How I view Obama

[Tinker]

See there is a lot of talk about this from a certain low-rent handicapper about what I believe and what I am getting politically. So I figure it's time to put my cards on the table and see how I view Obama.

I am very disappointed in Obama, but not for the reasons people think. People say he's incompetent. I disagree, I think he is the savviest politician I have ever seen. What I am disappointed in, is not him being ineffective, it's in him being effective in ways that frighten me.

For example, and I hope those like DoU and noddy who have actually read and understood what I have said can remember some of this stuff knowing that the handicapper will have forgotten. 10,000 Ninjas. I said a few years back that our foreign policy should be based off of a 10,000 ninjas policy. The evolution of SOCOM is essentially this, it's just the real version of my tongue-in-cheek view of it. We are moving away from occupational policy to having the ability to put special forces anywhere in the world in order to kill anyone that the government deems necessary to kill. SOCOM is more like 50,000 Ninjas. If 25 SEALS had died in a helicopter crash in 1990 that would've been devastating to the SEAL program, now it's a drop in the bucket. Under Obama, this elite secret special forces idea has taken flight and moved far beyond Bush. So people could say this is the opposite of what i wanted, but if you actually listened to me, it's actually in line with what I predicted during the election. It is sort of what i want though it scares me at the same time. I think that ultimately a reduction in large scale damage increases peace, but it also expands the scope and capacity for tyranny. So it means that in the long run there will be a lot fewer neighborhoods reduced to ash, but the capacity to storm a building and take out a single person is much much higher. So in terms of my idealism, this is repulsive, in terms of my realpolitik it is very close to what I predicted and wanted to see happen.

Economic policy. Obama has been playing the game of bipartisanship. This has been the biggest black mark on his policy, but it's a very subtle game. For instance, the surge v the tax cuts. Obama traded tax cuts in order to implement what is basically a Republican policy. Seems win/win for the Republicans right? No, not really. See, what this does is it kicks the can of the tax cuts down the road to a day where the Republicans won't have that bargaining chip. So when the tax cuts come around, he can exercise that Presidential veto and there won't be anything that can be held over his head regarding emergency government spending, or military spending that can be held over his head. The Bush tax cuts WILL expire because the Republican House will have to override a veto. Obama won't capitulate at that point.

Debt-ceiling negotiations. Obama put a whole bunch of stuff on the table, not unlike tax cuts v surge. The Republicans whittled it down, again, he kicked tax cuts down the road, because those tax cuts will again expire at the end of 2012. But he also came out with the added benefit of looking like he tried to negotiate but his partners were completely unreasonable. Luckily his vassal Boehner came through. And people like the nitwit handicapper think that Boehner did them a solid.

To understand Obama, you have to understand his subtle long game. We're not used to statesmen who think in terms of the long game. But Obama does. People have been predicting Obama's demise since he got started. They said at the beginning that he lost even though his legislative success rate was record-breaking. And it was like, "Hold up, hold up, this is still the opening game.", then we got to Debt-Ceiling and people are talking about satan sandwiches and the like and it's like, 'Hold up, hold up, this is still the mid-game.', next year we move into the End-Game, Obama needs only be re-elected and then he has 4 years where he is no longer beholden to trying to be re-elected. Presidents as a whole tend to become more radical in their second term as a result. We start to see the results of their policies as they are carried into fruition. Obama's subtle game is both his strength and his weakness. Obama's base doesn't recognize this subtle game, but then neither do his enemies.

For the election he's going to make the end of the Bush tax cuts a major part of his campaign, raising revenue will be a serious part of it. We'll begin to get into the draw-down of troops and not a single thing will have been hit by spending cuts, so no one will have yet lost their jobs. The Republicans and Tea Party folk are going to come across as increasingly unreasonable. Whether or not his game was too subtle is going to be his downfall.

I say all this, not because I love Obama and dearly want him to win, but because this is how I truly view the man. I think he has as Mr. Perfect says, out-neo-conned the neo-cons to a certain degree, but in most of the ways he has done it, he has done it in ways that I mentioned four years ago on the Spengler forum as being how Bush SHOULD have handled it. i.e. Bush did it incompetently and Obama does it competently. But ultimately the policy is the same, and that makes me very uneasy. The man isn't incompetent at all, he is highly competent, it's just that he is a bit too authoritarian surveillance state for my tastes.

[Mr. Perfect]

Denial only happens because there is something to deny.

[Ammianus]

Don't worry Tinker/Mr Perfect, who says he'll make it past this year?

[Hoosiernorm]

Imagine the movie Jaws with them showing the big plastic shark all of the time.

[Tinker]

[Hoosiernorm]

[Tinker]

I disagree that other people are that unknowable.

[Simple Minded]

[Tinker]

So what you are saying is that anyone who doesn't view him as a loathsome incompetent is a deluded cultist?

[Mr. Perfect]

[noddy]

from the outside american politics has been shallow as fuck showmanship for my entire life - obama aint any more deserving of this focus than any of the others.

[Mr. Perfect]

Absolutely not. Obama was completely coronated by the media, zero scrutiny, was sold as the greatest man of all time, the next George Washington, Abe Lincoln, even God according to some, was going to bring "new politics" "fundamental transformation of America", on and on and on and on. No he is only getting a small fraction of what he deserves. If GWB got downgraded, or produced 4 dollar gas, started more wars in the ME, continued the ones we have been in, was going though 9+% unemployment, on and on and on and on then the Media would have run him down to 5% approval. Obama's deficincies were papered over with "oh he's so SMART! He was the President of the school paper!"

Obama is skating.

[noddy]

only if you consume lefty media...no arguments the luvvies threw alot of childish hope at him - but you seem to take the lefty media with a passion and i dont.

it would be like getting all worked up about fox like the lefties do to me.. irrational.

[Mr. Perfect]

leftie=msm, you can't escape it.

[noddy]

a heap of the msm is lefty and rupert holds up the rightie angle with his empire.
both sides see the bit they dont like and get all frothy at the mouth that their is a conspiracy that people disagree with them and its horrid.

to me its just both sides preaching to the converted, saying what they want to hear and is business as usual in a multicultural and chaotic society.

have no fear, from my reading of the lefty papers it seems obama is paying for his high expectations big time... he has shown his inexperience by allowing such expectation to build...for me the first rule of new contracts is hammering the expectations down into something sane, humans do project so much crazy hope.

[noddy]

the most interesting question for me, and has been for quite some time is how the f*ck anyone could pull a proper magority and actually look after the "common folk" when they are such a chaotic mix of different contradictory agendas across different cultural and economic realities.

more than anything else, that was obama's foolish rhetoric, that he could be a uniter ... it would take a person with enough strength to piss all sides off and alot of luck to carry it long enough to see through the hysterical response period.

I really never saw him having that level of personal power but maybe you could argue he got unlucky with the economic context.

australia had a obama admiring centralising fixer during the same election cycle - he didnt even see his term out, his own party knifed him the back.. so on that level obama has done well

[Mr. Perfect]

Fox News is watched by about 1% of the US population.

All the high rating large audience "journalism" media outlets are all left wing.

[noddy]

so is this a conspiracy or a reflection of the actual demographics in america ?

[Tinker]

[noddy]

no argument with bush being the same creature- ive asked mr p several times how he reconciles that and he just mumbles bush wasnt a proper republican.
id like to know what he thinks about the fact the mainstream media being progressive is a result of the american demographic realities aswell.

im certainly aware my libertarianism is a minority viewpoint at the moment, i just think conditions are becoming more and more conducive to it and that gen-x is far more of that nature than the baby boomers who started this "government will fix it" meme.

the trick is working out how we can balance the crude requirement of making money by contributing to the larger economy with taking advantage of the increased lazyness we all get from automation.

[Tinker]

[noddy]

[Tinker]

Well...nothing kills a discussion like full agreement.

[Simple Minded]

[Simple Minded]

Noddy I salute you!!! IMSMO, you are an astute observer of human nature and therefore politics.

Hammering down expectations into something sane should be a senior level class at engineering colleges.

Henceforth, with your permssion, I shall refer to this theorem as either:
1. Noddy's First Law of Human Dynamics (move over Newton!)
2. Noddy's Hammer (similar to Occam's Razor)