Posted on 08/28/2011 9:41:51 PM PDT by neverdem
On Friday, Jonathan Alter wrote a column challenging his readers to "prove" why Obama "has been a bad president." He ended his piece, which he based off of the old Mission Impossible television show, by saying, "Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it, is to be specific and rational, not vague and visceral."
I wish to take up that task, but before I do so, readers must understand something about Jonathan Alter and his views. The former editor of Newsweek, Alter has written books and articles defending liberalism for decades. His latest book, The Promise: President Obama, Year One, ardently vindicates the president's first year in office and exalts Barack Obama as one of the greatest leaders the U.S. could have asked for. It's therefore understandable that he, unlike others on the Left, would still cling to the hopes of a successful Obama presidency. Unfortunately for the rest of the nation, he's wrong.
President Obama's term should first be placed into historical context in order to gauge his competency in comparison to those who worked in the White House before him. After all, a president still remains confined to what can be passed in Congress. The first evidence against Barack Obama's competency is his lack of achievement, given such large majorities in Congress. The current resident of the White House had something that two of the most popular recent presidents, who were regarded as highly competent, could only have dreamt of having: a filibuster-proof majority. Ronald Reagan could never claim a majority in both Houses of the legislature, while Bill Clinton achieved most of his successes with a legislature from an opposing party.
Yet, despite his party having the largest majority in Congress in over three decades (even after the Scott Brown victory), what was the president able...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Interesting read. Thanks for linking to the print version.
Sounds like he is fishing for ideas to twist and turn.
Answering this liberal froot loop will accomplish nothing. He will only put up the lie that Oblame-o created 2/M jobs in the first three years completely discounting that he lost 4/M jobs and the jobs he created were government and/or union jobs which are about the same, leeches on the economy. Also they’ll discount the fact that Bush created 8/m jobs in years when we didn’t even a jobs crisis.
People like this Newsweek guy just need to be ignored...they will never see the light of truth and even when they do, they’ll lie about it.
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