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I am quite satisified by Obama, I came in with low expections and he hasn't screwed much up Roland00 Send a noteboard - 11/02/2012 04:08:33 AM
He is not a perfect president, far from it, but then again I didn't expect much from him.

I do not expect him to save the economy, there is little he can do about that (most presidents can do little about the economy). The best thing he can do about the economy is create institutions in the economy that promote stability and consequences for a business actions and you won't see the results of those actions for years if not decades.

In my mind, the job of president is not screwing up. You don't have to get everything right, just don't screw up and tank. Seeing red emergency lights while you are president is a bad. For the most part Obama has not screwed anything up.

1) He hasn't create a big war
2) He hasn't made the government debt worse from a longer term perspective (yes he has had very large short term deficits, but these deficits aren't ones that create problems from a long term perspective.)
3) He hasn't appointed irresponsible people to the court, nor many massive screw ups with the federal agencies. (What is the worse screw up of a federal agency since Obama, Fast and the Furious?)
4) He hasn't completely screwed up American's faith in the government (such as Nixon)
5) He hasn't done anything obvious (from our perspective in time) that would bite us in the ass down the road such as Eisenhower and the Shah of Iran and Eisenhower/Kennedy with the Bay of Pigs

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My biggest complaints about Obama
1) Not ending Gitmo, spying on Americans, Indefinite detentions, etc.
2) He didn't break up the banks into much smaller organizations. My problem is not the size of the banking industry but how much power 7 or so banks have (JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup,
Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Metlife which may seem strange since Metlife is mostly insurance but Metlife got a lot bigger after acquiring a lot of former AIG assets.) We are going to have major problems later on and less growth due to these banks being such behemoths
(Look here for assest sizes)
http://www.ffiec.gov/nicpubweb/nicweb/top50form.aspx
3) He didn't prosecute anybody on Wall Street
4) Immigration Reform



5) He never really called about this so I can't hold it against him but tax simplification.
6) He never really called about it, but winding down the drug war.

I have some minor quibbles about Health Care Reform, it could have been better but at least he got the process started. Health Care reform is not something that is going to be fixed with one presidential term, it is going to be a long gradual process that is done over several presidential terms and he created the foundations that can improve over time incrementally.

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So people's biggest complaint about him to seem to boil down to one of three things.
1) Obama is far too incrementalist, too passive, not taking advantage of opportunity when it is presented to him, not getting things done.
2) I am scared shitless for he is part of the other team and his incrementalism drives me crazy. I see him do small things and I project him doing far worse things in the future if given the chance. I am scared for I project my fears onto the other guy from a team that is not my own.
3) He hasn't fixed the economy

The way I see it Obama's incrementalism is both a flaw and a strength, it is his nature and you can't separate it from his being. It has helped Obama from not screwing the world up (unlike some recent presidents). Furthermore Obama isn't really out there crazy as a democrat, he is no Bernie Sanders, in fact Obama has as much in common with Eisenhower as Obama has in common with Ted Kennedy.
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