THIS IS WHAT LATE-PERIOD HOPE LOOKS LIKE: “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” Barack Obama tells Diane Sawyer. Anyway, if you had “Obama evidences a fundamental misunderstanding of his options” on your pre-SOTU drinking game, you win, or lose, or whatever. [ABC News]
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{ 51 comments }
I’ve got “someone mentions Obama’s teleprompter” as a cue for my drinking game. If the pace from my insane cousins’ facebook feeds holds up, I’ll be in a coma by noon tomorrow. What the hell is wrong with these people?
I’d rather cum once than make her cum twice.
Oh Barry. That is just not a thing to be saying.
We’re stupid enough to have a shitty two-term president, so why not a great one-term president?
Name me one President who was defeated for re-election who is remembered as a great President?
I hoped she followed up her question with “please list all the great one-term Presidents in order.”
She was surrounded by total creeps, including her husband, but at least Hillary (at least based on my readings of Game Change) showed way more fortitude than Obama seems to be showing right about now. I have to think she would be kicking a lot more ass right now.
If he really is an Emanuellite, or a Summersinian, then he’ll be neither.
Hey dipshit, if you’re a good president then you get re-elected. There is no such thing as a ‘really good one term president’.
Jeesh. Pull Timmy and Larry’s heads out of your ass and go replay some campaign speeches, write down the promises, and then MAKE THEM HAPPEN.
He’s been hanging around Biden too much now. He’s caught speak-before-thinking-itis.
[re=500937]germansteel[/re]: James K. Polk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLg9xNHgFY8
[re=500931]magic titty[/re]: Agreed.
This is good news for John McCain.
What?
[re=500937]germansteel[/re]: Jimmy Carter must have been the guest lecturer at that madrassa.
Cake or Death?
Just how much hubris (or ignorance of history) does it take to even contemplate the possibility that your milquetoast first year in office would qualify you for a second equally tepid term in office? What the fuck is wrong with you? Has Rham been sitting on your face all this time? Gah!
[re=500937]germansteel[/re]: LBJ bowed out of the Dem nomination. He got one of the highest (the highest after Lincoln I think) marks on civil rights in a survey of historians (you know the one that put W last overall). But there’s that whole Vietnam thing, so it’s a wash.
Oh, that’s just something people say when they want to convey that it’s more important to do a good job than to be re-elected. It’s like saying “If my literacy program teaches only one child to read, it will have been a success,” when really you know it’s not going to be worth shit unless 50,000 of the little brats can get through Hop on Pop.
On the other hand, the previous asshole said in retrospect that the greatest moment of his presidency was catching a seven-and-a-half pound perch in his stocked pond. So bring it on, righties — we’ll compare dumbass remarks from our guys and see who’s more of an idiot.
[re=500937]germansteel[/re]: [re=500954]rafflesinc[/re]: I’m willing to go with LBJ.
I’ll watch a recap of the SOTU. Or read about it the next day. All it will be is Dems all forced cheery and stand up clappy, clappy every 10 seconds and Repigs all scowly, scowly. It gets real old real fast.
http://www.c-span.org/PresidentialSurvey/Overall-Ranking.aspx
T Roosevelt, Truman, and L Johnson are 4, 5, and 11. They were each elected only once in their own right. So it seems the only way to be a successful one full term president is to serve as VP and have the president die in office.
[re=500955]SayItWithWookies[/re]: Oh, fa sho, but…if you do a good job the first time around, you pretty much assure yourself a 2nd term. No.
I know he’s putting on the brave face, and saying he’s not afraid to lose ‘doin’ it my way’, but…fuck that.
Polk didn’t seek re-election
Polk didn’t run for re-election (and neither did LBJ).
I will say, however, LBJ was probably the most complete politician of the post WWII generation, and could have been the greatest pres since FDR but for fatal affliction of all American politicians for military action and dominance by the war mongers among us.
[re=500955]SayItWithWookies[/re]: Lowest. Bar. Ever.
Bush ejected from an economic nosedive. Under Obama, the economy seems, almost impossibly, to have stabilized.
The hard-core right and left are pissed about Obama’s policies, just as they were under Clinton. Under Clinton, the economic turnaround from the first Bush was nothing short of miraculous, and we stayed, for the most part, out of armed conflict. If they wouldn’t have caught Clinton with his pants down, it’d be hard to argue against putting him in the top-5 list.
[re=500963]Roger Williams hates your ways[/re]: But Garfield *was* elected twice in two non-consecutive terms. Probably due to the lasagna-lovers vote.
[re=500968]germansteel[/re]: fatal affliction of all American politicians for military action and dominance by the war mongers among us
Luckily we’re past all that.
[re=500987]TGY[/re]: You’re confusing your cartoon characters.
Of course LBJ actually got legislation passed. And James K. Polk invaded Mexico. I would focus on that.
“Or would you rather be a mule?”
What a bunch of presidential nerds. No wonder I love it here.
Seems kind of presumptuous to be talking about being a really great first term, considering that his only accomplishment so far is demonstrating that he really, really enjoys getting fucked by Republicans.
needs moar Versailles mirrors
Poor Hopey. At this point, it looks like he’s going to wind up as a mediocre one term President.
Suggested alt-text: “Bo’s breeder forgot that he’d been trained to ‘chase the black guy’.”
[re=500987]TGY[/re]: I thought that was Grover Cincinatti?
[re=500984]WideStance[/re]: It was the Clinton-era economic policies–which were really a continuation of neoliberal deregulative policies that became mainstream under Reagan–that set us up for the economic nosedive. And it’s Clinton’s economic advisers, Summers and Geithner, that really bear the blame for a lot of the anger right now. The economy under Clinton was great, but it was a bubble, that popped in 2000-1, then was reinflated by real-estate derivatives, then popped again, but worse, in 2008.
Unless some real financial regulation gets miraculously pushed through our dysfunctional Congress, we’re really on a path to return to the periodic crises of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The fact that Obama isn’t pushing harder for not only legislative change but a change in the discursive consensus about the relationship between the state and economic life is one of the more disappointing aspects of his presidency so far.
[re=500984]WideStance[/re]: I hope your analogy holds up. Right now I’m beginning to think the Yeah! America is mature enough to elect an articulate black president. (after 8 years of blatant incompetence and murderous corruption and only if he get to run against a doddering rageaholic and an ignorant small time thief) but Boo! America is not ready to let an articulate black man govern (even if his policy initiatives are to the right of Richard Nixon’s).
[re=501112]Jim Demintia[/re]: [re=500984]WideStance[/re]: Seriously, add to that Telecom deregulation, welfare reform and don’t ask don’t tell. Clinton may have been the best president of my lifetime, but he still sucked shit.
Obama originally wanted to say that he’d rather be a great one-term President instead of a good one-term President but the Republicans filibustered it
[re=500968]germansteel[/re]: Oh LBJ ran … until it was obvious he would lose. LBJ was barely the winner in the New Hampshire primary and withdrew when RFK entered the race.
Johnson has his problems running against Kennedys.
If Truman and LBJ are in the discussion, then add JFK; he was great at some things, not very good at others. Like Carter, he had not a clue how to get his agenda through Congress, but he made good court appointments, opened the Capitol to culture and showed folks a Presidential couple could be sexy. Much of what we admire in LBJ came from his perceived duty to carry out JFK’s policies.
The most solid case for a one-termer: Polk, despite his moderate views on abolition. Historians consistently rate Polk in the top ten.
Spoken like a true one-termer.
[re=501147]lawrenceofthedesert[/re]: Kennedy did do some good things but his best move as President was to get shot. People do love good looking things who die tragically.
There is an argument to be made, however, that his best move as President was nailing Marilyn Monroe.
[re=501159]Hooray For Anything[/re]: Too soon.
Ah, look at all the disappointed Lib/Progressive. It would appear that so many lefties are happiest when they are miserable. And their strategy for making themselves more miserable has such momentum that I think they will succeed. By focusing their disappointment on Obama, rather than working to try to undo something like, say, the requirement for a super majority in our House of Lords, which has kept Obama from delivering on so many of his promises (plan to close Gitmo” blocked by GOP NIMBY fear of Lex Luthor level terrorist able to destroy entire states just with their presence, or the desired public option pulled by Lieberman making health care reform as meaningless as Medicare Part D), they want to assist the GOP in its strategy of painting this administration as too powerful and over reaching at the same time being totally ineffectual in all aspects. Such a disappointing beast that it can only be put down.
Purity tests, purity test on the right on the left, we must have purity tests and so assure that only big hair hacks like Blogo or Edwards will want to be the DNC’s Quixote. That’ll show ‘em. That’ll bring our country back to the good old neoconservative, Chinese free market, weapons manufacturer for the world, fuck the poor for they must ever be with us principles of our founding fathers.
I suspect, once the angry left assists the Rich Needing Cash in tearing down this administration, and help get someone like Palin in office, then get a few more good anti-activist judges singing with the Supremes they will then be able to achieve a nirvana of outrage and pain equivalent to a Sioux Sun Dance lad hanging by all those delicious hooks. Oh the joy, the joy.
[re=501142]zenferret[/re]: Interesting times, those. Bobby Kennedy had no special love for LBJ and LBJ “always hated that little shit.” Quite a bit more dramatic than Hillary-vs-Obama 2008.
[re=501174]KBallweg[/re]: Easy fella, I think you misspelled Daily Kos in your web browser.
Ugh.
Back in my day there used to be these people called “liberals” and they had some things we called “principles” which they were willing to fight for.
KBallweg: “once the angry left assists the Rich Needing Cash in tearing down this administration”
When it comes to economic policy, name one substantive difference between the Bush and Obama administration. What about foreign policy? If things get bad enough, people might eventually wake up. I may be part of the “angry left” but you’re part of the corporate compromise weak cocksucker wall street douchebag wing of the Democratic party. That’s not the party I grew up with.
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