Quote Originally Posted by Skroe View Post
No. here's thing. I voted for Obama twice too first of all. But hating something... Detesting something... is zero excuse to avoid doing that something.

I don't - and nobody should - give a shit about liking this or any President, or their goddamn family. It's irrelevant. What matters most is their execution of their function. WHo cares if he's the first "nerd president". Seriously, fuck that personal shit. "I'm just a Dad who loves his daughters" Obama is a big nothingburger with a side of who gives a crap. Obama the political knife fighter (if it existed), the political leader, the policy maker, is the only Obama that is relevant.

Barack Obama and his staff played a huge role "locking" our politics in place by proposing an agenda as unpalatable to his fellow Democrats as to Republicans. And more than that, he didn't push the agenda. He thought the facts were so self evident that they spoke for themselves.

My response? Is he brand new or something? He's dealing with _people_. Not computers. People. People are prejudiced. Ignorant. Defensive by nature. He was called "Spocklike". That is not to his credit. Politics is about people, and the Presidency is the most political office this country has. If he isn't equipped to deal with that side of it, and just be the wonkish nerd, then he instead should enjoy a job working for someone who actually does have a black belt in the nasty business of getting large numbers of people to agree on something.

Take those fiscal cliffs for instance. He didn't drag leaders in to force negotiations. He didn't send out staffers to get together with their staffers to try and form a consensus. There were no conversations going on most of the time, not because the Administration refused to negotiate, but because he figured the Senate/House would do it and then drop it on hist able, and then he, by being apart, could be an even handed arbiter.

It's ridiculous and not how this country has ever functioned in modern terms, and that's not to his credit.

You want to see a living breathing example of this? The 2017 Defense Authorization bill just passed the House Armed Services committee last week. It authorizes the the biggest defense spending since the Early Reagan era. It's a massive military rearmament bill and Obama is very, very against it. But what did it pass in the Comittee? 50-2. It's expected to pass the House this month with around 390 votes in the affirmative. That's just this year. Every year, for most bills, has had a variation on this theme. He cultivated no allies in the legislature, so he has no allies. That's terrible for his agenda and terrible for this country.

We simply cannot let Barack Obama off the hook for the past 6 years of frozen politics. He wasn't just a victim. He was also an enabler of it. Because 'Spock' fucking sucks. We needed 'Captain Picard' instead.
Well as i said, we'll just have to disagree. You do seem to have a more utilitarian approach than I do. That's not a knock, simply an observation.