bill that sucked up to insurance companies by giving them millions of new premiums and an excuse to raise costs. If he loses he has himself to blame as far as trying to paint himself as a new above-politics messiah. And anyone who bought into that is an idiot. The result is that his own Party isn;t behind him. Not because he wants to radically change stuff either and break old style politics - but because he just hasn't got any political moves. He is suffering hugely from the one thing an untested arrogant politician with little experience would always suffer from - he hadn't learned how to do the politics part.

Anyhoo - here's Jon Huntsman's view of the last Republican debate. He decided not to take part in it.

http://nextgenjournal.com/2011/10/ng...jobs-and-more/

"I was totally embarrassed - completely embarrassed by the lack of seriousness, the lack of focus on the issues that really matter to the American people - issues about reviving our economy and addressing joblessness were given short shrift. Our role in the world and securing our position of pre-eminence were given short-shrift. It was more game-show-like than anything else...."

And here is hyper-partisan Obama fanboy Andrew Sullivan's take on Obama - it's what he thinks Obama should run on.

(Short Version: Best. President. Ever.)

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast....ma-record.html

"Personally, I am praying that Obama's messaging improves drastically. (It has failed on multiple occasions - not the least of which was during August/September of 2008.)

The truth is that this President has done a good job in what has been one of the most difficult periods of modern history. He saved the economy from ruin (until the Tea Party took over Congress) with a stimulus that was as large as possible given the political realities, presided over a stock market that fairly quickly recouped many of its losses, presided over almost consecutive monthly increases in private sector job growth (unfortunately balanced by monthly decreases in public sector jobs which I attribute to the GOP further starving government), enacted the only meaningful healthcare reform ever in our history, passed financial reform (no matter what the Left says, he did this), saved the auto industry (which Romney is on record opposing), fired the first salvo of the Arab Spring with his address in Cairo no less, drawn down our footprint in Iraq in a responsible way (and headed toward almost total withdrawal), stopped numerous terrorist attacks in this country, stopped torture as policy, repealed DADT, joined the international community in a measured and responsible way to bring down an odious tyrant in Qaddafi, and killed a whole generation of al Qaeda leaders. And taking out Osama bin Laden the way he did will go down as one of the bravest military actions in American history.

....If you'd told me in January 2009 that the banks would pay us back the entire bailout and then some, that the auto companies would actually turn around with government help and be a major engine of recovery, that there would be continuous job growth since 2009, however insufficient, after the worst demand collapse since the 1930s, that bin Laden would be dead, Egypt transitioning to democracy, al Qaeda all but decimated as a global threat, and civil rights for gays expanding more rapidly than at any time in history ... well I would be expecting a triumphant re-election campaign."

Michael

The only mistake that Obama made was that he allowed himself to be the whipping boy for the republicans by trying to be bipartisan but the republicans from the beginning had the intention to destroy Obama even if it meant that that the American people and the world would have to suffer.

As far as his foreign policy, it is far superior and has had much greater success than Bush's but even the coordinated republican opposition won't give him any credit.

All the republicans seem to want to do is return to policies that destroyed economies and governments around the world with more insane economic and foreign policies. All those republican candidates can't wait to return us to the greatness of the Bush era.

zargof

You're right about trying to be bipartisan, that was a big mistake. He should have used the opportunity of controlling both Houses to ram through some changes that would have really made a difference regardless of how loudly the Republicans screamed. Because now we have paralysis in Congress and nothing of meaning is going to get done.

What amuses me though are the conservatives (such as our simian friend) who are now criticizing Obama for his jobs bill being political, unlike everything the Republicans have done since Obama was elected.

As for the Republican candidates: I like Ron Paul because he is honest and says what he thinks unlike the others who say what they think will win them votes. The trouble is some of his policies are so bat shit crazy, they make Herman Cain's 999 tax policy seem sensible. Out of all of them I think Huntsman is the one that talks the most sense, but of course he doesn't have a hope.