I’m worried that neither candidate will lower the national speed limit to 55.
Nah, the point of all this is that the Electoral College approach sucks. It basically makes worthless the votes of the minorities in states in which one party is dominant.
I didn’t mean it to sound like I’m saying Obama is insincere.
What I meant to say is that all politicians say what they need to say to get elected.
A good example of this is the “benefits” a candidate will promise: health care, better education, cleaner industry, etc. What they don’t say is how it’s all going to get paid for.
A candidate will say, “I promise everyone in the US will have health care.” People then cheer. If the candidate then added, “Of course, this will cost about $5,000 per person per year, so I’ll need to add $5,000 on to everyone’s tax bill.” The cheering would stop real quick.
People always assume someone else will pay for the goodies.
I think you need to re-read the thread. You are saying that Obama is insincere.
Anyhow, yeah, if you don’t believe that Obama is going to do what he says he’s going to do, and are instead making up what you think he’s going to do out of whole cloth, then I can understand why you’d have problems differentiating him from McCain.
Not to beat a dead horse, but people are looking at Obama’s recent remarks as some sort of backing off of his commitment to withdraw troops, when in reality the story is this:
- Obama wins the Democratic nomination and begins to beat up McCain on Iraq.
- The McCain campaign responds that Obama hasn’t visited Iraq in two years, and so doesn’t really understand the current state of affairs (since, you know, all those briefings that Congress has been getting are apparently bogus or something)
- McCain (facetiously) offers to give Obama a guided tour of Iraq.
- The Obama campaign naturally refuses, and instead Obama announces that he’s going to Iraq on his own fact-finding mission.
- The press asks him why he’s going to Iraq - is it because he’s clueless like the McCain campaign implied?
- Obama remarks that he’s not clueless, and that he is merely visiting to “refine his policies” (he can’t come out and say “I’m going primarily to take away a rhetorical weapon from the McCain campaign”).
- The press freaks out and publishes “OMG Obama backing away from troop withdrawal commitment” headlines. Because, you know, what else could “refine my policies” mean?
Funny. Your defense of Obama’s sincerity relies on your belief that he was being insincere when he made this statement…
If (policy.refinement(); =! policy.reversalBoolean();){
Candidate.setInsincere(); // this var is indeed very public.
}
else {Stay the course // Because the first choice is always the right one.}
Obama is not perfect. In fact, there are good reasons to be upset with Obama’s political maneuvers, namely his backtracking on FISA.
That doesn’t mean he intends to backtrack on Iraq, particularly because he has no real incentive to do so. Unlike health care, withdrawing from Iraq will please his supporters and save money.
Hey, maybe he will “refine his policies” - who knows? I’m just saying that it’s politically unpalatable to say “I’m going to Iraq so www.gop.com has to take down their ‘days since Obama visited Iraq’ timer”, so he’s trying to give a noncommittal response.
I don’t take that as “insincerity” - it’s just being diplomatic. There’s a big difference between spinning a political visit, and promising to remove troops from Iraq while secretly planning to leave them there.
Neither will touch the Federal Reserve, so we’ll still have inflation, booms and busts, etc. Hope China keeps buying dollars.
Neither will light a fire under the bureaucrats to ease approval of new oil refineries, nukular plants, offshore drilling, etc.; energy plans, like the ones from the last few decades, won’t really do much in the end, even in the long term. I think gas prices may level off naturally, especially if the Iran talk dies down.
However, there will be a lot of fussing at the margins. Rejoice!
Would you like to see us in a land war in Asi^H^H^HIran?
Because that’s where McCain as President is going to put us.
In these days of a global economy, the economy’s out of any single entity’s hands, even one as influential as the US Gov’t.; as far as the US Gov’t goes, the role players are Congress and the Fed. So the economy is generally out of a president’s hands.
Now the president does have a legitimate say in foreign policy. 9/11 forced our hand; we had to invade Afghanistan. The revelation that the attackers were Saudi forced our hand with Saudi Arabia, leaving us the incredibly shitty option of invading Iraq or the even worse option of abandoning the Middle East to its own devices. Public demands for increased security would have ratcheted the authoritarianism up a notch no matter who was in office. The only difference one candidate makes over another is how competently they pursue these ends; generally, the circumstances dictate the response.
So for these two things, the two things the electorate judges their president by, we have on that he/she has no effect on whatsoever, and one where the candidate really only has one option to select at any given moment. (Not that this has prevented certain past presidents from making decisions that were clearly wrong.*
So the real difference we face is how competent a candidate and the people he surrounds himself with are, not so much any particular policy he’ll pursue, so that he will at least pursue these goals with a modicum of competence. And in this regard, I do believe one of the two candidates has distinguished himself where the other has not.
- I love how the official bio unreasonably charitably says that he “Set his own style” in foreign affairs.
I’ll vote for the one that promises not to.
Once the new president is elected, it will be explained to him what happens if we withdraw our troops from Iraq:
1- As the troops are withdrawn, the country will destablize
2- The various internal and insurgent factions will fight for power
3- The most ruthless leader with the most guys and guns will win
4- That leader will be far more ruthless than Hussein was
5- That leader will be very anti-American
6- The thousands of Iraqi’s who worked with, and supported, the US forces will be killed in horrendous ways. So will their children. Their friends. And the children of their friends.
7- In the end, the new leader will boast to the world how he sent the mighty US military running and Iraq will be a far worse place than it ever was under Hussein.
-or-
We can keep troops there for 20 years and have it be a friend in the region that we can work with to further stablize the region.
A few months after the new president is elected, he will give a speech saying the troop levels will be maintained (and possibly increased). How people vote in November will not change that. The only thing being decided in November is whether the words come out of Obama’s mouth or McCain’s mouth.
Okay, so the Republican president fucked up things so badly that it’s impossible to fix, by your logic. Do you want a president who might do the same again to another country, or one who has a more rational approach to “America’s enemies”.
And I suppose that, if you define all the issues you care about as “unchangeable (and indeed, impossible to affect) by the president”, then no, it doesn’t really matter who you cast a vote for. But that doesn’t mean there’s not a world of difference in their approach to the world, governance and ideology, and even if you don’t think so, POTUS is arguably the most powerful single position in the world.
Out of curiosity, if they, by some magical means, actually had the power to change things, who would you pick?
You should move to New Mexico for a while. Let’s see how long you persist in that belief.
That’s a pretty accurate assessment.
Do you want a president who might do the same again to another country, or one who has a more rational approach to “America’s enemies”.
As I stated above, it’s not a matter of what decision the president makes; it’s a matter of how well he executes, because usually only a single path presents itself. Our other options (aside from invading Iraq) were: Continue fomenting hatred and sponsoring a horrible Saudi regime with the base in SA, or abandon the area to its own devices, leaving our energy needs to the whims of dictators who despise us.
And I suppose that, if you define all the issues you care about as “unchangeable (and indeed, impossible to affect) by the president”, then no, it doesn’t really matter who you cast a vote for.
There’s the issue of competence. A competent president might not have bungled the Iraqi occupation so badly. A competent president certainly wouldn’t have forgotten Iranian (or even Persian) interests in a destabilized region. A competent president might have recognized the validity of the Petraeus Doctrine sooner.
But that doesn’t mean there’s not a world of difference in their approach to the world, governance and ideology, and even if you don’t think so, POTUS is arguably the most powerful single position in the world.
Second-most powerful. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is the most powerful. :)
Out of curiosity, if they, by some magical means, actually had the power to change things, who would you pick?
It’s nonsense to answer the question, and silly to consider it when another consideration – the candidate’s competence – is actually valid.
I don’t understand how this works. If you mean to say, the best executive decision (and by that I mean broad outline) can still be horribly managed, I agree, but that doesn’t mean terrible executive decisions that are well executed are suddenly good.
Our other options (aside from invading Iraq) were: Continue fomenting hatred and sponsoring a horrible Saudi regime with the base in SA, or abandon the area to its own devices, leaving our energy needs to the whims of dictators who despise us.
Where do you come up with this? We sure have cracked down on those Saudis since they asked us to leave. Also, my impression is that the amount of resentment against the U.S. world wide due to Iraq is now much greater than a specific extremist group pissed off because we had troops in Saudi Arabia.
It seems to me, our military and intelligence energy would be better spent going after specific threats.
There’s the issue of competence. A competent president might not have bungled the Iraqi occupation so badly. A competent president certainly wouldn’t have forgotten Iranian (or even Persian) interests in a destabilized region. A competent president might have recognized the validity of the Petraeus Doctrine sooner.
Competent leadership might have prevented many of the scandals associated with the war, but we still wouldn’t have found WMDs. Sure a functional Iraq would better, but there would still be anti-american sentiment built up because of that (which works to Al Queda’s advantage). That also doesn’t mean that Al Qaeda wouldn’t have bombed that mosque helping to incite the civil war (which may have broken out anyway due to the fact that the only thing holding Iraq together was force). Thus, the only way to probably keep Iraq together after the invasion would have been overwhelming force and a draft would have killed the war politically. With a competent president, we may not even be in Iraq. There are just too many unknowns to say the neocon ideology would have worked if it hadn’t been Bush.
Man, I really hope Obama can pull this off, because I see a lot of people trying to make excuses for a failed ideological view of the world.
That’s the McCain theory, and it’s already been proposed to everyone in America. Let’s call it “The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves!” Strategy.
If Obama believed it, he would be voting for McCain. Unless there’s a secret time machine in the White House, I don’t see why his opinion would change if he were elected.
There are alternate scenarios, mostly asserting a direct relationship between anti-Americanism and the length of an American occupation. Here’s one possible timeline (not necessarily Obama’s):
1- As the troops are withdrawn, the country will destablize
2- The various internal and insurgent factions will fight for power
3- The most ruthless leader with the most guys and guns will win
4- Perhaps thousands of Iraqis will die. If so, Americans will react in a manner similar to millions of deaths in Cambodia, Rwanda, Somalia, etc: sadly shrugging their shoulders, and blaming someone else (Bush, the Iraqis, “Muslim barbarians”, Al-Qaeda …).
5- The new Iraqi leader may boast as he likes about his military superiority over the US. He may even carry a wallet monogrammed “Bad Mofo!”. The US will collectively sigh, like it does when hearing about Kim Jong-Il’s golf scores or listening to his poetry.
6- Regardless of his pro- or anti- American tendencies, the new Iraqi leader will realize the benefits of Western engagement, just as nominally anti-American regimes in the Soviet Union, Vietnam, North Korea, etc. were successfully engaged by the US or US-led consortia. Business will be business, either behind the scenes or aboveboard.
7- ???
8- Profit!!!
So what you’re saying is that within the next twenty years, that ‘greet us with flowers’ thing will finally come true?
Yes! I knew Cheney was good for his word!
I can understand people’s discomfort whenever any politician uses the term “refine my position” because that is classic politician talk for “change my position.”
What I’m finding interesting is what people thing Obama’s position really is? I hear a lot of people who appear to think that Obama is committed to removing all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 16 months. But that ain’t gonna happen. His own spokespeople are saying, in interviews and on the talk shows (such as Reed this morning on Stephanopolous) that he intends to keep U.S. forces in Iraq for training, “counter-terrorism”, and “protection.” There are no specifics on how many troops that represents, and no committments to how long those troops will stay there, but I suspect we’re talking about U.S. presence in Iraq for a long time.
I’ll ask an expert like LK - how different does it look when you pull out all “combat troops” and leave in training forces, counter-terrorism forces, and protection forces? I’m not sure I know what the latter two represent.