Time --Mr Unpopular

[DOGS THAT BARK]

TIME: MR. UNPOPULAR...

President Obama, during a town-hall meeting with young African leaders in the East Room of the White House on Aug. 3, 2010
Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Photo


ya know its bad when Time magazine climbs on--
Link at top-
Quite long -3 parts and still couldn't get it all in.

buyers remorse??--I somehow remember Tony Robbins rhetoric comparison pre election-
-re: all hat no cattle.

 

[Duff Miver]

Your boy Dumbyuh was at 20% approval. His VP was at 10%.

Obama is more than double that.

:00hour

 

[Trench]

If Obama would govern the way he campaigned, liberals and progressives would love him. But if the Republicans don't produce a viable candidate in the next 2 years, "popularity" ratings won't prevent him from being re-elected.

 

[Trampled Underfoot]

Hmmmm Obama or McCain/Palin? Yeah, real tough choice. Just imagine where we would be with those two in charge.

 

[Lumi]

Damn,

TU and Fluffy beat me to what I was going to predict you would say. Suprisingly Fluffy was able to form a sentence without cussing or insulting a family member.

:0074 :0074 To you Fluffy

No scamper off ... shooo

Would you like me to forecast your next move Fluffy?

 

[Terryray]

If Obama would govern the way he campaigned, liberals and progressives would love him. But if the Republicans don't produce a viable candidate in the next 2 years, "popularity" ratings won't prevent him from being re-elected.

exactly!

This growing unpopularity among Obama supporters was presaged by those fun old New Left independent types several months ago. Guys so fond of flinging mud at any putative ally very early on.

Howard Zinn:

I think people are dazzled by Obama?s rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president?which means, in our time, a dangerous president...


Adolph Reed Jr.:

The only surprise about his presidency is how many ersatz leftists cling to the fiction that he's anything other than a superficially articulate neoliberal Democrat in the Clinton mold and that his administration would act in any other way.

 

[Trench]

exactly!

Howard Zinn:

I think people are dazzled by Obama?s rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president?which means, in our time, a dangerous president...


Adolph Reed Jr.:

The only surprise about his presidency is how many ersatz leftists cling to the fiction that he's anything other than a superficially articulate neoliberal Democrat in the Clinton mold and that his administration would act in any other way.

Well at least you're referencing credible sources now Terryray.

Nonetheless, it's interesting that you couldn't find any conservative sources offering insightful commentary on the inconsistencies of Candidate Obama vs. President Obama.

 

[Terryray]

well, Victor Davis Hanson did contrast the candidate vs office holder other day in his fine piece:

According to a popular myth, President Obama?s declining poll numbers are a consequence of his failure to be liberal enough. On race, in the wake of the Shirley Sherrod mess, we are told he needs to appoint more African Americans and bring in more advisers from the black community. On the economy, liberal economists decry his unwillingness to borrow and stimulate more.

This is lunatic in political terms.

Obama?s poll numbers are falling for three reasons clear to any amateur student of politics.

First, the voters in 2008 did not vote for liberal change, but for change from the costly and lengthy Bush wars, deficits, spending policies, and immigration proposals. Obama voters were also motivated by a desire to elect our first African-American president, fear over the September 2008 financial meltdown, a lackluster McCain campaign, and the strange perception that Obama was a centrist.

Since his election, Obama has outdone the average Bush deficits by a factor of four or five. His brief ?stimulus? became the prelude to a gorge-the-beast reordering of American society. Meanwhile, after demagoguing as a candidate everything from Guantanamo to Iraq, Obama in office has kept in place almost every major security protocol that Bush had established. He has broken his promises to close Guantanamo, try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York, and pull out of Iraq. This has meant alienating his shrinking base while being exposed as a hypocrite to suddenly wiser and less forgiving independents.

go to his NR column to read the rest!

 

[Trench]

well, Victor Davis Hanson did contrast the candidate vs office holder other day in his fine piece:

According to a popular myth, President Obama?s declining poll numbers are a consequence of his failure to be liberal enough. On race, in the wake of the Shirley Sherrod mess, we are told he needs to appoint more African Americans and bring in more advisers from the black community. On the economy, liberal economists decry his unwillingness to borrow and stimulate more.

This is lunatic in political terms.

Obama?s poll numbers are falling for three reasons clear to any amateur student of politics.

First, the voters in 2008 did not vote for liberal change, but for change from the costly and lengthy Bush wars, deficits, spending policies, and immigration proposals. Obama voters were also motivated by a desire to elect our first African-American president, fear over the September 2008 financial meltdown, a lackluster McCain campaign, and the strange perception that Obama was a centrist.

Since his election, Obama has outdone the average Bush deficits by a factor of four or five. His brief ?stimulus? became the prelude to a gorge-the-beast reordering of American society. Meanwhile, after demagoguing as a candidate everything from Guantanamo to Iraq, Obama in office has kept in place almost every major security protocol that Bush had established. He has broken his promises to close Guantanamo, try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York, and pull out of Iraq. This has meant alienating his shrinking base while being exposed as a hypocrite to suddenly wiser and less forgiving independents.

go to his NR column to read the rest!

VDH is an interesting guy, although being a Zinn disciple, of course I disagree with much of VDH's historical slant.

 

[Terryray]

Is all anyone might have are historical "slants", or is there an objective way of arriving at agreement?


how about Hendrik Hertzberg (Senior Editor and Staff Writer, The New Yorker) center-left opinion?:

No-Drama Obama--remember him? Remember that admirable temperament, that ability to peer over the horizon, that poker player's cool? That chess player's sense of where the game will be several moves ahead? That matter-of-fact, unsentimental empathy? That serene immunity to the 24/7 cable/talk-radio/Internet hysteria machine? These qualities of mind and character, which I admired in candidate Obama, I still admire in President Obama. Perhaps that's why I don't see his first year in terms of high points and sharp disappointments. There have been some of each, of course, but he's still up on the bridge, holding a steady course in a violent storm, even as many of the rest of us are clutching the railings and puking over the side.

I seldom miss a chance to bitch and moan about the flaws of our wheezing, rusted-out, barely functioning electoral and governmental machinery. So I haven't been terribly surprised at how difficult it has proved for Obama to get his modest, moderately liberal program through Congress, especially the Senate. These difficulties are not his fault. Blaming him--accusing him of cowardice, of not having "balls," of being a corporate shill, etc.--is infantile. To the extent that the left component of the center-left is indulging in that sort of self-destructive, misdirected petulance--well, I guess that's my "sharpest disappointment" of this president's first year.

 

[Trench]

Is all anyone might have are historical "slants", or is there an objective way of arriving at agreement?


how about Hendrik Hertzberg (Senior Editor and Staff Writer, The New Yorker) center-left opinion?:

No-Drama Obama--remember him? Remember that admirable temperament, that ability to peer over the horizon, that poker player's cool? That chess player's sense of where the game will be several moves ahead? That matter-of-fact, unsentimental empathy? That serene immunity to the 24/7 cable/talk-radio/Internet hysteria machine? These qualities of mind and character, which I admired in candidate Obama, I still admire in President Obama. Perhaps that's why I don't see his first year in terms of high points and sharp disappointments. There have been some of each, of course, but he's still up on the bridge, holding a steady course in a violent storm, even as many of the rest of us are clutching the railings and puking over the side.

I seldom miss a chance to bitch and moan about the flaws of our wheezing, rusted-out, barely functioning electoral and governmental machinery. So I haven't been terribly surprised at how difficult it has proved for Obama to get his modest, moderately liberal program through Congress, especially the Senate. These difficulties are not his fault. Blaming him--accusing him of cowardice, of not having "balls," of being a corporate shill, etc.--is infantile. To the extent that the left component of the center-left is indulging in that sort of self-destructive, misdirected petulance--well, I guess that's my "sharpest disappointment" of this president's first year.

Another interesting take Terryray. Wish I had time to further discuss VDH's take as well as Hertzberg's take on this subject. I''ll be off the grid for a few days but I'll resume this thread when I return. Good stuff though.