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Obama is the most popular modern US president

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M

MartyStu

Member
He did pretty well. Easily one of our best in some time.

That said, his administrations bullshit continuance of the drone program and the burgeoning of the executive's domestic--and often illegal--spying will always leave a sour taste in my mouth.
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
North America's got the best leaders. Obama and Trudeau need to do a buddy comedy

we can ignore Nieto

titiklabingapat said:
Clinton was the first black president. Obama is the first gay one.
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1336931961_cover.jpg
 
R

Rimon-hanit

Member
He is the king of cool.
He is probably the only politician I like hearing speeches from, just so much common sense, and I'm not even american.
 
J

Jobbs

Banned
Obama is the only president in my lifetime or that I can look back in history and say that I really liked. He has no scandals, no real flubs, and has maintained his dignity despite the most obstinant, immature, childish, and overall dysfunctional congress we've had in our entire history.

imagine what could have been possible if he had any other congress?
 
Vigilant Walrus

Vigilant Walrus

Member
Aaron Strife said:
- George HW Bush's approval rating in July 1992 per Gallup was 29%, a record low for his presidency. So yes he's still above HW. That he was a one termer should be a further hint that he wasn't the most popular president near the end of his run. Any definition of modern that goes further back is really straining the word "modern" for me.

- I think the fact that Clinton's personal reputation was tarnished is a pretty large caveat and that it speaks well of Obama that his high job approval tracks closely to his personal favorability but you can infer for yourself whether this should make him more "popular" I guess. I'm having trouble finding personal favorability numbers for past presidents.

Edit: Bush I, Bush II and Clinton's favorability ratings were all in the toilet in the final year of their presidency per Gallup (for Bush I and Clinton) and CNN (Bush II). So Obama is beating them by that metric.

- This is a forum post not a college thesis.

omg you totally owned me ;( how will i ever show my face here again
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I don't think a high favorability means anything. It's like going on metacritic and arguing your favorite whatever is best because most people gave the thing 10! There are countries in the world where world leaders have a high favorability - Like Duterte, in the Phillippines. Guy is a madman and is loved by many.
The idea that you would give self dependent and critical thought and stand by your own convictions instead of using the will of the masses as some sort of crutch to give more levy to your political ideology strikes me as incredible dumb and self destructive. The right way is often shouted down and unpopular because it's not the easy way. Populist nightmares if we are going to use this pissy yard stick to measure worth.

Yet, it's what a lot of people do. They join groups, and institutions and rally around the labels because having a unpopular opinion can bring self doubt and anxiety. :I
Sometimes the popular opinion is the right one, the fair one, the objectively logical one (as far as unified morals and ethics we can agree on, are concerned) but that is far removed from trying to make a point that someone is great because they are popular, favorable. That is almost disturbing and depressing:(
 
E

Ecotic

Member
Obama's post-Presidency is an exciting prospect. A decade from now he could easily have a 75% favorable rating and an enormously influential foundation. He could have effective veto power over certain things, like if another President ever tried for another misguided foreign adventure like Iraq, I could see Obama successfully throwing his weight behind the anti-war effort like he tried to do as a lowly state senator in 2002.

I do worry however that he'll cast a long shadow that the Democratic Party will be unable to get out from under. What I mean is, every Republican candidate until Trump had to pledge fealty to Reagan's legacy. I hope Democrats won't be beholden to Obama like that.
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
Cyan said:
I don't think the point of stump's post was to zomg own you (I mean, unless I'm misunderstanding, this isn't your argument, this is from a blog). Stump is pointing out that this just isn't very meaningful. Obama is the most popular of four people, and only then if you sort of fiddle with the metrics on Clinton.
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Its a small sample size because we've only had six presidents in the last 40 years. I'm not sure what wider net you could cast that would bear any relevance to our current political climate. I guess he's not as popular as George Washington.

The leader of the country will invariably be compared to his predecessors. I don't know how it isn't meaningful that Obama is tracking higher than his immediate predecessors in all but one instance (his approval being slightly lower than Clinton's at this point).

Vigilant Walrus said:
I don't think a high favorability means anything. It's like going on metacritic and arguing your favorite whatever is best because most people gave the thing 10! There are countries in the world where world leaders have a high favorability - Like Duterte, in the Phillippines. Guy is a madman and is loved by many.
The idea that you would give self dependent and critical thought and stand by your own convictions instead of using the will of the masses as some sort of crutch to give more levy to your political ideology strikes me as incredible dumb and self destructive. The right way is often shouted down and unpopular because it's not the easy way. Populist nightmares if we are going to use this pissy yard stick to measure worth.

Yet, it's what a lot of people do. They join groups, and institutions and rally around the labels because having a unpopular opinion can bring self doubt and anxiety. :I
Sometimes the popular opinion is the right one, the fair one, the objectively logical one (as far as unified morals and ethics we can agree on, are concerned) but that is far removed from trying to make a point that someone is great because they are popular, favorable. That is almost disturbing and depressing:(
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I'm not saying Obama is good simply because he has good approval ratings. I'm not sure how you would gleam that from my post here or elsewhere. I'm just happy that a president whose policies I generally support is backed up by the majority of the country.
 
M

Muppet of a Man

Member
Obama is genuinely a good guy with the people's interest at heart. Wish he could have had a presidency where the House and Senate were working with him instead of against him (even including the first presidency when the democrats couldn't get their shit together). He would have been super productive getting the right reforms in place for labor, environment, energy, technology, infrastructure, and education.
 
B

Baybars

Banned
Hate him with a passion. George bush in my opinion as dumb as he was had the balls to accept when he makes mistakes. Not obama though.

I will never ever forgive him from crying assad is the greatest hitler this century when he was about to bomb him for using chemical weapons in 2013 against his people to ''oh yeah that was the best decision ever'' to jeffrey goldberg this year
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
Baybars said:
Hate him with a passion. George bush in my opinion as dumb as he was had the balls to accept when he makes mistakes. Not obama though.

I will never ever forgive him from crying assad is the greatest hitler this century when he was about to bomb him for using chemical weapons in 2013 against his people to ''oh yeah that was the best decision ever'' to jeffrey goldberg this year
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Bush spent his last speech as president yelling that he was actually great. I think your perception of reality here is very skewed.
 
B

Baybars

Banned
Aaron Strife said:
Bush spent his last speech as president yelling that he was actually great. I think your perception of reality here is very skewed.
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I don't remember that. I remember him saying he fucked up in iraq, fired that loon rumsfield and then proceded with the surge that ended al qaida in 2007. Ofcourse obama ended all those gains when he withdrew in 2011 and handing the country to maliki
 
B

Bam Bam Baklava

Member
Baybars said:
I don't remember that. I remember him saying he fucked up in iraq, fired that loon rumsfield and then proceded with the surge that ended al qaida in 2007. Ofcourse obama ended all those gains when he withdrew in 2011 and handing the country to maliki
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You mean the withdrawl timeline set by the Bush administration and carried through by Obama?
 
E

eyeball_kid

Member
B-Dubs said:
He's going to go down as top 10 for the ACA alone. If the Iran deal goes well that's going to be even more solid. We've definitely had better, but his influence is going to be felt long after he's gone. He's not top 5, but it's hard to outdo Lincoln, Washington and the Roosevelts.
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Everyone I know has been negatively impacted by the ACA, including myself. I'm sure it's helped some people, but it was a shit deal. He (and/or Hillary via backroom deals) wanted that feather in the cap, but something is not always better than nothing.

He has been a face of intelligence and level-headedness, of moderate views and diplomacy over war, and boy did we have a drought of all that after the Bush years. But most of his foreign policy decisions, other than the Iran deal, have been a mess. The hundreds of thousands of dead, tortured, and raped in Syria over the past several years lies squarely on him due to his inaction there.

His DOJ didn't prosecute a single bank executive for the economic collapse. What has he done to try to tackle the massive income inequality in this country?

He has been on the wrong side of history regarding mass surveillance. This will be a major stain on his legacy, and particularly egregious since he has a Constitutional Law degree.

And I'm not at all a fan of using executive orders to legislate. That's not how our country is supposed to work. I'm not singling him out here, but he hasn't been afraid to use them. I know he was put in a tough situation by Congress, but sometimes you gotta take the L instead of pushing through your policies by trying to wield more power than the executive branch was given.

I voted for him twice, but I can't really say he's lived up to the the '08 Obama we were all enamoured with. But he was better than the alternatives.
 
B

Brinbe

Member
He is the modern President. Bi-racial, Hawaiian born, a child of the 70s, relatively humble roots. He lived a super normal life and never quite figured everything out until he was in his 20s.

But he worked hard, made a career of trying to bring different people together, and proved that anyone can make it to the biggest job in the word.

It'll be a long time till we see someone quite so normal/down-to-Earth as well as capable, calm, and cool ever again.
 
B

Baybars

Banned
Bam Bam Baklava said:
You mean the withdrawl timeline set by the Bush administration and carried through by Obama?
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Obama went against the military when they said it was too early to leave. That and the decision to stick with maliki instead of allawi the secular technocrat doomed iraq completely
 
B

Baybars

Banned
Bam Bam Baklava said:
The Iraqis had a say in this as well and would not renew the agreement, now what?
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The iraqis voted for allawi and not maliki. Allawi won the election and he was a unifier of shias sunnis and kurds. But obama and biden in their wisdom decided nah we quite like maliki. And the rest is history

And when you spend trillions in money and blood in iraq you do have a say in the matter. You do all the hard work and then piss it off is just a sad way to end the whole thing. Obama should have learned from clinton in kosovo.
 
S

sechsterangriff

Member
I wonder if like Roosevelt, people would just keep electing him if there wasn't a 2 terms limit.
I like him (European citizen here) because he's just seems to have some common sense and down to earth. And that's something I usually don't associate with politicians. Just some regular guy who you can trust that just happens to be the President of the US.
 
U

ugaboga232

Member
ACA was a nice step forward but its still no where near enough, exhausted a ton of political capital, and has perhaps poisoned the well for further healthcare debates for a while (mostly because of republicans but still). Baby steps I guess but there was a lot more that could have been done that wasn't big flashy things like public options. Obama was pretty decent otherwise (though foreign policy/spying/drones/TPP stuff is concerning).
 
Monocle

Monocle

Member
He's great.

Bobby Roberts said:
God, can you imagine if he'd had a congress that wasn't maybe the most ineffective, useless appendage of the body government in it's entire fuckin' history?
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Seriously.

ugaboga232 said:
ACA was a nice step forward but its still no where near enough, exhausted a ton of political capital, and has perhaps poisoned the well for further healthcare debates for a while (mostly because of republicans but still). Baby steps I guess but there was a lot more that could have been done that wasn't big flashy things like public options. Obama was pretty decent otherwise (though foreign policy/spying/drones/TPP stuff is concerning).
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You say that like the ACA wasn't hamstrung by Republican pushback.
 
C

Cyan

Banned
Baybars said:
He fired rumsfield. It was his way of saying i fucked up
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Going off vague memories here, but I think that was about failing to keep the peace rather than going in in the first place. I don't think he's ever admitted that the war was a mistake.
 
M

metalslimer

Member
It's pretty amazing what he's been able to accomplish with a congress that despised him for 6 years out of 8

And are we really revising history for W Bush administration who continued to torture people despite all of the evidence that it wasn't working?
 
Monocle

Monocle

Member
metalslimer said:
It's pretty amazing what he's been able to accomplish with a congress that despised him for 6 years out of 8

And are we really revising history for W Bush administration who continued to torture people despite all of the evidence that it wasn't working?
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The turrists and evildoors had to be punished.
 
D

djplaeskool

Member
I had a friend recently compare the Obama presidency to the Watchmen movie.

"There are some amazing things.
There are some terrible things.
In the end, it's about as good as it possibly could have been, given the circumstances."

I know I'm actually very curious what he will do once he leaves office.
Seriously feels like he's can do whatever, he'll have earned it, and he's made it so that I'm personally vested.
 
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