Maybe the country would have been better off with Hillary Clinton as President...
...but for no particular fault of Barack Obama's.
During the Democratic primary, the policy differences between Obama and Clinton were not particularly large, particularly in the area of foreign policy. For instance, Obama and Clinton both supported escalation in Afghanistan. There were some muttering that Hillary might have too much baggage - there was a well established anti-Clinton contingent, and in particular, her husband seemed to hurt her chances as often as he helped them. Obama, in contrast, was largely a tabula rasa - and people projected their own hopes (in the case of supporters) or fears (in the case of detractors) onto that.
On November 1st, 2008, in a post titled "The Metaissues:, I wrote: Years ago, I said that I didn't care whether the next president was a Republican or a Democrat, as long as it was a someone who could heal the country... With McCain's nomination of Sarah Palin, who resurrected the worst kind of jingoist, McCarthyistic tactics (and pushed it to the point that McCain had to pull it back), it became apparent that the McCain-Palin ticket wouldn't be the "healing" one.
But, the Obama-Biden ticket turns out to not have been the "healing" one either - not because of Obama himself, but because of the goateed "Mirror, Mirror" alternate-universe Obama many of his critics perceive.
My LJ friends list contains several folks who are highly critical of the Obama administration and this Democratic congress. Their criticisms are often founded in long-standing disagreements on the validity of Keynesian economics, and I welcome their thoughfully worded contributions to the discussion. (I have many criticisms of Obama and this Democratic congress too, but I'm usually coming from the other direction).
But respectful debate seems to be rare nowadays, since there is something about Barack Obama that has really brought out the crazies, and those things aren't particularly backed up by any actual facts. This is well quantified by a recent Daily Kos Research poll. (Bias warning: Daily Kos is a left-wing blog that is as invested in the "Republicans are being taken over by wingnuts" narrative as the right-wing is invested in the "Obama is evil Fascist Socialist Communist Marxist Canadian Indonesian Kenyan black-liberation-theology-Christan crypto-Muslim" narrative. However, the Daily Kos' conclusions do not seem to be too far out of wack with what I have observed from other sources.) You can drop into a right-wing site like RedState and see all these memes, such as the common canard, completely unsupported by any evidence, that ACORN stole the 2008 election (and is working to steal all the others in favor of Democrats). I've spent way to much time pouring over these sites. The folks posting there do live in some sort of alternate universe, where emphasizing the President's middle name somehow constitutes a logical argument.
You might believe that the economic policies of the Obama administration are bad for the country, but there's a huge difference between that and claiming that the Obama administration is deliberately trying to wreck the economy to make Americans more dependent on the government. Similarly, you might believe that the Obama administration's counterterrorism policies are ineffective or counterproductive, but that's a far cry saying he's a "Muslim plant with the agenda to destroy America from within."
There was a left-wing equivalent of this brand of crazy, the "truthers" who claim that the Bush administration either planned or deliberately didn't stop the 9/11 attacks, following the plot line of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Conspiracy theories have abounded for ages, and the Internet provided fuel for the fire - but I don't recall mainstream media and political figures on the left embracing this kind of crazy the way mainstream media and political figures on the right are embracing this kind of crazy.
In particular, many Republican Senators and Representatives appear to at least pander to the crazies, if not fully particiate in the crazy. As Obama pointed out at the recent Q&A, the GOP has sort of painted itself into a corner in that they can't be seen as agreeing with him on anything, to the point that Republican congresspeople are now voting against their own ideas.
So, I'm left wondering... would we have been better off with Hillary? Maybe she wouldn't have gotten the crazies all riled up - she doesn't share a name with a former Iraqi dictator, for instance - and maybe then the Republican politicians wouldn't be so invested in following the crazies off into crazyland and bringing the U.S. Government to a screeching halt.
During the Democratic primary, the policy differences between Obama and Clinton were not particularly large, particularly in the area of foreign policy. For instance, Obama and Clinton both supported escalation in Afghanistan. There were some muttering that Hillary might have too much baggage - there was a well established anti-Clinton contingent, and in particular, her husband seemed to hurt her chances as often as he helped them. Obama, in contrast, was largely a tabula rasa - and people projected their own hopes (in the case of supporters) or fears (in the case of detractors) onto that.
On November 1st, 2008, in a post titled "The Metaissues:, I wrote: Years ago, I said that I didn't care whether the next president was a Republican or a Democrat, as long as it was a someone who could heal the country... With McCain's nomination of Sarah Palin, who resurrected the worst kind of jingoist, McCarthyistic tactics (and pushed it to the point that McCain had to pull it back), it became apparent that the McCain-Palin ticket wouldn't be the "healing" one.
But, the Obama-Biden ticket turns out to not have been the "healing" one either - not because of Obama himself, but because of the goateed "Mirror, Mirror" alternate-universe Obama many of his critics perceive.
My LJ friends list contains several folks who are highly critical of the Obama administration and this Democratic congress. Their criticisms are often founded in long-standing disagreements on the validity of Keynesian economics, and I welcome their thoughfully worded contributions to the discussion. (I have many criticisms of Obama and this Democratic congress too, but I'm usually coming from the other direction).
But respectful debate seems to be rare nowadays, since there is something about Barack Obama that has really brought out the crazies, and those things aren't particularly backed up by any actual facts. This is well quantified by a recent Daily Kos Research poll. (Bias warning: Daily Kos is a left-wing blog that is as invested in the "Republicans are being taken over by wingnuts" narrative as the right-wing is invested in the "Obama is evil Fascist Socialist Communist Marxist Canadian Indonesian Kenyan black-liberation-theology-Christan crypto-Muslim" narrative. However, the Daily Kos' conclusions do not seem to be too far out of wack with what I have observed from other sources.) You can drop into a right-wing site like RedState and see all these memes, such as the common canard, completely unsupported by any evidence, that ACORN stole the 2008 election (and is working to steal all the others in favor of Democrats). I've spent way to much time pouring over these sites. The folks posting there do live in some sort of alternate universe, where emphasizing the President's middle name somehow constitutes a logical argument.
You might believe that the economic policies of the Obama administration are bad for the country, but there's a huge difference between that and claiming that the Obama administration is deliberately trying to wreck the economy to make Americans more dependent on the government. Similarly, you might believe that the Obama administration's counterterrorism policies are ineffective or counterproductive, but that's a far cry saying he's a "Muslim plant with the agenda to destroy America from within."
There was a left-wing equivalent of this brand of crazy, the "truthers" who claim that the Bush administration either planned or deliberately didn't stop the 9/11 attacks, following the plot line of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Conspiracy theories have abounded for ages, and the Internet provided fuel for the fire - but I don't recall mainstream media and political figures on the left embracing this kind of crazy the way mainstream media and political figures on the right are embracing this kind of crazy.
In particular, many Republican Senators and Representatives appear to at least pander to the crazies, if not fully particiate in the crazy. As Obama pointed out at the recent Q&A, the GOP has sort of painted itself into a corner in that they can't be seen as agreeing with him on anything, to the point that Republican congresspeople are now voting against their own ideas.
So, I'm left wondering... would we have been better off with Hillary? Maybe she wouldn't have gotten the crazies all riled up - she doesn't share a name with a former Iraqi dictator, for instance - and maybe then the Republican politicians wouldn't be so invested in following the crazies off into crazyland and bringing the U.S. Government to a screeching halt.