What makes Barack Obama such a great President?

[kentuck]

Some will argue that keeping the economy from going off the cliff is enough to qualify him for greatness. Others will point out that he saved the American auto industry. Some will say he ended the war in Iraq and killed Osama bin Laden. And some will say that his healthcare reform was historic. Still others have different reasons.

His detractors, even while giving him credit for rescuing the economy, will argue that he did not do enough or that he could have done more. They will argue that he saved the status quo for the world's capitalists and that the average person is not a lot better off.

They will say that while he was giving money to GM to "save" them, they were making record profits in their overseas operations. Why could they not bail themselves out?

And they will argue that the Iraq War went on too long and that Barack Obama continued too many policies of George W Bush and should have taken a more radical approach to ending the wars, rather than continuing them and hoping to end them with honor.

There are many reasons to agree or disagree with this President. He has not been a partisan leader. He has not followed the dictates of liberal Democrats. It could be argued that this has created a lot of tension on the left of his Party. What do you think makes Barack Obama a great President?

[JoePhilly]

1. Start with your first paragraph ... and then add ...

The repeal of DADT.
Rescuing millions of 401ks (DOW was 7500 when he took office, about 12k now).
Reversed the UE situation (its now back to where it was when the stimulus passed).

[FarLeftFist]

2. Plus this:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/rulings/promise-kept/

[T S Justly]

3. His connections to the banking industry. (nt) (nr)

[Whisp]

8. what? he has an ATM card?

the Bastard!

[Ikonoklast]

11. Even worse....

It's been reported that his two children received free suckers from the local branch that the Obamas used to bank at...IN CHICAGO!!!!!

There's the all the proof you need, right there, bought and paid for!!

[Whisp]

16. he lost interest in us a long time ago. he will withdraw to the elitist life

he had with his grandparents and while working in his community service cushy 6 figure manchurian job. Now deposit That, you pom pommer Obama respecter!

[Ikonoklast]

18. Well, he was born into The Royal House of Kenya, yanno. Fact.

I heard he had two lion cubs as pets.

[Whisp]

22. yah, I heard about that. He named one

Goldman and the other Sax.

and somehow those lions are still giving him unlimited cash for special favours of crates of Whiskas.

[FarLeftFist]

4. We'll see if he's great. For now he's just REALLY GOOD.

EDIT: STill a LOOONG way to go before his 2 terms are up

[Tx4obama]

31. +100. Well said! n/t

[girl gone mad]

5. The average person is worse off.

Quantifiably so. it's really a tragedy because he had perhaps the best opportunity of the last half century to really turn things around, to reign in the out of control financial sector and put average Americans on a more level playing field.

His greatness lies in his personal accomplishment of becoming the first African American President against some pretty big odds.

[MjolnirTime]

6. You are badly misinformed.

[banned from Kos]

9. Bank of America still exists. Some people find that difficult to accept. n/t

[Union Scribe]

10. That wasn't very convincing.

Perhaps you could explain how they are "badly misinformed"?

[MjolnirTime]

40. I guess I could have just said "You're full of shit" but I wanted to be polite.

[Number23]

57. LOL!!!!!

[cherokeeprogressive]

62. Badly misinformed... full of shit... neither statement is very intelligent or profound. n/t

[Ikonoklast]

12. Please show the timeline for economies recovering from a banking calamity.

This is not a normal recesssion, this was a financial panic; recovery from those takes *years*, not months.

It was a struggle to get what reforms, modest as they are, in place.


And you know that, but choose to ignore it.

[banned from Kos]

15. you no doubt know this but to really destroy capitalism you have to start with the financial sector

When Obama/Geithner saved it via the Supervisory Capital Assessment Program it was a once-in-a-life missed opportunity.

The fact that no political will existed for such a movement does not deter some people from their anger.

[Ikonoklast]

23. There is little will to 'destroy capitalism' in this country. Next to none.

That would be tilting at windmills in the current political/e \conomic climate in this nation.

When people start talking about 'destroying capitalism', they lose the support of the vast majority of the electorate.

Financial reform, yes, you might get people to listen.

[tledford]

27. The only real path to reform is the destruction of capitalism. eom

[Ikonoklast]

36. Please describe how 'reform' springs from that disaster.

Without tens of millions of people suffering enormous misery that would make The Great Depression look like fun times.

[johnaries]

34. Maybe that's because "destroying Capitalism" would be extremely stupid.

Controlling Capitalism with a Caveat Emptor approach and mixing it with a Socialist blend of essential services is the key.

"Purist" Capitalism and "Purist" Socialism both result in the same thing - Monopoly. Either way, the average person loses.

[JackRiddler]

59. Guess what. Capitalism destroyed itself, in 2008, and was rescued. It will destroy itself again.

That's where it always ends. It is an inherently unstable, crisis-generating system. Capitalism has always relied on a strong state to rescue it in crises, also to accept externalized costs and otherwise serve capital.

[girl gone mad]

30. I find this type of revisionism to be kind of funny.

I was one of a handful of people here warning about the depth and severity of the crisis from very early on. For my efforts, I was labeled a "gloom and doomer" and "debbie downer" by the constant apologists.

As I repeatedly argued in 2008 and 2009, the administration did not understand how deep our economic problems were. Not only that, they completely misjudged the causes of the crisis, and therefore failed to implement the proper solutions.

There is no reason that we should be stuck with double digit unemployment now. None. We had the tools and the capability to turn things around. All we lacked was political will on the part of our leadership. Instead of mounting a fight for jobs and higher wages, Obama decided to shift his focus and promote harmful deficit reduction schemes. Instead of listening to the economists who actually made valid forecasts and had accurate models, Obama appointed the original neoliberal architects of doom and Chicago School supply-siders. Rather than listen to top experts on white collar financial crimes who warned that leaving the criminogenic environment in place WILL lead to another collapse, Obama pressured state AGs to drop investigations and make crappy settlement deals, and expanded the Bush policy of giving slap on the wrist fines in exchange for complete amnesty. For all of these reasons, there will be no recovery.

But I'm guessing you know this and choose to ignore it.

[banned from Kos]

35. here is what actually happened:

Feb 09 --- $787 billion stimulus bill (Keynesian)
March 09 --- bank stress tests (SCAP) Banks began repaying TARP
July 09 ---- GDP positive, recession ends
Summer 09 --- began work on health insurance reform
late 09 ---- began work on bank reform

What else could have been done?

Reforming capitalism? that is a multi-year process that few support. We were lucky to save what we did.

[girl gone mad]

44. More revisionism.

TARP was not repaid. We've been through that many times now.

The stimulus bill was not Keynesian. It was insufficient and far too heavily weighted toward tax cuts. The infrastructure portions were a mess, with lots of wasteful pork.

Banks should have been preprivatized, jr bondholders wiped out, sr bondholders forced to take haircuts, lots and lots of credit writedowns should have occurred back in 2008. Rather than bailing out our corrupt and parasitic financial sector the rescue efforts should have focused on the productive parts of our economy. An outsized financial sector is the core problem. Saving the status quo has only made matters worse. Economist Steve Keen has done a lot of very convincing work in this area. The solution is higher wages and less financial debt. We preserved a precarious economic model based on low wages and high financial debt levels. It will topple again.

[banned from Kos]

50. ok - the nine big banks repaid TARP (Pro Publica) so the big holdouts are the GSEs.

But your final paragraph is finally getting somewhere..

You propose government seizes over $6 trillion in assets from pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds and retirees? That is what you are doing. (Bank of America has a $800 billion in equity and debt - then multiply by the other TBTFs).

Do you know how impossible that is? That would destroy the Democratic Party. THAT is why no Democrat seriously considered nationalizing the big banks.

And all this is done to write down loans? It surely would not create jobs - it would destroy millions of them without producing anything other than positive home equity for millions that would have to be allocated in some unfathomable way.

Impossible.

[JackRiddler]

58. The government would have needed to seize nothing, just watch the banksters file for bankruptcy...

entirely due to a disaster of their own creation. They got to rig the game by rules that they themselves wrote.

Bankster capitalism didn't need to be destroyed: it failed all on its own, and only survived thanks to the government rescue. The TBTFs were insolvent, the dominoes would have fallen, depositors would have been protected, assets would have passed to the public and banking could have been recreated as a public utility (e.g., each state with its own state-owned banks, a national bank to back them, support to credit unions and bailouts not for the failures but the SOLVENT banks, who actually were punished by seeing their irresponsible competitors rescued).

Now instead the banksters are allowed to create the next crash with similar chop-chop speculative instruments based on European debt, student loans, commodities and who knows what else we'll discover once they make the calls on their still-unregulated derivatives claims. And why not, since the first fraud ended with such spectacular rewards for the criminals.

The TBTFs get to pretend to be solvent entirely thanks to the suspension of mark-to-market and the unlimited provision of Fed bailout loans (which dwarf the TARP). The next banking crash is only a question of how and when in the near future, not if, and whether the political class will dare to sell another bailout plan to a people who have gradually woken up and taken to the streets. (It is still likeliest to come out of Europe in the spring; one of these austerity regimes will be broken by a populist uprising, and the dominoes will fall.)

It's also bullshit that Wall Street repaid the TARP - for example, Goldman "repaid" their approx. $13 billion in TARP only after they got to pocket another $13 billion from the Treasury via the backdoor of the truly criminal AIG bailout. Wall Street could "repay" TARP (which they ended up hating because of the threat of reduced bonuses) only thanks to other, far larger bailouts without conditions thanks to Fed largesse. (Furthermore AIG, Citi and BoA all got bailouts separate from TARP.)

Meanwhile a couple of million homeowners still face foreclosure. They've gotten jack shit in the way of renegotiation. The banksters also got away, so far, with completely trashing centuries of rule of law in titles and deeds through their staggering abuse of the MERS system.

The ratings agencies that Wall Street paid to lie investors into disaster are still sitting in judgement on the nations of the world.

So please stop with your extremely selective partial views and distortions in defense of bankster crime. No one who studies this and doesn't have an interest in the financial system buys these excuses.

[girl gone mad]

66. Your post is completely inacurrate.

Even milquetoast neoclassicist Krugman supported the preprivatization options. So did Stiglitz. Do you really think you're smarter than two Nobel Prize winning economists? Are you honestly going to argue that these men would support a resolution which would "destroy millions of jobs"?

[banned from Kos]

67. Krugman and Stiglitz don't have to deal with any political consequences.

Depriving mutual funds, insurers, pensions, individuals and the like of trillions is a BIG DEAL.

Bank executives own a tiny fraction of 1% of the big old TBTF banks. You would be nationalizing the property of average Americans.

It would be a political disaster and a multi-year fight. And TBTF banks don't file Chapter 11 either. Besides, TARP in 2008 removed all that as a possibility.

[girl gone mad]

68. Sad that you can only post lies and hyperbole.

[johnaries]

38. Interesting. I don't disagree. However,

what you describe are the CAUSES of the current crisis. Addressing these causes should be a priority once we get OUT of this current crisis, but they do nothing to help us relieve the current problem.

We need to get out of the current mess, and in some cases that may be to prop up some of the foundations of our current economy, even though they may be faulty.

Once we have a more stable footing, THEN we can address the issues that you bring up.

The alternative would be to let the entire structure fall. This may sound attractive, until it actually happens. Many people will die. The results will be that the "other side" will provide the only stability and they will prevail. We will have a new system of Barony and all of the efforts of Liberalism will be erased back several centuries.

History proves this.

[Whisp]

17. say your house is on fire

and the firefighters come and put it out, they don't save it all but it's not all gone like it could have easily been.
yes, you are worse off but blaming the firefighters is probably not logical when you know darn well who set that fire in the first place.

[hfojvt]

28. suppose the fire chief, instead of putting out the fire

decides to "compromise" with the arson league to let just 9/10ths of the town burn. And then promotes arson as a plan to create housing instead of promoting firefighting. Of course the arson league is in control of the House, but does the Chief have to propose an arson plan instead of espousing the benefits of fire fighting?

Could the fire chief be blamed then? Or were people just expecting him to walk on water?

[Whisp]

32. you say Obama is 9/10s responsible? Where is little Georgie in your fantasy?

or the deregulations of the past few decades that ultimately gave Obama that plate of shit to deal with.

fire=plate of shit
fire chief = Obama admin - without a genie lamp wish so many think he's hiding in his shirt pocket
arsonist=Bush, Clinton and the rest who contributed

[JackRiddler]

60. Oh enough of this fixation on personalities from middle management.

Wall Street is responsible and governments serve it, just as they did in Grant's or Hoover's time.

[girl gone mad]

37. Try this analogy instead:

Say your entire town is on fire. The firefighters come to put out the fires, but before they save the schools or the churches or the library or town hall or the shops on Main Street, they focus almost all of their efforts on a few mansions in a gated community.

Then, instead of turning the hoses on the rest of town and resuming the fight, the fire chief decides it's time to start worrying about potential water shortages and cost overruns. Never mind that the town gets its water from Lake Michigan and the treasurer knows costs are not really a problem.

Then the police chief tells everyone that the arsonists (who happen to live in the gated community and were saved from any losses) will not be prosecuted because he isn't really sure that the accelerants they used to spread the fire are technically illegal and prosecutions might be too hard.

But, hey, the Mayor has pushed to have the laws changed so that next time they burn the place down in the same exact way, they won't get off totally scot-free. Except the arsonists also bribed the state legislators to add provisions which guarantee that they will get brand new mansions the next time they burn the town down. Now guess which parts of the new legislation were implemented right away and which were put on the back burner indefinitely (no pun intended)?

[joshcryer]

48. Fine analogy, except that the treasurer in this instance is the one defunding the chief.

You make it sound like the chief has unlimited coffers, but he doesn't, because the townsfolk stat out during the past elections, and the irrational deficit monger creatures got out 9% more votes than the pro-putting-our-fires folk, putting in a treasurer that won't sign off on any spending.

Meanwhile it appears as if the chief is being blamed for what the mayor who got elected, and the legislators who got elected, who just perpetuate the same sort of irresponsible behavior in the past.

Because everyone, in the end, right or left, will happily blame the fire chief.

[girl gone mad]

52. The chief does in fact have unlimited coffers.

This town prints its own currency. In fact, the town had just spent a colossal fortune saving those mansions. If the chief had decided that the same level of urgency should be applied to saving the rest of the town, the people would have rallied behind him. At the time of the fire, his allies controlled the town coffers. Unfortunately, once the mansions were saved, he was mostly satisfied. It was his decision to turn the water pressure down to a trickle and let the townspeople fend for themselves. He called it shared sacrifice.

[joshcryer]

54. Yet the town founding papers say that no new spending can be done except through the elected...

...treasurer that we sat out and allowed be elected who screwed us over.

[girl gone mad]

55. That didn't happen for a couple of years..

but, honestly, if he had taken his case directly to the people, they would have had his back.

"Shared sacrifice" isn't much to get excited about.

[joshcryer]

56. ...it was the case all along except for 49 days.

The treasury has a cabinet and in the end one of the cabinet members died, and another cabinet member was having a really hard time getting his chair to be able to sit in it, it was being held up in another district of the town and every time he tried to get his chair the townsfolk made up even more asinine crap to keep him from getting his chair.

Since the fire chief campaigned that he was going to work together with everyone, and that he'd put out everyones fires, he wound up in a position where he basically agreed to let the people in power pull the plug on funding just when it was going to affect everyone, and he couldn't have been expected, as a post-partisan, nice guy fire chief, to have the treasury release lots of funds before one of the cabinet members died. I wish he thought of it, but I never expected it.

[FarLeftFist]

53. The average person doesn't blame this President for that.

[JackRiddler]

61. They shouldn't, actually. They should camp out at Wall Street.

[PETRUS]

63. Quite.

[motely36]

7. Alcohol

Lots and lots of alcohol...then he just doesn't seem that bad.

[T S Justly]

13. LOL! (nt) (DUzzy)

[cherokeeprogressive]

64. AHA! So he's a two at ten, and a ten at two!

Now I get it...

[Motown_Johnny]

14. to some the cup isn't 7/8ths full, it is 1/8th empty

and there isn't anything we an do about it.





I think President Obama is a great President because of the wide spectrum of issues he has had to deal with and has done a great job with.

Not just the economy or the auto industry. Not just healthcare or killing Osama bin Laden. It is all of that plus the DADT repeal, and passing hate crime legislation, and a fair pay act and limiting mercury in air pollution and .... well.... tons of stuff, here is a partial list.


Two great choices for Supreme Court.

The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

The Matthew Shepard Hates Crimes Prevention Act (which they said could not be done)

Children's Health Insurance

Tobacco Regulation

Credit Card Reform

Student Loan Reform

The Stimulus (including the largest tax cut ever, the largest investment in clean energy ever, the single largest investment in education in our country ever)

Health Reform

Wall Street Reform

The New G.I. Bill

The Food Safety Modernization Act (the most expansive food reform bill since the 1930s)

The Don't Ask Don't Tell Repeal

The New Start Treaty (even when the (R)s said he would never be able to get it passed)

Locking up over half the loose nuclear material in the world in less than half of his first term, something most (R)s thought impossible.




Most of that list is from The Rachel Maddow Show and is included in this clip
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#4077 ...

In that clip she also estimates that ~85% of what President Obama said he wanted to accomplish in his first term had been accomplished in the first half of his first term.

[hfojvt]

24. "including the largest tax cut ever"

I just love it when Democrats "out Republican" the Republicans. Hurrah for Obama, his tax cuts are bigger than Buish's. Even more so considering that he extended Bush's.

If that isn't a victory for progressives everywhere, then I don't know what is.

Of course, with "victories" like that, who needs defeats?

[Motown_Johnny]

41. Progressive taxes are a victory, Regressive tax policies are a failure

I included that only because it how Rachel Maddow described it and to not include it seemed wrong.

[Tx4obama]

33. Here's a bunch more ...

Here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022255

[Demeter]

19. IMV

[hfojvt]

20. lots and lots of faith

Obama is sorta like God. He gets credit for eveything good, like the sunshine, and good crops and health and children and puppies. Anything bad that also happens? Hurricanes, earthquakes, plagues, mass murders, famines, cancer? Those are all the fault of either man's sin or of the devil.

In the same way, Obama saved the economy and GM (even though Congress passed those bills) but is not responsible for the continuation of the Bush tax cuts because that was Congress's fault. It is apparently also Congress's fault that Obama goes around spreading the message that the budget needs to be cut (on the backs of working people and the poor) and that tax cuts will create jobs and grow the economy. I guess Congress also made him create the Catfood Commission and also to embrace their conservative proposals.

For some, Republican economics is great as long as it is proposed by "Democrats". They hated Bush, not because of his tax cuts or economic policies, but because he vetoed the Matthew Shepard act and was anti-abortion.

[dennis4868]

21. because he gets alot done...

in the face of incredible unprecedented republican obstruction.

www.whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com

[johnaries]

25. I think you said it already: "He has not been a partisan leader" nt

[mzmolly]

26. Health Care Reform, the formation of a Consumer Protection Bureau, helping homeowners

ala HAMP etc. None of the advances Obama made, helping average Americans would have happened if we had a President McCain. Not to mention we'd likely be at war with Iran and Iraq was part of McCain's "100 year" plan.

Keep in mind, GM making profits overseas, does not mean they would have "saved" union jobs in the US with those profits.

[bhikkhu]

29. Your first paragraph covers much of it

I would add, in fairness, that 2009 wasn't a good year for most of us, and it certainly wasn't a stand-out year for the president. 2010 was a better year for accomplishments and progress, in spite of the repugs kicking our asses at the ballot box.

And 2011 was a genuinely good year, again in spite of vigorous obstruction. I don't think its unreasonable to say that there may be a learning curve to the presidency, and Obama has pretty much got it figured out now. A second term should be much more productive, particularly if we can produce a more cooperative congress.

Ending the war in Afghanistan (as he plans to do) would make him a close-to-great president in my book, while officially ending the war against Al-qaeda and retiring the AUMF would make him a great president.

on edit - now I forgot to add a thing that's at least as important as ending wars - if he is able to turn around the long increases we have seen to income inequality in this country, that would be a great thing. I don't think any means for "sudden change" there is likely to be effective, but if he turned it around in the same deep policy-driven way that Reagan sent it in the wrong direction, that would be fine.

[Stoic]

39. He brings the Democratic and Republican Parties closer together

Of course, not rhetorically, but functionally they both now pursue the same policies and practices. Bringing America together. Awesome job, Mr. President.

[Octafish]

42. Well stated, Stoic.

Thank you for putting into words our current political state of convergent devolution.

[madokie]

43. What makes him a great President you ask

He likes me that is what. He likes you too. That is what makes this man a great President and a good man

[Octafish]

45. Eight Years of Bush Jr.

Worked for Clinton and Bush Sr.

[Karmadillo]

65. +1, buteven with that advantage,

he hasn't done much. The opportunity cost of the Obama administration, given the receptiveness of the country for genuine change, has been huge. He could have been a contender. He most definitely isn't.

[Warren DeMontague]

46. Running on "Bush's policies are fucked" & then continuing those policies isn't "great"

So precisely which "liberal democrat dictates" are he going against, for instance, when he's having the DOJ and DEA continue to piss away millions of our taxpayer $$$ to drag cancer grannies off to prison for smoking pot?

"I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It's not a good use of our resources."

http://granitestaters.com/candidates/barack_obama.html

Those are [a href="http://granitestaters.com/candidates/barack_obama.html"]his own[/a] words.

This President is slightly better than mediocre, but hardly "great". Maybe that'll change in Term II. Let's hope.

[boston bean]

47. Not some of his supporters, that's for sure. nt

[sandyd921]

49. You know what?

I don't want to get into the wars over how good a president Obama has been or who is or isn't supporting him. I supported a different candidate during the primaries in the lead-up to the '08 election but did support him and worked to get him elected once he had the nomination. Can't say I had high expectations for him, but initially I was somewhat hopeful and had those hopes dashed.

I will vote for Obama this time but I have come to believe that the problems in this country are deeply systemic and that change will not come merely through electing another President (even a Democratic one). While I do think it is important that we support true progressives/leftists for congress (the inside game) I have concluded that the most important effort will be the outside game mounted by the people in the streets of this country. Until and unless there is massive demand for change by the people, the politicians will not respond. I have limited time and energy (I put in long hours in my work) and putting my time into re-electing Obama is not one of my priorities. I expect, like many others, that in 2012 many millions of us will be out in the streets demanding economic and social justice and an end to the corruption of the plutocrats. I believe that this is also likely to sweep into office in subsequent elections people who will enact the change we demand.

[toddaa]

51. Everyone gets a trophy