Obama Disaster

I saw a Dailykos article by Badabing in which TheAtomicA commented that Obama was super-ambitious and wanted to be remembered as a great president, and bruh1 commented that America is already off the cliff and that Obama’s policies aren’t reflecting that fact, so defending him doesn’t make sense given the emergency. These are two thoughts I’ve been having. Here are the quotes:

TheAtomicA: “His ambition was clearly to be remembered in history as one of the great Presidents. I don't know if we've ever had a more ambitious President in regards to that -certainly not in my lifetime.”

bruh1: “I am trying to get beyond the he said, she said or partisan/ideological divides to bring into play a real historic understanding of the politicians we are seeing in the Democratic Party, and their inadequate response to the task in front of them. i recently realized if this were 1990 Obama would be fine. But, its 2010, and we are over the cliff, so he's not.”

Obama wants to be popular like Reagan and Clinton, so he has a mix of their policies, but America is in a mess because of Reagan and Clinton (plus Bush II) and while America could cope with Reagan and Clinton’s policies to some extent in the 80s and 90s, America is broken now, and those policies are now very dangerous.

Neoliberalism, war, and high defence budgets are crazy, but especially so in this environment. Add Bush II’s “security” policies of torture, domestic spying, detention without trial, execution of American citizens abroad, etc., and Obama is a complete disaster. He had the greatest opportunity imaginable when he entered office, but he was stuck in his old dream of being a popular president like Reagan and Clinton, and so he missed the boat. His enneagram type is 3, so he figured if he does what all the popular people do, then he can’t go wrong. Oops.