My two top reasons for being happy that Obama won

[erudito]

First, as a non-American, I prefer American Administrations to have as flat a learning curve as possible. Breaking in a new one is tedious (and it is not as if Obama and Romney had any serious foreign policy disagreements anyway, Romney's attempt to invent some were pretty pathetic

Comments

[expanding_x_man]

I'm actually burned out on arguing (on FB) about the election, not that we will argue, but just saying so I may not reply to any replies

Foreign policy

[erudito]

That all strikes me as more nuance than different direction. I am not sure folk outside the US see President Drone Strike, I Shot the Sharif and Qaddafi Squasher as much of an appeaser. (I am sure Pakistan doesn't, for example.) A Romney Administration would have been overtly friendlier to Israel, but there would not have been much substantive difference. And I agree that the Obama Administration dropped the ball on the Green Revolution -- in part as a reaction to the previous Administration and partly that learning curve issue. (The Libyan intervention strikes me as a bit of a backhanded comment on their own earlier Iran policy

Re: Foreign policy

[expanding_x_man]

W was not polarizing in himself, people polarized during his term as a result of others casting shadow-puppets on him.

If a president says "I like puppies", and pundits start screaming "SEE, HE'S A CAT HATER!!!!11!!1", whereas others start saying "see how wonderful and sweet he is, see he loves all the little puppies", that president is not polarizing, it's an example of polarization happening in the pundit-sphere.

Obama is polarizing *in himself*, in his actions, in his rhetoric, and in his attitudes. Bush would *never* have referred to democrats as "our enemies", he would never have told democrats to sit in the back of the bus, he never did, nor would he have ever played to the divisions in the country. Obama does little else.

So yeah, Obama is polarizing, W wasn't.

Re: Foreign policy

[fizzyland]

Nothing says courage of convictions like an anonymous commenter.

Re: Foreign policy

[necromancer1962]

Fizzyland, attacking the person and not the argument shows that you have nothing worthwhile to contribute.

Obama was incredibly divisive in his campaign. The problem for the US now is that the percentage of active voters relying on the government in some form or another is now so large that any candidate that tries to break the "entitlement" mentality is really at a huge disadvantage.

My issue was that this election was a choice between tweedledum and tweedledee. Neither of the candidates were ever going to make the structural reforms that are really required.

Since pain is the best teacher, my optimistic outlook is that the coming pain (and there will be much to go around) will actually get the voters to learn that a bureaucrat will never solve a problem because their job depends on their being a problem and their advancement relies on the problem seeming bigger that it actually is. This may get them back to an earning and responsibility mentality instead of an entitlement and authority one.

Re: Foreign policy

[fizzyland]

Necromancer1962, you left a throwaway comment you weren't even willing to attach your name to, that's cowardice and I called it as such. You don't get to be self-righteous about it.

Obama isn't the one who blathered away to the ultra-wealthy about how 47% of us are parasitic government leachers, your viewpoint is skewed if you somehow think that Obama is the divisive, polarizing one. He's just the guy conservatives hate for winning.

As for those structural reforms, I'll agree that neither party is interested in doing anything that inconveniences the ultra-wealthy. When we stop letting oil companies get out of paying taxes and stop letting corporations get tax breaks for offshoring operations, then maybe people can get back to that "earning and responsibility mentality", which most people call paying the bills. But instead too many people are lucky to get 30 hours a week working at Wal-Mart if they can find work at all.

Re: Foreign policy

[necromancer1962]

The first thing you are wrong about is assuming that I wrote the anonymous comment. I did not.

The second thing you are wrong about is thinking that a handle (such as "fizzyland" or even "necromancer1962") is in any way more morally superior than just using "Anonymous". It isn't so calling it cowardly is entirely hypocritical.

The third thing you are wrong about Obama not being decisive. Much of the campaigning done by the Democrats was based on an "us" and "them" implied racist theme and saying that conservatives were "the enemy".

The forth thing you are wrong about is saying that the problem is about oil companies. The problem is the financial sector that get to risk other people's money and then get bailed out when it goes all wrong. They are the ones behind the "green" movement as billions of taxpayer dollars are spent for bad "climate" science and they want their slice of the subsidies, handouts and trading markets for solutions that are never going to work and will do nothing for the environment.