So how muh longer until we can say Obama sucks?

[HPLovecraft]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHzKxtwuGzo

[octothorp]

Originally Posted by octothorp

Sure, he didn't do very good in the first round, but he bounced back in the second round, and I think you've got to wait until at least the elite eight to really judge his bracket. For the most part he's played it perhaps a little too conservative, but he did pick Syracuse to upset Oklahoma, and ultimately that game probably decides the fate of his bracket: if he's right about that upset and the top seeds win in the rest of the round, then ultimately you've gotta say that it was at least mildly successful. And I'm far from an Obama apologist. Personally, I'd love to see his bracket get completely destroyed by a couple one-seeds getting upset at the sweet 16 level.

Okay, I've gotta admit, it's starting to look like the critics were right. Syracuse, Duke, and his final four pick Memphis all lost. Losing a final four pick during the Sweet 16 stage is just inexcusable. He was trying to do the showy thing with picking a 3 seed Syracuse to advance, but if you're going to pick a 3 seed, Missouri and Villanova were both obviously better. I mean, it's still possible that one of his three remaining picks wins the tournament, but they're all #1 seeds. There's no victory in being right about #1 seeds when your underdog picks fizzle.

[HOZ]

From the Economist: Starting to wonder if their endorsement was misplaced


But at home Mr Obama has had a difficult start. His performance has been weaker than those who endorsed his candidacy, including this newspaper, had hoped. Many of his strongest supporters—liberal columnists, prominent donors, Democratic Party stalwarts—have started to question him. As for those not so beholden, polls show that independent voters again prefer Republicans to Democrats, a startling reversal of fortune in just a few weeks. Mr Obama’s once-celestial approval ratings are about where George Bush’s were at this stage in his awful presidency. Despite his resounding electoral victory, his solid majorities in both chambers of Congress and the obvious goodwill of the bulk of the electorate, Mr Obama has seemed curiously feeble.

All I can says is that the man has had no executive experience at all. Not many businesses would have hired him with his current resume. The G20 summit in London maybe he can have a do-over with the gift thingy with 10 Downing Street. Have a read.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by HOZ

From the Economist: Starting to wonder if their endorsement was misplaced


But at home Mr Obama has had a difficult start. His performance has been weaker than those who endorsed his candidacy, including this newspaper, had hoped. Many of his strongest supporters—liberal columnists, prominent donors, Democratic Party stalwarts—have started to question him. As for those not so beholden, polls show that independent voters again prefer Republicans to Democrats, a startling reversal of fortune in just a few weeks. Mr Obama’s once-celestial approval ratings are about where George Bush’s were at this stage in his awful presidency. Despite his resounding electoral victory, his solid majorities in both chambers of Congress and the obvious goodwill of the bulk of the electorate, Mr Obama has seemed curiously feeble.

All I can says is that the man has had no executive experience at all. Not many businesses would have hired him with his current resume. The G20 summit in London maybe he can have a do-over with the gift thingy with 10 Downing Street. Have a read.

Well, I guess that settles it. Now that you have the imprimatur of The Economist, you can feel free to have at it. Let it be known that HOZ's Obama lovefest is now over.

For the record, I still find the whole thing a little silly. FDR was given 100 days. We're just past 60. Bush was way more "feeble" and far less popular in his first9 months.

Pretending you have the first clue what kind of President Obama will be remembered as is like pretending you have the first clue who will win the Stanley Cup in October. You don't--and you're free to prognosticate if you like, but I wouldn't go betting any of your life-savings on it.

My own view is that Obama's main flaw is that he's too pragmatic and too cautious. But no-one "got duped." That's silly. The only people who thought Obama was a left-wing ideologue were Joe the Plumber and his braintrust. You might remember them from "Kill him!" and "He's a socialist!" The election WAS about hope--but not hope for a massive sea-change in the American polity, just hope for a return to dignity and respect after the idiotic disaster that was the last 8 years. People voted for Obama because he seemed better than Bush. And guess what? He still does.

The problem, to me, is that this is a historical moment that calls for bigger ideas. Why not universal health care? Create a big entitlement program that creates jobs and puts hundreds of dollars a month into the pockets of middle-class consumers? That would be a "Gordian Knot" solution--would definitely stimulate the economy--and would help out the middle class (for whom real wages have been declining since the 60s) a whole heck of a lot.

So to me, he's not swinging for the fences, but a base hit is still a lot better than a strikeout. I sort of think there's a little bit of wishful thinking going on here: like somehow, if Obama fails, then maybe we weren't all such idiots for being on board with Bush for all those years when he was racking up debt through international boondoggles and dragging the American brand through the mud.

Unfortunately, even if Obama fails it won't make Bush a better president. It'll just mean the mess he left was bigger. So.... you may want to cool your jets and start hoping for a different present under the tree.

[Azure]

Simply 'seeming' to be better than Bush doesn't cut it.

Nor does giving the people 'hope'....for what I don't know, considering nothing has changed.....work either.

Obama is in the Whitehouse to provide results.

People won't care if he's too cautious, or too pragmatic, or if the mess Bush left was really big(which I don't get, considering Obama has done NOTHING to fix ANY of the flaws that allowed all of this to happen in the first place).....nor do they care if Congress is full of a bunch of incompetent fools.....they want results. And if Obama doesn't provide results, he is going to be vilified by more and more people.

Thats just the way that American politics works. Bush started off relatively slow.....but soared after 9/11. Most Presidents probably would have, even they hadn't responded the same way Bush did. When it became apparent that Iraq was a major crapshow, his ratings fell like crazy.

Because he wasn't providing results, and the American people were sick and tired of their sons and daughters dying for something that wasn't providing results.

Sure, Obama has a tough job.....and while I can give him 100 days, or 200 days, or a full year.....I can't excuse his wasting of trillions of dollars.

Or any of the other mistakes he has made.

And apparently, neither can the media.

[HOZ]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

Well, I guess that settles it. Now that you have the imprimatur of The Economist, you can feel free to have at it. Let it be known that HOZ's Obama lovefest is now over.

For the record, I still find the whole thing a little silly. FDR was given 100 days. We're just past 60. Bush was way more "feeble" and far less popular in his first9 months.

Pretending you have the first clue what kind of President Obama will be remembered as is like pretending you have the first clue who will win the Stanley Cup in October. You don't--and you're free to prognosticate if you like, but I wouldn't go betting any of your life-savings on it.

My own view is that Obama's main flaw is that he's too pragmatic and too cautious. But no-one "got duped." That's silly. The only people who thought Obama was a left-wing ideologue were Joe the Plumber and his braintrust. You might remember them from "Kill him!" and "He's a socialist!" The election WAS about hope--but not hope for a massive sea-change in the American polity, just hope for a return to dignity and respect after the idiotic disaster that was the last 8 years. People voted for Obama because he seemed better than Bush. And guess what? He still does.

The problem, to me, is that this is a historical moment that calls for bigger ideas. Why not universal health care? Create a big entitlement program that creates jobs and puts hundreds of dollars a month into the pockets of middle-class consumers? That would be a "Gordian Knot" solution--would definitely stimulate the economy--and would help out the middle class (for whom real wages have been declining since the 60s) a whole heck of a lot.

So to me, he's not swinging for the fences, but a base hit is still a lot better than a strikeout. I sort of think there's a little bit of wishful thinking going on here: like somehow, if Obama fails, then maybe we weren't all such idiots for being on board with Bush for all those years when he was racking up debt through international boondoggles and dragging the American brand through the mud.

Unfortunately, even if Obama fails it won't make Bush a better president. It'll just mean the mess he left was bigger. So.... you may want to cool your jets and start hoping for a different present under the tree.

My goodness you are hung up on Bush. This is the second time I posted something and you went off on a Bush tangent. You are very sensitive to me criticizing Obama. Somehow equating my criticism of Obama as trying to make Bush's presidency better. Well I am not. Bush is history and Obama is the man in power.

Did you by chance read the article at all?

[CaptainCrunch]

Bottom line to me is that the comparison's to Bush are a smoke screen and nothing more. Each president handled different situations.

My problem with Obama right now is that he seems to be throwing trillions of dollars at the economic situation without a lot of foresight or due diligence.

I don't agree with the concept that you can merely spend your way out of a recession while peddling a message of hope, it just seems to be the solution that people want to hear and see, and personally I think its a bad plan.

That and Obama seems to be doing a lot of back peddling on multiple situations and his handling of foreign policy seems to be a example of more McCain solutions then his own.

I agree that its a bit too early to be judging an entire presidency, but I think he's had a below average start.

[driveway]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I don't agree with the concept that you can merely spend your way out of a recession while peddling a message of hope, it just seems to be the solution that people want to hear and see, and personally I think its a bad plan.

What is your alternative plan, and why are you not e-mailing it to our leaders right now?

[Ronald Pagan]

Originally Posted by HOZ

My goodness you are hung up on Bush. This is the second time I posted something and you went off on a Bush tangent. You are very sensitive to me criticizing Obama. Somehow equating my criticism of Obama as trying to make Bush's presidency better. Well I am not. Bush is history and Obama is the man in power.

Did you by chance read the article at all?

Did YOU read the article?

The Economist questions him but they hardly blame him for all the problems and even offer up at the end of the article that things could be turning around.

Talk about splicing out what satisfies your bias and ignoring the rest.

[Agamemnon]

Originally Posted by driveway

What is your alternative plan, and why are you not e-mailing it to our leaders right now?

Well... this isn't really the proper thread for 'solutions' and 'constructive debate'. The thread title alone implies that Obama will fail... it's just a question of when, now, or soon? It's really more about reveling in his failure and telling other people 'I told you so'.

If you have a soapbox and an ideology you want to yell out to everyone, then you're in the right place!

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Bottom line to me is that the comparison's to Bush are a smoke screen and nothing more. Each president handled different situations.

My problem with Obama right now is that he seems to be throwing trillions of dollars at the economic situation without a lot of foresight or due diligence.

I don't agree with the concept that you can merely spend your way out of a recession while peddling a message of hope, it just seems to be the solution that people want to hear and see, and personally I think its a bad plan.

That and Obama seems to be doing a lot of back peddling on multiple situations and his handling of foreign policy seems to be a example of more McCain solutions then his own.

I agree that its a bit too early to be judging an entire presidency, but I think he's had a below average start.

Well, spending did work out pretty well for FDR--but in a way, that's neither here nor there. What FDR undertook was a massive re-organization of American entitlements, so it's not surprising that it had a stimulative effect. Obama's stimulus may well be too small, but I think it's pretty clear that the fiscal-conservative-supply-side-ists are pretty much out in the cold right now, and with good reason: after all, John McCain and Lindsey Graham's fingerprints are all over the emendation to the 2001 Omnibus bill that arguably caused the whole mess by deregulating exotic financial instruments like credit default swaps.

However, Obama isn't really after the kind of big sea-change in the way government works that FDR did, but instead increasing spending in hundreds of separate areas. If you want to argue that this might be the wrong approach, I think you'd probably have an argument. But saying "let's keep trying fiscal conservatism. It might start working, for some reason" is the sort of magical thinking that lost John McCain the election. Cutting spending is a recipe for a deeper recession, and most people understand that at the moment. The problem is that spending SHOULD have been kept under control when the economy was doing well, though admittedly that takes the sort of foresight that term-limited politicians aren't generally known for.

So--I actually (for all that HOZ claims I'm somehow "defensive" about it ) am not in love with what Obama has done so far, but not because I think that he isn't living up to his promise. In fact, anyone who paid attention during the campaign knows that Obama is being exactly the kind of president that he seemed like he would be: pragmatic, cautious, humble and careful. All of these are positive qualities until they become flaws, but that's the nature of politics, I guess.

For better or worse, Obama's success or failure as a president will be measured by the economy. If, in two years, the economy is still languishing with no sign of improvement, he'll go down in history as an overly-cautious Hoover-type, too measured to take the kind of drastic action that the situation called for. If things look better, he'll go down as more of an FDR-lite, not responsible for loads of new entitlements, but given credit for shepherding the country out of recession.

In the end, neither is particularly fair: my own view is that the President usually deserves less of the blame and less of the credit for the economic situation than he usually gets--but that's the way it's been in U.S. politics at least since "It's the economy, stupid" and perhaps before.

[Agamemnon]

Originally Posted by HOZ

My goodness you are hung up on Bush. This is the second time I posted something and you went off on a Bush tangent. You are very sensitive to me criticizing Obama. Somehow equating my criticism of Obama as trying to make Bush's presidency better. Well I am not. Bush is history and Obama is the man in power.

There's a whole field of political science called Comparative Politics. In order to measure someone like Obama (assuming a neutral measurement is what you're looking for), you have to contextualize him with other world leaders, as well as previous Presidents.

Without measuring Obama against previous Presidents, it's pretty tough to judge how good of a job he's doing. Bush was the most recent example of someone who had the same job Obama was elected to, I'd say comparisons aren't just useful, they're necessary to figure out what is improving and what isn't. You also need a 'sample' amount of time... 60 days isn't enough.

But, if the goal is to say 'Obama sucks', then I suppose comparing him to the next most recent US President is out of the question.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Agamemnon

There's a whole field of political science called Comparative Politics. In order to measure someone like Obama (assuming a neutral measurement is what you're looking for), you have to contextualize him with other world leaders, as well as previous Presidents.

Without measuring Obama against previous Presidents, it's pretty tough to judge how good of a job he's doing. Bush was the most recent example of someone who had the same job Obama was elected to, I'd say comparisons aren't just useful, they're necessary to figure out what is improving and what isn't. You also need a 'sample' amount of time... 60 days isn't enough.

But, if the goal is to say 'Obama sucks', then I suppose comparing him to the next most recent US President is out of the question.

Talk about a post that cuts right through the BS. Nicely done.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Agamemnon

There's a whole field of political science called Comparative Politics. In order to measure someone like Obama (assuming a neutral measurement is what you're looking for), you have to contextualize him with other world leaders, as well as previous Presidents.

Without measuring Obama against previous Presidents, it's pretty tough to judge how good of a job he's doing. Bush was the most recent example of someone who had the same job Obama was elected to, I'd say comparisons aren't just useful, they're necessary to figure out what is improving and what isn't. You also need a 'sample' amount of time... 60 days isn't enough.

But, if the goal is to say 'Obama sucks', then I suppose comparing him to the next most recent US President is out of the question.

As a guy who has a lot of experience in political science, I think Comparative Politics is actually fairly useless for the purposes you are suggesting. The purpose is to draw comparisons between various political and ideological trends. It does not have the capability nor the specialization to examine presidencies on a scale, regardless of context.

In fact, context is precisely what makes the measurement useless. The precise experiences and policies of all US Administrations have been in response to vastly different times and situations. I'd say we can begin examining the similar Keynesian practices of both Bush and Obama with some of his predecessors, but to say that we can actually compare the efficacy of Presidents themselves is a fruitless statement.

[Ronald Pagan]

Yeah comparative politics isn't generally used to compare presidential administrations.

Comparative politics is used as a socio-scientific method to evaluate the effects of different government institutions and ideologies relative to each other. In essence it's trying to create as best possible a lab study using cases of different government organizations to measure their effects.

Generally, comparative politics would have very little to do with measuring Obama vs. Bush unless there were significant systemic or idealogical changes. The latter may hold but an analysis would only be useful after the fact.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Ronald Pagan

Yeah comparative politics isn't generally used to compare presidential administrations.

Comparative politics is used as a socio-scientific method to evaluate the effects of different government institutions and ideologies relative to each other. In essence it's trying to create as best possible a lab study using cases of different government organizations to measure their effects.

Generally, comparative politics would have very little to do with measuring Obama vs. Bush unless there were significant systemic or idealogical changes. The latter may hold but an analysis would only be useful after the fact.

And we are actually seeing what are basically extensions of George Bush's economic policy. Obama is just going one step further.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by peter12

As a guy who has a lot of experience in political science, I think Comparative Politics is actually fairly useless for the purposes you are suggesting. The purpose is to draw comparisons between various political and ideological trends. It does not have the capability nor the specialization to examine presidencies on a scale, regardless of context.

In fact, context is precisely what makes the measurement useless. The precise experiences and policies of all US Administrations have been in response to vastly different times and situations. I'd say we can begin examining the similar Keynesian practices of both Bush and Obama with some of his predecessors, but to say that we can actually compare the efficacy of Presidents themselves is a fruitless statement.

Well, here's the thing, though: you can't measure success or failure unless you know what either of them looks like. A comparative approach is the only worthwhile way to do that in the moment, because as you say the challenges each administration faces are different.

Incidentally, can you imagine if people tried to pass judgement on Abraham Lincoln after his first 60 days? Good lord. What a cluster**** he presided over. What a loser.

[Agamemnon]

Originally Posted by peter12

As a guy who has a lot of experience in political science, I think Comparative Politics is actually fairly useless for the purposes you are suggesting. The purpose is to draw comparisons between various political and ideological trends. It does not have the capability nor the specialization to examine presidencies on a scale, regardless of context.

Agree to disagree I guess. I think it's extremely important to look at what previous Administrations did when judging the character and effectiveness of the current one... I find that when some judge Obama without the context of previous President's it seems to fit a certain motive... my opinion though.

Does Obama suck now, or is he still a few weeks away?

[Thunderball]

Originally Posted by peter12

And we are actually seeing what are basically extensions of George Bush's economic policy. Obama is just going one step further.

Pretty much. This pretty much indicates that there really wasn't/isn't any other plan in the collective playbooks. Obama or McCain, you would have seen these same things. The only possible difference was Obama was more capable of relaxing people and buoying confidence. However, I think Obama's honeymoon phase is pretty well over.

As for the comparative politics discussions, Peter12 and Ronald Pagan are right. There's way too small of a sample to compare Bush and Obama, and even so, comparative politics as a method of study isn't geared to such a small comparision. Typically, comparative politics studies the differences in nations (ie: Canadian v. American v. British politics), or the differences in policy between parties over a long period of time. So maybe its possible to plot the differences between Bush Sr./ Bush Jr./Reagan/Ford and Clinton/Obama/Carter.

I think Obama will be critiqued on how good of a replacement he was for Bush (seemingly an easy task), and more importantly, how fast he can bail America (and with that, the world) out of this current recession. For these benchmarks, its still very, very early in the game.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

Well, here's the thing, though: you can't measure success or failure unless you know what either of them looks like. A comparative approach is the only worthwhile way to do that in the moment, because as you say the challenges each administration faces are different.

Incidentally, can you imagine if people tried to pass judgement on Abraham Lincoln after his first 60 days? Good lord. What a cluster**** he presided over. What a loser.

Can anyone pass complete judgement on Richard Nixon? If it weren't for his efforts in opening up trade relations with China, we would be in an even worse mess now.

You can only measure certain policies and occasionally, ideologies, but we can't measure "men" on a holistic scale that encompasses everything.

In a free society, we should certainly be allowed to pass judgement (hopefully informed) on our leadership whenever we damn well please.