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20 Jan 09: What the world wants from the new American president.

Redeye, I stand corrected. I now seem to remember that you have previously posted your US relationship.

We all have different points of view. Mine is different from yours at times, and that's what makes "Army.ca" a friendly discussion forum.
 
A world where all agree is boring, and I'm glad that in general there seems to be a good exchange of ideas.  Democracy cannot function without a strong civil society that allows for discourse and that exchange, after all.
 
Redeye said:
That laundry list of sore points of VDH's is to me a lot of fluff and full of red herrings:

Bows to Saudi royalty, the Japanese emperor, and Chinese autocrats - Signs of respect and customary greeting - though seems Obama was a little too enthusiastic - this is being blown totally out of proportion and context.
Actually, for Americans, it is a bit of a big deal, going back to their revolution.  Part of the "thing" about being POTUS is that you are subordinate to nobody, including Royalty.  As I understand it, it is rather bad form for the POTUS to bow to anyone.  (Yes, I've seen the pics of Dubya, but he wasn't bowing, he was lowering his head so that the Saudi dude could put a medallion around his neck).
 
That's true enough I suppose - though as I have read it he's hardly the first to do it - and that said it's a symbolic thing more than anything else.  It's being trumped up by a few extremists to be some sort of thing - just like Lord Monckton's opinion is somehow fact once it passed through Glenn Beck's lips.  Not the best optics, but there's been plenty such little gaffes made by pretty much every Prez Democrat or Republican.  Not really anything of substance long term overall.

Technoviking said:
Actually, for Americans, it is a bit of a big deal, going back to their revolution.  Part of the "thing" about being POTUS is that you are subordinate to nobody, including Royalty.  As I understand it, it is rather bad form for the POTUS to bow to anyone.  (Yes, I've seen the pics of Dubya, but he wasn't bowing, he was lowering his head so that the Saudi dude could put a medallion around his neck).
 
Some pics of how other world leaders greet the Emperor:
http://hotairpundit.blogspot.com/2009/11/president-obama-vs-rest-of-world.html
 
Looks like Obama got it right in the Shanghai China video.
Japan was a bit over the top and perhaps that has been pointed out to him .
 
mariomike, clearly he tried more than a little too hard, I kind of laughed and wondered which of his handlers coached him to do that or if it was his (likely well-intentioned, but obviously poorly executed) initiative.  The reality, however, is that it's not so huge a thing as it's being trumped up to be by people who seem desperate to find any reason to vilify the guy.  I love when they call him "inexperienced" - aren't all Presidents "inexperienced" when they take office for the first time?

It's the same as when they were starting to call him a "failure" as POTUS when he'd been in office for three months (less in some cases!) - as if he somehow was going to dramatically alter a the trajectory of the American economy or social structures in such a short period of time.

I think what really gets to me is that rather than a real good discussion on how to move forward, the whole mess is being dominated by the teabagger set, and the shyte that these people say is just astounding, whether they're claiming he's not a citizen, or that he's a Marxist, or that he's a Muslim, or whatever else they have to say.  I've seen some just amazing blog pieces, Twitterers, and videos of these folks where I start to wonder if they need to throw another chlorine puck in the gene pool.
 
Redeye said:
I love when they call him "inexperienced" - aren't all Presidents "inexperienced" when they take office for the first time?
No, not all presidents "inexperienced" when they take office.  Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas, Reagen was Governor of California.  They are akin to "mini-presidents" in their respective areas, including Commander-in-Chief of an armed force (the various national guards).  Mr. Obama's experience is rather thin for President, and by this I mean in public office.  Remember, if it weren't for his charm, his good looks and Oprah's endorsements, he would have been an asterisk on the pages of US history, much as Geraldine Wasserface is from her run at VP in the 1980s.
Redeye said:
It's the same as when they were starting to call him a "failure" as POTUS when he'd been in office for three months (less in some cases!) - as if he somehow was going to dramatically alter a the trajectory of the American economy or social structures in such a short period of time.
He got the Nobel Peace Prize in less time, so stranger things have happened.
Redeye said:
I think what really gets to me is that rather than a real good discussion on how to move forward, the whole mess is being dominated by the teabagger set, and the shyte that these people say is just astounding, whether they're claiming he's not a citizen, or that he's a Marxist, or that he's a Muslim, or whatever else they have to say.  I've seen some just amazing blog pieces, Twitterers, and videos of these folks where I start to wonder if they need to throw another chlorine puck in the gene pool.
Much as the left was open to "discussion" when Dubya was in office? 
 
Technoviking said:
No, not all presidents "inexperienced" when they take office.  Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas, Reagen was Governor of California.  They are akin to "mini-presidents" in their respective areas, including Commander-in-Chief of an armed force (the various national guards).  Mr. Obama's experience is rather thin for President, and by this I mean in public office.  Remember, if it weren't for his charm, his good looks and Oprah's endorsements, he would have been an asterisk on the pages of US history, much as Geraldine Wasserface is from her run at VP in the 1980s.

True enough - but I don't think that experience is necessarily needed to define a candidate.  Look at Sarah Palin, sure, she was Governor of Alaska (until she quit, anyhow), but what did that get her.  She still comes off as a populist buffoon, nothing really scares me more than the thought of her having influence or a shot at office (although I have a feeling a lot of Democrats would love to have her as an opponent).

Obama was already making a name for himself and a persona in 2004 when he gave the keynote address at the DNC.  He was almost unheard of at that point but I remember when my wife first told me about him and even then it seemed like he'd be the ideal person to step forward.  Of course getting support from Oprah Winfrey (given the tremendous amount of influence she has in America, look at what happens if you're an author and your book gets mentioned by her!) certainly helped him a lot but ultimately, he had to stand on his own and did so.

Technoviking said:
He got the Nobel Peace Prize in less time, so stranger things have happened.

No argument there.  That one made absolutely no sense to me, I don't see what great accomplishment merited that, especially given that as I understand it the nominations would have closed about the same time he was inaugurated.  I've heard a good argument that it is a tool of moral suasion - a sort of "reminder" to "do the right thing".  Whether that's true or not I have no way to say.  I wonder though if it weighed on his consideration of a course in Afghanistan, but doubt it would have.

Technoviking said:
Much as the left was open to "discussion" when Dubya was in office?

Many of them were, and there was lots of good debate and discussion going on then.  There was a lot of very vocal protestors about a lot of things Dubya did and rightly so in my view... but that wasn't all the left just as the teabaggers aren't all the right.  The problem is that anyone in the middle or in the rational camps of across the spectrum is getting drowned out by nonsensical sideshows.  That's not good for anyone ultimately.

What I'll be interested to see is if the right in the US does wind up fracturing - sort of like the PC/Reform/UA/CCRAP rift in Canada, with a teabagger type wing splitting off, sort of like what happened in the 23rd Congressional District of New York recently. It would be beneficial to the Democratic Party for sure to be able to split the right vote.
 
Obama has to really screw up to not win 2012....but, given that, you will proabably find him as reviled as Bush & Clinton by the time his 8 years is up.
 
Boy I like this Redeye guy!  :christmas happy:
Like I told a member in a PM a few days ago I don't like to be labelled as left or right.
When I was in Texas I was slowly becoming a moderate Republican and I could see myself voting for a Progressive Conservative.
But ......  Try and find politicans who sit down and have a calm reasoned argument on the best way to deal with an issue.
Karl Rove didn't help matters and parts of that have spilled into Canada.
Makes you wonder why any competent individual would want to run for political office.  :(
 
I was a card carrying Progressive Conservative until the party ceased to exist, and since then I've found that I'm not real fan of the CPC.  I just can't stand social conservativism.  I'm generally a moderately right leaning centrist when it comes to things like fiscal policy, but even there I find a lot of conservatives to be rather hypocritical and more self-interested than really interested in doing good for all.  In the American case, for example, I wonder where people who see no problem with funding two wars, one of which had very, very dubious casus belli in the first place, get off crying poor on health care reform which impacts so many people.  I'm not committed to any particular position on what form such reform should take but it seems to me that the fact that the administrative costs alone of the American system, with bloated insurance company bureaucracy and admin costs, and costs of delivery soaring to spread out cost of non-payers can be fixed and that some manner of state intervention is the best way to go.  Free markets are good when they function, and markets for healthcare tend not to be efficient - or at least not socially optimal.  Granted the US healthcare system is anything but a free market now but the intervention that does exist is patently ineffective.

Baden Guy is right that this stuff is spilling into Canada - the smearing and nonsense that's starting to pervade national political discourse is just a distraction - witness the Afghan torture allegation handling - it strikes me that the best way to look good in this is hold the inquiry - shine light into all the corners, and prove, as the government should be able to do, that they acted in the best reasonable manner.  Instead, attacking their opponents makes it look like they have something to hide when they fail to produce and real backing to show they don't.

What I'd like to see Obama be able to do is rise above this, get the Congress and Senate to actually work together, and get some policy changes in place that address the myriad of serious issues that the United States (and the world, really) are facing so that they can be clearly perceived as leaders.  That seems to be a pretty tall order for any politician though.

Baden  Guy said:
Boy I like this Redeye guy!  :christmas happy:
Like I told a member in a PM a few days ago I don't like to be labelled as left or right.
When I was in Texas I was slowly becoming a moderate Republican and I could see myself voting for a Progressive Conservative.
But ......  Try and find politicans who sit down and have a calm reasoned argument on the best way to deal with an issue.
Karl Rove didn't help matters and parts of that have spilled into Canada.
Makes you wonder why any competent individual would want to run for political office.  :(
 
Well, if the Obama frot-fest is over, I'd like to jump in here.

On one hand, you two seem to go on (rightly so) about the uselessness of smear campaigns in bringing forth real issues and truth, yet, on the other, you seem to be tripping over each other over Saint Barack.  Dude was elected for a few reasons (in addition to the fact that more people voted for him than for Mr. McCain).  These include, but aren't limited to:
  • his looks
  • his race
  • his ability to speak well VERY well
  • Oprah Winfrey
Not one of these things has bugger all to do with governing.  Public speaking is one skill.  Governing is another. 

You may want Obama to rise above this.  Hey, "Yes we can".  Hey, he's also modest.  Why "only" B+?

his administration had "inherited the biggest set of challenges of any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt" which they were still working on.
So, he grades his performance (B+) and then talks in circles about results and his starting condition.  They aren't the same thing, yet he demonstrates his skill at speaking in circles.  Yes, let us all hope.  ::)
 
I don't disagree with a lot of your comments TV.
I sat and watched Obama consider his answer to Oprah, thinking careful best sidestep this one. Then he comes out with B+.  :-\

One major aspect that stands out in my impression of Obama is his style of policy analysis.
Get the best people in the subject matter, carefully listen to and consider all the pros and cons.
Examine the possible options, implement policy.

I think the way Bush has turned a cold shoulder to Cheney indicates he regrets some of the decisions his administration made.

Ref the  "Obama frot-fest " I recommend "Lil' Bush Girl."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6wO9qcNxAE&feature=fvst


 
Baden  Guy said:
Ref the  "Obama frot-fest " I recommend "Lil' Bush Girl."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6wO9qcNxAE&feature=fvst
:rofl:  that was hilarious!  I also remember this photo (with glee!):
lesbians_against_bush_bumper_sticker-p128711045596571375trl0_400.jpg

;D
 
Well, that didn't take long:

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2009/12/change-obama-now-more-hated-than-bush-at-end-of-his-second-term/

Change… Obama Now More Loathed Than Bush at End of His Second Term
Tuesday, December 22, 2009, 6:59 PM
Jim Hoft

A Good Solid B+

Barack Obama’s approval index number dropped to a new low today.
Rasmussen reported:

    The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 25% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-six percent (46%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21 That’s the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President (see trends).

At the end of his second term President George W. Bush had a 43% disapproval rating.


In less than one year Barack Obama managed to pi$$ off more people than George W. Bush.
Nice work, Barack.

We know. It must be Bush’s fault.
Hat Tip Doug Edelman
 
First anniversery reflections by Lord Black:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/01/22/conrad-black-the-lessons-of-massachusetts.aspx

Conrad Black: Incompetent Obama teeters on the edge
Posted: January 22, 2010, 11:00 AM by NP Editor
Conrad Black, U.S. Politics

The burning question after the Massachusetts Senate election is whether the administration responds by making a course correction to survive politically by jettisoning its policy core and cleaning up its methods, or 'doubles down,' as President Obama has implied, and escalates the ideological and guerrilla war for direction of public policy. This was a referendum on the Obama administration, including health care, not just on health care. Even less was it just the rejection of an astonishingly unappealing candidate, predestined to glory as a trivia question. John F. Kennedy took that seat with lashings of his father's money in an anti-Brahmin revolt against Henry Cabot Lodge in 1952, and was reelected by 864,000 votes in 1958. In the intervening years of Teddy Kennedy, the Democrats could have won with a candidate not confined to two legs and one head. This was less a wake-up call than a Te Deum for a dying and sweaty dream.

The president has three principal problems. He is well to the left of the public and of what he promised the voters in 2008, and it is an old, passe leftism, that is authoritarian, deviously presented and was discredited in this country decades ago; the sort of nostrums that caused Bill Clinton and others to become 'New Democrats.' He is increasingly perceived as having credibility problems and of being cold, cocksure, narcissistic and intoxicated by what he modestly called 'the gift' of his own articulation. And as president, he has been quite, and quite surprisingly, incompetent.

The second of these problems seems to prevent the president from appreciating the last. The only serious domestic initiative to show for the last year is an obscene stimulus bill that has had to be defended by the spurious supposition of 'jobs saved' since, contrary to promises, unemployment has risen by over five million after it was enacted. That target could have been attained without squandering 787 billion borrowed dollars.

Current economic projections call for massive debt increases of $1 trillion a year for a decade, with huge money supply increases that will make history not only by their size but, according to forecasts, by their non-inflationary nature, accompanied by tax increases that will, also miraculously, not retard recovery from the recession. No audible sane person believes this arithmetical fairy tale, including, one dares to hope, the president himself. It is a recipe for guaranteed stagflation and currency devaluation.

The administration bought wholly into the unproved claim that carbon emissions are causing global warming, but global warming has not, for the last ten years, been happening. The president padded around the Copenhagen global warming conference trying to generate enthusiasm for $100 billion annual transfers to the Mugabes and Chavezes, as well as the Chinese (the world's largest carbon emitters), as conscience-alleviating payments for the carbon emissions of the economically advanced countries. America's fellow culprits found less tangibly burdensome expiations. So will America.

Mr. Obama must have noticed that the science and the politics were wrong, and that the arithmetic was too. The whole concept, like his promotion of renewable energy, his cap-and-trade bill, his redesignation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and his pursuit of complete nuclear disarmament, is mad. It was a worthy encore to the president's previous cameo appearance in the Danish capital, where his and his wife's prodigies managed to bring Chicago in fourth in contention for the 2016 Olympics, (out of four competing cities).

In foreign policy, engagement with Iran and North Korea, appeasement of Russia, over Georgia and missile defense, attempting to bully Israel and to deny that there was an agreement between the Sharon and Bush (Jr.) regimes over settlements, and siding with Chavez and the Castros in the Honduran crisis against constitutional democracy and America's legitimate interests, have all failed, practically and morally, at least without knowledge of indiscernible and unlikely, contrary intelligence.
There have been no initiatives to reform NATO, the UN, the IMF, all in need of modernization, and there has been a regrettable delay in launching the long-promised and necessary measures to turn the Afghan operation into a success, while the U.S. and its allies have been milling about, losing ground and taking increasing casualties.

The fumbling over Guantanamo has been another fiasco, as attorney general Holder has acknowledged that it is an exemplary prison. But Obama has been entrapped by Teddy Kennedy's unfounded identification of Gitmo with Abu Ghraib. The president's reaction to the near disaster of the panties-terrorist in the skies over Detroit began with waffling from a Hawaiian luau, and gained altitude agonizingly slowly.

No one is audibly lamenting the retirement of George W. or throwing shoes at his successor's head because he speaks in sentences, but this president is bestriding the world as a flake, cow-towing to the Mikado, apologizing for President Truman's use of the atomic bomb, criticizing Roosevelt and Churchill's uninclusive approach to winning World War II, and Churchill and Eisenhower for disposing of the pajama-clad hysteric Mohammed Mossadegh as head of Iran.

And instead of sending the Congress completed bills and drumming up public support for them, as legislatively successful past presidents like FDR, LBJ, and Reagan did, he just rolls a Christmas tree into the Capitol Rotunda and invites Reid and Pelosi and their vacuum-cleaner committee chairmen to festoon it with their favorite pork baubles. Stealing the Alaska Senate election with the fraudulent prosecution of Senator Stevens, (since retracted), the Minnesota Senate election with the fraudulent recounts against Senator Coleman, and the unchallenging seduction of Senator Specter as he was circling the Republican primary drain in Pennsylvania, to get 60 Democratic senators, enabled the public purchase of party loyalty, the dismissal of sincere moderates like Senator Olympia Snow, (whose furrowed brow is a mortal challenge to Botox), for a bad health care bill that is not a reform. This was not what was thought to be meant by the slogan 'Yes we can!,' is not leadership, and the people, even in Massachusetts, don't like it.

It has been a year of fecklessness, amateurism, and posturing. Less that is useful has been accomplished by this president in his first year than by any president since Herbert Hoover, and he was ambushed by the Great Depression after seven months.

President Obama rose with astonishing speed from a more improbable sociological provenance than any of his 42 predecessors, an alumnus both of the genteel finishing school of Harvard Law and of the Chicago boiler room for hardball politicians. Neither his radical nor sleazy connections stuck to him. He deftly made an unspoken arrangement to liberate white liberal America from its guilt complex over historic treatment of African-Americans, and to banish the down-market Al Sharptons, Jesse Jacksons and Charlie Rangels as black spokesmen, in exchange for a one-way ticket to the White House. With this implicit, non-refundable offer in his back pocket, he almost effortlessly seemed to take the Democratic Party away from the Clintons and rode the trends, the economy, and the sclerosis of his opponent's campaign straight into the White House, with professional skill and elegance.

Withal, this president seems overwhelmingly confident, strangely detached, and, as Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's leading speech-writer, and now one of the leaders of the Obama Buyers' Remorse Movement, wrote, 'cold and faux eloquent.' He is fluent and sonorous, but rather vapid. And now, Maureen Dowd, foxy doyenne of New York Times columnists and pin-up girl of the D.C. Democratic establishment, niece of FDR's top fixer, former co-leader, with Michelle, Caroline Kennedy and Oprah Winfrey, of the Obama massed, synchronized cheerleaders, has apostacized and reviled the president as a nasty egotist. When A Democratic president has lost Ms. Dowd and the Kennedys' Senate seat, it is time to return to the drawing boards.

If the president has a Damascene rendezvous with the real wishes of the American people and turns the White House bowling alley into a cram-course charm school, he can be a popular and successful president yet. An excellent bi-partisan health care bill that really is a reform can still be had and would be hugely admired, especially after this debacle. If he wants to double down on what we have seen in the last year, he will leave the White House in a submersible in three years.

For all the claims that the Republicans are too influenced by religious zealots and country club knuckle-draggers, the administration may be in the hands of 'redistributive,' pacifistic Kool Aid drinkers. If it is, the Republicans will have to elevate their 2012 presidential candidate this year. The office may, 213 years after the retirement of George Washington, actually seek the (wo)man, but not from what is conspicuously on offer now, from either party.

National Post
 
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