End of American Dream a Nightmare for Obama!

[DRAKOS]

What do you think of this. As was bound to happen, an article has just appeared, in the Washington Post and so in a respected, mainstream newspaper, calling on President Barack Obama to declare he will not run for re-election in 2012

According to political commentators Douglas Schoen and Patrick Caddell, "America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety" that Obama is magnifying because he "has largely lost the confidence of the governed."

In order to "galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made," they urge that Obama make an "explicit" announcement that he will be "a one-term president."

To pick holes in Schoen and Caddell's analysis is easy. A president who turns himself into a lame duck is scarcely likely to be able to mobilize the American people for the kind of decisions - not just hard ones but brutally hard ones - that lie ahead of them.

On the substantive point, though, they are right. Americans are facing a wrenching change of life that in an odd way Tea Party supporters, for all their superficiality, have expressed better than anyone else.

The core of the change of life America is undergoing is that it is ceasing to be an exceptional nation.

It will remain for a long time more powerful and richer than anyone else, and continue to exert immense cultural appeal, for a long time.

But it's in a phase of inescapable decline. This sense of contraction, of children's lives no longer being better than those of the parents, was, surely, as much the cause of the anxiety and anger expressed in the mid-term elections as the specifics of unemployment, mortgage foreclosures and wage cutbacks.

Decline has happened before to Rome and Britain and France and Spain. And, as is worth noting, to China also.

As was the case with these national empires, and others, this phenomenon has mostly been self-inflicted.

America tried to do everything - to police the world, to run the world's financial system, to maintain its people's standard of living far beyond its economic and financial ability to pay for their bills.

And now it's broke and exhausted. In Afghanistan, its military options have narrowed down to finding an exit strategy that avoids humiliation.

At home, it is entering, an era of austerity. No longer - any more than can Ireland or Greece or Portugal - can it avoid paying the pile up of bills, even by devices such as that of the Federal Reserve in temporarily shrinking the value of its outstanding bills by printing money.

There is of course the staggering budget deficit. Yet proposals by a bipartisan commission set up by Obama to suggest ways to squeeze the deficit down by $4 trillion over four years have provoked, from the Democrats, "simply unacceptable" and, from the Republicans, a refusal to even talk about closing tax loopholes.

This is only the best-known deficit. As considerable is the deficit in the form of the liabilities of so-called entitlement programs. The employee pension plans of the states are underfunded to the tune of $3.4 trillion.

And there's the cruellest deficit of all, that of the gap between rich and poor. America's top 1 percent now get one-quarter of the national income. Their gain has come mostly from the middle class. Again, it was the Tea Partiers who best understood the American Dream has passed them by.

Obama has not in fact "lost the confidence of the governed." Indeed, 47 percent told exit pollsters they wanted him to run again in 2012. He has, though, lost his voice.

If Obama spends the next two years telling his people the truth, he may well pay the ultimate political price.

But he would have fulfilled his own dictum, as he told TV interviewer Diane Sawyer, that "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president."

[skrewer]

Wrong initial forum, now its in the right place.

[DanDesade]

to be honest i'm not entirely sure how america is going. its a world away from where i live. what understanding i do have comes via the media, and depending on what i'm reading the picture is either careful optimism or a real concern for the countries future.

[DRAKOS]

THANX Skrewer!

[skrewer]

Originally Posted by DRAKOS

THANX Skrewer!

Np

[DRAKOS]

What no thought on this Post?

[skrewer]

I think obama has been one of the worst things to happen to this country, along with one of the best things. Worst: His political agenda, his foreign policy (especially his stance of subservience towards the middle eastern countries), his economic management (you don't raise taxes during a depression and you don't spend money you don't have to fill in a debt you do have), and a few other areas that I don't have time to get into (b/c I have class at noon). Like: His being in the government has caused us to question those we so blindly follow more and caused us to become more aware of whats going on in our country (who's bribing who, who's cheating the system, etc.). Its making us pay attention to things we never used to before, so that we don't make the same mistakes as often (like electing a FAR leftist as opposed to a moderate).

[Isaac Sumizone]

I remain pro-Obama and continue to support his goals and agenda.

[Master Holton]

I like some of the things Obama has done.

I don't want to see a Republican as president. I don't want to see a Democrat as president. So I'll be voting for whoever the most moderate canidate is.

I like some of the things Obama has done: Health Care Reform (from what I understand it keeps insurance companies from denying a sick person money?)

I like how he bitch slaps congress into doing what he wants every time he gives a speech.

I like repeal of Dnt ask Dnt tell... Discrimination is bad. mmkay?

I like the attitude we've developed towards changing politics and washington for the better: As much as congress thinks otherwise... And as much as the supreme court rules otherwise.

But 2012 is going to be an awesome presidential campaign race. Hands down.

People will give oodles of money to Obama

Corporations (thanks to the supreme court) will be backing the republicans will their billions.

I can't wait to see what happens.

[tom the pit leader]

As I look out into the sea of potential candidates on any side of the aisle, I see:


Hillary Clinton
Obama

and nobody else. Barring someone the Republicans have been hiding in the secret GOP bunker, the Republicans have NO ONE to run that wouldn't make them the laughing stock of the the country.

If the TEA party runs someone, and the Republicans pick them up, there will cease to be moderate Republicans because they'll ALL vote Democrat to keep the TEA party out of office.



Personally, I'd be in favor of the Republicans running Hillary, but I kinda doubt that'll happen.

Most of Obama's problems come from the other Democratic party leaders not being able to count and then fucking up his good ideas.