Originally posted by: ScottMac
Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: ScottMac
Originally posted by: OneOfTheseDays
I find it interesting how Republicans consistently find ways to lower the bar in their nominees. They are jumping for joy that their VP candidate didn't look like a complete idiot on national television.
Something just doesn't add up.
Republicans lowered the bar? The Dems selected a slimy piece o' crap Chicago machine politician for their presidential candidate ... it's pretty hard to get lower than that.
Good grief
Only thing I see slimy in your post is you.
You don't get much more the opposite of what you said than a guy who can make a fortune as a minority Harvard Law Review editor instead choosing to serve the public.
But there are always pissants to attack good leaders.
There's no dispute; he's part of the Chicago machine, and *not* the motivator ... he's does as he's told, he goes along to get along.
How else do you explain his strong support for Todd Stroeger (for example)? He's probably the best example, but there are other Chicago, Cook County, and Illinois politicians he has been told to support and, like the good little machine person he is, he does ... regardless of how totally worthless the candidate is.
He's not for change, he's for The Machine. The corrupt and thriving Chicago, Cook County, Illinois machine ... he supports it, right or wrong ... not exactly a candidate for change when you can't even fight against your home town leeches.
"But there are always pissants to attack good leaders." Probably so, and there are also people that will support the lowest scumbag piece of crap politicians because they are presented by The Party as The Choice. The hometowne record supports my position; I was here, I saw it. He's pure machine product.
I think your post improved somewhat this time from the simple base name-calling to getting a bit more specific and less ad hominem, but still attacking (which is ok).
I don't doubt that Obama has made the compromises needed for Chicago politics. His critics can't make up their mind, one minute attacking him as a naive boy scout and the next the most cynical of machine politicians. But you have to learn to not get bogged down only in the nitty gritty details with a politician and to judge whether they are also greater than those details would lead you to assume.
I can make a case for all kinds of widely viewed as 'great' leaders being compromised by petty politics. Since I know JFK history, I can use him - on the one hand, I can make a strong case that he was a remarkable visionary among the 20th century's greatest leaders for peace; and yet, many who knew him well knew the crass politician, the guy who slipped Teddy a note when he got married that all the other sex didn't need to end, the guy who had - yes, Chicago - mob help from his father's asking, who had real advantages in the election that were simply paid for by his father's wealth, including a private plane, a man who made many cynical political decisions, from angering his own brother Bobby with the selection of LBJ for VP to angering civil rights leaders as he recognized the limitations on what he could get done. It's all true, even if it appears contradictory.
And I'll tell you this: a guy I think a lot of, who I call JFK's "left hand man" (Bobby was his right hand), Ted Sorenson, who was with him all through his Senate Years and was his advisor and chief speechwriter, very early on recognized the qualities in Obama and said Obama had more of the leadership that was like JFK than any politician since JFK - and endorsed him for president in early 2007. That's not something that fits your description of a 'slimy machine politician'.
I could have shown you a sleazy Abraham Lincoln out pandering to the racist voters, often changing his message from speech to speech on just how anti-black he was, and he's look like the sort of crass and deceptive politician you attacks, yet his nickname was 'Honest Abe' for his other actions later as president.
There's an old saying, 'familiarity breeds contempt', and I wonder if your familiarity with Obama might not add to your perception of his weaknesses. That's always the case with those who know leaders well personally, and who see the public glorified image and the person and say hmmmm.
I'm not saying Obama will belong on Mt. Rushmore - he's largely an unknown to me, frankly, other than things making him far preferable than the alternative. He was my third, not my first, choice and I think he may yet make me have a lot of limitations on compliments for him, as I do for Bill Clinton. But your comments appear out of line, off-base, for the reasons mentioned previously. Obama *has* made sacrifices few would make for his personal wealth to serve the public and he deserves credfit for it.
It's fair game to note any political sleaze he's been involved in, but you need to also remember how many politicians have some of that and to look also at what they do that has more an effect - are they servents to the small private and powerful groups who buy them, or do they try to do good things for the general public.
Going backwards, I can point to Bill Clinton's reversal of the 12-year Republican deficit, to Jimmy Carter's Camp David Accord and attempts to put the nation on track for energy indepednance, to LBJ's cutting the national poverty rate by a third, to many JFK accomplishments - to pick two his limited nuclear test ban treaty and peace efforts - to Truman's efforts to get blacks in the federal courts and the military integrated, to FDR's massive programs to help the public like social security, and so on.
Sadly I can point to harm by each Republican president that stands out more than any good, as well - GWB is too obvious, his father continued big debt and played a key role in Iran-Contra, Reagan started us on the road of the massive debt and supported terrible atrocities throughout Central America and lost a great historic opportunity for nuclear arms control with Gorbachev, Ford did little but secretly approved the slaughter of 250,000 East Timorans by Indonesia and pardoned Nixon, Nixon too much to list, Eisenhower began the precedent of our having a CIA that ran around as an enemy of democracy and using violence, deception, assassination, for usually greedy interests - the first covert op the overthrow of democracy in Iran installing a dictator and secret police force for 25 years causing great problems later, the do-nothing Coolidge and Hoover's policies paving the way for the economic crash, and so on.
They may have all been 'good people', somewhat, and each may have had the sort of 'petty local political activities' you are so disdainful of Obama for in Chicago.
But there are other things. Obama has also shown some great qualities - go look at what Sorensen sees in him, consider how JFK went from a petty rich kid to a great leader.
Hopefully you can have a more balanced and open-minded estimation of the president Obama could be, even while I admittedly say he could greatly disappoint, too.