PhoenixDark said:
Outside of his dismissal of the healthcare bill and the ridiculous "I might vote for Chris Christie cuz he's tuff" shit, this is spot on. The second half of Obama's first term has been nothing but a giant disaster. To call him a weak leader is an understatement, because to be perfectly honest he simply is not a leader. He's a negotiator in chief during regular hours and a counselor in chief during tragedies. Which makes him more of a university president than a president of the United States.
I hold no illusions that with a mere speech, Obama can get legislation passed or shame his enemies into civility. But it's shocking that someone who propelled and even saved his candidacy through speeches has been such an ineffective, hesitant speaker as president. He doesn't use the bully pulpit outside of the series of weak "come on guys" appeals after the polls show his latest initiative has been rejected by the American people, thanks to an uncontested, disciplined noise machine on the right.
His presidency has been a series of final straws, with each concession and cave worse than the previous one. There is no excuse for what happened with the debt ceiling, where he gave a nationally televised speech staking out a position before caving immediately afterward. How can anyone respect that type of behavior? You're going to tell me that if Obama completely pulled out of the discussion, Boehner would allow a default? Both him and McConnell said there would be no default, it wasn't possible. Obama was willing to give them a 70-30 deal and call it even, but settled for 98-2 because of what, fear of them nuking the economy? It was not going to happen. There were more democrats and moderate republicans in the house than tea partiers, by a significant margin in fact.
He wanted a bad deal, and got one even worse. And now OFA wants me to go around explaining to people the good things Obama got for them with this deal? Fuck that. Maybe we need four years of Perry, but most likely Romney.
I can't say it any better.
A growing part of me wouldn't mind Perry or Romney winning. There's some really, truly nasty and unavoidable shit coming down the pike for this country over the rest of this decade (and the next), regardless of who's in the White House, and I'd be amused at the idea of a Republican at the helm when our Energy/Economy/Environment chickens come home to roost.
Hell, we've been implementing Republican policy over the last 30 years under both parties.. it would be sweet justice to see them catch the blame for the results.
And this is going to sound hateful, but the American people kinda deserve it. I say "30 years" because the Carter-Reagan election was an inflection point, a "red letter" event, as Doc Brown would say:
Carter asked us to behave like adults and sacrifice and live within our limits, while Reagan promised free cotton candy and missile-equipped ponies for everyone, and the infantile voting public ate that bullshit up. Politicians took note of Carter's fate, and now we're here.
(I take that back.. there is no "kinda" in that statement. We deserve what we're going to get.)
I used to use the phrase "if it weren't for Supreme Court appointees" as a caveat in my voting decision discussions, but I think we are now past the point where voting for a candidate if only to save the Court from a hard right turn is valid. Good appointees or not, there is now enough bad policy baked into the cake - and implemented by both sides - that good justices aren't going to hand-down decisions that: (a) magically reverse decades of immature, short-sighted policy choices; and (b) buy us enough time to get on course.
National politics are now like a sport: fun to watch, but we're on a set of rails now. Community, neighborhood, and family mitigation/organization/efforts are what will determine the fate of localities.
