How far will Obama fall?

[Perd Hapley]

Perhaps you should wait for him to make a mistake before you condemn both him and the media.

It's too bad you guys can't participate in the optimism being felt by most of the country.

Quite wrong on both counts.  Concerning the latter, it is very good that we have not bought into false hopes built on "solutions" that will make things worse, or vague feel-good language.  Obama has no track record of epoch-making change, so far.  Forgive us if we don't believe he will suddenly come up with something new. 

Concerning the former, Obama has been the center of attention for the past two years, and has spoken his piece on a variety of topics.  By now, we have some idea of what sort of politician he is.  Yeah, he may get a couple of things right.  I refer you to the proverbial broken clock. 

[Boomhauer]

Perhaps you should wait for him to make a mistake before you condemn both him and the media.

It's too bad you guys can't participate in the optimism being felt by most of the country.

Excuse me if I'm not swept up in the cult of personality worshiping a Chicago Politician/communist.

[Nitrogen]

Excuse me if I'm not swept up in the cult of personality worshiping a Chicago Politician/communist.

While I agree with this, I also am not swept up in the conservative cult that he's Satan, and will destroy this country, either.
Clinton did things I didn't agree with, as did Bush, and neither of them have destroyed the country.  Obama won't either.

[RoadKingLarry]

It's too bad you guys can't participate in the optimism being felt by most of the country.

I guess I didn't get the fauning sychophant gene.

[grampster]

I have heard a lot of people sigh and say; I hope he succeeds.

I hope he doesn't.  If he truly pushes the agenda that he has been associated with most of his adult life, I hope he fall flat on his face. 

If for some reason the vague uplifting language he used during the campaign was simply rhetoric to get elected, and his bully pulpit is used in ways that are actually in keeping with the founding principals of our country, then I will give him a well done. 

By that I mean, cut taxes, work toward a smaller and less intrusive government, tighten up oversight but loosen regulation, secure our borders and ports and put us on a crash program to build large nuclear power plants and regional small nuclear steam plants, encourage converting our otr trucking to CNG, exploit our coal, gas and oil resources in the meantime so that the change over is done with little pain, and seriously look at high speed, elevated, electro-mag rail system using the interstates. 

How about that President Obama, rather than lowering everyones living standard to the lowest common denominator with socialism.

[Manedwolf]

If he succeeds, we'll have gone from the Great Experiment the founding fathers intended to just one more bland semi-socialist extension of the EU. Where hard work and determination are no longer rewarded, where incentive is gone, where people really have no reason to try harder, invent, make something of themselves, because they can make just as much and live just as well by doing little to no work and getting benefits from the increasingly dwindling productive class. All of it watched over by a bloated bureaucracy of infinite loops of redundancy that moves at the speed of a snail in getting anything useful done.

It would be like draining all the color out of a wonderful painting, leaving it in bland grey and beige forever more.

At least, until the barbarians, no longer checked, come. Then things get interesting. Because there have always been barbarians, and always will be.

[john828]

Mongols, Huns, Moors, Vikings, etc.

Interesting post Manedwolf.  A concise depiction of the fall of an empire with vivid imagery.

I think it was Stalin, might have been Lenin though, who said something about us buying the rope from them that we hang ourselves with.  Might not be too far from the truth except the rope might have a tag on it that says, "Made in China."

Obama will undoubtedly fail at some things.  I doubt the media will give him a pass if it is major, but for the next few years, I guarantee you that they will spin it to put him in a favorable light and place the blame on the previous administration.  That might even last for four years and get him re-elected depending on who he runs against.

Mainstream America used to be center right, now they are leaning center left.  If the trend continues, we may encounter some cultural shifts that will create some societal earthquakes much like real earthquakes that occur due to plate tectonics and volcanoes.  The analogies abound.

Obama was groomed for this position.  No one rises in Chicago without this grooming process.  I hope he gets caught up in a scandal too big for the press to ignore or spin.  Why do I wish ill will toward a gentleman?  Because his core beliefs are diametrically opposed to mine and many others, and if he (and others like him) could have their way, we would not be free, we would not own anything, nor would we be Americans anymore.  We would probably just be citizens of the world.  Worldians--I guess.  I am just a simple man, but not being an American just seems wrong.  Maybe I am wrong, but there is a special pride in being an American.  I cannot help but cry when I hear Lee Greenwood's song, God bless the USA, I get goosebumps as I write this.  I love our flag, I am thankful and proud of our veterans. 

Okay, I am getting a little mushy, but surely half the country feels this way, if only they'd get their heads out of their rumps.

[longeyes]

I expect Obama to be a metaphorical neutron bomb for America.  It will look like America--albeit a bit more run down--but the life of the place will be gone.

Optimism about America's future under Obama should be based on the soundness of his program, and I see nothing constructive in what he's proposed so far.  What isn't vague is ominous, frankly.

His cabinet choices do not inspire confidence.  We will have a known tax cheat running our economy, a known gun-grabber for AG, and a Secretary of State who has announced she will no tolerate "diviseness" (does she mean dissent???).

Already he is proving he does not understand the extent and nature of the Islamist threat by shuttering Gitmo, just as he doesn't understand the energy crisis by strangling offshore drilling.

A child shall lead us.

Really?

[grislyatoms]

He's going to fall long and hard.

Folks who were chanting his name a couple weeks ago, or even on the fence, will see things get worse by degrees.

Things are going to get very ugly, and when they do his fickle supporters will be out for blood.

[Werewolf]

Perhaps you should wait for him to make a mistake before you condemn both him and the media.

It's too bad you guys can't participate in the optimism being felt by most of the country.

Participate in an optimism that is a function of fluff with no substance; emotion and not reality.

Sorry - but that's a pretty good way to set one's selff up for some miserable times when it becomes obvious that the fluff is just that and the real world trumps feel good every time.

[Werewolf]

I have heard a lot of people sigh and say; I hope he succeeds.

I hope he doesn't.  If he truly pushes the agenda that he has been associated with most of his adult life, I hope he fall flat on his face. ...

Here, Here!

I, for one, and I imagine most here would be very unhappy in a socialist country with half the population on the dole and the other half taxed to the point they wished they were.

Most here would be very unhappy in a country where only the police and the military owned guns.

Those are my hot buttons I'm sure y'all can list a myriad more of what Obama would term a success that would make you unhappy.

[El Tejon]

Perhaps you should wait for him to make a mistake before you condemn both him and the media.

It's too bad you guys can't participate in the optimism being felt by most of the country.

Mistakes?  Plenty already.  Not counting the campaign gaffes (Arabic in Afghanistan, # of states, inter alia) how about not knowing what he is doing with executive orders or cabinet appointments (most galling is at Treasury)?

The media?  The have no idea who they selected as President.  All they know is that he is a socialist and an African-American.  After the election they admitted that they knew nothing about him despite his cuddling up to terrorists and radicals (every week he met with one).

I know Obama.  I knew him when he lived on 54th (a condo complex called East View Park in Hyde Park).  He is a committed socialist and knows the Saul Alinsky radical handbook backwards and forwards (he paraphrases his books in his speeches).  He is a post-American and sees the Constitution as a stage that we must "get beyond."

As a member of the Productive Class I have no optimism about what Obama will do to us.  Obama and his fellow Alinskites see this as war without bullets.  I am not happy with their coming war on me.

I wish Obama nothing but failure.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

what partb of the world are most people optimistic? even black folks that are tickled pink aren't optimistic around here. the only bastion of optimism is the local liberal arts school.



when he falls i look for the first folks with knives to be black  the white media folks will be afraid to speak up till after its safe,   i mean main stream media

[Phyphor]

Bush set the bar low.  Very low.  Obama can fail, and nobody will notice, since we should see 4 years of "blame bush".

Hell, we've seen 8+ years of 'Blame Clinton' so why should it change now?

Betcha in 4 years we'll also see 'Blame Obama' thrown around the 'net as well.

[DeaconKharma]

I will use the Clinton experience to guage my answer to this. It will take a mell of a hess to stick to his hide. It will be the meanspirited Republicans causing all this. They will rally around him and use words like "its a distraction" etc as if he's got more important stuff to handle and "move along nothing to see". Now if he betrays a column of the Liberal beliefs... then and only then will you see a stink raised. Similar to Rick Warren's "disinvite" debacle.

[john828]

I can see that deacon to a point.  I think we'll see a hell of a mess before it is all done.  Some of it can never be pinned on him since it was fifty years in the making, but what he does with the stewardship been given him--that's the part he'll be pinned to.  Hopefully he'll be smart enough to cut his losses as soon as he sees a policy begin to fail.

[HankB]

. . . Why do I wish ill will toward a gentleman?  Because his core beliefs are diametrically opposed to mine and many others, and if he (and others like him) could have their way, we would not be free, we would not own anything, nor would we be Americans anymore.  We would probably just be citizens of the world.  Worldians--I guess.  I am just a simple man, but not being an American just seems wrong . . .

I'm certainly not as well traveled as some on this forum, but after trips that at least touched parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia . . . I have absolutely NO desire to be a "Worldian." 

[longeyes]

At least, until the barbarians, no longer checked, come. Then things get interesting. Because there have always been barbarians, and always will be.

The barbarians have already come.  They got here 40 years ago.

[john828]

I'd say almost eighty years now, longeyes.

The barbarians have already come.  They got here 40 years ago.

1969 was a pivotal year, but most of them were born almost twenty years before that; and, most of their mentors were born thirty to forty years before that, so, yeah, eighty years is a good estimate.  Some pretty radical ideas immigrated from across the pond in the teens and twenties of the last century that radically shifted the landscape of the academic scene.  For that matter there was a pretty big shift in consciousness in the late 1850's and mid 1860's when "Nature red in tooth and claw" and evolution came to the forefront in ideological thought.  Before that, well, we had a lot of shifting in the 14th and 15th centuries as secular science superceded religious enquiry.  Well, I could go on, but suffice it to say, "We jumped off the cliff into the abyss in 1969, but the hike up the mountain was a slow, arduous journey.

[Beagle]

I recently came across a graph showing that every president in recent memory started with a high popularity rating, which then plummeted during the course of his administration. "The triumph of hope over experience" is the moral of that story, and especially appropriate at the moment.

At any rate, it's probably not fair to hoist Obama by this particular petard. Judging by the last day or two, there are plenty of real reasons to complain about him.