The president is neither omniscient nor omnipotent

[AreaCode707]

I'm just wondering if people understand that. I'm no Obama fan, nor was I a Bush fan, but in both cases I've seen people lay blame on the president for not preventing/fixing the most ridiculous things.

For example:

The oil spill. The President doesn't know how an oil rig works, isn't personally responsible for making sure that the oil companies and the monitoring agency keeps a non-cozy distance, isn't an expert on spill cleanup, and has no power to really truly know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, which cleanup strategies are going to be quickest and most successful.

The delay of a plane. The President had little or no hand in creating the laws about how long passengers can be kept on planes, did not create an international loophole, does not magically know that there's a plane full of passengers stuck in Newark and cannot swoop down out of the sky to rescue them or castigate the airline.

Corporate corruption. The President doesn't know the inner workings of any large corporation, even the ones that give him campaign contributions, cannot possibly have any inkling of what an analyst tells their boss that gets translated into real time decisions which may be bad or criminal. He has no power to stop or even substantially slow the inherent issues in a bureaucratic corporate environment.

And yet we expect him to act like he knows all down to the tiniest detail, apologize for not forseeing the impossible, publicly commit to learning ridiculous trivia about multiple industries and situations that doesn't affect his actual decisions or job, and we scorn him for not fixing problems that are not fixable or that are not within his authority to fix.

This is a fault of both political sides. We don't know what the actual role of the President is anymore and we expect him to be a cross between Superman and Gandalf, with a hefty dose of PR guy thrown in.

How much more could the president, any president, accomplish if we took our high school civics courses more seriously, stopped demanding stupid conciliatory and empty gestures from him, and only looked for output that the office of president is authorized to produce?

/rant

 

[glenn1]

I'm just wondering if people understand that. I'm no Obama fan, nor was I a Bush fan, but in both cases I've seen people lay blame on the president for not preventing/fixing the most ridiculous things.

For example:

The oil spill. The President doesn't know how an oil rig works, isn't personally responsible for making sure that the oil companies and the monitoring agency keeps a non-cozy distance, isn't an expert on spill cleanup, and has no power to really truly know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, which cleanup strategies are going to be quickest and most successful.

The delay of a plane. The President had little or no hand in creating the laws about how long passengers can be kept on planes, did not create an international loophole, does not magically know that there's a plane full of passengers stuck in Newark and cannot swoop down out of the sky to rescue them or castigate the airline.

Corporate corruption. The President doesn't know the inner workings of any large corporation, even the ones that give him campaign contributions, cannot possibly have any inkling of what an analyst tells their boss that gets translated into real time decisions which may be bad or criminal. He has no power to stop or even substantially slow the inherent issues in a bureaucratic corporate environment.

And yet we expect him to act like he knows all down to the tiniest detail, apologize for not forseeing the impossible, publicly commit to learning ridiculous trivia about multiple industries and situations that doesn't affect his actual decisions or job, and we scorn him for not fixing problems that are not fixable or that are not within his authority to fix.

This is a fault of both political sides. We don't know what the actual role of the President is anymore and we expect him to be a cross between Superman and Gandalf, with a hefty dose of PR guy thrown in.

How much more could the president, any president, accomplish if we took our high school civics courses more seriously, stopped demanding stupid conciliatory and empty gestures from him, and only looked for output that the office of president is authorized to produce?

/rant

I wonder how anyone could anyone have gotten the impression that Obama had super powers after hearing things like "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal..." and "we're the change we've been waiting for."

 

[PokerGuy]

He presented himself as the savior that could do all. Now he's demonstrating that he's actually just an empty suit who wouldn't know leadership if it came and bit him on the butt.

 

[AreaCode707]

He presented himself as the savior that could do all. Now he's demonstrating that he's actually just an empty suit who wouldn't know leadership if it came and bit him on the butt.

And if we were collectively better versed in the responsibilities and powers of a president, we would have laughed at do-all claims and elected someone demonstrating knowledge of the office. He ran on a do-all platform because that's what we demand. The fault here is ours, for requiring that, for rewarding that, and for electing someone who promises that.

I'm sure HE knows the duties and powers of the office, but he and all other running politicians have to conceal that knowledge and profess powers beyond their abilities in order to get elected. Symbiotic failure of expectation-setting...

 

[PokerGuy]

Area: does the public share some of the blame? Sure we do, we put an idiot in office.

Someone who falls for a con and gets robbed is also partially to blame for being gullible and greedy, but that doesn't absolve the con artist from responsibility.

 

[nageov3t]

I was promised that the election of Obama would be greeted by the skies opening and celestial choirs singing. :|

 

[Lanyap]

This is the way it is. It was on his watch. Everyone knows this.

 

[Moonbeam]

When the sick see somebody who is sane they call him a God pretender so that when he proves not to be the God he never was they can cut him down. Such is the way of self-hating idiots.

 

[Bowfinger]

He presented himself as the savior that could do all.

Link?

Now he's demonstrating that he's actually just an empty suit who wouldn't know leadership if it came and bit him on the butt.

You nutters need to make up your minds. You spend half your time attacking him because he hasn't done anything and the other half attacking him for all the radical changes he's making to destroy America. About the only thing you're consistent about is attacking. No matter what Democrats do or do not do, you attack.

There are so many valid, material criticisms one can make of Obama and the Democrats. You fwapping twits can't bother to consider this, of course. You're so full of blind hatred you seize any non-issue you're fed and beat it mindlessly, never once pausing to consider whether it's accurate, let alone important. Consequently, you drown out any intelligent and well-founded concerns while relegating yourselves to the irrelevant fringe with the other loons. In short, you prove again and again that the real empty suits are you.

 

[Jaskalas]

This is a fault of both political sides. We don't know what the actual role of the President is anymore and we expect him to be a cross between Superman and Gandalf, with a hefty dose of PR guy thrown in.

When these men in office consider centralized power and authority the end-all solution to all problems, there arises a great deal of expectation. Particularly when the President's first address on the oil spill was him essentially telling the American people that HE was in charge and in control of it.

Having said that, I agree with you. Particularly with regards to the stock market and such.

 

[werepossum]

I'm just wondering if people understand that. I'm no Obama fan, nor was I a Bush fan, but in both cases I've seen people lay blame on the president for not preventing/fixing the most ridiculous things.

For example:

The oil spill. The President doesn't know how an oil rig works, isn't personally responsible for making sure that the oil companies and the monitoring agency keeps a non-cozy distance, isn't an expert on spill cleanup, and has no power to really truly know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, which cleanup strategies are going to be quickest and most successful.

The delay of a plane. The President had little or no hand in creating the laws about how long passengers can be kept on planes, did not create an international loophole, does not magically know that there's a plane full of passengers stuck in Newark and cannot swoop down out of the sky to rescue them or castigate the airline.

Corporate corruption. The President doesn't know the inner workings of any large corporation, even the ones that give him campaign contributions, cannot possibly have any inkling of what an analyst tells their boss that gets translated into real time decisions which may be bad or criminal. He has no power to stop or even substantially slow the inherent issues in a bureaucratic corporate environment.

And yet we expect him to act like he knows all down to the tiniest detail, apologize for not forseeing the impossible, publicly commit to learning ridiculous trivia about multiple industries and situations that doesn't affect his actual decisions or job, and we scorn him for not fixing problems that are not fixable or that are not within his authority to fix.

This is a fault of both political sides. We don't know what the actual role of the President is anymore and we expect him to be a cross between Superman and Gandalf, with a hefty dose of PR guy thrown in.

How much more could the president, any president, accomplish if we took our high school civics courses more seriously, stopped demanding stupid conciliatory and empty gestures from him, and only looked for output that the office of president is authorized to produce?

/rant

Very true. It's like the criticism of Obama for not immediately visiting the Gulf to "survey the damage". Is he to suspect that his buddies at CNN/ABC/CBS/NBC/MSNBC are pulling a fast one on him? The oil spill is half the news cycle FFS. The President needs to be issuing orders to those who know what to do - or more likely to those who can find out who knows what to do, and see that it gets done - not "feeling our pain" and generally getting in the way. Yet we punish him politically if he doesn't come down, press the flesh, look concerned and eat in a local restaurant.

I'm done giving him rope on the oil spill though since he (or at least his administration) seems to be actively obstructing those who are working to mitigate the damage and since he actively lied about the NAE report and his subsequent drilling moratorium. He has a legal obligation to take control of the operation, and he says he is doing just that. But he appears to be doing just the opposite. But you are spot-on that our expectations of our president tend to be completely unrelated to his actual power and responsibilities.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I agree OP. I don't like Obama because I don't subscribe to his political philosophy, but the idea that the president is personally responsible for every single notable "event" that occurs during his presidency is laughable.

The oil industry has been trucking along under laws from previous administrations for many many years before Obama hit the scene. Even if the first thing he did upon taking office was undertake a complete safety auditing of American oil companies and oil companies operating on american waters he would have been lambasted for "unnecessary action against an industry that hasn't seen a serious disaster for more than 40 years" or some such. Not only that, but something would have happened somewhere else and he would have been held doubly responsible for that because of a supposed prevent ability of this alternate mishap if only he hadn't wasted the resources spent on the oil auditing.

You don't even have to worry about the fact that there's no way in fucking hell that he could have had the knowledge to check up on the oil industry or have had any good reason to suspect it BECAUSE of the very aforementioned 40-something year disaster free spell. If he really was omniscient and took pro-active action to prevent it he STILL would have been in the hot seat, and he'd never have been able to prove to the nay-sayers that he had prevented a major disaster. You absolutely cannot win as president.

The truth is that people who are against a certain party will find reasons to hate that party's president even if they have to resort to nit-picking piddling details or assigning blame for impossible to predict events that hardly anyone was worried about before they blew up or melted down or whatever. The news networks know this and they egg it on by having morons like Bill O'reilly and Sean Hannity harp on the same issues constantly until they gain credence through sheer repetition. People are biased, and I'm not sure it's possible to change the mind of a truly biased person; especially when there's always an angle to any situation they can pursue to continue that bias, and there's always a news network beholden to one side or the other to lend that angle credence.

 

[evident]

OP couldn't have said it better. but i want this oil spill to stop

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

OP couldn't have said it better. but i want this oil spill to stop

please do not compare BP to 9/11.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

as for the OP, congress is not the expert in healthcare or finance, yet they are drafting laws to regulate these industries.
i've always wondered why...

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

You absolutely cannot win as president.

Well that's the nature of the job. The best you can do is act competently in the face of disaster.

Look at his commission to investigate drilling. Experts in the field. Oops, not. In fact he's as expert as those he selected for the position.

Now THAT is why I bitchslap him. I know he couldn't have stopped this from happening, but he could have shown leadership early on and became familiar with the situation. He did not.

He could have gotten government resources to help early on. He did not.

He simply get's around to something in his own time and then it's usually to pay lip service and blame someone. To be sure this in no way let's BP off the hook, but when disaster struck, why did he wait so long to assess and assist?

Simply because he didn't care enough about something which was low on HIS priority list.

Bush was an idiot and I don't think Obama is that, but I do think he's completely self centered with the emphasis on protecting the image he'd like to project.

 

[Lemon law]

please do not compare BP to 9/11.

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Well I too want the oil spill to magically stop. Be its resolved, we need a Harry Potter magic wand.

But yakity Yak, BlanBlahYoutoo, please explain to this forum how the Obama alternative of John McCain would have done better?

Put up or shut up.

 

[Lemon law]

as for the OP, congress is not the expert in healthcare or finance, yet they are drafting laws to regulate these industries.
i've always wondered why...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now you manage to be about the dumbest person on earth, what an absurd thing to say.

The giant problem you have in saying what you said is that private industry that knows best about what is good for themselves, is totally toxic to the American people's interests.

We have a health care system that is unable to contain costs, it can't deliver health care to the average American, we have known the system that worked well 60 years ago was on the verge of collapse 20 years ago, is incapable of self reform, and therefore government must step in. And as the critics bleat, but but but the reforms are not perfect, the real standard is it better than what we had before?

But its the finance reform that your truly inspired stupidity is most clear. How damn short your damn memory is when unregulated financial buccaneering totally collapsed the American economy. Well maybe you think the tooth fairy can do a better job of reforming
banking, but failing the tooth fairy, the only entity that can do it is Government.

I can hear you again already, but but bit the government plan will not be perfect, but once again, if its better than the really really really stinking system we had before, how can you say its not an improvement? Or for that matter self correcting, even if initial government regulations have failings, those can be corrected by better future regulations.

But given the fact that you don't want more oil spills and don't presumably want more financial meltdowns, put up or shut up, explain to this forum how this is possible without governmental regulations?

 

[owensdj]

Obama can't "win" no matter what he does. The "drill baby drill" right is criticizing him for doing nothing, even thought it was BP's responsibility to fix the leak and they said they were working on it. If he'd gone in and taken over the clean up the right would have said it was "socialist" and a "government takeover" of oil.

 

[nageov3t]

Obama can't "win" no matter what he does. The "drill baby drill" right is criticizing him for doing nothing, even thought it was BP's responsibility to fix the leak and they said they were working on it. If he'd gone in and taken over the clean up the right would have said it was "socialist" and a "government takeover" of oil.

the fact that the right is criticizing him over his handling of the spill doesn't really matter.

it's the fact that the left is doing it that should be concerning.

most republicans aren't going to be voting for Obama no matter what he does... but if we go into 2012 with Jon Stewart, Chris Matthews, and some of the biggest liberal columnists criticizing the president on a regular basis amidst no signs of getting out of Afghanistan, it's something that I'd worry could really drive down voter turn-out among the young and minorities that propelled Obama to victory.

 

[umbrella39]

Damn Obama for not sucking the oil spill up his ass before it could cause any damage.

Damn Bush for not snorting Katrina up his nose before it hit the coast.

Foolish mortals, McCain would have deployed Palin to dive to the bottom and plug the leak with her fake boobs.

 

[alphatarget1]

Damn Obama for not sucking the oil spill up his ass before it could cause any damage.

Damn Bush for not snorting Katrina up his nose before it hit the coast.

Foolish mortals, McCain would have deployed Palin to dive to the bottom and plug the leak with her fake boobs.

Palin has fake boobs?

 

[PieIsAwesome]

Palin has fake boobs?

Need link to support what would otherwise seem like liberal, partisan, hackery.


I agree with the OP.

 

[PeshakJang]

But its the finance reform that your truly inspired stupidity is most clear. How damn short your damn memory is when unregulated financial buccaneering totally collapsed the American economy. Well maybe you think the tooth fairy can do a better job of reforming
banking, but failing the tooth fairy, the only entity that can do it is Government.

So the answer is to put Dodd and Frank, two of the biggest crooks in congress, who had major parts in CAUSING the problems we face now, and benefited greatly, in charge of "fixing" things? "It took a crisis to get this done"... "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.”... this sounds exactly like the health care "reform" when it got passed...

Are you sensing the trend? Wait for/create a crisis, label something "reform", shove it through congress, and claim victory... after the fact there are always pawns like you to say "anything is better than nothing", and defend it although you have *NO* idea what it will actually do. This is the second time it has taken place on a major issue... and it is already beginning with the oil spill/energy "reform".

I will bet $1000 right now that the *EXACT* same thing will happen... a piece of legislation labeled "energy reform" will be rammed through congress, with at least 1000 pages of new regulations that nobody has read, and it will be hailed as a victory for the American people, while doing almost nothing but putting new taxes on business and individuals. Watch.

This is the answer to everything though, right? Jesus LemonLaw, how ignorant can you get? "Blind partisan hack" just doesn't seem like a strong enough label for you.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well I too want the oil spill to magically stop. Be its resolved, we need a Harry Potter magic wand.

But yakity Yak, BlanBlahYoutoo, please explain to this forum how the Obama alternative of John McCain would have done better?

Put up or shut up.

your partisanship is showing. where did i mention anything about mccain and him being able to do a better job. heck, i didn't even mention obama.
somehow you assumed i was on the "other side" and you went straight to attack mode.

how the hell did my post even have anything to do with what the OP is about. you have no idea, do you?

let me clue you in.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=30036985&postcount=80

it was a jab from another thread. feel stupid now don't you?
actually i bet you don't because someone as partisan as you never thinks he's wrong.