Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
I say he totally sucks now, but that can change at anytime. Maybe in a few weeks some of his more daring/innovative foreign policy ideas will come to fruition.
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Well, at least you're honest, and aren't pretending that you had some regard for him before he was elected.
I agree that people should be able to hold informed opinions about their leaders whenever they like. However, you yourself said that it's impossible to judge certain things without the benefit of hindsight, and I agree. With that said, two things have to happen before a "judgment" of Obama can ascend beyond the realm of opinions and ***holes (i.e., everybody's got one.)
1. You have to decide what success would have looked like, and what failure means in a specific sense.
2. You have to wait long enough to see if the predicted results of his policies either came true or did not.
In that sense, here's an important wrinkle: let's hypothetically say that in the month of March, the economy had turned around completely and things right now were just hunky-dory, smooth-sailing, happy times. Could Obama be given credit for that?
I say no. Why? Because as recently as the last week of January,
Bush was still president. An economic recovery this fast would have to be noted as the final achievement of the Bush administration's TARP-bailout from last fall. Obama would then get to ride the coattails of that recovery, but it would not be his achievement.
So... if you can't give him credit for success, it's probably still too early to blame him for failure. Your Nixon example is quite telling: you chose a policy the true implications of which could not have been fully understood for many, many years. That's probably the case now.
However, feel free to form an opinion now--or rather, to stick to the opinion you already had. As you say, it's your right. Just remember that there was a President, who 60 days into his administration had:
1. Overseen the secession of seven states, largely in response to his own election.
2. Tried, but failed, to relieve sectional tensions through a compromise that would have effectively enshrined slavery in the constitution.
3. Severely underestimated the gravity of the crisis, leading to Federal troops getting caught with their pants around their ankles at Ft. Sumter. Lincoln then mishandled the aftermath, leading to four more states seceding.
4. Refused to negotiate with the new confederate government, thus passing up his only opportunity for a bloodless end to the crisis.
5. Suspended the writ of habeas corpus, temporarily demonizing his own side and galvanizing antipathy to the Federal government in border states like Virginia.
In the ensuing months, he appointed the incompetent Gen. George McLellan to command the Union army, oversaw the humiliating defeat at Bull Run and a number of other places, and generally was at the center of a complete cluster****. He is now remembered as perhaps the greatest President, and probably rightly so. But his first 60--indeed, his first 100 days, were a complete disaster--and he could easily be (and was) criticized for his bungling of the entire affair from start to finish, as long as you ignore what happened later.
The point is--give it time. I'm not so foolhardy as to suggest that I know the mettle of this man any better than anybody else. And I agree that comparisons should be bracketed--Bush is not Obama, they face different challenges, etc. But it's equally dumb to take the Rush Limbaugh approach, to hope he fails, and then invent impossible tests to prove that he did. There's a little of that going on in this thread, frankly.