What is your REAL view of the Obama Presidency?

[Douglas Carpenter]

I added number seven for the sake of those who claim some members are "Obama worshipers," I just wanted to see if there REALLY are any.

33 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	One of the greatest Presidents of the modern era
	3 (9%)
	Overall a good President - He is doing the best he can considering the circumstances and political realities of today
	9 (27%)
	He is doing an acceptable job considering how things are these days - but he compromises too much
	9 (27%)
	He is a professional career politician with few core principles - but he is doing an over all acceptable job
	1 (3%)
	He is a professional career politician with few core principles - and he is doing an overall lousy job
	9 (27%)
	He is a terrible President - one of the worst in modern times,
	2 (6%)
	He's the Lord of Glory. He is the great "I am", the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. His name is wonderful, the Prince of Peace is he, the everlasting father throughout eternity
	0 (0%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[MADem]

1. Considering the fact that the GOP is determined to FUCK HIM and OBSTRUCT HIM, I'd say he's doing a

superb job.

There's only so much you can do without both houses of Congress...which is why we need to do some serious shit and help him get that in 2014.

[jazzimov]

31. + 1000

[RobertEarl]

2. He ain't no socialist

In fact, he's a pretty good capitalist.

Problem is, the best this country delivers for the people is socialist.
So he's not really doing what is best for the country, is he?

[adric mutelovic]

3. Acceptable in my view. Very good job domestically, mediocre job in foreign issues

Good job in Iraq, but drones killing too many innocents. Very few complains from me about his handling of domestic issues

That's my 2 cents.

[quinnox]

4. professional and doing lousy job

Its a shame because he has charisma to burn, and is a brilliant individual, and could be an important agent of change. But he has wasted his chances and I think will end up as mediocre, unless he makes a dramatic turnabout in this second term. Which is possible.

[MrSlayer]

5. I think it's been a tremendous waste of potential.

A real disappointment.

When he was swept into office in a landslide with a mandate to make real change he and the party balked and bent over backwards to appease the Republicans.

People wanted the complete opposite of what we've been getting over the past thirty years and in particular the Bush disaster. But instead we just got more of the same. 2009 was the time to put the clamps on Wall Street, to raise taxes on the rich, to put the brakes on the globalism that has been decimating the workers of the country, to get card check, to get Medicare for all, to end the wars, to rebuild this country's infrastructure from the ground up and we did none of that.

Everything is still by and for the 1%. We needed a new FDR style of government and we ended up with someone that has been more Reagan than Reagan.

It's sick and sad and I see no future for this country. The best days are past. It didn't have to be this way. There was a real opportunity to do great things but no one took it. No one even tried.

[GoneFishin]

27. Agreed.

+1

[CountAllVotes]

36. Things will change

That is inevitable.

However, I agree with your viewpoints very much and I know what you mean about the sadness and the disappointment.

It was all right there and "Fired up and Ready To Go!".

Yeah right ...

We are still in Afghanistan.

We have become a nation that depends on war profiteers.

Sad and sick both.

Hang in there ... things will change as that is part of life -- that great guarantee which is change. Lets hope for a brighter future and try to see what positives there are among us, We the People.

We must keep hope alive!!

[kenny blankenship]

6. The problem is that his core is "Moderate Republican"

straight out of the heart of the Reagan period, as he admitted himself in an interview with Univision - about 4 or 5 years too late to qualify his disclosure as fully candid. I know I wasn't informed that I was voting for a Reagan Republican when I voted for him in 2008. I'm sure many others would have been surprised to learn that as well.

[Puzzledtraveller]

15. I can't peg him down either but chose overall acceptable

I tend to favor pragmatism and he's very pragmatic.

[Xyzse]

7. I am somewhere around these two:

He is doing an acceptable job considering how things are these days - but he compromises too much.
He is a professional career politician with few core principles - and he is doing an overall lousy job.

Currently, I don't care much any more other than judicial appointments, especially Supreme court ones.
I voted for him twice for lack of a better option. Though I must admit, Romney was particularly heinous and had to bring that thing down.

I pretty much relegated his status to an unimportant icon with limited effect on the day to day goings of the country. Any damage done, is still much less than if a Republican were in charge. If there are any improvements, then BONUS!

[gcomeau]

8. Need option to vote for multiple choices...

I would say the first three are all equally true.

[nevergiveup]

9. He managed to keep the ship afloat

when it was about to sink and he did it in spite of massive obstruction from Congress. I think because of this Obama will likely be known as one of the better presidents. My biggest beef with this president and his administration has been their ineptness in public relations. The president and those who surround him always seem to be 1/2 step behind. The best example of this is letting the Tea Party taking over the health care debate and the resulting 2010 election fiasco.

[GeorgeGist]

10. He named his children's dog BO ...

his wife thinks of herself as a 'single mom' and he thinks of himself as a moderate republican.

[Parable Arable]

11. I voted for option 3.

Though a combination of that and option 2 is a bit more accurate. He isn't the progressive paragon we were hoping for and his negotiation strategy really leaves a lot to be desired, but considering the situation he inherited and the congress he's working with, I think he's done a fairly good job. However, I still feel as if he could be doing more if he compromised a tad less.

[leftstreet]

12. He's not a President, he's a CEO n/t

[The Link]

13. Not as good as Clinton

Better than Carter

[Motown_Johnny]

14. One of the greatest Presidents of the modern era

Other than FDR, who did a better job than Pres. Obama?

IMO, nobody.

That makes him one of the greatest of the modern era.

[Parable Arable]

17. If you ask me?

Truman, Johnson, Clinton, and possibly JFK... But that's just my two cents. They also inherited situations that weren't as dire as the one Obama inherited, so he has that going for him Though I believe the aformentioned presidents all dealt with congress in much better ways.

[limpyhobbler]

16. Good on some issues, lousy on other issues. I'm a tough grader though so

so don't take it personal.

Obama: D-
Bush 2: F--
Clinton: D
Bush 1: F
Reagan: F
Carter: D
Ford: D
Nixon: F
LBJ: C
JFK: C
Ike: C
Truman: B
FDR: A
Hoover: F
Coolidge: ?
Harding: F
Wilson: F
TR: C

[Parable Arable]

18. I'd give Coolidge an F

If I recall correctly, he was responsible for a number of the deregulation policies that led to the depression?

Coincidentally, Coolidge was one of Reagan's favorite presidents.

[Retrograde]

30. Wow! You ARE tough!

Only Truman and FDR get anything above a C? Why is Wilson so low? And where's Taft?

I'd bump up Clinton, Ike, TR and (reluctantly) Nixon at least. And give Bush 2 an I or J or even a S. Obama's still too soon to call IMHO.

[limpyhobbler]

34. Oh I forgot about Taft.

I don't know much about him. He was the fattest president and from Ohio. I'll give him an F.

Wilson -I was thinking of Creel Committee. It was some propaganda committee he set up to convince people to love the war. Also he jailed people who spoke against the war, including Eugene Debs. Also he was a racist. He re-segregated federal offices, some of which had been integrated since the civil war. When people complained he said:"Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen."

"Adventurers swarmed out of the North, as much the enemies of one race as of the other, to cozen, beguile and use the negroes. The white men were aroused by a mere instinct of self-preservation — until at last there sprung into existence a great Kuklux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country."

- Woodrow Wilson wrote that in his book.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson

[duffyduff]

38. On education policy alone, Obama is a spectacular failure

There is no way to sugarcoat it. I wouldn't give Obama such a good grade as a D-.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

19. Considering he is dealing with the insane on the right and an organized fifth column on the left

I think he is doing a spectacular job. I didn't like the bailouts or the Robert Ludlum business, but i'm not sitting in the whitehouse.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

20. A very mixed bag.

Good to great on LGBT issues. Pretty piss poor on labor in general, education, and the environment. Great on the economy for the wealthy and investor class, not so great for the rest of us. Utter failure on holding financial criminals accountable, as well as war criminals. Has a hard on about medical marijuana and whistleblowers that I find distasteful. Foreign policy -- wrong on Latin America, wrong on drones, currently right on Syria.

[scarletwoman]

21. Lousy job - so many missed opportunities. But I guess they were only missed opportunities if he had

any core principles.

When he first took office in the midst of the Wall Street and bankster meltdown, he could have had the whole country cheering him on if he had immediately taken on those bastards and started kicking predatory capitalist ass. But what did he do? He went for bailouts and then moved right on to health care "reform" - and an entire year was wasted with Congress arguing over the Insurance Company Protection Act, while the whole economic mess caused by the out of control plutocrats was simply patched up with bailouts and then basically ignored.

Then he starts his second term by "negotiating" a pitiful tax cut that gave more away to rich - when he wouldn't have had to anything! He could have let the Bush tax cuts expire entirely and then pushed for a fresh round of tax cuts for just the middle and working classes. I can't imagine how that would be hard sell - he'd have been able to draw an absolutely clear contrast between the Republican penchant for protecting the rich, and a Democratic push to bring relief to the 99%.

Time after time, he's accepted the right wing framing of issues and then negotiated from a place of weakness. It's been absolutely astounding to witness this behavior from a supposed Democrat.

In 2008, after no other choices remained except for Obama and Hilary Clinton, I reluctantly threw my support to Obama, only because I knew Clinton was a neoliberal, and I was thoroughly fed up with neoliberalism after the Bill Clinton administration. Obama talked like an economic populist - so I allowed myself a small sliver of hope that maybe he meant what he said. More the fool, I.

In 2012, knowing by then that Obama was a neoliberal Reaganite, I voted for Obama again - only because I have never in my life voted for a Republican, and a Romney presidency was utterly unthinkable.

But it's been truly heartbreaking to have a Democratic president who only talks a good game, but in reality kowtows to Wall Street.

[forestpath]

24. +1000

[GoneFishin]

32. Yep. His hand wasn't forced on the tax give aways to the 2%.

Very revealing. He feigns impotence often in my opinion. But on the tax cuts he was exposed completely because all he had to do was wait for them to expire.

[TheKentuckian]

41. Right on, except I think he has core principles

They just tend not to be those I have any love or respect for.

I really think he is stunningly effective in getting what he wants, like 95%.

Obstruction is a side item to the main course that is objective.

We have two cabinets and sets of advisers to look at in awe inspiring levels of frustration now.

[Harmony Blue]

22. Acceptable job but too much compromising

....sometimes to reach a compromise you have to start at the edge not at the right of the middle for negotiations. Take a hard line stance and then slowly soften up gradually reaching the center.

[Blue_In_AK]

23. I'm trying to ignore it.

[scarletwoman]

25. It's a bummer, for sure. To have a supposed Democratic president who won't actually fight against

the 1%. I despise neoliberalism with the heat of ten thousand suns.

[Raine]

26. Number 2, he's doing the best he can and overall a good president. He's too moderate for my taste

but I can see how things are for him.

[Fire Walk With Me]

28. He is a complete corporate and plutonomist shill, actively advancing the neocon/Bush agendas

and engaging in (or simply allowing long-term) domestic terrorism upon those seeking their 1st Amendment right to demand change.

If you have a problem with anything I've said, I've been posting facts about all of it here in GD and the Occupy Underground forum for a long time. Tired of trotting out the same links over and over. Google "NDAA section 1021" and search DU for "who enables austerity" and "what a police state looks like" adding my user name. Look up the FBI's definition of domestic terrorism and see how part of it allows for groups using force and the threat of force against political groups to change their behavior. 7400+ jailed and beaten Occupiers, you see; zero zero zero banksters in jail.

Obama's gonna get on this, any day now, any second:

[Initech]

29. I like how Bill Mahee put it:

"Being the president after George W. Bush is like being the maid after Led Zeppelin's been in the room. You can't change the world in a day but you can at least get the smell of stupid out of the room."

[newmember]

33. "One of the greatest Presidents of the modern era "

[Logical]

35. Overall a disappointment. My expectations were high. Better than any GOP idiot. But that is it. n-t

[Ready4Change]

37. His failures to end/separate himself from several policies from the Bush administration trouble me.

It indicates, to me, just how beholden to monied interests any high end politician from both parties are now.

Despite that, he has taken some good steps, and I feel confident in thinking he is better for us than either McCain or Romney would have been.

But it's not enough. I'm convinced we are now living in an oligarchy/plutocracy.

[Johonny]

39. I think the executive branch works again which is a plus

He certainly seems to believe in governance and has tried to govern which is a plus over the Bush years. He passed a moderate luke warm agenda which some people like other people see as too little too late. He has generally lead from the rear on gay rights and equality. The class divide isn't getting better. He uses the bully pulpit sparingly. He kept the US in pointless wars and failed to investigate the worst of the war. He's generally viewed as a poor advocate for the core of his party even though oddly enough the core of his party LOVES him. I think that last part is the real view of the presidency. We all want to really really like Obama, but... On days I forget the buts I think he's doing a great job. On days I remember nothing has been done about Gitmo, I think * Obama. It's the desire to love and disappointment that is likely going to be his legacy. I think much like Clinton and Carter he will be loved more when he's gone.

[Douglas Carpenter]

40. one last time