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Well after Bush he was a refreshing for a while. And his campaign promises made him seem like a perfect american leader to transition from pax americana to a po

Well after Bush he was a refreshing for a while. And his campaign promises made him seem like a perfect american leader to transition from pax americana to a post US led world - the skill of Theodore Roosevelt (the only great american of the 20th century) with the goodwill of Woodrow Wilson. And when you say i will close Guantanamo Bay in a year - you tend to believe that kind of stuff.

obviouslygreen 13y ago
...his campaign promises made him seem like... The worst thing about the whole "we used to love him until he did x" misses the issue that leads to these situations in the first place; it would more accurately be "we used to love him until we realized he lied to us." That's what American political campaigns are and have, as long as I've been listening to them, always been: A long series of lies and overstatements told in order to gain office. That people continue to believe them and lavish praise onto these liars encourages them and guarantees we'll continue to see this happen long into the future.
- etherael 13y ago
  I hope I'm not the first to break it to you, but it's not just America. That's the nature of the beast, I am constantly confused as to why people are surprised when they centralise all power under the control of a small group of people and that power is co-opted by other forces they likely initially sought to guard it from. There's just no getting around that, it's like shoveling earth into a pool and wondering why the water level rises. You want to stop the flooding? Put the shovel down.
  - mcdougle 13y ago
    "absolute power corrupts absolutely." I don't know where that quote is from -- I grew up hearing it from my father.
    - phaemon 13y ago
      It's part of a quote that's generally rendered as: "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." It's from a letter written by Lord Acton to Bishop Creighton in 1885. A more complete quote is: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - obviouslygreen 13y ago
    I hope I'm not the first to break it to you... You most certainly aren't. I normally cite this as an international phenomenon, but it's gotten to the point where either people know that or they've had their heads buried in the sand, so it's hardly worth belaboring the point any more (not that it'll stop me, but I no longer feel quite so tied explaining it over and over).
- bradleyland 13y ago
  When considering the motivations of another person, I always take a close look at the amount of cynicism I'm applying to that person, and then I ask myself whether there is another possibility. We have to consider the possibility that Obama really did believe in the ideas he pitched during his presidential campaigns, but that once he entered in to office something very powerful changed his views. The measure of how powerful that agent of change is would depend on how deeply Obama held his convictions. So we have two possibilities: 1) Obama is a purely evil, lying, power-hungry individual 2) Obama's ideology was forced to the sidelines by a system that is immune to such purity I'm not sure which is more terrifying.
at-fates-hands 13y ago
He said he would do a lot of things in his first fours years, none of which came to fruition. -- Said he could cut the deficit by half in his first term. Instead he actually added over 5 trillion to it. -- Said he would reduce unemployment to under 8%. Today, it still hovers around 10% if you take into account the people who stopped looking for work. -- Said the stimulus would create 3.5 million jobs. Instead, we actually lost 1.1 million jobs AFTER the stimulus. -- Said he would make health care more affordable. You simply can't add millions of people to the health care ranks and expect rates to go DOWN. Simple supply and demand economics. -- Said his investment in Green energy would create 5 million jobs. After spending $90 billion, instead of 5 million jobs, we had several solar companies go bankrupt after securing guaranteed government loans, many of which left tax payers on hook for hundreds of millions of dollars. And yet, he still got re-elected.
moron4hire 13y ago
The comparison to Wilson is more apropos than you think. Wilson was not a good guy. He was a raging racist and thought Fascism--as it was then growing in pre-WWII Europe and before the genocide issue was impossible to ignore--to be the ideal course for America. And he was quite fond of locking up political opponents without charges: The Espionage Act was used to shutdown newspapers and lock up citizens critical of the war effort. Yes, I would absolutely compare Obama and Wilson, but not in terms of "goodwill".
Alex3917 13y ago
"And his campaign promises made him seem like a perfect american leader to transition from pax americana to a post US led world" Unless you actually read his proposed policy documents, which made it pretty clear that he had no clue what he was talking about.

obviouslygreen 13y ago

...his campaign promises made him seem like... The worst thing about the whole "we used to love him until he did x" misses the issue that leads to these situations in the first place; it would more accurately be "we used to love him until we realized he lied to us." That's what American political campaigns are and have, as long as I've been listening to them, always been: A long series of lies and overstatements told in order to gain office. That people continue to believe them and lavish praise onto these liars encourages them and guarantees we'll continue to see this happen long into the future.

etherael 13y ago
I hope I'm not the first to break it to you, but it's not just America. That's the nature of the beast, I am constantly confused as to why people are surprised when they centralise all power under the control of a small group of people and that power is co-opted by other forces they likely initially sought to guard it from. There's just no getting around that, it's like shoveling earth into a pool and wondering why the water level rises. You want to stop the flooding? Put the shovel down.
- mcdougle 13y ago
  "absolute power corrupts absolutely." I don't know where that quote is from -- I grew up hearing it from my father.
  - phaemon 13y ago
    It's part of a quote that's generally rendered as: "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." It's from a letter written by Lord Acton to Bishop Creighton in 1885. A more complete quote is: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- obviouslygreen 13y ago
  I hope I'm not the first to break it to you... You most certainly aren't. I normally cite this as an international phenomenon, but it's gotten to the point where either people know that or they've had their heads buried in the sand, so it's hardly worth belaboring the point any more (not that it'll stop me, but I no longer feel quite so tied explaining it over and over).
bradleyland 13y ago
When considering the motivations of another person, I always take a close look at the amount of cynicism I'm applying to that person, and then I ask myself whether there is another possibility. We have to consider the possibility that Obama really did believe in the ideas he pitched during his presidential campaigns, but that once he entered in to office something very powerful changed his views. The measure of how powerful that agent of change is would depend on how deeply Obama held his convictions. So we have two possibilities: 1) Obama is a purely evil, lying, power-hungry individual 2) Obama's ideology was forced to the sidelines by a system that is immune to such purity I'm not sure which is more terrifying.

at-fates-hands 13y ago

He said he would do a lot of things in his first fours years, none of which came to fruition. -- Said he could cut the deficit by half in his first term. Instead he actually added over 5 trillion to it. -- Said he would reduce unemployment to under 8%. Today, it still hovers around 10% if you take into account the people who stopped looking for work. -- Said the stimulus would create 3.5 million jobs. Instead, we actually lost 1.1 million jobs AFTER the stimulus. -- Said he would make health care more affordable. You simply can't add millions of people to the health care ranks and expect rates to go DOWN. Simple supply and demand economics. -- Said his investment in Green energy would create 5 million jobs. After spending $90 billion, instead of 5 million jobs, we had several solar companies go bankrupt after securing guaranteed government loans, many of which left tax payers on hook for hundreds of millions of dollars. And yet, he still got re-elected.

moron4hire 13y ago

The comparison to Wilson is more apropos than you think. Wilson was not a good guy. He was a raging racist and thought Fascism--as it was then growing in pre-WWII Europe and before the genocide issue was impossible to ignore--to be the ideal course for America. And he was quite fond of locking up political opponents without charges: The Espionage Act was used to shutdown newspapers and lock up citizens critical of the war effort. Yes, I would absolutely compare Obama and Wilson, but not in terms of "goodwill".

Alex3917 13y ago

"And his campaign promises made him seem like a perfect american leader to transition from pax americana to a post US led world" Unless you actually read his proposed policy documents, which made it pretty clear that he had no clue what he was talking about.