Reply #8: Funny

[GihrenZabi]

See, I also think it doesn't matter from a macro perspective who is the President, either - because no matter who is in the Executive as long as we're held captive by a two-Party system, as long as we don't have term limits such that Congressional service remains a career and not a calling, as long as we allow corporate influence on our politicians (and I don't know that we can ever get rid of this), as long as we remain a capitalist system with as little true regulation and price-controlling as we have - the government is not going to be of the people, and for the people.

We will continue down this path of personal avarice and ambition, watching the United States' position as the worlds' preeminent power continue to degrade, watching our manufacturing potential continue sliding down the tube, the dollar weakening, health care and education continue their tumble into the substandard, etc.

Americans, as a whole, give the President too much credit for things he didn't do and too much blame for things which weren't all his doing.

E.G. - Bill Clinton getting credit for "eight years of prosperity." Show me how he was directly responsible for said prosperity, more so than, say, overspeculation on the value of the entire tech sector of the stock market...is it just coincidence that when that bubble burst things began to unravel?

E.G. - the war in Iraq. George Bush was the public mouthpiece for the war effort, but we all know he's a Grade-A dunce. Was HE responsible, or was it the Neo-Con junta that put him into office? And where do the Congressional Democrats' responsibilities lie? How about the media's?

Nowadays the President is more of a mouthpiece than anything. He can try to set a tone, but without a cooperative Congress his power is minimal. World leaders can ignore him now that the United States isn't such a dominant superpower any longer. Corporate leaders can bypass him through their friends in Congress.

The Presidency, by and large, is a vestigal organ of government left over from a time when the leader of our nation WAS actually a General and "Commander-In-Chief."

One of the best reforms we could enact in the United States would be to eliminate the Executive Branch altogether and move towards a Parliamentary system wherein the Chief Executive of the nation was the head of the majority party in the Senate, and could be removed at any time through a vote of no confidence. Enough of this four-year term nonsense. If you do a bad job, we get rid of you whenever we feel it's appropriate.


Anyway...I support Obama more because he is a symbol of progress than anything else. I have no illusions that he is going to become President (and that feels rather inevitable to me at this point) and suddenly you are going to see the SWEEPING reforms this country so badly needs to survive healthy and strong through the 21st century.

You will not see massive tax reform, social reform, or reform of the very structure of our Federal government.

You will not see a repudiation of the pattern which began at the Gulf of Tonkin and which led to our having a military far too large for our own good which we deploy outside the original intent of the Fathers when they ordered the creation of a national army.

You will not see a health care system which cuts costs drastically, sets limits on what doctors can charge, changes the rules on when drug patents expire, and which covers everyone.

People need to understand that Obama is the lesser of evils, and his most important value is as a symbol of racial progress, that a multiethnic American has taken the highest office in the land.

That's Obama's greatest value, IMHO. He's not going to be a champion for the Progressive Left, which is what I had dreamed he would be.

He's just going to be another Democratic President - which is to say, better than a Republican President - but he's not going to be the arbiter of change he sold himself to be during the Primaries.

Not if he wants a second term...and your first term is just an extended campaign for your second term...