Rate the Presidents, Installment #44: Barack Obama

[Blair]

5 stars, just because people are giving him 1 stars without even posting a comment.

The initial optimism of his policies/campaign lead people to frankly be a bit naive-as Bill Maher said Yes We  Can didn't end in 2008, the Tea Party gains in 2010 meant that you couldn't get big reforms passed. His actions on the economy in 2009 were really good, the stimulus showed how you get an economy back on track and bailing out the car industry was a good decision. His foreign policy has been very good for a US president, the deal on Iran and opening with Cuba were two actions that would have seemed impossible in 2008. It's more impressive considering the GOP have pulled every tactic possible (Bibi speech, 47 letter etc) to stop it.

[Blair]

If you give him a 4/5 and gave Nixon a 1/2, you're probably a partisan hack. Off the top of my head, here's a list of crap he's done, mostly foreign policy.

-Lied about withdrawing troops out of Iraq within 18months, actually followed the 'Bush Plan' of 3 years. He actually sent troops back last year.
-Sold weapons and trained the anti-Assad rebels, aka Sunni Terrorists.
-Bombed Libya into 'democracy', allowed Gadaffi to be killed and Libya to plunge into Civil War which...
-strenghtened Jihadists and allowed the attack on Benghazi (Iran Hostage Crisis v2?)
-sold chemical wepaons to the government of Bahrain to crush the protestors
-sent drones to bomb children in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. He claimed that he was 'pretty good at killing people', which is true.
-gave weapons to Mexican drug cartels and tried to use 'executive privledge' to cover it up
-refused to talk about the the Trans-Pacific Partnership
-lied about protecting constitutional rights and later extended the Patriot Act by executive order

Of course he has accomplishments as well but I disapprove of his Preisdency.

He is pretty much a Democrat Nixon and earns the same rating - barely 3 stars.... and very close to 2 if the other Presidents weren't so bad.

At the time, he had to act in Libya. The exit plan should have been better done, we should of had UN troops in there and we should have secured the peace. We had a situation were Colonel Gaddaffi was bombing civilians, and protesters. If we had done nothing there would have been widespread slaughter.

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Considering it was caused by a french air strike, and a Libyan mob there wasn't much Obama could do apart from droning the entire area to somehow protect Gaddafi

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He sent 500 troops to the Embassy, to stop the Benghazi you seem to be ranting about

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In all fairness US gave non lethal aid to moderate Syrian opposition forces.

And the US is much stronger, in 2008 along with Britain it was seen as the drunk abusive world power who would never stop, whilst appearing to have every vice (torture, no health coverage, gun problems, threatening to bomb everyone) Sure Obama hasn't fixed everything, but he's done a pretty good job, much better than you or I

[Blair]

I agree with the last Northerner in regards to Iran, but it's completely different to what happened in Libya. Iran in 1953 was a proactive attempt by the CIA to get it's hands on oil, whilst Libya was the UN having to intervene to literally stop tanks killing protesters. It's nearly as good an example of liberal interventionism as there is for the initial stages.

Likewise Obama's actions on issues like Climate Change, LGBT Rights, Green Energy and College tuition in the last couple of years show that towards the end the President just acts as a spokesman for their cause who can't always guarantee results. I honestly think if Walker/Bush become President in 2016 then we're going to miss having a relatively good guy in the White House