Has Obama been a good President? Paul Krugman thinks he has. In fact he thinks he is one of the three most important presidents in modern history, mainly because of what he has faced and what he has accomplished. First is Roosevelt, then Johnson, then Obama.
Roosevelt is in a place by himself. He faced the depression and a world war and he brought us through both with flying colors. Johnson passed more significant legislation than anyone else and now Obama comes along, part of both. He has passed one of the most significant pieces of legislation in history, something that almost all his predecessors tried to do and failed and he did it in the face of almost complete opposition from the faithful opposition.
He was faced with a slightly smaller version of what Roosevelt saw in the depression and two wars caused by his predecessor. He pulled us out of the depression and he is continuing to work on that and he has, so far kept us from killing too many American kids to solve other people’s problems. That’s significant. No, he’s not a charismatic leader. He’s certainly no Bill Clinton but he’s actually accomplished a hell of a lot more than Clinton ever did.
Everybody talks about Reagan but he actually didn’t significantly change where we stood as a country or where we stood in the world and the claim that he destroyed the USSR is ludicrous. He didn’t even know it was crashing until people were picking up pieces of the Berlin wall for souvenirs.
Leon Panetta says that Obama relies on the approach of a law professor rather than then that of a leader. If he means that Obama is careful about making decisions that effect the world, that’s true. It’s about time we had a leader in this country that considers the consequences of his decisions. Clinton’s considerations were all based on political concerns. Bush’s were all based on power and oil, his father’s on moral principles which is not all wrong; Reagan’s on how good a film script they would make.
One of the big complaints about Obama has to do with his national security credentials. Okay let’s look at that. His basic bottom line, don’t do anything stupid, places him far in front of most of his predecessors, especially George Bush. Despite the mess in the Middle East, which he had nothing to do with creating, we as a country are in a far better position in the world today than when Bush left office
Basically healthcare is a huge achievement. Pulling us out of the depression was almost as big, maybe bigger, even though many don’t think it has gone far enough. His environmental policies are good and where they have failed it is because of a do-nothing congress that has failed to function on anything.
Leon Panetta was on with Bob Scheiffer , discussing the war in Iraq and Susan Rice’s statement that the President has reiterated, that we will not have boots n the ground in this fight. They were both critical of this strategy, both saying that the President should have all options open. Now these are two supposedly smart guys and one thinks that they might consider that the President, by stating that he wouldn’t use ground troops isn’t sending a message to ISIS but to the other players in this game, a message that says, id there are going to be ground forces in this action, they are going to have to be yours.
It definitely appears that if Obama leaves even a chance that he may supply ground troops, the Arab nations, whose asses we are saving, will never commit their own troops. It is essential that we make them do the heavy lifting. It is also essential, that we make them pay the freight for this mission of saving them from religious fanatics of their own ilk. It is costing us a fortune and we will gain nothing from this fight. They will gain everything. Why should we pay the cost? These are not our problems.
Sure the ISIS forces are scabrous slime but the groups we are protecting are not a hell of a lot better. Helping them should cost our nation nothing. In fact we should make a profit much like we did in the Gulf war.
But back to Panetta himself and what he has to say. He says that the president needs to have the heart of a lion and that he needs to be ready to engage. Well, that has been the history of our presidents, hasn’t it? Even Jimmy Carter was forced into that position and look what happened to him. But I think Panetta is wrong about Obama and about US foreign policy. Obama is actually being a warrior, a smart warrior, when he stands back and observes what is going on before he jumps in with both feet. It’s easy to be a man of blind action like Bush or Cheney but look where that got us. They were ready to fight at a seconds notice but they had no idea who to fight or how they were going to end that fight and they cost us thousands of lives and trillions of dollars
Obama has looked at that position, seen it for the disaster it was and decided to actually get all the facts before he makes a decision, thereby investigating the remote possibility that we actually do something right in international politics for a change.
This country has often been accused of having no foreign policy. Most often this has been done by people who don’t know the difference between long-term policy and immediate tactics. Obama is, at least, looking for a strategy that we will be able to follow to some orderly conclusion even as he deals with the mess created by the ill thought out tactics of his predecessors.
Considering the overall time from 2001 until now, this segment of the Middle East war is a very short one. Maybe we should just sit back like the President and let events develop so that we can see what is really going on and thereby compose a strategy that has, at least, a chance of success.
It’s when a pretty stupid woman named Susan Page who writes for USA Today appears on Face the Nation and makes a statement that the world is a dangerous place and that the government is not competent to handle it, that one realizes that anyone can write for USA Today who has learned to type. Yes the world is a dangerous place. In fact it always has been, but it is really no more dangerous today than it has been many times in history. What it has is better communication, making us now more aware of the problems. But our government, despite its problems is more than adequate to handling what is going on. All we need to do is keep politics out of the decision making and have a few of our loudest but least intelligent voices keep their opinions to themselves, at least until situations, like Ebola and ISIS develop to a point where they can rely on more than panic or their misinterpretations of what is actually going on, to create an opinion.
Considering that America in the form of the World Trade Center was attacked twice, once when Bush the elder was one month out of office and the second time when his son, Bush the warlike, had been in office for eight months, it would seem that Obama has been a very staunch defender of the nation in comparison to the aggressive but inept Bush family.
Page, of course ignores these facts and goes on to say that under Obama the nation is not safe. Obviously Susan knows nothing of history and less of the present.
Looking at Obama’s time in office. Anyone who says this is a failed presidency just isn’t paying attention, or has an ax to grind. During his first two years Obama had more stuff done that Clinton did in eight years, this despite almost blindly universal opposition by the GOP.
Of course there’s healthcare, which is now a huge success but there is much more. He prevented a depression of epic scale. We were losing 850,000 jobs a month when he took office. He turned that around and now we are gaining a quarter a million a month and have been doing to for years. Then he lost his democratic majority in the House and the GOP has stopped everything that would help the country simply because Obama is behind it and they don’t want anything good to be attributed to the black man in the white house.
If there is anything wrong with Obama’s presidency it seems to be a lack, not of legislative skills, but of political cunning. He has not managed to get any of his right wing opponents to help him get the good stuff that he comes up with and that they actually approve of, into law.
A good example of Republican thinking, can be attributed to Robert George, who states that Obama did pass healthcare, but that it is still unpopular. This is a boldfaced lie. It’s only unpopular in the feeble minds of the obstinate right. George further states that Obama will have a tough time getting anything through a unified Republican congress, and in that, he’s right.
Nobody asks why a unified congress wouldn’t want to execute laws dealing with immigration, which everyone thinks we need and why they would not approach new tax legislation which everybody and his brother agree that we need. Why is congresses failure being ascribed to Obama? It’s simple, the Republicans yell louder and longer then the Democrats, They also lie with much more conviction.