I'm not big into calling out people on our own side, even less so when it's someone I tend to like and enjoy. But Badabing's diary yesterday has left me no choice. While I have my own disagreements with President Obama, I am also a realist, and I can see some very similar patterns emerging that are much like those of the time of Jimmy Carter.
Carter, like Obama, was inspiring on the campaign trail and too often the "technocrat" in the White House. Carter faced opposition from his own party in Congress and across the nation. Carter faced a crippling recession, just as Obama is today. So, we got Reagan in 1980, and now, all these years later, so many Democrats say, Carter did good, I wish we'd reelected him, yadda yadda, and of course, it's far too late to make a difference.
I don't think the President is perfect. I think the tax cuts were AWFUL, as is the treatment of Manning during his detention, and the continued reliance on the BSS (Bush Security State). These are all things I can't stand, and that really disappoint me about him. However....
MITT ROMNEY?!?! You're comparing our President, who is one of the biggest success stories of our time, to an empty suit with a great hairdo? Are you fucking kidding me?! We have health care reform, it's not perfect, but it's the first fucking reform since Lyndon Johnson's administration of the healthcare system. We have a fair pay act for the first time ever. We pulled our combat troops from Iraq on schedule, a mess that he was handed by that dumbshit that he replaced. We got DADT repealed. We got the AG to stop enforcing DOMA. We got a new START treaty to clean up nuclear weapons and draw down the arsenals. That's a pretty big list of achievements for a "technocrat."
We like to sit around and talk about our ideal president. We imagine how we would've been with Al Gore or Howard Dean as president, only to forget how wooden Gore was in 2000, how he nominated Lieberman to be his running mate and stiffed Bill Clinton from campaigning for him because he was pissed at him. We think of the Gore of 2003 on, who had fire in his belly and pure progressive thoughts in his heart, but that wasn't the Gore of 2000. And if that Gore had been president, yes, maybe 9/11 would've been averted and we sure as shit wouldn't be in Iraq, but there'd likely be this same sort of "technocrat" bitching at him as there was to Carter, and as being directed at Obama now.
More after the fold....
Leadership isn't always about the great speech. Reagan gave lots of great speeches. Do you think he was an amazing leader? Probably not, because a good deal of his policies SUCKED. But for whatever faults they have, both Carter and Obama spent their time in the White House trying to FIX THINGS, and fixing what's broken, and doing so with unpopular means, is as much leadership as going out and giving a pretty speech. When you're handed a pile of shit, you have to put the gloves and mask on and start cleaning, and it's hard to be inspirational when you're digging out of the biggest hole left a president since FDR showed up at the White House in March 1933. FDR used inspiration because he had Congress solidly behind him, a luxury Obama did not have from the start, because Kennedy was ill, because Franken took months to be seated, and because our Blue Dogs were nipping at his heels from the start.
Yes, there could and should've been more, but this leads me to my final point....
THIS PRESIDENT HAS FACED THE MOST DISGUSTING SMEAR CAMPAIGN IN MODERN HISTORY.
You utterly fail to mention this, Badabing, and while it doesn't excuse every single thing he's done, it puts him in an incredibly tough place. YOU try making decisions while your family is being dragged through the mud, when your little girls are mocked on national TV and radio, when your wife's efforts to bring simple good health to our nation's children are turned into some "socialist nanny-state domineering," when you were handed two wars that were managed piss-poorly, when you were handed the worst recession we've had since the Great Depression, when you're repeatedly called a Muslim like it's a dirty word, when this fraudulent idea that you were born in Kenya keeps being propagated by Fox and all the right-wing hacks and the SPEAKER OF THE FUCKING HOUSE only because they can't say the word "nigger" out loud when they want to, YOU, Badabing, YOU try "leading" under those circumstances.
If you want to have a debate over the things he should've done, could've done, etc., let's have a debate, but please do NOT insult my intelligence or that of so many others by comparing this president to Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney would drag us down screaming into the fifth circle of hell, as would any of these clowns running on the GOP side. He may not be an amazing president, he may not be everything we hoped he would be when he was elected, but by God, he's got some pretty good accomplishments on his plate, he's done a pretty decent job, and he's infinitely better than the alternatives that exist out there.
Updated by wolverinethad at Wed Mar 30, 2011 at 10:30 AM EDT
I just wanted to add that last year, a lot of people on here said they weren't gonna go vote because they were mad at Congress for this or that, or mad at their governor, or something. Look what we got, people. We're now having to fight twice as hard just to keep from losing ground against these retrograde fools that run the House and have several states in complete control. Think about it: do you REALLY want a Republican in the White House for the sake of complete purity in your soul? So we can be stuck in a wonderful land of complete repression, discrimination towards the LGBT community, DADT's abolition, repeal of healthcare reform, worker's rights blown up, further loss of decently paying jobs, continued rollback of government assistance, and women losing control over their bodies?
If the answer to that question is yes, if you'd rather see us go to hell just so you can have your purity vote, then you're just as bad as anyone on the other side who wants to drag us to hell. Purity votes are a wasted exercise. We NEVER get the politicians we want in life, especially in this twisted day and age. We have to keep fighting and hoping that we can change enough of them to make a difference, and I've never stopped believing that we can keep making a difference, but I'm not willing to sacrifice the nation so I can go write in Dennis Kucinich's name at the ballot in the name of "purity."