Why I will not be Voting for Obama in 2012
by Mike Kimel
Why I will not be Voting for Obama in 2012
Cross posted at the Presimetrics blog.
The presidential elections are a year and a half away, but I am pretty certain of one thing: I will not be voting to re-elect Barack Obama. That does not mean that I will be voting for the Republican nominee, or for any of the third party candidates, but rather that I do not see any likely circumstances under which Barack Obama will do anything I think is necessary to earn my vote. That may seem unusual because I voted for Obama, and my economic views are probably best described as slightly left center.
Now, I’m nobody special, and my endorsement or lack of it isn’t going to make a whit of difference, but I suspect there are other people who are also somewhere close to slightly left of center (i.e., who are either what Obama considers to be his “natural constituency” or close enough that they can be convinced to vote for him rather than his likely eventual opponent) who are starting to think the same thing I am. So perhaps its worth trying to explain why I feel the way I do. I think its easiest to do that by discussing the issues I think I important and what Obama has done (or not) about them.
1. Economic growth/unemployment/taxes. These three topics, as Senator Ryan and all economists know, are closely inter-related. Sadly, the relationship between these three topics is very, very different than Senator Ryan and most economists believe. Getting the economy moving is vital after eight years of mediocre growth under GW Bush, culminating in the Great Recession. But when you go back as far as the data allows, you find a quadratic relationship between the top marginal tax rate in one year and growth in the subsequent year , and that we are at a point on the curve where it is an increase, not a decrease in tax rates, that is likely to lead to faster economic growth. Even sticking to the period of relatively low taxes we’ve been in since Reagan started his tax cuts, growth rates should go up and unemployment rates should go down if tax rates go up.
There are two reasons this is true. One is that taxes pay for the existence of the government. The government provides services the government provides that are conducive to growth and which the private sector simply has not historically provided at non-negligible levels. These services include national defense, monitoring and controlling epidemics, and building infrastructure.
The government also provides some leadership that can make it possible for the private sector to adopt new technologies. As an example – in this day and age, having a vehicle that could run on any mix of gasoline, ethanol or natural gas (depending on which is cheapest per mile) would be a nice thing to have. You can buy one of those vehicles today… in Brazil. Never heard of such a thing? Well, there are millions of bi-flex and tri-flex vehicles on the road in Brazil today, made by such exotic companies as GM, Ford, Volkswagen, and Mercedes. Why are there so many flex-fuel cars and motorcycles on the road in Brazil? Because the Brazilian government realized you can’t get from 1970s fuel shortages to where they are now without someone forcing both auto makers and fuel stations to make changes simultaneously. Without government action, auto makers wouldn’t have been willing to mass produce flex-fuel vehicles out of fear there would be no filling stations for those vehicles, and fueling stations would have been reluctant to make investments out of fear that there would be no vehicles to take advantage of them. In other words, the situation we see in the U.S.
But there is another, perhaps more important reason, why higher tax rates often lead to faster economic growth and lower unemployment. As I keep pointing out, any good business owner (and any lousy one, for that matter) will tell you, if you tax something more, you get less of it. And income taxes can be seen as penalties on withdrawing money from one’s business for the purpose of consumption, which means they discourage business owners from taking profits out of their business. The alternative to taking profits and consuming is re-investing in the business. Thus, higher tax rates on income lead to more investment on business. And this result is borne out empirically; when the top marginal rate is below 50%, a tax increase is correlated with more private investment and less private consumption.
2. Deficits and the national debt. This is another tax related issue. Historically, during and following tax hikes tax collections /GDP rise. During and following tax cuts, tax collections fall. (How a fact so basic that even a child could observe it in the data became a surprise to many people is a testament to, ahem, economists like Art Laffer and Thomas Sowell.
But there are many ways to cut taxes people pay, and changing the marginal rate is only one such way. Enforcement of tax law is another. Since 1929 (that’s as far back as data is available) – every single Republican President decreased the tax burden, the percentage of people’s income paid in taxes, and thus far, all Democrats but Truman and Obama have increased that percentage. Click on the link and you’ll also see that growth rates were much faster for Presidents who increased the tax burden than for Presidents who decreased it. Though there are many ways of being fiscally responsible or irresponsible, it is, of course, easier to balance the budget if tax revenues are higher. The last four Republican Presidents – Ford, Reagan, and the two Bushes all increased the national debt. Conversely, before Obama you had to go back to 1944, when the nation was fighting World War 2, to find a Democrat in the Oval Office who increased the national debt.
And yes, I know, there was a bad recession going on when Obama took office, and the economy still sucks. And yes, I agree with Keynes – the data shows that expansions following recessions during which the government increased its spending are longer and stronger than when expansions following recessions during which the government cut spending. But that spending should have been paid for with tax hikes. Historically, when the government raises taxes during or shortly after a recession, the resulting expansion is longer and stronger than when the government cuts taxes. That’s what the data shows. The reasons are the same as given above in the discussion about economic growth, plus one: during periods of economic weakness those in the private sector tend to sit on money.
As an aside – it is worth noting that both this Great Recession and the Great Depression came about half a decade after big reductions in both marginal tax rates and regulation. Coincidence?
3. Obama’s performance might resemble that of other Democratic administrations more closely had he chosen economic advisors who paid more attention to data and were less enamored of the policies GW Bush was employing. When you pick an advisor who jumps through hoops to be like one of GW’s economic advisors, you will get GW’s outcomes. Its even worse when you’ve been warned and you do it anyway. Frankly, if I say so myself, it isn’t that difficult to find people who actually can spot business cycles at both ends.
4. The bail-outs. Of course, one of the big contributors to the Obama deficits are how Obama reacted to the poor state of the economy. (In fairness, some of the bail-out spending was pre-committed by the previous administration, but then Obama voted in favor of that spending as a Senator and didn’t try to walk it back once he became President.) But where are the prosecutions? Was there not wrongdoing? And then you have stories like Matt Taibbi’s latest. Like GW’s policies before him, Obama’s approach seems almost designed create another mess.
5. Health care. Obama care = Romney care. This is a policy that Republicans were pushing a decade ago, and would still be pushing if a Democrat hadn’t proposed it. Where is the public option?
6. The wars. I don’t have a solution, but then I didn’t spend a few hundred million bucks running for President, nor am I about to spend a billion dollars running for re-election. It is the height of immorality to seek out the presidency or re-election in a time of war and yet have no clue how to bring the war to a successful conclusion.
I always thought it was the height of insanity for anyone to vote to re-elect GW in 2004, after screwing up the economy and two wars. Yes, I know some worthies were still talking “Mount Rushmore” a year or two later, but one should be better than that. And yes, there are a handful of things Obama did that GW might not do, but let’s be realistic – this has looked from the very beginning like GW’s third term.
Which leaves just one question – if the policies of the Republicans are even worse than Obama’s – and they tend to support anti-growth tax policies (calling them pro-growth doesn’t change the data), what should a rational person do? I don’t know. But I think if I’m going to see Republican policies enacted, I’d prefer to see them run under a Republican label. See, Democratic policies may not be very good, but historically they have tended to produce better results than Republican policies. (BTW – Michael Kanell and I have an entire book called Presimetrics looking at how Presidents performed on a wide range of topics.) Another four years spent bringing the feeble Democratic brand down to the levels of the even more feeble Republican brand will cause lasting damage.
Well, I am in the gridlock camp. The only hope for higher taxes is gridlock and letting the Bush tax cuts expire. Obama may yet embrace this approach to deficit reduction in a second term. Particularly if the GOP regains the Senate. They may not have enough votes to over ride a veto of an extension and he may decide he has nothing to lose by doing the right thing.
I voted for obama 3 times – TX unusual “two step” primary gives the highly motivated 2 chances to support a candidate once at the polls and once in a messy caucus process.
But I will not be voting for or supporting him in any way for his re-election campaign for all of the reasons you cite. I think living in TX makes this protest “non vote” easier; it’s not like he has much of a chance of capturing TX electoral votes. I’m not sure I could be as certain if I lived somewhere more evenly divided and the race turned out to be close.
I don’t think any of the GOP field will do better on any of these issues but also don’t think they have any chance of winning 271 electoral votes. The 2010 mid terms have fired up a really ugly element in the GOP base that will make it impossible for any primary candidate to show anything but total fealty to their insane rantings. Whoever survives will be assured of getting W’s 28% hard-core rump and not much else.
I agree. I want to see either a Dean or Clinton primary challenge, if for no other reason. to force the issues back across the center line.
No question that O has been a major disappointment, especially when one considers the campaign rhetoric we were fed. The issue becomes what does one do when one is faced with the spector of Obama vs the absurdity of the Republican Party candidates? And that then brings up the entire issue of the voting population and how do they come to see the current crop of Republican leaders as being interested in their, that is working class, intersts? Most of the Tea Bagger populace appear to be working stiffs. What is that fool who demanded that the “government keep its hands off of her Medicare” thinking now about the Paul Ryan plan? Very distressing it all is.
Regarding the issue of taxation and the effect of an increase in marginal rates on the economy; I don’t question that higher income taxes for the financial elite, anything over $300,000 annually, would lead to increased investment of profits. The way the tax laws work wouldn’t the owner of a privately held corporation be able to manipulate the earnings so as to still shield the profits from taxes if marginal rates are increased? Also, assuming that corporate taxation is not a myth, if profits are not paid out as income to the owner aren’t those profits still subject to taxation? Would the tax savings to the company be significant if paid as corporate income rather than individual income? In addition, if marginal rates on earned income are raised wouldn’t the owners of a corporation simply be able to pay themselves “qualified” dividends rather than salaries and thereby significantly reduce their tax liabilities? It would seem that any marginal increase in tax rates would have to be accompanied by a major revision of the law regarding earned vs unearned income.
I’m not going to vote for the weak SPD Social Democrat Party in the 1930 German Reichstag elections, because if I’m going to see center right policies enacted, I might as well see them labled center right. What could go wrong?
The problem is that even though Obama has demonstrated that his rhetoric is much different than the policy actions he prescribes the other participants rhetoric is lunatic and their policy actions are even more extreme than their rhetoric.
The apallingly weak grip of the facts in this story is just irresponsible
———-
The bail-outs. Of course, one of the big contributors to the Obama deficits are how Obama reacted to the poor state of the economy. (In fairness, some of the bail-out spending was pre-committed by the previous administration
————
Actually, in fairness 80% or more of the money that went to wall street was spent by the Bush administration and most of the rest was pre-committed. This is all spelled out in Barofsky’s report’s so there’s no excuse for getting it wrong.
————-
, but then Obama voted in favor of that spending as a Senator and didn’t try to walk it back once he became President.)
————
The Obama administration has recovered nearly all the money that went to wall street. If you object to the auto industry rescue, a topic that is always ignored by such claims, then present some reasoning.
———-
But where are the prosecutions? Was there not wrongdoing?
———
The level of dewey eyed naivete needed even ask this question boggles the mind. Please sit down, but I have to tell you that the laws are neither written nor applied in a fair manner. Even Charles Keating had his sentence overturned. Look it up. Look up the terrible fate of Michael Milken, forced to play tennis for a year and to pay a couple of million dollar fine out of his $2billion earnings. Where do you live?
—-
And then you have stories like Matt Taibbi’s latest.
—-
Matt Taibii has no fucking idea what he is talking about. That’s why he is an easy mark for Republican disinformation.
—-
Like GW’s policies before him, Obama’s approach seems almost designed create another mess.
—-
Head on Desk
If you represent the voter, we deserve the Republicans and Blackwater thugs back on the streets.
MarkJ
Please go to the comments above and delete five of the six repetitions of your comment. That is what the delete button, which only you will have for your comments made from the same computor, is for.
Is there any expectation that President Obama will be seriously challenged by Democratic contenders?
MarkJ,
You are certainly correct, but this is what is often referred to as the “good cop, bad cop” process of debate or negotiations. One party is so absurd, the bad cop, as to make the unsatisfactory position of the other party, the good cop, seem acceptable as a least worst position. I can’t say that this is a well staged charade controlled by the party that controls both the Dems and the Repubs, the Corporate/Wealth Party, but the result certainly works to their greater advantage. It does require the cooperation of the mass media, which is also controlled by the same C/W grouop. It has also resulted in a SCOTUS that seems to have a political ideology as its legal guiding light. Is it ppossible that our political/economic structure operates as a vast criminal conspiracy?
Rootless,
I think your analogy is weak. If you want to tiptoe around Godwin’s law, this is more like voting for Hindenberg in ’32. All the rational folks voted for the senile old fool because the other guy was worse. That obviously did not work out. Maybe the rational folks should have tried to find a decent candidate, perhaps doing what they could for Bruning
At least Hindenberg stood up to hitler once or twice. Obama seems to specialize in the preemptive fold.
Pythoncharly,
You may find it hard to believe but I don’t owe Obama anything. He owes me and 310 million other Americans. He cannot or will not live up to his obligations.
So as we can see from the two comments immediately above, rootless_e and pythoncharly, which seem not to be off the mark, the true nature of the conundrum. How do we get the representation that we seem to be voting for, even when our candidate wins the election? We voted for a man that presented himslef as a populist who would represent the best interests of working class America and be helpful to people in need. We seem to have gotten a DLC charter member who might best be compared to Bill Clinton, though I think Clinton had better negotiation skills. It’s frustrating to expect a candidate to live up to the promise of his campaign rhetoric and find that we elected a consumate politician that aims for the expediant compromise from the outset of negotiations. Does he not recognize that his adversaries are rigid and inflexible. The Republican leadership seems to have adopted an ideological position that ignores the basic political process of compromise and consensus. The end result is a bit too far right of the center and though some portion of the American populace voice a conservative to reactionary political ideology they are certainly not a majority. When that majority participates and sees that participation bear only half a harvest the frustration is significant. We keep calling it a political and economic class. Maybe its a criminal class acting in an orchestrated manner. Who is the conductor?
Don’t be absurd. Obama presented himself as a Democrat, not a populist.If he had presented himself as a populist or in the camp of Dennis Kucinich, who I supported BTW, he would have LOST THE ELECTIONS. Obama in the primaries was clearly a “moderate” in terms of American politics – that’s what the voting public wants. Complain to them. Second, your DLC charter member nonsense is sheer fantasy. For some reason there are a lot of people running around who claim to be left wing but don’t care that Obama rescued the nation’s largest unionized industry from near death, that he has appointed and supported the most activist Secretary of Labor in 50 years (and compare her to Rob NAFT Reich, for crying out loud), has passed a health care reform that Barbara Lee calls as important as the civil rights wins of the 1960s, and is regulating mercury and carbon from coal burning. Not a single one of those is “DLC”, but we keep hearing this lazy ass claim as if it meant something.
Finally, I think the most remarkable feature of the “progressive” criticism of Obama is the persistent delusion that a black man, who as a lawyer worked on police brutality cases, and who managed to vault to the top tier of power against all odds is a simpleton who needs to have the nature of the Republican party explained to him. I’d call it racist, but it seems involve a more profound confusion than merely prejudice. What appears to be the case is that America was conditioned by W to be unable to tell the difference between bellowing and winning.
I never thought I would hear myself say this:
Hillary in 2012
mature, smart, savvy, tough
Apparently Geithner made some contacts with some (?) prosecutors suggesting that a get tough approach on white collar crime might spook the markets.
Since Geithner still has his job I must assume the lack of integrity came from the top.
“Apparently” some people will believe rumors.
Rootless,
I agree that Obama ran as a moderate dem and talks like a moderate dem. I also agree he doesn’t need the Rep party explained to him.
To me, he simply doesn’t understand economic data, motivations and constraints, and he hasn’t enough guts to negotiate with the other side to boot.
Str,
As DeLong always says, the Cossacks work for the tsar.
Hey those multimillion dollar campaign contribution checks from JPM/GS/BofA/Citi aren’t going to write themselves.
No sarcasm intended I sincerely believe BO believes he needs this money to win reelection and has clearly acted (or failed to act depending on the issue at hand) to make sure he can get it.
I fully expect that as in 2008 corporate america will cover both bases to make sure their calls are returned. They might prefer an anti-tax GOP candidate in general but they read polls too.
I did Jack.
Win
Win
Win
“and who managed to vault to the top tier of power against all odds is a simpleton who needs to have the nature of the Republican party explained to him. I’d call it racist, but..”
Nice piece of straw construction. Are you Rahm Emmanuel in disguise? Certainly no one would accuse Obama of any lack of intellect. That doesn’t make him a brilliant negotiator, though he is certainly a compromiser. And no, Obama may not have had the word progressive emblazoned on a T-shirt, but he certainly did talk the talk. “Change you can believe in.” Was that a religious statement? He set himself up as an alternative to Hilary Clinton who one might have expected to be a DLC clone of Bill, who himself was a good slightly right of center Democrat.
You had something to say, but you’re beginning to blow smoke now that others are less impressed by the turn of events over the past two years. There are still troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The banks have cleaned up profits without cleaning up their mess. Bradley Manning and Barry Bonds are in jail and the bankning industry is in financial heaven. Some change to believe in. And your criticism of Taibi is not shared by those with a better grasp on effective journalism than you seem to demonstrate. “Taibbi on a Fed Bailout the Business Press Buried” @CJR http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/taibbi_on_a_fed_bailout_the_bu.php
The strength of the right wing is the complaceny of the liberal with attaining less than his goals. Success in half measures is little more than the stalling strategy for ideals that are intended to appear to be twice what they are. At the current rate of back peddling we may end up with a right wing clack in control of the whole Congress in spite of their own best efforts to play the jesters in the court of oligarchs and plutocrats.
Mike,
How naive. I haven’t voted “for” anything in years. I consistently throw my vote to anything with feet, flippers or feathers that can beat a vile Republican and their nasty “plans” in an election. Grow up.
success in half measures is a lot better than utter failure and life under a Republican police state. Is it your theory that you can create a revolution by being disgruntled?
So Geithner and (then) NY AG Cuomo meet to talk about football and girls?
You wrote “ Does he not recognize that his adversaries are rigid and inflexible. “
What do you think? He’s managed a more succesful legislative 2 years than any Democratic President since LBJ, DeMint called for making HCR “waterloo”, the GOP treats him with undisguised hatred and contempt, and you think it’s possible that Obama retains illusions about the good intentions of the Republicans? Jesus. What he is doing is what a good politician should do – try to go over the Republicans to their constituents.
As for the elections. I supported Dennis because I wanted to end the wars right away.The big three all waffled – you know why? Because that was the winning formula. If you had the delusion that Obama was going to implement Kucinich’s platform, you have only yourself to blame – he certainly did not ever make that a possibility. Your interpretation of hope and change is nice, but it seems based on nothing rather than wishful thinking. If you want to be angry that your wishful thinking turned out to not correspond to reality, you should be angry at yourself.
Hillary in 2012? Better in many ways. But economically? Aren’t both Obama and she cut of the same cloth as her husband? Glass-Steagal was repealed under Clinton, who recently defended that repeal.
“It is the height of immorality to seek out the presidency or re-election in a time of war and yet have no clue how to bring the war to a successful conclusion.”
Strongly disagree, simply on the illogic of the assertion. If we know there is a way to a successful conclusion, then holding Obama to account for not concluding the wars is fair and reasonable. We do not, however, know that there is such a way. Some things just don’t have good outcomes. Once you make a bad marriage, destroy liver and kidneys while traveling with the band…you have to accept that there may be no way to reach a ” successful conclusion.” And even if you find a conclusion that somebody thinks of as a success, others will hound you for getting it wrong and get the Heritage Foundation to rewrite history on you.
Obama promised to get us out of the torture business, and mostly has. He promised more open government, and has done some pretty creepy things. He promised to close that Cuban prison, and though there have been some really odious efforts to politicize that decision, it is important enough that he should have sucked up the damage and done it.
The Libyan war is Obama’s. Getting out of Afghanistana and Iraq “successfully” cannot be his, because it may simply be impossible to do.
Amen to that. Guess I’ll go Green. Definitely not voting for another Bush term
Keep working on your thesis re: the affect on investment trends brought about by raises in top marginal tax rates.
Leave the politics to someone else. Myself, I have few illusions about Obma, and none about the Republicans.
Kharris. If it’s impossible to conclude the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq successfully, then that is sufficient reason to withdraw. What could be worse than a national debt which gives fiscal hawks ammunition in arguing to dismantle SS, Medicare and Medicaid, to mention a few? NancyO
why aint the perps in jail?
Matt Taibbi: “Justice Department Has No Appetite To Take ANY Cases Against Wall Street Executives”
(video)
posted cuz i thought taibbi’s analogy of a car dealer selling cars with defective breaks and then buying life insurance on the drivers was as close to the truth as i’ve heard yet..
rootless_e: “ He’s managed a more succesful legislative 2 years than any Democratic President since LBJ”
Better than Carter?
kharris: “If we know there is a way to a successful conclusion, then holding Obama to account for not concluding the wars is fair and reasonable. We do not, however, know that there is such a way. Some things just don’t have good outcomes.”
How do we know we lost in Iraq? We leave. How do we know we won in Iraq? We leave. Why not just declare victory and leave? 😉
abolutely. carter got little done unless you consider deregulating the airlines a great accomplishment.
you have to have an actual broken law, not an analogy dreamt up by someone who does not understand finance or law.
cactus-You’re mad Obama hasn’t committed political suicide?
little john,
Funny. I thought Clinton was pretty popular, and he did those items on the list that applied to his time.
If Democrats, Independents, and others do not vote for Obama, then he’s out at the end of this presidential term. So, who is in?
I’ve watched and listened to dissatisfaction with Obama’s leadership or whatever you want to call his actions during the first term. Naturally, the Republicans weren’t happy with him. Then the leftists disowned him. Then many of the Independents. And, now, the moderate Democrats? Sorry, I don’t believe it.
The polls don’t appear to show that Obama is losing many Democrats. Leftists, fine, as their numbers aren’t that large anyway. But moderate Democrats?
Democrats and hardcore leftists who thought that Obama was going to lead from a leftist or far left of center position weren’t thinking very hard. How was he going to pull that off, yet serve as the leader of the nation? The disillusioned, particularly on the blogs, expected him to do what? Lay it out. Then try to explain the Congressional votes that would carry the day with such an agenda.
President Obama is a weak leader in my judgment, but he is still a Democrat and that comes across weekly. Does he appear to be a hardened leftist in his actions? Of course not. A hardened leftist couldn’t get elected and wouldn’t survive one term if he/she was elected by some fluke.
So, some Democrats will abandon him. Big deal. It’s not the end of the world. If Obama is re-elected with or without the support of leftists and other Democrats dissatisfied with his leadership performance, it’s likely that he is preferrable to having a Republican as President if one is a Democrat. Well, that is probably the situation for most Democrats.
I don’t follow the supposed logic that a Democrat can be elected President and govern with a hardened or far left agenda. I don’t see that in the cards. Who really thought that would happen and why?
I am an Independent voter who believes that both major political parties are wrecked. I simply vote for the candidate(s) whom I believe will do the best job.
Heh!
you mean: kill AFDC, pass NAFTA, bomb Serbia, and hire Dick Morris to suck toes? Put Rush Limbaugh on AFR? Derefulate banking!? That was a good one.
Min:
Glass-Steagall and Section 20 of it was weakened from 1987 onward and repealed in 1999 under Greenspan. Wasn’t the president Clinton? Clinton had nothing to do with it other than sign the bill. It was dead by then.
I assume you haven’t concluded I am a hardcore leftist.
“If Obama is re-elected with or without the support of leftists and other Democrats dissatisfied with his leadership performance, it’s likely that he is preferrable to having a Republican as President if one is a Democrat. Well, that is probably the situation for most Democrats.”
This assumes a one-time game. In a repeated game, reputation matters. I’ve pointed out many, many times that there is a difference between Reps and Dems and which affects growth: until Obama, going as far back as the data allows (1929), every Republican President decreased the federal tax burden and every Democrat save one (Truman) increased that burden. Truman, of course, dealt with the wind-down of WW2 (call it an excuse I think is acceptable).
The Dem reputation suffers enough from misinformation, but when that misinformation comes from the inside, it will be fatal if kept up for long enough.
cactus,
Apparently you are not alone in not approving of the Messiah:
A floundering presidency heading for a fall? Barack Obama hits rock bottom in latest Gallup poll
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100084185/a-floundering-presidency-heading-for-a-fall-barack-obama-hits-rock-bottom-in-latest-gallup-poll/
sammy,
Please point to a single place where I referred to Obama as a messiah or otherwise indicated I expected something special from him. I recall writing how I was holding my nose and voting for him as the least bad option, but that I’d be watching him.
FWIW, and I certainly am not one to defend him, but a big part of Obama’s popularity problem is the relentless brickbats coming from your side of the aisle, which is odd given he looks very much like GW or Mitt Romney in from a decade ago when conservatives and Republicans were still gushing over them. Other than nominating Sotomayor, can you name anything he has done that GW or Romney circa 2001 – 2003 would not have done? Can you name any significant initiative from the GW era that he has actually broken with?
Mike,
Can you name any significant initiative from the GW era that he has actually broken with?
Other than Obamacare, the “Stimulus,” Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, starting a war without congressional approval (Libya), tax increases, cap-n-trade, EPA regulating carbon, moratorium on oil drilling, revision of rules of engagement in Afghanistan, and class warfare?
I’ll have to think about it.
Class warfare…what an odd attribution about Obama…and such a ring about it.
Sammy,
Obamacare is esentially Romneycare. Not very different than GW might have proposed after a few years, what with his own foray into healthcare.
The stimulus? What part of it? Because its not like pumping a lot of money into the banks didn’t start while GW was President. So what did Obama do that is different from GW had begun?
Starting a war without Congressional approval in Libya? Seriously? It would be one thing to say he he didn’t follow the Constitution and get a declaration of war – but then it seems that’s passe these days. Heck, even Reagan did that a few times. But what? He didn’t provide “evidence” from Curveball that Libya was buying yellowcake from Niger and that’s your break? Isn’t that somewhat, er, “nuanced”?
Cap-n-trade? Do you know something nobody else knows? Because what has been proposed is just an evolution of what we saw from 2001 to 2008 (remember, its market based, not command and control based), and even that isn’t going to happen. Its not like Obama
EPA regulating carbon. Remember the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the EPA couldn’t refuse to regulate CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act? The Bush administration slow walked some vague proposals in response, and Obama has refused to put any political capital into keeping a Congressional initiative alive so it died in Congress. If that’s a break with the Bush administration, then what isn’t? I mean, really?
Moratorium on oil drilling… there is such a thing as reacting to a disaster. You do realize that after the Challenger blew up, the remaining space shuttle fleet was grounded for 32 months, right? Can you guess why? (Hint – it isn’t because Reagan was against the space program.)
Revision of the rules of engagement in Afghanistan. Its not like GW kept exactly the same rules of engagement in Afghanistan since 2001 either.
Class warfare? Let’s stick with actions, not words. So far what has he done differently than Mr. “haves and the have mores” on the class warfare front?
With all due respect, you might as well throw in asking the White House cook to remove or add dishes to the menu to your list. You haven’t mentioned anything that is more than a footnote, and most of your list isn’t even that.
Mike,
Thank you for the honesty of your thought and for enunciating some of the things I have been thinking.
rootless_e is possibly right; he is certainly a ‘fierce and implacable, passionate’ cynic, but I don’t think I could live in his world of bitter superiority. (Perhaps he will mellow with age.)
PS thanks also for the book, although my purchase is perhaps the best thanks. Also, are you familiar with Ecclesiastes 12:12?
Mike, the ACA is actually the same exact plan proposed by Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation in 2003. To say that it was not a conservative plan is just flat out lying.
Nancy,
No argument there. The leader who refuses to be the one who lost Laos or “lost” the minvan, no matter the cost, is a rotten leader. The problem is one of knowledge. We humans are not smart enough to know what will happen if we do one thing, what would have happened if we had done another. You make the best choices you can.
My point is that holding Obama responsible for achieving something that may be impossible to achieve is silly. We mere mortals don’t even know what folks at the White House and the Pentagon and the CIA know, so we will never be able to know what’s possible. That’s the plan, I guess.