Tim over at The Mess That Greenspan Made writes about why the Fed is immoral and I can hardly improve on it. You should read the whole thing. Once you’re done with that, read about why our crisis will deepen even further instead of getting better over at Cafe Americain. I believed when I first saw Obama that as President that he reminded me of JFK in that he was highly inexperienced and seemed to be running around listening to a lot of supposedly smart people instead of making decisions on his own. This level of inexperience got us into the Vietnam War with JFK and it’s liable to do something similar again with Obama though I would hazard a guess that the war will be one fought on internal grounds in the finance industry and government.
When you lack experience to make hard decisions, you will almost always make the wrong ones. We are seeing this continually with this administration and while I do believe that he is well-spoken and well-meaning, I don’t believe he is capable of the job we have given him. It is likely to only get worse as time goes on. There is little support for the stock price surge we have been seeing since March and the U.S. dollar is under fairly heavy pressure. We are likely to see a a big fall in both starting sometime in September just about the time that the American public decides it is OK to start putting money back into the market. The result will be both obvious and terrible.
um, wow. so then, the experience of leadership in the great state of texas somehow absolves bush of responsibility for the iraq and afghanistan conflicts, a disastrous fiscal policy based on a legacy of foolhardy neoconservative deficit theory and a series of (admittedly debatable) maneuvers to undermine the official oversight guaranteed to congress and the supreme court?
i’m not saying obama’s doing a good job at all (he’s not), but clearly the last 8 years have shown that experience in making the hard decisions counts for jack. “[while] he is well-spoken and well-meaning, I don’t believe he is capable of the job we have given him” describes our former president about perfectly. except for the “well-spoken” part.
Nope but then if I spent my time writing about how much previous presidents sucked, that’s pretty much all I’d write about. Which might be an improvement, who knows.
My feeling on the Bush presidency is that his errors weren’t so much based on inexperience as they were his slightly idealized belief in the rightness and power of America which was likely co-opted by lots of people with influence. Does that make him any less responsible? No. But it may give us a different insight into why our government did what it did. Also, if you’re going to equate Iraq with Afghanistan, I think you’re going to be swimming pretty hard upstream.
With Obama, I don’t see any other explanation for the haphazard way he is approaching things. They have had it very easy for a little while but things are going to get harder. I feel like his inexperience in managing anything larger than a Senate campaign is causing him to rely on the so-called smart people around him and they don’t seem to have a clue what they are doing much like many of the so-called smart men around Kennedy.
The parallels with Kennedy and Obama are striking in my mind. Kennedy was just beginning to find his voice, in particular as it relates to Vietnam in the months before he was killed. That extremely unfortunate event then resulted in a very insecure LBJ, a slick Senator who lucked into the VP job (ring any bells?) becoming President and taking us into Vietnam. I don’t think something so dramatic has to happen here because I’m not sure Obama will ever find his own voice. He strikes me as a politician through and through and someone who is likely to be swayed by opinions around him instead of making his own decisions. Just my feelings from 10K feet.
I do that Obama can find his own voice and that it is one of reason and intellect and not party and racial politics. So far, there has been little evidence that that will happen.
thank you for taking that as it should have been said, rather than how i said it — i appreciate your willingness to overlook my propensity for being an a-hole (a trait which does not exhibit itself solely on your blog — which fact is no comfort to me, but may at least make you feel better!).
i think you and i are very much on the same page re: obama and his ‘politician-ness’, and i couldn’t agree more that he reminds me so greatly of kennedy (let us not forget that kennedy was our first catholic president, which was not too far removed from being black for a politician at that time). i think that’s a highly astute parallel you draw, in fact.
the thing that i cannot get past is the lambasting obama is still taking for his lack of experience. there is a willingness to applaud, forgive or outright ignore bush’s reliance on those who might have taken advantage of his rosy view of america and its place in the world in spite of his having the very experience of which the lack is given blame for obama doing the same.
i don’t think i could have written a more confusing sentence. if anyone needs a map to make it through that syntactical maze i’m afraid i may not be able to help.
the beautiful, horrible thing is that responsibility does not care about experience or politics. in the end, if you say you’re the man, you’re the man, and every president must answer for his mistakes whether they were based on advice or his gut.
except reagan. but that’s a different argument.
btw, doofus that i am, i forgot to give props to the iacono article. great piece of work, that.
Hi, I just happened upon your blog post looking for clojure stuff. I’m an Obama supporter and I wanted to respond to your post.
You seem to be judging JFK’s administration as a failure based on one major foreign policy issue. You also seem to be judging Obama’s administration as a failure based on an economic disaster his administration inherited and a solution that hasn’t played out yet. I completely disagree with these judgments.
Both presidents came to office facing great challenges. Obama’s challenges (the economy, 2 wars, health care) were inherited by his administration. JFK faced a nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union, the spread of Communism in Asia, and the civil rights movement.
JFK was a good president. I have high hopes for Obama. I think his presidency will be as successful as JFK’s and I think our country will be better of for it.
Anyway… fun to stumble upon some political debate in the midst of coding. Thanks.
Sure Obama inherited a mess, and I’m not happy with his predecessor either, but he’s doing the very opposite of fixing things.