I think every president has an idea of what kind of president they want to be when they take office. And then life gets in the way.
George Bush wanted to be a domestic policy president, who focused on education policy. His first effort was No Child Left Behind, but then the wars happened. He neglected his signature policy, which was torn apart and ruined by number-manipulating state bureaucrats. Money got sucked into a war that he hoped would end in one week. He ended up as a mocked, failed War President. A punchline on late night TV.
Obama wanted to usher in a new era of prosperity and equality. Instead, he's getting buffeted by an economy that won't pick up steam.
How much of this failed economy is Obama's fault? Is he failing the economy or is the economy failing him? Could he have done more with the stimulus? Taken a stronger stance against Tea Party types? Used his rhetorical skills to put a spin on this bad situation?
The most discussed New York Times article among my Facebook friends (yes, a scientific sample) is Sunday's Opinion piece by Drew Weston that argues that Obama has failed us.
There is something tragic about the modern American Presidency. We let this guy's imagination go wild during the two year election campaign. Let him dream of greatness. We give him about two months to achieve those lofty goals in a political system that grows more dysfunctional, polarized, bureaucratically calcified by the year. When he inevitably fails, due to circumstance or human frailty, we mock him, hate him, loath him.
Jonah does not want to be president when he grows up. Who can blame him?
Apt. 11d 
None of my Facebook friends post anything but pictures of their kids, vacations photos, and challenges to show I care by changing my status to indicate that I am opposed to various diseases.
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Libya deserves at least passing mention, I think. Back in March, Obama promised that active US involvement would take “days, not weeks.” It’s almost like the 2011 Obama and the anti-war 2007 Obama aren’t the same person, although perhaps the 2007 Obama would also have been seduced by the possibility of multilateral military action side by side with the French. (There’s a similar break in continuity with the campaigning GWB and his initial contempt for “nation-building.”)
http://abcnews.go.com/International/libya-crisis-obama-moammar-gadhafi-ultimatum/story?id=13164938
With any luck, we may also be up for a Somalia II.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_(1993)
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“Used his rhetoric skills to put a spin on this bad situation?”
Obama has ridden just about as far as you can on rhetoric, and he’s entering the zone of diminishing returns. What was the point of his statement this week?
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I still can’t shake my suspicion that the reason the economy won’t pick up steam is because the actual state of the economy has been much worse than anybody has acknowledged for the past 15 years or so. If you figure 2007 is the baseline, Obama has been doing very poorly, but if 199-whatever through 2007 was a bubble-induced aberration funded by weirdly cheap international capital and drunken hedge fund managers temporary ability to hide risk, then Obama is just suffering from bad timing and the general pointlessness shared by the American political elite.
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Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job
“African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation’s broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, ‘It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can’t catch a break.'”
http://www.theonion.com/articles/black-man-given-nations-worst-job,6439/
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love that, Russell.
It is a cruel twist of fate that the fate of the presidency is tied to the economy, because he can’t do much about the fact that union and manufacturing jobs are gone, the Greeks have stolen all the EU money, wars that he didn’t start have sucked up trillions of dollars, the political system is incapable of making tough decisions, and so on.
Anecdote. Getting quotes on refinishing 1,000 square feet of floors. There is a 1 grand difference between American, blue collar workers and companies that outsource their work to undocumented labor.
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Getting quotes on refinishing 1,000 square feet of floors.
Whenever I feel like refinishing something, I wind up finding houses like this. Then I’m happy that I live in the boring neighborhood.
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If it weren’t for Obama, I could put on some paint and flip the place to somebody with an FHA loan and a couple hundred cash.
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Well that’s why the Palins, Newts, and Huckabee’s aren’t running, right? (Yes, I know that Newt is technically running, but not really, right?). They’re all folks who have jumped the celebritician shark, and don’t need the press from running for president to keep their easier and more lucrative careers running.
Bachmann, Huntsman, Perry, probably need more press before they can become well paid Fox commentators (I’ve heard Huntsman on the radio and think he totally could be a successfully talk show host). Romney, on the other hand, I think really wants to be president (as did McCain).
I haven’t figured out why Kasich isn’t going straight for that route instead of shopping around for districts to run in. But, possibly, he needs more publicity (especially national publicity) or liberal venues just don’t have the lucrative contracts to offer (compared to Fox).
My daughter still pretends she wants to be president, but I think that’s more ’cause she wants someone to write a book about her presidency than because she really wants to run the country.
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“There is a 1 grand difference between American, blue collar workers and companies that outsource their work to undocumented labor.”
I wonder if the undocumented labor outfits are paying Labor and Industries (or whatever you call it in NJ), Social Security, Medicare, etc., or if they just hand their guys a bundle of cash at the end of the day.
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You can, or could years ago, get away with calling them independent contractors and pretend that they were going to pay all of that themselves.
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“You can, or could years ago, get away with calling them independent contractors and pretend that they were going to pay all of that themselves.”
People still try to get away with that a lot, but the IRS doesn’t like it. If workers don’t use their own tools, they’re not subcontractors.
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The corollary to the one Russell quoted:
Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’
WASHINGTON, DC–Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that “our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.”
“My fellow Americans,” Bush said, “at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us.”
Bush swore to do “everything in [his] power” to undo the damage wrought by Clinton’s two terms in office, including … going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies …
During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-pros,464/
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It’s ridiculous to say that the president gets only two months to fix things up. Ronald Reagan inherited a very troubled economy, and certainly the Democrats began to categorize him as a failure as soon as they plausibly could (the New York Times observed in 1982 that the “stench of failure” hung over the administration). But over three or four years, Reagan’s policies worked (unlike someone else I could name), and he won re-election handily. Along the way, he spent very little time whining about how terrible his predecessors had been, because he was a grown-up.
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“It’s ridiculous to say that the president gets only two months to fix things up.”
It’s probably more like 2/2.5 years of benefit-of-the-doubt. That’s where we are right now, and there’s been a surge of ankle-biting from former Obama supporters. Two months (or three months) is probably how long a president gets carte blanche. I’m not sure they should get that, either, actually.
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Here’s the Obama speech keyboard. Each key will produce Obama saying a different word, and you can string them together as you like.
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/07/build-your-own-obama-speech.html
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