Best/Worse President since WW2 - Quinnipiac poll

[JJ Husker]

The people that responded to this poll sure weren't taking a very broad view. Based on the response to this one question; Who was the worst president dating back to Truman? and Obama and GW Bush had by far the most votes. Anyone who answered that question with anything other than Jimmy Carter is an idiot and should've been kicked out of the sample group. Obama, GW Bush, & Nixon the worst? c'mon. Nixon did some reprehensible things but he was NOT a bad President. Clinton's affair(s) did NOT make him a bad president. Our populace is too stupid to be trusted for anything anymore.

[carlfense]

 

 

How soon people forget Presidents like George W Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Tricky Dick.

Crazy, right? Particularly since the first of those was still president six years ago.

 

And the next disaster that Obama presides over/initiates/ignores that is the equivalent or worse than 9/11, the Iraq War, or the financial meltdown will be his first.

 

It's really only fair to blame Iraq on Bush. 9/11 was months into his term and the threat intel he received was generic at best. The financial crisis, to the extent that it was created by government policy, had been building, policy by policy, for decades. Bush aimed big and lost big on Iraq, and for that, history will not be kind. Obama's downfall came out of an abundance of caution and general ineffectiveness.

 

I wasn't blaming Bush entirely for those (although the Iraq War as you noted would come the closest) but rather pointing out the silly howling about Obama's failures.

 

How many of the following can you actually blame on Obama: IRS/Lerner, Benghazi(!), Fast and Furious, the shrinking deficit, etc? And which of those are even approximately equivalent to the 3 most prominent Bush-era problems?

[carlfense]

 

Obama's downfall came out of an abundance of caution and general ineffectiveness.

 

Well, again, I'll post this link. Obama may have been a decent president. But we'll never know, because he never had the chance to show us. When the other party holds a meeting on the night of your inauguration and pledges to obstruct every single thing you do - and then spends the next six years following through on that pledge - it's nearly impossible to say how good/bad Obama is, or will be viewed.

 

This is one party throwing a six-year (soon to be eight year) temper tantrum because they lost an election. It's borderline criminal what they're doing to this country because they simply will not attempt in any way to work with this president.

 

LINK

 

Right. That's what McConnell figured out . . . that if he was willing to throw all of his responsibilities to the American people under the bus he could make Obama a failure (at least on the legislative side).

[LukeinNE]

RE: Republican obstructionism. Layup rebuttal guys: The Democrats had a massive House majority and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for most of two years (Al Franken provided vote 60 starting July 7, 2009). I don't approve of the GOP's tactics as the minority party by and large, but good lord. The Republicans could not stop anything by themselves in either chamber. That Obama, Reid, and Pelosi couldn't hold their people in line with the discipline required to enact his agenda is their failing, and to blame it on the GOP is intellectually lazy partisanship.

 

Kickstarted by Reagan, ironically.

 

Eh. The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 pre-dates Reagan. Fannie Mae goes all the way back to the New Deal. Give me enough time, and I could probably find a cited example of at least a little culpability in the 2008 crash from FDR to Bush. I don't particularly care about scoring political points, I just wanted to emphasize it was a team effort.

 

How many of the following can you actually blame on Obama: IRS/Lerner

 

I wouldn't blink if the idea came from the White House, but there's no evidence of that, and if it did, that sounds like a classic case of "Chief of Staff will 'take care' of the issue and the president doesn't need or want to know."

 

Benghazi(!), Fast and Furious, the shrinking deficit, etc?

 

 

At most, Benghazi will be a minor problem for Clinton in 2016. The only issue for me was the disinformation campaign the White House went on for a couple weeks afterward. It was unnecessary and left a bad taste in my mouth, but almost certainly no criminal negligence or whatever was alleged. It's hard to keep all our State Dept assets safe.

 

F&F to me seemed like an ambitious idea that went wrong. I frequently complain about the government responding weakly (or not responding at all) to problems. I won't go too hard on them when they were trying something creative and it just didn't work.

 

The rising or shrinking deficit is largely a reflection of the economy writ large. He and Bush exploded federal discretionary spending and both put expensive new entitlements into place, so they deserve some blame for the deficit. That said, I'd be remiss if I didn't note the most productive episode of Congressional dysfunction in American history (sequester) happened on Obama's watch.

[carlfense]

RE: Republican obstructionism. Layup rebuttal guys: The Democrats had a massive House majority and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for most of two years (Al Franken provided vote 60 starting July 7, 2009). I don't approve of the GOP's tactics as the minority party by and large, but good lord. The Republicans could not stop anything by themselves in either chamber. That Obama, Reid, and Pelosi couldn't hold their people in line with the discipline required to enact his agenda is their failing, and to blame it on the GOP is intellectually lazy partisanship.

Actually, they had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate for about 14 weeks . . . not two years.

[carlfense]

That said, I'd be remiss if I didn't note the most productive episode of Congressional dysfunction in American history (sequester) happened on Obama's watch.

*cough*

[Junior]

At most, Benghazi will be a minor problem for Clinton in 2016. The only issue for me was the disinformation campaign the White House went on for a couple weeks afterward. It was unnecessary and left a bad taste in my mouth, but almost certainly no criminal negligence or whatever was alleged. It's hard to keep all our State Dept assets safe.

 

F&F to me seemed like an ambitious idea that went wrong. I frequently complain about the government responding weakly (or not responding at all) to problems. I won't go too hard on them when they were trying something creative and it just didn't work.

 

The rising or shrinking deficit is largely a reflection of the economy writ large. He and Bush exploded federal discretionary spending and both put expensive new entitlements into place, so they deserve some blame for the deficit. That said, I'd be remiss if I didn't note the most productive episode of Congressional dysfunction in American history (sequester) happened on Obama's watch.

 

 

Which disinformation campaign was that?

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/world/middleeast/apprehension-of-ahmed-abu-khattala-may-begin-to-answer-questions-on-assault.html?hp&_r=2

 

 

Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the suspect captured by U.S. special forces on Tuesday for his role in the 2012 Benghazi attack, reportedly said he was motivated in part by the anti-Islam online video made in America, according to the New York Times.

 

"What he did in the period just before the attack has remained unclear. But Mr. Abu Khattala told other Libyans in private conversations during the night of the attack that he was moved to attack the diplomatic mission to take revenge for an insult to Islam in an American-made online video," Times reporter David Kirkpatrick wrote in a story on Khattala on Tuesday.

[carlfense]

Nixon did some reprehensible things but he was NOT a bad President.

Whoa.

[knapplc]

Crap. I did research on dates and whatnot to answer the "layup." Thanks, carlfense.

[LukeinNE]

Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the suspect captured by U.S. special forces on Tuesday for his role in the 2012 Benghazi attack, reportedly said he was motivated in part by the anti-Islam online video made in America, according to the New York Times.

"What he did in the period just before the attack has remained unclear. But Mr. Abu Khattala told other Libyans in private conversations during the night of the attack that he was moved to attack the diplomatic mission to take revenge for an insult to Islam in an American-made online video," Times reporter David Kirkpatrick wrote in a story on Khattala on Tuesday.

 

I would caution against taking the word of a terrorist in the interest of defending the Obama Administration. His statement flies in the face of the conclusions drawn by House, Senate, and State Department investigations. There was no spontaneous protest outside the compound, the attack was pre-planned, Al Qaeda was involved, and the video had little, if anything, to do with it.

Actually, they had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate for about 14 weeks . . . not two years.

 

 

My bad, I forgot about Scott Brown. A few points, though. One, he campaigned on stopping the health care law and won....in Massachusetts (perhaps that particular bout of obstruction was in line with the wishes of the American people?). Two, the Democrats thoroughly deserved losing the precious time they did in between Kennedy's death and his replacement's appointment. Third, (minor correction to an earlier point of mine), one minority member must vote to let a bill out of committee, which happened with ObamaCare, the stimulus, etc, so let's not overstate the degree of obstructionism, and finally, ObamaCare was an enormous miscalculation on Obama's part. There are many things wrong with its legislative journey, including (for the sake of this issue) eating up the Democrats' precious time with an overwhelming majority.

[TGHusker]

 

Nixon did some reprehensible things but he was NOT a bad President.

Whoa.

 

Nixon was corrupt and he was paranoid and he had a disregard for the constitution. That is enough to place him in the bottom tier of any presidental list. With that said every president (maybe not Jimmy Carter) has some accomplishments. Nixon finally got us out of Vietnam - in that regard he is like Obama having to get us out of Bush's Iraq. Nixon opened up doors for relationships wt China - overall a good thing. (Now the bad thing about that is that I think that was the beginning to the 'new world order' and the out sourcing of jobs). The liberals should like him for starting the EPA and his Supreme Court nomination of Blackman, who authored the majority opinion of Roe v Wade.

[carlfense]

My bad, I forgot about Scott Brown. A few points, though. One, he campaigned on stopping the health care law and won....in Massachusetts (perhaps that particular bout of obstruction was in line with the wishes of the American people?). Two, the Democrats thoroughly deserved losing the precious time they did in between Kennedy's death and his replacement's appointment.

Which affects your two year filibuster proof majority claim . . . exactly how?

 

Third, (minor correction to an earlier point of mine), one minority member must vote to let a bill out of committee, which happened with ObamaCare, the stimulus, etc, so let's not overstate the degree of obstructionism,

That's a slender reed.

 

. . . and finally, ObamaCare was an enormous miscalculation on Obama's part. There are many things wrong with its legislative journey, including (for the sake of this issue) eating up the Democrats' precious time with an overwhelming majority.

Or maybe it was/is the best available option in an imperfect world.

[carlfense]

His statement flies in the face of the conclusions drawn by House, Senate, and State Department investigations. There was no spontaneous protest outside the compound, the attack was pre-planned, Al Qaeda was involved, and the video had little, if anything, to do with it.

I don't remember those exact conclusions in the House, Senate, and State Department investigations . . . but it's admittedly been awhile since I read them. Are you sure about your facts here?

[EbylHusker]

Yet another poll reinforcing the idea that most Americans are f'ing retarded and should just be put down for the betterment of humanity as a whole.

[Junior]

 

His statement flies in the face of the conclusions drawn by House, Senate, and State Department investigations. There was no spontaneous protest outside the compound, the attack was pre-planned, Al Qaeda was involved, and the video had little, if anything, to do with it.

I don't remember those exact conclusions in the House, Senate, and State Department investigations . . . but it's admittedly been awhile since I read them. Are you sure about your facts here?

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/senate-report-attack-on-us-compound-in-benghazi-could-have-been-prevented/2014/01/15/5e197224-7de9-11e3-95c6-0a7aa80874bc_story.html

 

No mention of the "cause" of the violence in this article about the senate investigation.

 

 

The committee described the attacks as opportunistic and said there was no specific warning that they were about to be carried out.

 

The report said that on Sept. 18, 2012, the “FBI and CIA reviewed the closed circuit television video from the Mission facility that showed there were no protests prior to the attacks.”

 

But it took six more days for intelligence officials to revise their chronology of events and say that “there were no demonstrations or protests” at the diplomatic compound “prior to the attacks.”