Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story?

[Stavros]

I think you exaggerate the expectations that people had of the Obama administration -if there were liberals in the USA who thought this was the second coming, well, they had it coming, as it were, for being so intellectually inept. I don't think anyone would have been able to achieve much in four years after the castastrophic presidency of George W. Bush, whose legacy is as bad if not worse than Reagan's.

You could have been honest and admitted that if people brought before the courts of America are presumed to be innocent unless proven guilty, 'Catching known terrorists and putting them in Guantanamo' IS very bad, because the majority of Guantanamo's prisoners were not terrorists, were not convicted of any crimes of any description, but were in Cuba because someone in Afghanistan or Pakistan shopped someone to the US they didn't like having been told the Americans would pay them for that information! There were children in Guantanamo, and yes, there were people there who could not offer a sensible explanation as to how they got from somewhere in England to Afghanistan -but the precise point made -not just by liberals- is that unless you have proof that the prisoners have broken the law, why are they there? It was a round-up, pure and simple, and neither Bush nor Cheney cared one way or the other if they were guilty. Along with extraordinary rendition and torture, it was as shameful to the USA as it was to the UK, and part of the discourse of resentment that propelled Obama into the White House. If he made a mistake, it was in not rounding up the prisoners, deciding which ones had a case to answer (about six I think the figure is), and sending them to The Hague, or a regular (not military) court somewhere in the USA. And releasing the rest.

I agree that Obama's record is a disappointment, I never expected much anyway. I don't think the next 4 years will see an improvement either, whoever gets elected next year. The problems go much deeper, which is why I sometimes find your attacks on Obama superficial, if politically motivated for obvious reasons. We are about to slide backwards in the UK where at least the USA has recorded economic growth of some kind, and even with this stasis we are better off than the Greeks or the Spaniards.

[Ben]

[onmyknees]

I think you exaggerate the expectations that people had of the Obama administration -if there were liberals in the USA who thought this was the second coming, well, they had it coming, as it were, for being so intellectually inept. I don't think anyone would have been able to achieve much in four years after the castastrophic presidency of George W. Bush, whose legacy is as bad if not worse than Reagan's.

You could have been honest and admitted that if people brought before the courts of America are presumed to be innocent unless proven guilty, 'Catching known terrorists and putting them in Guantanamo' IS very bad, because the majority of Guantanamo's prisoners were not terrorists, were not convicted of any crimes of any description, but were in Cuba because someone in Afghanistan or Pakistan shopped someone to the US they didn't like having been told the Americans would pay them for that information! There were children in Guantanamo, and yes, there were people there who could not offer a sensible explanation as to how they got from somewhere in England to Afghanistan -but the precise point made -not just by liberals- is that unless you have proof that the prisoners have broken the law, why are they there? It was a round-up, pure and simple, and neither Bush nor Cheney cared one way or the other if they were guilty. Along with extraordinary rendition and torture, it was as shameful to the USA as it was to the UK, and part of the discourse of resentment that propelled Obama into the White House. If he made a mistake, it was in not rounding up the prisoners, deciding which ones had a case to answer (about six I think the figure is), and sending them to The Hague, or a regular (not military) court somewhere in the USA. And releasing the rest.

I agree that Obama's record is a disappointment, I never expected much anyway. I don't think the next 4 years will see an improvement either, whoever gets elected next year. The problems go much deeper, which is why I sometimes find your attacks on Obama superficial, if politically motivated for obvious reasons. We are about to slide backwards in the UK where at least the USA has recorded economic growth of some kind, and even with this stasis we are better off than the Greeks or the Spaniards.

"I think you exaggerate the expectations that people had of the Obama administration -if there were liberals in the USA who thought this was the second coming, well, they had it coming, as it were, for being so intellectually inept. I don't think anyone would have been able to achieve much in four years after the castastrophic presidency of George W. Bush, whose legacy is as bad if not worse than Reagan's. "

Stavros....with all due respect, that's as ignortant a statement as I've ever read. Profoundly ignorant in fact. Your reading of things on this side of the pond are lacking...to say the least.
Barrack Obama was the second coming for liberals....make no mistake about it, and don't attempt to lower expectations now that the jury is in. James Carville pronounced 40 years of liberal domination after the election. Take 30 minutes and go back and google some of what the left wing intellengencia was saying and writing about him in 2008. This guy had sky high expectations. If they could have molded a savior out of clay, it would have looked and sounded like Obama. To suggest otherwise is revisionist history. He was the right color, had the right left wing radical resume, the right education at the nations most liberal institutions, and the right oratory, and cut his political teeth community organizing and pandering to public employee unions. To a left winger, that's like being a carpenters son from Nazareth.

The second asinine statement concerns Reagan. I'm beginning to think you're spending all your waking moments when not on HA, reading those UK tabloids. Gallup and CNN ( neither particularly sympathetic to conservatives) poll for the most influential and popular presidents every year. Reagan came in first this year followed by Lincoln and Clinton, so I'm not sure where you're developing your information, but your bias is becoming a disqualifying factor from me taking you serous as an observer of the US political scene. It's fair to say you disagree with Reagan's conservatism, but to call his 8 years disastrous may be the dumbest thing you've said recently....and that's saying something. The miles of mouners lining the streets and highways to pay respects as his casket came home to California was an astounding sight, but appearently you missed all that while reading The Guardian editorials.

[hippifried]

Sorry, but all these "expectations" I keep hearing about didn't come from anywhere other than the lunatic fringe & the Republican opposition. They didn't come from anybody who was actually paying attention to the campaign & the candidate instead of the pundits. Yeah pundits. You know, those empty talking heads who tell you "Fprget what you just heard. Let me tell you what he really meant.". Do y'all really believe that the voters who elected the President by a landslide really expected a pacifist? An isolationist? A vindictive jerk who would prosecute his predecessor? (As far as I know, the only ones actually pushing that nonsense were Jonathan Turley & Noam Chomsky.) So what's left on the international front? Oh yeah, horrible stuff. BinLaden's dead. Who's sniveling about this? It couldn't possibly be the same whiners who bawled that Clinton didn't give the green light to have him killed back in the '90s, could it? AlQaeda dude in Yemen? Oh waaaa, he's dead too. Those poor Somali Pirates. Boo hoo hoo...

Domestically: Wasn't he supposed to close down Wall Street & turn the US into a socialist paradise? Cuban style healthcare? Total redistribution of fthe wealth? All those jobs streaming back from China? We're not all hooked up to the fuel free energy grid Yet? What's he waiting for? Waaaaaaa!!!

Who's expectations? My bad, I guess. I wasn't paying enough attention to the empty lips all over the electronic media telling me what I was supposed to be thinking. Oops! My mistake. That shouldn't be past tense. I still don't give a shit about any of that silliness. I am disappointed in the Congress. I didn't expect the "blue dogs" to turn on him as viciously as they did. I'm still dsappointed that the Republicans turned out to be such cowards that they're afraid to even question the nutbar teabaggers. We shall see what happens next year.

[Stavros]

"I think you exaggerate the expectations that people had of the Obama administration -if there were liberals in the USA who thought this was the second coming, well, they had it coming, as it were, for being so intellectually inept. I don't think anyone would have been able to achieve much in four years after the castastrophic presidency of George W. Bush, whose legacy is as bad if not worse than Reagan's. "

Stavros....with all due respect, that's as ignortant a statement as I've ever read. Profoundly ignorant in fact. Your reading of things on this side of the pond are lacking...to say the least.
Barrack Obama was the second coming for liberals....make no mistake about it, and don't attempt to lower expectations now that the jury is in. James Carville pronounced 40 years of liberal domination after the election. Take 30 minutes and go back and google some of what the left wing intellengencia was saying and writing about him in 2008. This guy had sky high expectations. If they could have molded a savior out of clay, it would have looked and sounded like Obama. To suggest otherwise is revisionist history. He was the right color, had the right left wing radical resume, the right education at the nations most liberal institutions, and the right oratory, and cut his political teeth community organizing and pandering to public employee unions. To a left winger, that's like being a carpenters son from Nazareth.

The second asinine statement concerns Reagan. I'm beginning to think you're spending all your waking moments when not on HA, reading those UK tabloids. Gallup and CNN ( neither particularly sympathetic to conservatives) poll for the most influential and popular presidents every year. Reagan came in first this year followed by Lincoln and Clinton, so I'm not sure where you're developing your information, but your bias is becoming a disqualifying factor from me taking you serous as an observer of the US political scene. It's fair to say you disagree with Reagan's conservatism, but to call his 8 years disastrous may be the dumbest thing you've said recently....and that's saying something. The miles of mouners lining the streets and highways to pay respects as his casket came home to California was an astounding sight, but appearently you missed all that while reading The Guardian editorials.

Re Obama: I was not following all of the day to day comments on the election that are natural sources of information to you, so much of the surrounding rhetoric on Obama escaped me -perhaps also, I am too cynical about politicians declaring the imminence of change -to some extent there is always something that changes, but major structural changes are rare, even from this distance I thought a lot of the rhetoric on Obama was overblown, but it would not have the same impact on me here as it has done on you there. I concede the point to you, given my limited access to all of the debate at the time.

In my lifetime, only three political leaders have delivered real, structural change -Clement Atllee and Margaret Thatcher in the UK, and Ronald Reagan in the USA. Attlee for me is the finest politician Britain has ever produced, I wont go into it because its not relevant, but his record as an MP, as a member of the wartime coalition in the 1940s and then Prime Minister is exemplary.

Reagan, from this side of the pond -as well as the political divide- looks quite different from the matinee idol you refer to.

1) It was during the Reagan presidency that the USA began to de-industrialise. I don't know how much of the outsourcing of production could have been stopped or delayed in an age when 'free markets' and the growth of industrial capacity in south-east Asia made American labour uncompetitive with its counterparts in South Korea, for example, where most of the Gulf of Mexico's offshore oil rigs are now made. The point is that this structural shift took place on Reagan's watch and is wholly in tune with the ideological belief that -as Maggie said- You can't buck the market. The USA is paying the price for that shift today, in terms of lost jobs and lost tax revenues.

2) Reagan's foreign policy with one exception, was a disgrace to the democratic heritage of the American Revolution.

Following the revolution against autocracy in Nicaragua in 1979, a transitional government was established which contained all shades of opinion, including conservatives, and they were the people who drafted the new constitution. The Reagan presidency recruited terrrorists and crooks to undermine this transition in Nicaragua, and was found guilty of numeorus violations of international law. The constant sabotage of the Nicaraguan economy was one element in the painful experience that country endured, for no reason other than that Reagan and his advisers didn't like it -that Nicaragua was creating a democratic state following a revolution, just as it did in the USA, meant nothing to Washington. That the Sandinistas lost power in subsequent elections and handed over power to a new government demonstrated their commitment to democracy, in spite of the attempts of the USA to destroy it. Ronald Reagan was the enemy of democracy and human rights in Central America.

The USA was an assiduous backer of Joseph Desire Mobutu in Zaire, a man so openly venal he once advised his own citizens that if they were going to steal, they shouldn't steal so much, just enough to get by. The USA sponsored this anti-democratic, mass-murdering lunatic because it saw the southern cone of Africa as part of the 'new' Cold War. Stinger missiles were sent to Zaire for use in the civil war in Angola -the USA and Mobutu supported another mass-murdering lunatic called Jonas Savimbi, a man whose troops committed atrocity after atrocity in an attempt to sabotage stability in the country; yet Savimbi had absolutely no hope of ever leading Angola. All this was done to spite the USSR, but at the same time the USA was buying oil from the allegedly 'Marxist' MPLA government! The consequence of this mis-guided and, given the indifference the USSR showed to Africa anyway, politically sterile game, was that the USA today continues to buy oil from 'Marxist' Angola (the MPLA are still in power), and Exxon and the rest are busy offshore giving god knows how many millions of $$$ in 'signature contracts' to the MPLA, money that is then salted away in the Caribbean banks where the little people can't see it. You backed the wrong horse, but pay for it now anyway -and Angola? Is it a beacon of democracy in Africa?

In the whole eight years of his Presidency, Ronald Reagan failed to bring either side of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians into dialogue -Jimmy Carter negotiated a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, Bill Clinton sponsored the treaty between Israel and the Palestinians, Reagan did nothing -zilch, nada. But he did send hundreds of US marines to their deaths in Lebanon on a mission that was designed to fail before they even got there. The Reagan presidency was indifferent to Israel's invasion of Lebanon, and looked the other way when its Israeli allies cleared the way for the Falangists (the military group modelled on Franco's Fascist army) to enter the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps and slaughter the people living there. This was a crime for which Ariel Sharon was sacked as defence minister by his own government.

Because the Reagan Presidency viewed Islamic Iran as the greatest threat to stability in the Middle East, it chose to ignore Saddam Hussein's record as President of Iraq, and was a major contributor to a war that ended a million lives and bankrupted both states -one consequence of which was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

In the same decade the Reagan Presidency joined with Saudi Arabia in the financing and military support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in its war against the USSR; one consequence of which was the birth of the Taliban, their eventual takeover of power, and the licence that was given to al-Qaeda. The line from Reagan to Bin Laden -call it Route 66, or Route 666: its there, Reagan paved the way to 9/11.

Throughout this period, Reagan was baying for democracy in Eastern Europe -Let Poland be Poland; Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall! At no point in the same period did Reagan call for a democratic transition in Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain or Iraq.

If there was one exception, it was the gradual realisation that Gorbachev was for real, that he marked a radical moment in the history of the USSR. But Reagan's decision in his second term to open serious negotiations on nuclear weapons capability and deployment was opposed by his own advisers, notably Richard Perle and Dick Cheney, indeed, to them, Reagan had betrayed them and their activist agenda.

Reagan's legacy is with us today -the ruins of hope in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where over the next two weeks another filthy crook will seek election, as thousands of women are raped on a daily basis. Reagan's indifference to settlement activity on the West Bank and his failure to deal with the underlying roots of that conflict have resulted in the growth of an Israel which has ceased to be a democracy, and is being transformed into a fascist state as settlers from the West Bank move into pre-1967 Israel and use political muscle and new laws to deny Arabs their democratic rights to education and housing.

A long winded way of demonstrating the damage that Reagan did all over the world, and why his repudiation of the values of the founding fathers (and mothers) of the American Revolution denies him the right to be considered a great American, and why his record as President is so poor.

[Ben]

[Ben]

Who Are We?

By BOB HERBERT
Published: June 22, 2009

Policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the early months of the Obama administration has been its unwillingness to end many of the mind-numbing abuses linked to the so-called war on terror and to establish a legal and moral framework designed to prevent those abuses from ever occurring again.
The president deserves credit for unequivocally banning torture and some of the other brutal interrogation techniques that spread like a plague in the Bush administration’s lawless response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But other policies that offend the conscience continue.
Americans should recoil as one against the idea of preventive detention, imprisoning people indefinitely, for years and perhaps for life, without charge and without giving them an opportunity to demonstrate their innocence.
And yet we’ve embraced it, asserting that there are people who are far too dangerous to even think about releasing but who cannot be put on trial because we have no real evidence that they have committed any crime, or because we’ve tortured them and therefore the evidence would not be admissible, or whatever. President Obama is O.K. with this (he calls it “prolonged detention”), but he wants to make sure it is carried out — here comes the oxymoron — fairly and nonabusively.
Proof of guilt? In 21st-century America, there is no longer any need for such annoyances.
Human rights? Ha-ha. That’s a good one.
Also distressing is the curtain of secrecy the Obama administration has kept drawn over shameful abuses that should be brought into the light of day. Back in April, the administration rightly released the “torture memos” detailing the gruesome interrogation techniques unleashed by the Bush crowd. But last month, Mr. Obama apparently tripped over his own instincts and reversed his initial decision to release photos of American soldiers engaged in the brutal abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
We saw the profound effect of the disclosure of the photos from Abu Ghraib in 2004. Imagine if they had never been released. Now, in an affront to a society that is supposed to be intelligent and free, the Obama administration is trying to sit on photos that are just as important for Americans to see. The president’s argument for trying to block the court-ordered release of the photos is a demoralizing echo of the embarrassingly empty rhetoric of the Bush years:
“The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in danger.”
The Obama administration is also continuing the Bush administration’s abuse of the state-secrets privilege. Lawyers from the Obama Justice Department have argued, as did lawyers from the Bush administration before them, that a lawsuit involving extraordinary rendition and allegations of extreme torture should be dismissed outright because discussions of such matters in court would harm national security.
In other words, the victims, no matter how strong their case might be, no matter how badly they might have been abused, could never have their day in court. Jane Mayer, writing in the June 22 New Yorker, said of the rendition program, in which suspects were swept up by Americans and spirited off to foreign countries for imprisonment and interrogation: “As many as seven detainees were misidentified and abducted by mistake.”
The Bush and Obama view of the state-secrets privilege effectively bars any real examination of such egregious mistakes.
It was thought by many that a President Obama would put a stop to the madness, put an end to the Bush administration’s nightmarish approach to national security. But Mr. Obama has shown no inclination to bring even the worst offenders of the Bush years to account, and seems perfectly willing to move ahead in lockstep with the excessive secrecy and some of the most egregious activities of the Bush era.
The new president’s excessively cautious approach to the national security and civil liberties outrages of the Bush administration are unacceptable, and the organizations and individuals committed to fairness, justice and the rule of law — the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and many others — should intensify their efforts to get the new administration to do the right thing.
More than 500 of the detainees incarcerated at one time or another at Guantánamo Bay have been released, and, except for a handful, no charges were filed against them. The idea that everyone held at Guantánamo was a terrorist — the worst of the worst — was always absurd.
Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, noted that Mr. Obama had promised to bring both transparency and accountability to matters of national security. It’s the only way to get our moral compass back.

[onmyknees]

Sorry, but all these "expectations" I keep hearing about didn't come from anywhere other than the lunatic fringe & the Republican opposition. They didn't come from anybody who was actually paying attention to the campaign & the candidate instead of the pundits. Yeah pundits. You know, those empty talking heads who tell you "Fprget what you just heard. Let me tell you what he really meant.". Do y'all really believe that the voters who elected the President by a landslide really expected a pacifist? An isolationist? A vindictive jerk who would prosecute his predecessor? (As far as I know, the only ones actually pushing that nonsense were Jonathan Turley & Noam Chomsky.) So what's left on the international front? Oh yeah, horrible stuff. BinLaden's dead. Who's sniveling about this? It couldn't possibly be the same whiners who bawled that Clinton didn't give the green light to have him killed back in the '90s, could it? AlQaeda dude in Yemen? Oh waaaa, he's dead too. Those poor Somali Pirates. Boo hoo hoo...

Domestically: Wasn't he supposed to close down Wall Street & turn the US into a socialist paradise? Cuban style healthcare? Total redistribution of fthe wealth? All those jobs streaming back from China? We're not all hooked up to the fuel free energy grid Yet? What's he waiting for? Waaaaaaa!!!

Who's expectations? My bad, I guess. I wasn't paying enough attention to the empty lips all over the electronic media telling me what I was supposed to be thinking. Oops! My mistake. That shouldn't be past tense. I still don't give a shit about any of that silliness. I am disappointed in the Congress. I didn't expect the "blue dogs" to turn on him as viciously as they did. I'm still dsappointed that the Republicans turned out to be such cowards that they're afraid to even question the nutbar teabaggers. We shall see what happens next year.

LMFAO....what a fucking revisionist. You don't have the luxury of playing that game old man. Maybe Obama didn't come gift wrapped with your expectations, but who are you? There's too much of a voluminous historical record to beat you about the face and head with . Maybe the smartest thing you've said on these boards was ."Maybe I wasn't paying attention"...You should have stopped there. What makes a person like you say obviously erroneous things? Partisanship ? Denial? Drugs? Only now 3 years into the failure do I hear hand wringing about too high of expectations. Maybe you forgot the extravagant Greek like inauguration ceremony or the countless magazine covers comparing him to FDR and Lincoln. Yes...some of the punditry drove the expectations, but the Obama team spoon fed the public all it wanted about hope and change and they came back for more. Your post wrings hallow, false and bitter. I give you 3 samples of thousands that popped up on a simple search. You're right...you weren't paying attention...hardly new for you.


James Zogby, 11.19.2011
President, Arab American Institute; author, 'Arab Voices'
As I have listened to the increasingly harsh political rhetoric coming from Republicans, I have thought back to a special night in early 2009 and the spirit of cooperation ushered in by our newly elected president, and wondered where it all went.

MTV News....


The historic nature of Barrack Obama's presidency — not to mention his oratorical abilities — guarantees that his inauguration on January 20, 2009, will be one for the ages.



CNN....

Poll finds great expectations for Obama


BARACK OBAMA






November 13, 2008|From Paul Steinhauser CNN Deputy Political Director
Most people believe President-elect Barack Obama will change America when he takes over from his predecessor.


Call it a case of great expectations.
A new national poll suggests that most Americans think Barack Obama will make major accomplishments as president of the United States.
Nearly two-thirds of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Thursday say President-elect Barack Obama will change the country for the better, with 25 percent saying Obama won't change the country and 9 percent indicating that he will change the country for the worse.
"He's inspired me and this entire nation with his fondness for change," said iReporter Brian Langkan of Elgin, Illinois. "I just hope that the bureaucracy and the typical procedures of Washington don't weigh him down or hold him back or lead him in a new direction."

[trish]

Actually it's the republican party that didn't live up to my expectations. I didn't vote for Hillary in the primary because she was obviously to polarizing. The GOP and friends were attacking her viciously before she even became first lady. I forgot that since Gingrich's time, the GOP strategy is to sabotage all democratic administrations from day one even it is means wrecking the Constitution and the economy. They're willing to do anything from shutting down the government to refusing to raise pay our debts. Boehner refuses to let anything come to a vote, even if he's for it, if he can't pass it without democratic support. Obama's been for approx. three years and has yet to have a majority of his appointments approved.

I take full blame for having such unreasonable expectations of the GOP. I should've known better.

[fred41]

Actually Hillary was pretty vicious herself during her primary against President Obama...not to mention the fabrications trying to shed herself in a more positive light.
The Clinton Political machine is famous for it's brutality...(the whole "birther" issue was rumored to have started with her campaign)..