SmashMouth

I was a good loser four years ago. “In the grand scheme of history,” I wrote the day after Barack Obama’s election as president, “four decades is not an especially long time. Yet in that brief period America has gone from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to the apotheosis of Barack Obama. You would not be human if you failed to acknowledge this as a cause for great rejoicing.”



Despite having been—full disclosure—an adviser to John McCain, I acknowledged his opponent’s remarkable qualities: his soaring oratory, his cool, hard-to-ruffle temperament, and his near faultless campaign organization.

Yet the question confronting the country nearly four years later is not who was the better candidate four years ago. It is whether the winner has delivered on his promises. And the sad truth is that he has not.

In his inaugural address, Obama promised “not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.” He promised to “build the roads and bridges, the electric grids, and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.” He promised to “restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.” And he promised to “transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.” Unfortunately the president’s scorecard on every single one of those bold pledges is pitiful.

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Cruize

Four More Years!

saintfan

I don't really dislike Obama. I didn't vote for him then and I won't vote for him now because I have a fundamental difference of opinion with him on a number of issues which I have ranted about on and off over the last 4 years. My position I think is well documented.

Still, I have to say that I never viewed him as a 'typical' politician. To me he at least seemed sincere in his delivery. I believe HE believe's he's doing the right thing. I think he found out pretty early on the office can be extremely restrictive. I also think tons of his supporters exercised their own brand of racism and voted for him purely because he is a black man. They bought his presentation completely and now, as we have seen, many of his supporters have turned their back on him because he was unable to immediately deliver on all that rhetoric.

And no, he's no more guilty of campaign rhetoric than any of the rest of them. I hold him no more (or no less) accountable for campaign lies than I do any other politician. His supporters worry me greatly however. I'd be willing to bet a large percentage of them had never voted in their life. They didn't know enough to know he was 'politickin' and that he couldn't just DO everything he preached to them. They don't understand the system, even remotely.

I am so disappointed in America, not because of Obama and his policies with which he and I disagree, but the rampant ignorance and stupidity that makes up such a large part of our population. Everyone is self-interested these days, political spending is out of control, we are fighting wars for the wrong reasons, we allow system-wide abuse of welfare because we're too damned sensitive to say "no", or "enough is enough".

Obama isn't the answer, but unfortunately Romney isn't either. What we need is a true leader of men, and I don't see one on the horizon.

Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel...

Halo

We could see one term presidents more often. Until a visionary comes forward with real ideas that seriously address the economy that are not offensive to either party, we're just putting bandaides on the problems.

We have never in the modern era seriously addresses our economy without war or conflict abroad being involved...think about it!

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Cruize

The current Republican party, which is being led by it's far right-wing representatives and funded by the nations most wealthy, is what scares me. They have treated President Obama like a racial slur every since he took office. The rhetoric has been disgusting and embarassing to me as an American. If you disagree with his polices and actions, tell me why and offer me an alternative. I will listen. Simple. If your message resonates, it will show up at the polls. They have done everything in their power to obstruct and to impede our nations progress, most telling on things they've agreed to in the past, all in hopes of winning back the White House. The complete opposite of what they were elected to do. It's been all about politics and nothing about governing the past 3+ years. Their polices on womens health, the elderly, the sick, the poor, and the disabled is borderline evil but absolutely un-American in my opinion. One of main things that separates our great nation and it's success from others around the globe is it's saftey nets. Instead of fixing those programs, the Republicans would just do away with them if they could. That's simply wrong. The tax code, in which the nations most wealthy pays a far smaller marginal rate than the working man, is ridiculous. They want to label such talk as "class warfare" and jealousy. It's not. It's about simple fairness and equality. Their candidates tax plan includes more breaks for the wealthy while placing a larger burdern of our governments funding and deficit reduction on the backs of the working class. That's just wrong. Do I believe President Obama and the Democrats have all the answers to our problems? Of course not. But, in the most pressing issue facing our nation being the deficit, they've offered 10-1 in spending cuts to revenue raising. The Republicans refused. Jeb Bush, who if he had run I think would have been at the very least a stronger challenger to President Obama than Romney, called that decision by the Republicans as crazy. Another troubling undertaking by the Republicans is voter suppression in PA, Ohio, and Virginia, along with voter purging in Iowa and Florida. We have fought wars here and abroad, even for other nations citizens like in Iraq, for the freedom and right to vote. That is as un-American as it gets and is insulting to those who have served and given their lives in those pursuits. Their policies aren't championed by the majority of people, so they're doing their best to steal the election. Disgusting. The bottom line is, regardless of who wins the election, to address our debt and move our nation forward, revenue is going to have to be raised and spending is going to have to be cut. There's just no way around it. I think the Democrats will do it in a more fair way than the Republicans. It's just that simple for me.

Halo

Cruize, you could have made it a lot simpler for me had you just posted this...
Ok, now I can understand the point you're trying to make.

SmashMouth

Niall Ferguson Defends Newsweek Cover: Correct This, Bloggers

First, duck the argument. Second, nitpick. Third, vilify. That’s what Niall Ferguson says liberal bloggers did after reading his Newsweek story on Obama’s record. Here, he offers a point-by-point defense of his argument.

The other day, a British friend asked me if there was anything about the United States I disliked. I was happily on vacation and couldn’t think of anything. But now I remember. I really can’t stand America’s liberal bloggers.


“We know no spectacle so ridiculous,” Lord Macaulay famously wrote, “as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.” But the spectacle of the American liberal blogosphere in one of its almost daily fits of righteous indignation is not so much ridiculous as faintly sinister. Why? Because what I have encountered since the publication of my Newsweek article criticizing President Obama looks suspiciously like an orchestrated attempt to discredit me.


My critics have three things in common. First, they wholly fail to respond to the central arguments of the piece. Second, they claim to be engaged in “fact checking,” whereas in nearly all cases they are merely offering alternative (often silly or skewed) interpretations of the facts. Third, they adopt a tone of outrage that would be appropriate only if I had argued that, say, women’s bodies can somehow prevent pregnancies in case of “legitimate rape.”

Their approach is highly effective, and I must remember it if I ever decide to organize an intellectual witch hunt. What makes it so irksome is that it simultaneously dodges the central thesis of my piece and at the same time seeks to brand me as a liar. The icing on the cake has been the attempt by some bloggers to demand that I be sacked not just by Newsweek but also by Harvard University, where I am a tenured professor. It is especially piquant to read these demands from people who would presumably defend academic freedom in the last ditch—provided it is the freedom to publish opinions in line with their own ideology.

***

Let me begin by restating my argument. President Obama should be judged on his record in office. In my view, he has not only failed to live up to the high expectations of those who voted for him, but also to the pledges he made in his inaugural address. (In order to be fair, I deliberately did not judge his performance against his campaign pledges.) The economy has performed less well than the White House led us to expect, despite a bigger increase in national debt than it led us to expect (exhibit 1).

1. FY2010 Budget and Outcomes / Latest Projections


Note, however, that I cut the president some slack on the economy. He inherited a bigger mess than most people appreciated back in November 2008. And forces beyond his control (Europe) have clearly dampened the recovery. Here’s what I wrote:

It was pretty hard to foresee what was going to happen to the economy in the years after 2008. Yet surely we can legitimately blame the president for the political mistakes of the past four years. After all, it’s the president’s job to run the executive branch effectively—to lead the nation. And here is where his failure has been greatest.

Notice, then, that my central critique of the president is not that the economy has underperformed, but that he has not been an effective leader of the executive branch. I go on to detail his well-documented difficulties in managing his team of economic advisers and his disastrous decision to leave it to his own party in Congress to define the terms of his stimulus, financial reform, and health-care reform. I also argue that he has consistently failed to address the crucial issue of long-term fiscal balance, with the result that the nation is now hurtling toward a fiscal cliff of tax hikes and drastic spending cuts.

The second part of my argument is that these failures of domestic leadership have fed into a failure of foreign policy. As commander in chief, President Obama has earned a relatively strong public reputation mainly thanks to a campaign of assassination that liberal bloggers would have excoriated if it had been conducted by his predecessor. His withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan will, in my view, prove to have been premature. More importantly, he has been indecisive in his responses to the revolutionary wave that has swept the Middle East since the Iranian “green” revolution of 2009. And, finally, he has been inconsistent and ineffective in his handling of the major strategic challenge of our times, the rise of China. (By the way, I base these judgments on a great many off-the-record conversations with influential policy-makers here and abroad. When a very senior military man asks you: “Have we any global strategy beyond just trying to hang on?,” you have a right to wonder if the answer might be “No.”)

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SmashMouth

Bloody Good Video

Danno

Socialism - America DOES NOT want it.