Well the presidents in my lifetime were Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2(illegally), Obama, Trump, and Biden.
Yeah he’s the best of the lot. I would prefer FDR in some kind of undead emperor setup but sadly that’s not available.
Comment on xkcd #2875: 2024
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Imagine being alive from 2009 to 2017 and thinking to yourself “Wow, Obama did such a great job, I want that guy back here running things again.”
God damn, I thought Randall Munroe was supposed to be smart.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 10 months ago
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yeah he’s the best of the lot.
I mean, “best” by what standard? He’s a continuation of the Reagan tradition.
I would prefer FDR in some kind of undead emperor setup but sadly that’s not available.
FDR got where he was thanks to a large popular movement that his administration ultimately undermined and dismantled. The guy that delivered Harry Truman, J. Edgar Hoover, and Allen Dulles onto the American system was a compromise at best.
Fixating on Presidents as modern day messiah figures has been uniformly bad for American politics and social progress. And its illustrated by this latent desire for a Lich-King President, a shambling corpse propped up by hagiography and revisionist history, who we’re taught to venerate as the fountain of progress rather than merely the man at the helm during a hurricane who didn’t sink the ship.
These guys aren’t prime movers, they’re consequences of much larger and more sweeping social movements. I would love to be in a country that elects a guy like FDR, but I do not believe that magically making FDR president again would result in anything remotely like the policies we got under his original administration.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I agree with that. I was being somewhat flippant talking about a “Lich King president” (I was going for Warhammer 40k if that helps set the picture better)
Without movements we don’t get shit. The rich have access by default. Everyone else has to make their access, typically with movements.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Younger, more energenic, possibly idealistic presidents might lead to a change of status quo.
So that’s pretty much why not.
joenforcer@midwest.social 10 months ago
Fixating on Presidents as modern day messiah figures has been uniformly bad for American politics and social progress. And its illustrated by this latent desire for a Lich-King President, a shambling corpse propped up by hagiography and revisionist history, who we’re taught to venerate as the fountain of progress rather than merely the man at the helm during a hurricane who didn’t sink the ship.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Man, if only.
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 10 months ago
As someone that’s been alive since Ford… Yeah, I’d love to have Obama back. I didn’t agree with him all the time–or even a lot of the time–but he was reasonable and largely measured, and managed to work fairly effectively with a divided congress. Would I rather have someone like Jimmy Carter again? Sure. Would I much, much rather have another Obama than another Bush, Reagan, or–may the dark lord protect us–Trump? Absolutely.
(Am I pretending that Clinton didn’t happen? Yes.)
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 months ago
(Am I pretending that Clinton didn’t happen? Yes.)
They were administrative repeats, minus the sex scandal.
Trade deals and bailouts and immigrant witch hunts and government shut downs and echoes of a prior war that they never managed to clean up. Both presidents focused themselves on the project of further privatization, with Clinton giving us HMOs and Obama delivering the ACA. Both presided over tech booms, which were promised as a panacea to poor wage growth. Both squandered their majorities and frittered away their executive authority, while the market economy swelled and the labor economy sagged. Both ushered in fascist televangelists because they couldn’t improve the material conditions of their constituents.
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 10 months ago
One big difference was that Clinton enacted Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, while Obama was much friendlier in general to LGBTQ people and their rights. In my opinion, Obama was a better communicator, but that might be because he was speaking at a generally higher level and communicating policy and law rather than empathy. They had different approached to law, and I definitely preferred Obama’s.
Unfortunately, under a fundamentally capitalist system, there’s not a lot that can be done to make sure real wages grow for the workers, aside from a strong NLRB and having solid pro-union policies.
frittered away their executive authority
Here’s an area I very, very strongly disagree on. I oppose a strong executive branch that can enact edict without oversight. I believe the gov’t branches should largely be equal, and Obama went too far in uses of presidential power, which Trump then expanded on. That’s an awful precedent. We revolted against Britain for a good reason, and I would prefer to not see a need for American Revolution Pt II.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Clinton enacted Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, while Obama was much friendlier in general to LGBTQ people
Clinton enacted DADT with the blessing of the liberal movement while Obama dragged his feet on gay marriage until long after the SCOTUS had ruled on Obergefell v Hodges. The Respect for Marriage Act wasn’t even Obama’s legislation. It was signed in 2022 under Biden.
Unfortunately, under a fundamentally capitalist system, there’s not a lot that can be done to make sure real wages grow for the workers
Sure there is. The US Federal Government is the largest employer in the country. If the President wants to raise wages, one of the most straightforward decisions he can make is to simply raise starting salaries for government workers. This instantly puts upward pressure on the national wage rate, makes federal jobs more desirable, and improves the economic conditions of millions of federal workers.
In fact, this is one of Obama’s few direct actions. He signed an EO raising base pay for federal workers to $10.10 back in 2014. A meager improvement, particularly when national cost-of-living had long since exceeded what amounts to a $20k/year salary. But hey? Notably better than $7.25.
I oppose a strong executive branch that can enact edict without oversight.
That’s cool. Your opinion doesn’t matter. You have no control over the extent to which Presidents exercise their authority.
You might applaud Obama for spending eight years sitting on his hands and boo Trump for taking a direct and aggressive role in shaping national policy. But Obama’s fecklessness put no constraint on his successor. No more than Clinton’s limited Bush. No more than Hoover’s limited FDR.
That’s an awful precedent.
Its a precedent that’s been in effect under dozens of prior administrations. You govern the country with the tools you’re given. Or you don’t. But there’s no reward for pulling a Calvin Coolidge or a Rutherford B. Hayes and sitting on the sidelines while your country circles the drain.
The only precedent you’ll have set is one in which your party gets booted from office when the people you’re selected to represent continue to suffer under conditions you failed to alleviate.
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 10 months ago
The ACA is the only reason I’m alive, so fuck off.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Your local medical system and its workers is the reason you’re alive. You’d be just as alive under a Single Payer model or a fully public health care model. Its very possible you’d be alive without the ACA, just a lot broker.
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Thanks for telling me what my life experiences are
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 months ago
You’re welcome
Thief_of_Crows@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
The ACA is the only reason you pay thousands to insurance companies every year.
AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Oh yeah I forgot insurance didn’t exist before 2008.
You fucking dumbass.
Thief_of_Crows@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
The ACA specifically prevented socialized medicine, as a hand out to insurance companies. In a lot of ways, it was the best possible deal for insurance companies. It essentially wrote into law that they must exist. If not for the ACA, we wouldn’t all be paying thousands to insurance companies because they’d have been made illegal for all serious illnesses/injuries.
jballs@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I think it was more like the guy before him drug us into multiple, decades long wars - then the guy after him tried to overthrow our democracy and instill himself as president after losing an election. So having an 8 year break of semi-normalcy was refreshing.
uid0gid0@lemmy.world 10 months ago
No, tan suits and Dijon mustard are so much worse than either of those.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 months ago
We got into a shooting war in Syria under Obama. We overthrew the Libyan government with US-French joint airstrikes, too. We fostered relations with the fascist Modi regime in India and failed to secure any kind of lasting peace with Iran. We couldn’t actually end the embargo of Cuba or even close down Gitmo. Instead we ended up ramping up police powers in the wake of the Baltimore and Ferguson riots.
Despite having a supermajority in the Senate, we never managed to get DC or Puerto Rico their statehoods… which is a shame because DC statehood alone could have kept Mitch McConnell out of the Senate majority position and flipped a host of federal judicial appointments including two in the SC. Extra important given that we lost the Voting Rights Act case under Obama’s DOJ and a bunch of redistricting fights as well. That gave us a Republican House Majority despite those districts representing less than 45% of the total voting base.
Hell, one of the first things the Obama House, Senate, and Presidency did after a sweeping win in 2008 was… to strip federal funds from ACORN!
Maybe some of those fuck-ups were what cost him the House, the Senate, the SCOTUS, and then the Presidency in the snowball of failure that lead up to 2016.
Having an 8 year break of a smooth operator in office definitely blinded us to the decay of the republic that accelerated under his watch. But who did that ultimately benefit?
I guess it benefited our nation’s budding crop of fascists.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Sorry for trying? The guy took a legitimate run at peace with Iran, normalizing relationships with Cuba, and closing Gitmo. The GOP found ready allies among Democratic senators to block it all. (Except the Iran deal which they just blew up the second they were in office again.)
The GOP blocked the aid that would have seen us take a Ukraine like stance to moderate rebels in Syria.
The Super majority in the Senate didn’t even last a full year. They had it for six months. People think Obama should have shoved the entire progressive agenda through in six months but you forget Manchin and crew were part of that majority.
Finally, he didn’t lose shit in 2016. He wasn’t running because there’s a term limit on presidents. It was Hillary Clinton and she shit the bed on campaigning.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Trying what? When he took office in 2009, he had all the accumulated Unitary Executive authority accrued under Bush plus direct Treasury Ownership of the six largest banks in the country, plus a Senate supermajority and overwhelming House majority, plus the world’s most powerful military.
What did he do with all this in his first two years? Bailouts for the richest of the rich and Mitt Romney’s solution to insurance industry reform. No mortgage debt relief, despite naked criminal behavior by the banks his US Treasury Department then owned. No student debt relief. No emergency authorization to expand Medicaid and Medicare - something even dumb-dumb Trump happily waved through without Congressional approval by way of the Stafford Act. No immigration reform which he had the votes for but was afraid to pass without Lindsey Graham’s blessing. No climate change bill despite the fact that it was John McCain’s fucking bill, he just didn’t want to pass it without McCain’s official endorsement.
He did not try. He was notable for how much he didn’t do, particularly relative to Bush before and Trump after, because he was afraid of looking bad on cable news shows. He was entirely fixated on his public image, rather than on the real social impact of the administration he was orchestrating.
The GOP didn’t block shit. They had no majorities anywhere in government for two full years.
Donald Trump did more with a simple majority than Obama did with 60 votes. And when he lost that majority, he pulled every lever available to the executive branch. Trump was turning out executive orders as fast as his fat little fingers could sign them. Obama couldn’t even be bothered to nominate a full slate of federal judges to fill Bush-Era vacancies.
He didn’t try to campaign for Hillary in big swing midwestern states. Given how he was underwater on approval through most of his last year of office, maybe it wasn’t even the worst move. But this was yet another instance in which he just couldn’t be bothered to try.