Obama is the worst president since WWII

[Monketi Ghost]

Yeah, I don't get this complaint. Bush was president for a whopping 7 months and 22 days. The national security state is like a cruise ship with a frozen rudder. How long does it take to turn around? How long does it take even to figure out there's a huge problem? I wouldn't frankly blame the 9/11 security lapses on any one person in particular, but Clinton has got to be at least as culpable as Bush.



On both of them? The war in Afghanistan was the "good" war, remember? It was fully bipartisan (come to think of it, so was the Iraq War until the going got tough), and Obama actually significantly deepened our involvement there. 170% more US soldiers have died in Afghanistan under Obama than under Bush. So how the Afghanistan War can be blamed on Bush but not on Obama is beyond me.



Good points. Bush got a bad rap for Katrina. FEMA is a distributor of funds and a training agency. It's really mostly administrative, but for some reason most people think it is some sort of superhero, search and rescue arm of the federal government. Katrina looked bad because (a) it was the "perfect" storm; and (b) the local governments of Louisiana and New Orleans did a horrible job.



The housing bubble collapse wasn't Bush's fault. It was in some sense decades in the making, and a lot of it is the fault of government policies which had bipartisan support (especially the implicit guarantees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were favorites of liberal Democrats, if anybody). I think Bush did an admirable job of addressing the crisis in the little time he had left remaining in his administration. And he tried to do as much as possible to help give Obama a running start and the tools he needed. I feel like Obama dropped the ball on the recovery. It is not a coincidence that, 5 years on, we still have subpar growth. One would normally expect a huge bounce back from such a deep recession. There was one under Reagan, for example.



Comparing Presidents is pretty stupid in general. They each face unique problems, and, like quarterbacks of football teams, they get way too much credit for successes and way too much blame for failures that happen on their watch. It makes more sense to compare ex-Presidents, and in that respect, Bush II is an excellent ex-President. He has remained dignified and respectful and eschews partisan criticism of his successor.

Nothing that happened while W was POTUS was his fault!

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Nothing that happened while W was POTUS was his fault!

Because he was never POTUS. Just ask any Tea Bagger. We went straight from Clinton to BHO.

 

[johnny karate]

Yes, I agree with you completely.

I think you may have misunderstood my post, which surprises me a little if you actually read my post so I think you likely just skimmed it. The point of my post was to point to a 6-year old thread which (tangentially) related to the topic of this thread and which I thought readers of this thread might find interesting.

My framing that AUP had made a prediction which came true was intended as humorous. What AUP said was that the US (in 2008) appeared to be in a similar situation to what Australia had faced recently, and he thought it likely the outcome would also likely be similar. That's a sensible point, even though things didn't work out as similarly as I think he expected.

I thought I had made my humorous intent clear, but obviously not. A jokes not funny if one to explain it, but I'll explain anyway.



I could imagine people taking the part in red seriously if this were the John Edward Educational Foundation or the Sylvia Browne Society. But this is JREF and I assumed most regular posters here knew better.

The reason Darat closed the thread is that it was part of a special 2008 Elections sub-section of the Politics forum. With the 2008 elections over, Darat closed the sub-section and all the threads in it. (After all, who could have predicted that people would still be interested in discussing the 2008 election after it was over?) It had nothing to do with AUP having made some super-prediction (which, as the quoted AUP post showed, he hadn't, despite my framing it as such). And my insinuation that JREF employs psychics who can accurately predict events 6 years in advance is obvious nonsense.

I assumed everyone here would be familiar with Pehata's Limit, which establishes it's impossible to make reliably-accurate psychic predictions more than 5 years in advance. Evidently not. Next time I'll know better and stick to serious posting.

I guess I did misunderstand the intent of your original post.

My apologies.

 

[johnny karate]

Nothing that happened while W was POTUS was his fault!

When I posted that list of "occurences", it wasn't my intention to explicitly blame Bush for any of them, but merely to point out that they happened on his watch, and to make that same criterion available for anyone who wished to demonstrate that Obama was an objectively worse president that Bush.

The tsunami of rationalization from Bush-apologists was to be expected, but still missed the point.

What we are left with - it seems to me - is a lot of bitter, angry conservatives who always despised Obama and are now reveling in the fact that they have a poll that validates them, the legitimacy or significance of that poll be damned.

It's the same mentality and maturity level as teenage girls arguing about their favorite boy band.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Nothing that happened while W was POTUS was his fault!

I blame a lot of Dubya's mistakes on Cheney and his coven of neocons. They led Bush around by the nose for the first year to year and a half of the "Bush" years.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I blame a lot of Dubya's mistakes on Cheney and his coven of neocons. They led Bush around by the nose for the first year to year and a half of the "Bush" years.

Then they put him in a room with a whole box of Lego.

 

[Neally]

Please highlight the part that explains how you are able to determine which public opinion polls are correct when they yield different results.

Apparently you are unable to distinguish the difference between polls that measure two different things.

 

[johnny karate]

Apparently you are unable to distinguish the difference between polls that measure two different things.

From the link in the OP:

A new Quinnipiac University survey found that voters rate Mr. Obama as the country’s worst president since World War II.

From you:

Absent a more refined statistical metric as I've discussed, I'll go with overall averages. http://www.gallup.com/poll/124922/presidential-job-approval-center.aspx Putting him in the bottom 4 but not the worst.

Different public opinion polls measuring the same thing: Who is the worst president.

And yet somehow they came up with different results.

How is that possible?

 

[Neally]

Different public opinion polls measuring the same thing: Who is the worst president.

And yet somehow they came up with different results.

How is that possible?

The polls and approaches are completely different, obviously. I've given my reasoning why I have my preference. Your continued hounding this in trying to draw some sort of equivalency and therefore trying for an irrational "gotcha" isn't working. It's also borderline trolling.

 

[johnny karate]

The polls and approaches are completely different, obviously.

How are they different and what makes one more valid than the other?

Please be specific and offer cites where applicable.

I've given my reasoning why I have my preference.

I'm not looking for your "preference". I'm looking for some objective measure that supports your position regarding the validity of public opinion polls. You have yet to supply that.

Your continued hounding this in trying to draw some sort of equivalency and therefore trying for an irrational "gotcha" isn't working. It's also borderline trolling.

I'm sorry if having your assertions challenged offends you. Simply provide the information I requested and we can be done with this.

 

[uke2se]

I'm sorry if having your assertions challenged offends you. Simply provide the information I requested and we can be done with this.

This, pretty much. No more dancing.

 

[Neally]

How are they different and what makes one more valid than the other?
Please be specific and offer cites where applicable.

What part of, "Presidential Job Approval Rating" and "Thinking about the United States Presidents we have had since World War II: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, which one would you consider the best president? " do you not understand? For the polling differences, compare http://www.gallup.com/poll/124922/presidential-job-approval-center.aspx with http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2056

For the third time, I've already explained why the former is better than the latter. I've explained why polls are better than appeals to authority in this situation.

I'm not looking for your "preference". I'm looking for some objective measure that supports your position regarding the validity of public opinion polls. You have yet to supply that.

I've already gave my reasoning. Your lack of remembering or understanding is your problem.

I'm sorry if having your assertions challenged offends you. Simply provide the information I requested and we can be done with this.

You haven't challenged my assertions and I have no problem debating them. I do have a problem with repeating something over and over to someone that doesn't pay attention or is fishing for something that isn't there.

The bottom line with this deliberately obtuse questioning of yours is that it's troubling for you that both polling approaches put your beloved BO at or near the bottom, and that you need to resort to trying to attack the whole idea of polling as a methodology to determine a president's "place in history".

 

[uke2se]

What part of, "Presidential Job Approval Rating" and "Thinking about the United States Presidents we have had since World War II: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, which one would you consider the best president? " do you not understand? For the polling differences, compare http://www.gallup.com/poll/124922/presidential-job-approval-center.aspx with http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2056

For the third time, I've already explained why the former is better than the latter. I've explained why polls are better than appeals to authority in this situation.


I've already gave my reasoning. Your lack of remembering or understanding is your problem.

You haven't challenged my assertions and I have no problem debating them. I do have a problem with repeating something over and over to someone that doesn't pay attention or is fishing for something that isn't there.

The bottom line with this deliberately obtuse questioning of yours is that it's troubling for you that both polling approaches put your beloved BO at or near the bottom, and that you need to resort to trying to attack the whole idea of polling as a methodology to determine a president's "place in history".

I don't understand. Where did you explain how one approach was better than the other one?

 

[Grizzly Bear]

I suppose "worst" is relative. Found this article while browsing around:

Despite the fact that millions of Americans still blame George W. Bush for the weak recovery, even he has seen his approval rating tick up in recent years. As the current president, Obama has not yet had the opportunity to capture this post-presidency favorability boost. Five years from now, Americans will almost certainly look back with fonder memories of his time in office. Note that when Quinnipiac ran an identical poll, in the second term of Bush’s presidency, Americans rated him as the worst modern-day president—by basically the same percentage (34 percent) as they currently rate Obama (33 percent).

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/2/obama-worst-president-wwii-new-poll-shows/

I just note this because people's memory is usually bad enough when it comes to politics, but you could say this is another one of those things that Obama's not doing a "first timer" on.

And to add....

Voters also rated the man who swept into office in 2009 with a promise of “hope and change” as worse than even his predecessor, Republican President George W. Bush, who left office with terrible approval ratings.

From the same article... (it has things partisans would wet dream and curdle simultaneously over)
If you base your opinion of Obama as a person setting himself apart from his predecessors, he doesn't really have to be objectively "the worst POTUS" in history to still take hit to the gut in a popularity contest. Essentially goes back to my earlier responses about where some of the poll results could have come from. Far from being this exclusively though.

The articles is linked for all interested.

 

[applecorped]

This, pretty much. No more dancing.

Yes, please. No more dancing.

 

[tyr_13]

This is a very good point. Fortunately, Quinnipiac actually ran a head-to-head poll between Bush and Obama, which is probably the fairest measure of relative popularity between Obama and another president. Bush was considered the better president by 40%, Obama was considered better by 39%, and the rest thought they were about the same or expressed no opinion.

'Fairest' doesn't equal 'fair'.

Was Obama at a disadvantage because he's still President? Probably. Of course, he has almost always had the media wind at his back, and Bush has had the media wind in his face.

The largest media network is unabashedly and completely pro Bush and anti Obama. People can easily stay in their own impervious information bubble and thus be convinced that 'the media' is all anti-Republican, and they can be convinced of that from the media!

Interestingly, independents broke against Obama pretty strongly, 41% to 31%, but there were more Democrats in the sample than Republicans (31%-26%), and Republicans were slightly more supportive of Obama than Democrats were of Bush (7% to 4%).



The usual experts called on to judge presidents are historians, who in my experience are a pretty biased lot (liberally so). I would rather read their comparative analyses rather than just the rankings they assign. Here's one by Peggy Noonan, which I think makes a persuasive case that Obama is at least an anomaly (and probably not a good one).

Peggy Noonan? She's not a historian, and while she's very bright (I remember her very quickly identifying Palin as lacking), Obama's run still isn't over. A conservative book writer's opinion now isn't what I was talking about. The facts still aren't at hand.

As disappointed as I have been with Obama's run, he's had some really good parts and I don't see how anyone could have done better with the Congress as it has been. I can certainly name several people I believe would have been much worse.

 

[Peephole]

The housing bubble collapse wasn't Bush's fault. It was in some sense decades in the making, and a lot of it is the fault of government policies which had bipartisan support (especially the implicit guarantees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were favorites of liberal Democrats, if anybody).

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had very little relevance to the financial crisis. You should educate yourself better on this matter. The major problem was decades of deregulation. Bush did nothing to reverse this.

I think Bush did an admirable job of addressing the crisis in the little time he had left remaining in his administration. And he tried to do as much as possible to help give Obama a running start and the tools he needed. I feel like Obama dropped the ball on the recovery. It is not a coincidence that, 5 years on, we still have subpar growth. One would normally expect a huge bounce back from such a deep recession. There was one under Reagan, for example.

Obama tried but Congress refused any more stimulus. Reagan didn't do ****, the Federal Reserve tanked the US economy to get inflation down, and when that was accomplished they lowered rates again and the temporary unemployment crisis was easily fixed.

 

[Unabogie]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had very little relevance to the financial crisis. You should educate yourself better on this matter. The major problem was decades of deregulation. Bush did nothing to reverse this.

Indeed. We went through this recently and I posted this link:

http://fcic.law.stanford.edu/

This is the official congressional report on how the 2008 crisis occurred. Note that Fannie and Freddie were late to the game in terms of subprime mortgages and were actually losing market share. Any theory of the crisis that does not include CDOs and CDSs is complete BS.

 

[sunmaster14]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had very little relevance to the financial crisis. You should educate yourself better on this matter. The major problem was decades of deregulation. Bush did nothing to reverse this.

The implicit government backing of Fannie and Freddie was THE key driver of the financial crisis, in my opinion. The original sin, if you will. Private financial institutions simply could not compete with Fannie and Freddie in the market for conforming mortgage loans, so they were forced to look for business elsewhere, mainly in the subprime and alt-A sectors. This led to innovative loans and securitization structures which inflated a massive credit bubble. Credit bubbles have huge positive feedback because as credit loosens, asset prices rise which leads to good loan performance which then leads to more loosening of credit standards. Fannie and Freddie of course jumped on the subprime and alt-A bandwagon, thus enhancing the effect.

Obama tried but Congress refused any more stimulus. Reagan didn't do ****, the Federal Reserve tanked the US economy to get inflation down, and when that was accomplished they lowered rates again and the temporary unemployment crisis was easily fixed.

The Federal Reserve is pretty impotent when it comes to managing the economy. It can only tinker around with interest rates, which of course captures the attention of bond traders, but has little effect on the real economy. Fiscal policy is paramount. Taxing and spending policy is where the real action is. Reagan lowered taxes and increased spending. It was the right prescription in 1981, and it was the right prescription in 2009. If Obama had been willing to cut income taxes, he could have had his spending too. In any case, he came up short, even on spending. You could blame some of that on Republicans not giving him the spending he wanted, but he actually got almost all of what he asked for, at least initially. His administration made some bold predictions about how effective the stimulus would be, and they were all wrong.

 

[Unabogie]

The implicit government backing of Fannie and Freddie was THE key driver of the financial crisis, in my opinion.

Even the conservative dissent disagrees with you.

http://fcic-static.law.stanford.edu...port_hennessey_holtz-eakin_thomas_dissent.pdf