President Obama just made the best speech of his life

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

It seems like you want someone who'll be as much of an asshole for the D's side, as Bush was for the GOP. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but this certainly seems to be what you are advocating for.

I don't think Bush was that much of an asshole I guess. I think perfectly nice people can do perfectly horrible things and I think Bush was generally classy. Just happened to be wrong on things that affected millions of lives, making him very dangerous but not an inherently bad person in my point of view. My world doesn't have to have villains to the core so I don't tend to see many people that way, and in Bush's case I think he was an earnest, unqualified and very wrongheaded leader but I would not consider him a bad person.

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Bush was very effective in large part because of his willingness to ignore the law, precedent, and public opinion to ram through what he wanted. I don't want a Dem president who is going to act in a similar fashion.

I don't want someone to ignore the law but I do want someone to ignore public opinion if public opinion is wrong. I do not place much value in a leader who merely represents public opinion verbatim. There's none of the benefit of the buffer between direct democracy that way.

Honestly I'd settle for the campaigning Obama and the Obamacare Obama. That was a man trying to lead, he was bold and was audacious. Since then he's been a man trying to keep his approval rating and get reelected.

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I don't think it's very good for the long-term futures of the party for the Dems to act in that fashion, and I'm surprised to see others advocating for it.

I'm just advocating some audacity. That even that seems brazen to Democrats and lefties is maddening to me. I'm advocating that Obama try to govern the way he campaigned, with grandiose ideas and swinging for the fences.

When you swing for the fences, even failure is decent because it's hard to fail completely. If he is audacious even his compromises will be ok. When he is timid his compromises are tantamount to bending over repeatedly. Obama didn't get his healthcare home run (it got quite perverted by the healthcare industry) but by swinging for the fences he got a double. But since then he's been playing small ball.

All I am saying is play some long ball Democrats. You can't win against the Republicans playing small ball. I'm saying that his instincts are wrong. When they are being obstructionist you don't move towards them and try to make consensus, you move away from them and start from a better position to negotiate. He capitulates too much by being a consensus seeker without a counterpart willing to seek consensus.

You yourself say they only want to say no to him. And you yourself admit he was wrong to try to work with them so much initially. I'm just saying the same thing more harshly and with less use for Democrats in general. I just don't wanna add little asterisks to my anger with them, I find them completely and utterly useless. The Democrats have not done a thing I value in the last 10 years and while we both understand and can point at why I am not willing to forgive them for it.

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I also should remind you that ALL of Bush's accomplishments worth mentioning were in his first term - his second-term goals all failed spectacularly and he was mired in scandals CAUSED by his very assholishness and willingness to beat up institutions that didn't agree with him.

I read his second term differently. I read it as him taking back control from his administration and trying to ride out the mess. He fired Rummy, and started saying no to Cheney.

But I do give you that he didn't have as much political capital to work with and was less audacious. That does indicate that a lot has to do with situational factors if that is what you mean to point out and it is something I agree with. The difference between the Bush presidency and the Obama presidency, like nearly all such comparisons, is going to be largely situational with very little dispositional difference.

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You say that Bush changed America more than Obama could dream of doing, I flat-out disagree with that contention. The ACA is the biggest and most meaningful reform to hit the books in 40 years. I hate parts of it too (which you should blame on Harry Reid as much as anyone) but it puts us down the path to a sane health care policy.

I do agree that it was big (I personally think it is almost entirely bad so it's not something I like, but it certainly is big). But Bush did multiple things of that magnitude (though this is hard to measure as I'm not talking about a simple metric like how much it costs). Iraq was bigger, Homeland Security almost as big, Patriot Act smaller in effect and let's not forget the tax cut combination with war spending. That was not an accident. It is an old (Reagan era) conservative strategy of "starving the beast". I really don't think enough Americans understand the significance of it. It's like burning the land. Bush himself described it as a fiscal straitjacket and it's one that Obama is wearing. It was HUGE.

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What was Bush's accomplishment that exceeds that? Other than sowing fear of foreigners and lowering taxes, I don't really see anything worth pointing at.

Then you really don't understand the impact he had, in my opinion. Obama is hugely hampered by the strategy Bush employed. Bush undid all of Clinton and burnt the ground for Obama. He pulled off an ideological 180° for conservatives and made it very hard for his successor to do the same.

Obama has most certainly not pulled the country back around even halfway. And I don't think he is going to manage to do it in his second term either (though I am hoping he'll at least have second-term balls on the mid east question).

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

It seems like you want someone who'll be as much of an asshole for the D's side, as Bush was for the GOP.

The cases are not symmetrical. It's one thing to pursue conservative-wing Republican policies and market them as populist. That's deception bordering on fraud, and takes an asshole to do. It's quite another thing to pursue liberal-wing Democratic policies and market them as populist. To do this, you only need to make the American people's priorities your priorities, get behind the policies most likely to bring them about, and consistently execute them. To pursue this agenda robustly requires no character flaws at all.

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I just thought of a concrete example of his timidity. He avoids calling out Republicans. He keeps blaming something more general like "Congress" for the countries woes.

He has not even used his bully pulpit to pressure Republicans for being obstructionists right. He spreads blame in ways that make it not help the Democrats (but does help him, by making him seem more presidential and above the partisan problem that he is distancing himself from).

**** that timidity. Get your damn hands dirty Obama. Name and shame the obstructionists. When they played chicken with the debt ceiling he should have played hardball and put them on the spot while doing it.

If you are clearly never going to call a bluff then there is no risk to bluffing. That is why the Republicans get away with their strategies. Because the Democrats do not adapt accordingly. Game theory dictates that the Democrats "play sheriff" on these bluffs, but Democrat instincts cause them to incessantly fold.

Anyone who is known to always fold enables a counterpart that can always bluff.

If this were a poker game the Democrats would be loose-passive (the worst kind) and Republicans are loose-aggressive (not great at all but if all you face is loose-passive it's a cakewalk). In poker you must adapt, the correct profile for Democrats right now is tight-aggressive. Pick your spots but when you play play hardball.

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@Cycloptichorn,

I wish I could agree with you but he is inept as is the whole democratic party and will continue to be if reelected. But for the stupidity of the republicans he wouldent have a chance of being reelected.

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@Robert Gentel,

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Then you really don't understand the impact he had, in my opinion. Obama is hugely hampered by the strategy Bush employed. Bush undid all of Clinton and burnt the ground for Obama. He pulled off an ideological 180° for conservatives and made it very hard for his successor to do the same.

Obama has most certainly not pulled the country back around even halfway. And I don't think he is going to manage to do it in his second term either (though I am hoping he'll at least have second-term balls on the mid east question).

Have to keep in mind that the economy tanked heading into the beginning of Obama's term. What was he supposed to do (other than nationalize the banks, his biggest mistake was the failure to do so - and it's completely clear now that they were 100% insolvent and we bailed them out for nothing in return)? He campaigned on a certain set of priorities and strategy for over a year, and then two months before the election, the economy imploded. A large amount of the new things he wanted to do were simply impossible in this environment. NO prez could keep their campaign promises in such a drastically different situation.

If Obama can manage to undo Bush's low tax rates, he'll be a winner in my book; everything else at this point is window dressing.

Re: the next election, the fact that the GOP can't get an A-list candidate to go up against Obama is just unbelievably lucky for him. I don't think Romney will be able to beat him in the general election, and certainly not Newt...

Cycloptichorn

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@Robert Gentel,

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He has not even used his bully pulpit to pressure Republicans for being obstructionists right.

If I link to instances of him doing exactly that, in speeches over the last year, would you admit you were wrong?

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**** that timidity. Get your damn hands dirty Obama. Name and shame the obstructionists. When they played chicken with the debt ceiling he should have played hardball and put them on the spot while doing it.

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but he certainly did some of that at the time; and, do you not realize that he won that engagement? 'cause, he did. The gov't didn't shut down. The GOP came out with the blame; their approval ratings dropped significantly during that time period and remain much lower than they were in 2010; no significant spending was cut at the time, and the 'supercongress' ended up with major cuts in areas the GOP can't stomach: defense, and nothing at all to Medicare or SS. So, tell me how he lost out on that one.

Cycloptichorn

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

If I link to instances of him doing exactly that, in speeches over the last year, would you admit you were wrong?

Wrong about what? I didn't say that he never once mentioned Republicans, but that he did not use his bully pulpit "right".

I don't think that I'd agree that I'm wrong if you just find examples of him calling out Republicans, I'm saying he doesn't do it enough and that I find it timid when he avoids it at all.

Every single time Obama complains about "do nothing congress" instead of "obstructionist Republicans" he is being timid and self-centered. Putting himself and his need to be above the fray over his party.

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I don't necessarily disagree with this, but he certainly did some of that at the time; and, do you not realize that he won that engagement? 'cause, he did.

He did not win by enough. All he had to do was start earlier and bluff back and he could have gotten more than the disaster he did get. Sure, we didn't go over the cliff, and sure the Republicans came out worse than the Democrats for it. But only slightly.

It should not even have been close. If I remember correctly he could have started 6-10 months before he did, but allowed it to get to crunch time where bluffing got more concessions than necessary.

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The gov't didn't shut down. The GOP came out with the blame; their approval ratings dropped significantly during that time period and remain much lower than they were in 2010; no significant spending was cut at the time, and the 'supercongress' ended up with major cuts in areas the GOP can't stomach: defense, and nothing at all to Medicare or SS. So, tell me how he lost out on that one.

Letting it get that far itself is a loss. There was no reason for the world to get as nervous as it did about the US. The US suffered an unprecedented downgrade in rating that was fairly well deserved. The committee is a complete joke and everyone knows it.

Nobody got anything. You are calling averting a bigger problem and not loosing too much with a victory. There's certainly no victory there for me, and the problem was of Obama's creation in the first place.

If I asked you 2 months into his presidency if you thought there were going to play chicken wouldn't you have said "of course"?

And if so, what makes more sense as a strategy for you? To wait till the last possible minute to start the game? Or to start as early as possible?

This is most clearly a big strategic error he made and all he can say in his credit is that he came through it relatively unscathed. So he got himself into it and got himself out of it. That is not a victory, that is par for the course to failure to me. Why didn't he try to swing for the fences? What he got was a compromise between Republican wet dreams and middle ground. Why didn't he start earlier with a more audacious liberal wet dream?

Why the hell is he too chicken to really campaign for defense cuts, for example? Why was that a defensive instead of an offensive play?

This is not armchair quarterbacking after-the-fact either, people (yes, weasel words but I can find you cites if you disbelieve it) were saying it was a mistake before it unfolded. The error of waiting was being called out and pulling ink all over the place.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Have to keep in mind that the economy tanked heading into the beginning of Obama's term. What was he supposed to do (other than nationalize the banks, his biggest mistake was the failure to do so - and it's completely clear now that they were 100% insolvent and we bailed them out for nothing in return)?

Nationalize the banks was the right move. But he didn't even compromise from this because he never seriously even put it on the table.

There you go, you wanted him to nationalize. He wasn't forced not to do it, he simply didn't fight for it at all. He would have lost, mind you. But not trying guarantees the loss as well as increasing the odds of future losses. He needs to make them spend political capital of their own for their victories, not just hand them over in self-induced compromise.

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He campaigned on a certain set of priorities and strategy for over a year, and then two months before the election, the economy imploded. A large amount of the new things he wanted to do were simply impossible in this environment. NO prez could keep their campaign promises in such a drastically different situation.

I know what kind of limits he has. But he didn't campaign as the guy who was gonna see that it was unlikely and give up. He campaigned on the audacity of hope. A lot of people were counting on him dreaming the impossible dream and ******* trying anyway.

The reason so many of us are pissed at him is because the Obama of campaign promises is just so distant from the Obama of actual governance. I know his hands were tied but his mouth wasn't and he should have been using it more.

He should have been pounding the bully pulpit and saying he was fed up and most importantly not going to take it anymore. Instead he's the guy who will adopt whatever is in the wind, and waits for the Occupy movement to say so before suddenly finding the populist in him.

He's gonna use the bully pulpit and the populist mantle very well soon. He's gonna use it for the only damn thing he cares about enough to be bold: getting himself elected.

Where was he on these "urgent" populist issues all this term when he was handing away compromise up front?

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Re: the next election, the fact that the GOP can't get an A-list candidate to go up against Obama is just unbelievably lucky for him. I don't think Romney will be able to beat him in the general election, and certainly not Newt...

I agree, he is very lucky that the Republicans have their Tea Party problem. If they were not facing their own problems with coherence they'd mop the floor with him and a better candidate. Yet he'll still manage to make it close. For all the man's rhetoric he sure can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

If Obama can manage to undo Bush's low tax rates, he'll be a winner in my book; everything else at this point is window dressing.

I forgot to comment on this, and disagree with it strongly. The taxes were just one prong in a two-pronged strategy of starving the beast.

Taming the runway defense industry is where he is failing abjectly and it was a huge domestic political play by Bush as well. Obama needs to fight for defense reductions to begin to reset the Bush-era. The Bush administration used 9/11 fear to reverse the Clinton-era of gradual reduction (which is a no-brainer to anyone who is not an expansionist) and that starves the social "beast" almost as much as the taxes cuts do (perhaps more so in the long run, when things like vet care are eventually factored in).

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It's difficult to have these conversations, because the reality of Obama's performance will never match up to the hypothetical in your head. So the conversations go like this:

You: Obama hasn't done X or Y, he's been too timid!

Me: He HAS done X and Y, in fact.

You: Well, he hasn't done ENOUGH of X and Y.

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You: Obama hasn't really delivered, he hasn't had any successes worth mentioning.

Me: actually, he has had several successes, X Y and Z - and they tried hard on A B and C as well.

You: well, he COULD have had more successes if he had done D, E, and F.

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You need to admit the possibility that the things you recommend him doing could have ended in failure as well. A great example is the debt ceiling thing. We agree that Obama came out on top, though you think he didn't do so 'enough' and should have started 6 months earlier. I think you said:

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He did not win by enough. All he had to do was start earlier and bluff back and he could have gotten more than the disaster he did get. Sure, we didn't go over the cliff, and sure the Republicans came out worse than the Democrats for it. But only slightly.

Do you simply not remember what was going on 'earlier?' It isn't as if the guy was sitting on his thumbs, he was busy winning other arguments with the GOP in the 8 months leading up to that - he got a very favorable budget passed, he got DADT repealed, got unemployment insurance extended, got the START treaty passed. All things the GOP swore up and down weren't going to happen. You think Obama should have had more threats and posturing during that time period? Should have 'bluffed more?' What would he have done if the GOP had called his bluff and shut the gov't down, as a huge percentage of them clearly wanted to? It would have been a debacle.

C'mon. I cannot recommend your advice as sound, well-thought out plans. These are emotional exhortations that reflect your frustration with the situation. And I get that. But you should put a little more thought and reflection into the situation before reflexively blaming him for having to navigate a difficult political situation and not doing so as well as he hypothetically could have.

And let's put blame where it's due. You state:

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Nobody got anything. You are calling averting a bigger problem and not loosing too much with a victory. There's certainly no victory there for me, and the problem was of Obama's creation in the first place.

Once again, this is total bullshit. The debt ceiling problem was 100% the creation of the GOP, who conceived of using this vote as an unprecedented way to hold the Senate and Exec branch over a barrel. They failed in doing so. It wasn't a problem created by Obama in any fashion. It's just incorrect for you to say this.

Cycloptichorn

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

It's difficult to have these conversations, because the reality of Obama's performance will never match up to the hypothetical in your head.

I was just thinking of a way we can play this game. Let's replay the decisions and you tell me what an "audacious" move would be, what you prefer and we compare it to what he did?

I think you are a bit more of a politics buff than me so I think you should make the list (or if you see through this transparent ploy to get you to do the legwork for the game I'll do it). What do you think?

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You need to admit the possibility that the things you recommend him doing could have ended in failure as well.

Of course! But you don't understand that failure is a spectrum and even in failure he could do much better.

This is what I mean when I say that if you are bold your failures are ok because it's hard to fail completely. If you aim higher your failures will be higher too. If you shoot for the stars and hit the ceiling it's better than the ******* floor. Dreaming the impossible dream is not just Quixotism. It's only "impossible" to those without audacity. To those with audacity it's merely a tough gig and even failure can be better than the timid dream of. Obama's been holding onto the ground timidly and his audacity was just a campaign illusion. I don't think he realistically has a shot at doing a whole lot, but when I replay Bush's presidency I can't find any spots where he could have realistically gotten any more. When I review Obama's presidency I find plenty.

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A great example is the debt ceiling thing. We agree that Obama came out on top, though you think he didn't do so 'enough' and should have started 6 months earlier.

Sure, he should have put up a countdown to Republican-induced Doomsday. He should have started saying months earlier that he would not consider anything with strings attached. They know what they need to do and they just need to do it.

I'd put a huge countdown up and start from that position, not wait till their bluff is actually dangerous to even do anything but cave intelligently to.

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Do you simply not remember what was going on 'earlier?' It isn't as if the guy was sitting on his thumbs, he was busy winning other arguments with the GOP in the 8 months leading up to that - he got a very favorable budget passed, he got DADT repealed, got unemployment insurance extended, got the START treaty passed. All things the GOP swore up and down weren't going to happen.

I expect a president to be able to multi-task. Starting the negotiations for the debt-ceiling earlier is simply not a logistical problem at all for the office of the president. I do understand that he wasn't twiddling his thumbs, but that isn't what I accuse him of. I accuse him of timidity of strategy, not laziness. The guy works hard and has the most intellectual honesty that the office has ever had in my lifetime. I'm not knocking the guy, I'm knocking his strategy. His governance strategy has been timid and looks more like part of his campaign for the second term (hey, the campaign season just gets longer and longer!) and I wish he spent as much political capital on governance as he does on campaigning. He's a rockstar when it comes to selling himself but a total scrub when it comes to forwarding his agenda.

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You think Obama should have had more threats and posturing during that time period? Should have 'bluffed more?' What would he have done if the GOP had called his bluff and shut the gov't down, as a huge percentage of them clearly wanted to? It would have been a debacle.

I would fold before then too, but just having more time lets you negotiate so much better. He got as good as he could get with the **** on the line, but it's bloody obvious that he deserves fault for letting it get that far with that much inaction (on the issue, of course).

So for example, if we were to take this issue what would you consider the ends of the Audacious - Acceptable spectrum. I think he pulled off acceptable. He got no serious fouls and only some bruising. I think audacious would have been for him to start early with a broadside: "In several months the Republicans are going to try to hold the nation hostage. Here is what you need to know:"

He should have gone on to say that everyone knows that we absolutely need to raise the ceiling or we are up **** creek, and that the American public should brook no bullshit on this issue. He should predict that they will do it before they do (it's a gimmick but really does undermine him because it starts the whole thing off with him being "right") and tell the nation that his party will not attach any political games and is ready to do its duty as soon as the Republicans mature enough.

Now maybe they'd still be stubborn up to the very end, and maybe I'd still think the very same compromise was the right move but guess what? Even if the result is the same the spending of political capital would not be. You correctly pointed out that the Republicans came out looking a bit bad. This is how they'd come out looking a LOT bad (more time to brand it that way too) if they bluffed all the way to the end.

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C'mon. I cannot recommend your advice as sound, well-thought out plans. These are emotional exhortations that reflect your frustration with the situation. And I get that.

I am certainly emotional (i.e. frustrated) about it but I do not think that my core qualms have much to do with them. There's nothing emotional about starting the debt ceiling talk early, that's just elementary game theory.

And so is my take on the level of aggression needed in negotiations. This is like a poker match and you need to play a certain way to match up to the way your opponent is playing. And trying to be "post-partisan" when the other side is just being contrary is just not going to work, it plays right into them. I do not see this as an emotional reaction I'm having but rather a fairly obvious defect in Democratic game theory.

When the other side is determined to be hardasses in negotiations the solution is not to simply compromise more. You need to stake out even more distant initial positions with these kinds of people and move the territory of compromise closer to you.

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But you should put a little more thought and reflection into the situation before reflexively blaming him for having to navigate a difficult political situation and not doing so as well as he hypothetically could have.

I think plenty about it. I mean, I see how it's easy to dismiss all I say as being overemotional and a knee-jerk reaction but even if you are right about all that it doesn't help me at all by not being able to illustrate how things are wrong. It's just a mild form of an ad hominem argument. "You are wrong because you were emotional and reflexive." Instead of pointing out why my arguments are wrong it just alleges that the messenger is _____(fill in the blanks, anything non-positive works).

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Once again, this is total bullshit. The debt ceiling problem was 100% the creation of the GOP, who conceived of using this vote as an unprecedented way to hold the Senate and Exec branch over a barrel. They failed in doing so. It wasn't a problem created by Obama in any fashion. It's just incorrect for you to say this.

This is semantics, I know that holding the country hostage was a Republican thing but I was talking specifically about the strategy that allowed it to be so successful.

Their bluff when it came was not something he could call. This was due to his timing failure. Of course the hostage play is the Republican's "fault" but think of this like sports. They are supposed to work against you. You are supposed to react. I blame Obama for the failure on his side to react to their very predictable ploy. I do not, of course, blame Obama for their decision to use this strategy. I blame him for failing to be able to react to such a simplistic and predictable ploy of chicken by making the cliff farther away. In a game of chicken the shorter the distance to the cliff the more dangerous it is. This is not even a controversial point, this is just bloody obvious. He should have started earlier, why is it so hard for you to admit an obvious strategical error. I have no problem admitting he did very well once in the pickle and came out almost unscathed but it's pretty obvious that he could have done better with more time, why is that such a hard thing for you to agree with?

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@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

This is what I mean when I say that if you are bold your failures are ok because it's hard to fail completely. If you aim higher your failures will be higher too. If you shoot for the stars and hit the ceiling it's better than the ******* floor. Dreaming the impossible dream is not just Quixotism. It's only "impossible" to those without audacity. To those with audacity it's merely a tough gig and even failure can be better than the timid dream of.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." ~ George Bernard Shaw

Obama is a very reasonable man. I had the hopes that he could be both reasonable and audacious because he sure campaigned that way, but we'll have to settle for thoughtful and reasonable. There isn't an audacious bone in his body.

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@Robert Gentel,

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I have no problem admitting he did very well once in the pickle and came out almost unscathed but it's pretty obvious that he could have done better with more time, why is that such a hard thing for you to agree with?

Well, because the ploy was not 'predictable,' it was unprecedented. As in, never done before, because nobody ever thought anyone would be dumb enough to do it. And GOP leaders meeting with him told him they WEREN'T going to do it - for months - before reversing their stance after their base revolted on them last May, after the it became clear that the budget negotiations went so far south for the GOP.

Imagine playing defense in football, and the other side tries a brand-new play that nobody ever thought would work, so you never really schemed on how to stop it most effectively. This play relies upon technical manipulations of very specific rules in a way they weren't intended to work by the creators of the game. The other team is doing it to be as nasty as possible, when they are already losing the game. In such a situation, ANY victory is a victory.

Let me circle back to the beginning. Could Obama be doing a better job overall, of course he could! He has made several mistakes, not the least of which was the appointment of Summers and Geithner. Huge mistake there. He believed the GOP wouldn't be the biggest assholes they possibly could be (which they were, if you want to have a convo about their tactics in the Congress I'd love to). Big mistake. He believed that his own party would back him up; another mistake. But given the situation, he hasn't done all that bad, and I'm still satisfied with the accomplishments he's had in the face of such stiff opposition.

Maybe his biggest problem is, as you pointed out earlier, the fact that the Dem party is FULL of people who are Republican-lite. They simply do not hold the line the way the GOP does. It makes every close vote such a gamble.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Well, because the ploy was not 'predictable,' it was unprecedented. As in, never done before, because nobody ever thought anyone would be dumb enough to do it.

I can't claim being aware of the ceiling needing to be raised as early as I call for Obama to have been talking about it but I certainly thought they'd do exactly that once I did know about it and the whole knowing about it thing I expect the administration to have a better handle on.

I think it was pretty predicable, the huge bailouts and the blow back, rise of the tea party and populist (and very misguided) angst with government spending made it very predictable. Every single thing the Tea Party said and did pointed at this. Their "Contract with America" stipulates that they would try to balance the budget and limit government growth (both completely impossible and completely insane in this crisis) and went so far as to say that even unemployment was good because it hurt Obama. They were willing to play chicken about everything and this was oh so entirely predictable.

Just because something is unprecedented doesn't make it unpredictable. You keep coming back to that but it's simply not a valid syllogism. Despite being unprecedented it was the obvious thing that the Tea Party would want to do and they'd already played chicken with Obama on unemployment benefits the previous year. Come on, I bet even you made comments about them being nothing but obstructionists way back then, and now you are trying to make it sound completely unpredictable.

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And GOP leaders meeting with him told him they WEREN'T going to do it - for months - before reversing their stance after their base revolted on them last May, after the it became clear that the budget negotiations went so far south for the GOP.

So his failure is ok if they employ a ruse like a fake field goal? He was just supposed to take them at their word? How naive do you really expect this all to be? Time after time, his failure is because of their strategy. When the hell is he going to have the accountability to you to actually, you know, react to their strategy?

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Imagine playing defense in football, and the other side tries a brand-new play that nobody ever thought would work, so you never really schemed on how to stop it most effectively.

I've already pointed out the very simple adjustments in game theory that it requires, this is really not rocket science. This really isn't as unpredictable as you make it sound. Being a hardass in politics was not invented this year or even this century.

There are fundamentally obvious ways to go about negotiations. You yourself have said that Obama's biggest failure was to try to work with Republicans too long, and now you are just unwilling to say pretty much the same thing in a different tone (a more scornful one that I have). I bet your main objection to most of what I say is tone-related.

I am not willing to forgive Obama and you are. That is probably all we substantially disagree on. I want Obama out, and you don't.

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This play relies upon technical manipulations of very specific rules in a way they weren't intended to work by the creators of the game. The other team is doing it to be as nasty as possible, when they are already losing the game. In such a situation, ANY victory is a victory.

If that were really so crafty of a move I'd give you that. But it wasn't, it was just another in a long string of very simplistic (basically just turn the petulance up way high) games they have been playing.

You give them way too much credit here, they have been merely consistent and stubborn. They are scrubs too and you make them out to be all stars.

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Let me circle back to the beginning. Could Obama be doing a better job overall, of course he could! He has made several mistakes, not the least of which was the appointment of Summers and Geithner. Huge mistake there. He believed the GOP wouldn't be the biggest assholes they possibly could be (which they were, if you want to have a convo about their tactics in the Congress I'd love to). Big mistake. He believed that his own party would back him up; another mistake. But given the situation, he hasn't done all that bad, and I'm still satisfied with the accomplishments he's had in the face of such stiff opposition.

Like I said, I think you agree on most of the basics but are willing to accept his level of play. I think reasonable people can disagree about this. I want A-players, Obama's a decent B and you are fine with that. I want Democrats to play their A-game and I think you guys are waaaay to accepting of their repeated failure to bring it. And I think this acceptance empowers their mediocrity.

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Maybe his biggest problem is, as you pointed out earlier, the fact that the Dem party is FULL of people who are Republican-lite. They simply do not hold the line the way the GOP does. It makes every close vote such a gamble.

That and not having balls. Just having the balls to put their necks out there more often would make me cheer. If they are gonna fail I wanna see them at least going down with a fight. Why the **** was Iraq a cakewalk for Bush to get approved? That should have looked like 100 Mr. Smith Goes to Washingtons but they looked like a bunch of mice.

Time and time again, Democrats settle for mediocrity. I think they do this because they can't see the forrest for the trees and each individual inflection point they can only see Democrats vs Republicans and side the way they lean. So the Democrats can go be Republican lites precisely because people accept them as a lesser evil.

If you step back and look at the forrest, the problem is precisely this. Acceptance of failure, timidity and mediocrity. Because "it's better than Republicans!" The lack of any pressure in the two-party system makes this a vicious cycle that is hard to break out of and that is why I advocate that people stop this blind fealty to the party. The party is ineffective and sick. Replacing it should be on the table and sometimes you need to take the long view and refuse to keep supporting their mediocrity even if it means a short term loss.

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I was just thinking of a way we can play this game. Let's replay the decisions and you tell me what an "audacious" move would be, what you prefer and we compare it to what he did?

I think you are a bit more of a politics buff than me so I think you should make the list (or if you see through this transparent ploy to get you to do the legwork for the game I'll do it). What do you think?

Haha, that's a lot of legwork! But, we've already named a few.

Decision: bail out the banks.
Audacious alternative: nationalize the banks.
Risks: Massive revolt from a Congress who is owned by the banks in large part

Decision: Pass health care reform
Audacious alternative: use the bully pulpit and relentless populism to push through a Public Option
Risks: alienating the Drug industry and the AMA, both of whom supported the ACA but threatened not to if he pushed for the PO.

Decision: take a hard line with Israel and support democracy in the Middle East in a variety of ways
Audacious Alternative: threaten to cut all foreign aid to Israel if they don't clean up their act
Risks: being labeled as an 'anti-semite,' condemnation from both sides of the isle, difficult public conversations.

That should do for a start...

Cycloptichorn

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@Robert Gentel,

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Why the **** was Iraq a cakewalk for Bush to get approved? That should have looked like 100 Mr. Smith Goes to Washingtons but they looked like a bunch of mice.

Well, in large part because the Dems aren't really an anti-war party; because 9/11 cowed our media into accepting the meme that anyone who stood up to warmongering was a 'traitor;' and because many top Dems are just as beholden to the defense industry in their states as the GOP is.

Those of us who spoke out against it were viciously and repeatedly attacked - right here on A2K, as well as in the rest of our society as a whole. Fear prevailed. But, let us also remember that the Bush admin had to repeatedly and aggressively lie and deceive the nation - including Congress - to build the case for war. It wasn't a cakewalk on their part either, they had to break all sorts of ethical and moral rules (as well as the law) in order to do so.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Decision: bail out the banks.
Audacious alternative: nationalize the banks.
Risks: Massive revolt from a Congress who is owned by the banks in large part

Like I said I don't think it would have worked. But it should have been the starting ground for negotiations in my opinion. Don't you also share the view that he should have been more aggressive abou that? Whatever that case I do, I think he should have started out with nationalization on the table even if it eventually would have had to be taken off. I think that the deals we got for the bailouts were ok, but could have been a lot better and there's a lot of blue sky between what we got and nationalization. So here I favor more audacious than Obama.

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Decision: Pass health care reform
Audacious alternative: use the bully pulpit and relentless populism to push through a Public Option
Risks: alienating the Drug industry and the AMA, both of whom supported the ACA but threatened not to if he pushed for the PO.

I cede this one, this is actually one where I both advocate more timidity as well as boldness. That is, I want a public option. I don't think the healthcare problem in America is a problem of insurance but one of insane waste and excessive cost (largely from over treatment and commercialization of healthcare). So yes, a public option is more audacious but honestly I think tackling healthcare in this economic climate is bad strategy on the whole. I do not think it was urgent enough not to wait for better times. The Democrat side of this negotiation will do so much better in less lean times than it will in lean times. I think you need to pick spots in timing as well and think that this kind of negotiation in this kind of economic climate is not ideal. Nevertheless this was certainly audacious and in the question of timing it was more so than I would have been in his shoes.

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Decision: take a hard line with Israel and support democracy in the Middle East in a variety of ways
Audacious Alternative: threaten to cut all foreign aid to Israel if they don't clean up their act
Risks: being labeled as an 'anti-semite,' condemnation from both sides of the isle, difficult public conversations.

Cutting off aid is a non-starter. No serious expert on the middle east is going to start with that as a position. He specifically called for Israel to halt settlement construction and they told him to pound sand. So he took it back. I am just saying he shouldn't have walked back all his own positions (starting from his Cairo speech). I'm not suggesting that he commit political suicide, just stick to his own guns. Now Bibi knows he can walk all over Obama and lead him around by the nose. Every time Obama tries to reign Israel in Bibi calls around Congress and scares Obama off.

Now not all of this is his fault. Bibi is simply not a partner for peace and the world will have to wait for the next Israeli leader for a realistic chance but Obama should know how this game works very well and should have known what he was up against. Walking back his position against a guy like Bibi was worse than not trying at all. In his shoes I either stick to my guns or wait till my second term, but if getting elected again is more important to me than my principles I'm certainly not going to shout them from the rooftops and the walk them back. That just looks weak on top of being useless. It only emboldened Bibi and strengthened his political standing at home (thusly making peace that much more elusive).

So here, if I'm Obama I would have avoided such an obvious pissing contest. He should have stated opposition to settlements (this is hardly new there has not been a single administration that sanctioned them) but not made it a precondition to negotiations (even though it's clear that peace can't be made with a people who are still trying to settle your land making this the line in the sand just challenges a guy like Bibi to stick it to you in public).

I think here he needed to pick a better spot and stick to his guns. But by the time he got around to a good position (the clarification of 67" lines with landswap that the entire ******* world think is the obvious solution) Bibi just bitch slapped him again and went to the US to say he rejected even that.

Obama really doesn't do well with tightasses like that. He starts them off with kid gloves and they bloody his nose first every damn time. And then he sulks off every damn time. Now Mideast peace is no longer as important as it was before Bibi repeatedly humiliated him in public.

So here, I fault him for being weak and too concerned about his Jewish vote. It's his self-centered problem that I label the "Hussain Dilemma". He should have thought about what he was going to do if they played hard ball, because if it was clear all along that the endgame would be to pick up the ball and go home he should have waited for a better time.

My strategy here would be to outline a plan to recognize Palestine with provisional borders separately from the issue of land swaps and refugees. Israel's insistence on sequentialism instead of parallelism is the game theory that lets them put off peace and keep "building facts on the ground" and the obvious strategy to take to counter this is to insist that all parts of the process move forward. We already know the Palestinians need an eventual state but by insisting that everything be solved at once Israel gets to put it off indefinitely.

The US should recognize and aid Palestine as a beginning of the process through which Israel negotiates its land swaps with them. The Saudi proposal is a great one, it should have been seized upon a decade ago and public acceptance of its principles by the US is where I would have started instead of the line in the sand he dared Bibi to cross.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Well, in large part because the Dems aren't really an anti-war party; because 9/11 cowed our media into accepting the meme that anyone who stood up to warmongering was a 'traitor;' and because many top Dems are just as beholden to the defense industry in their states as the GOP is.

But the people who vote for them are anti-war (generally). And they should stop forgiving them for just giving lip service to them on this.

America kills more people than almost any other nation on earth year after year. This is why terrorists attack Americans. It's not a good idea to keep doing (especially as America's power wanes, things like flying drones over other countries is cool when you have the only drones).

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Those of us who spoke out against it were viciously and repeatedly attacked - right here on A2K, as well as in the rest of our society as a whole. Fear prevailed.

All Democrats have to do to stop it is to vote on the issue instead of party lines. But Democrats don't care as much about this issue as they do beating Republicans.

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But, let us also remember that the Bush admin had to repeatedly and aggressively lie and deceive the nation - including Congress - to build the case for war. It wasn't a cakewalk on their part either, they had to break all sorts of ethical and moral rules (as well as the law) in order to do so.

I mean the vote was a cakewalk when all dust settled. With as many people like us against it they should not have broken in favor of it so easily out of fear and when they did Democrats should not have been so easy to forgive them for it.

That was the most polemic political decision of the decade and it went through those bodies with barely a whimper. And our basic difference is that I'm willing to fire them over it, even if it means a Republican term, and you aren't. I really think that's the nuts and bolts of it, and guess I'd just have to agree to disagree with you on that. I want Democrats, as they currently exist, to fail. I do not want their continued mediocrity to be rewarded by job extensions. If we don't start firing the Democrats without balls when the hell are they ever going to grow any?

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I'm really enjoying the Cyclo v Robert exchange, even though both individuals blithely assume that all Republicans are scum.

In Cyclo we have the truly partisan Democrat, the E.J. Dionne of A2K: All Democrats goood! All Republicans baaad!

In Robert we have, at least, a realist who isn't about to cut Democrats slack simply because they are...Democrats.

One has to admire the tenacity of Cyclo though. He's a Dem Hack, but a damned dedicated one.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

I don't think all Republicans are scum at all (which I think is one of our core differences, my plays have fewer villains overall), though I do think that the current Republican crop are B-Players.

And now that the Republican party is just another brand of big-government party I don't see enough difference between the two parties in ideology to really get excited one way or the other. I would lose no sleep at all if the Republicans won this election (it's actually what I prefer, I want Obama betrayal of his anti-war campaign promises to be repudiated with a loss).

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President Obama just made the best speech of his life

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