> I don't think that Obama was a liar, crook, incompetent, or evil.
All politicians are liars. If you think there's an honest one, I'm sorry to inform you that you're hopeless naive.
Obama started lying very early in his Presidential campaign. For example: "Barack Obama faced widespread condemnation today from both right and left for reneging on a promise on election campaign financing." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/20/barackobama.jo...
One example of Obama's incompetence: his administration completely botched the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. Do you remember that? And he was actually terrible at advocating for a health care plan, forcing Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to do all of the work and lobbying for the ACA, which doesn't actually deserve the name "Obamacare" given to it later by Republicans.
Another example: he was overconfident about Clinton winning in 2016 and thus failed to more forcefully pursue a vote on his Supreme Court nominee.
Oh yeah, and his administration bombed a hospital.
He promised while running that legislating abortion rights would be his first act as President. That was a lie.
He bailed out Wall Street during the financial crisis while allowing homeowners to go underwater.
He continues to take credit for promoting fossil fuels in the US, as if that were a good thing.
I could go on and on and on about Obama, but I'd rather not write an entire dissertation here. My list is just some things that popped into my head immediately. (I did google for the link to confirm the thing I already knew.)
Remember that the Snowden revelations occurred during the Obama administration, which was spying on us illegally.
> When was the last time a President, or a Presidential candidate, has been among the best of us? No, elections are exercises in mass irrationality, glorified beauty pageants.
> All politicians are liars. If you think there's an honest one, I'm sorry to inform you that you're hopeless naive.
If all politicians are liars, then you first statement becomes a tautology. All presidents are politicians, all politicans are liars, ergo all presidents are liars.
"All politicans are liars" is an empirical claim. It's not necessarily true, in the logical sense. It's just a sad fact about us and our political system. We promote the worst of us, not the best of us. It could be different if our system were better, or if we were better, collectively.
The influence of money in politics is particularly pernicious. In the US, election campaigns are privately financed. Thus, politicians have to cater to the ultra-wealthy, or be ultra-wealthy themselves. But politicans can't run for office telling the public "My votes are owned by the ultra-wealthy", so they have to lie. (Infamously, Joe Biden told his wealthy donors the truth in 2020, "Nothing fundamentally will change", while simultaneously telling voters the opposite.) Moreover, voters believe lies, or at least overlook lies, which gives politicians even more incentive to lie and exaggerate. If lies were reliably detected and strictly punished by the electorate, then it would be an entirely different matter.
I'm not obsessed with Obama specifically. I simply have a very good memory, and someone else mentioned Obama. I could give a similar spiel about every President of my lifetime going back to Reagan.
There's no President who I admire. I don't do hero worship. Not even, say, FDR, who was responsible for the Japanese-American internment camps during WWII, one of the most shameful episodes in our history.
All politicians are liars. If you think there's an honest one, I'm sorry to inform you that you're hopeless naive.
Obama started lying very early in his Presidential campaign. For example: "Barack Obama faced widespread condemnation today from both right and left for reneging on a promise on election campaign financing." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/20/barackobama.jo...
One example of Obama's incompetence: his administration completely botched the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. Do you remember that? And he was actually terrible at advocating for a health care plan, forcing Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to do all of the work and lobbying for the ACA, which doesn't actually deserve the name "Obamacare" given to it later by Republicans.
Another example: he was overconfident about Clinton winning in 2016 and thus failed to more forcefully pursue a vote on his Supreme Court nominee.
Oh yeah, and his administration bombed a hospital.
He promised while running that legislating abortion rights would be his first act as President. That was a lie.
He bailed out Wall Street during the financial crisis while allowing homeowners to go underwater.
He continues to take credit for promoting fossil fuels in the US, as if that were a good thing.
I could go on and on and on about Obama, but I'd rather not write an entire dissertation here. My list is just some things that popped into my head immediately. (I did google for the link to confirm the thing I already knew.)
Remember that the Snowden revelations occurred during the Obama administration, which was spying on us illegally.