Posted on 01/21/2013 5:48:44 AM PST by Iron Munro
Edited on 01/21/2013 7:51:52 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
The "legacy thing" may be harder than Barack Obama imagines. Beginning his second term, Obama has a focused, though unstated, agenda: to achieve presidential greatness in the eyes of historians and Americans. In this, he will almost certainly fail. He is already a historic president as the first African-American to be elected, but there is a chasm between being historic and being great.
Presidents are ultimately judged not by their total record, or by their ability to enact their agendas, or by their popularity. They are judged by whether they get a few very big decisions right or wrong. Lyndon Johnson is mostly remembered for failure in Vietnam; it overshadows the passage of two landmark civil rights bills and approval of Medicare and Medicaid. Richard Nixon is not celebrated for creating the Environmental Protection Agency, expanding food stamps or opening talks with China; Watergate dwarfs all.
These appraisals are made while a president is in office and, more definitively, after he's left. Does a president's performance stand the test of time based on what happens later? Did his policies advance or retard the nation's well-being? Were they wise or simply expedient? Depending on the answers, much else can be forgiven or forgotten, as Robert Merry shows in his engaging book Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians.
Consider Harry Truman. For his last year in office, he was deeply unpopular. His approval rating hit a low of 22 percent. The Korean War frustrated Americans; the White House was accused of cronyism. Yet, historians rank him in the top 10 presidents. Merry relates Truman's reaction to the Soviets' 1948 overland blockade of Berlin "to starve out the city and bring it under the Soviet yoke." His top advisers concluded that U.S. withdrawal was inevitable.
Excerpt, read more at tampabay.com
“There should be no early voting OR absentee voting unless absolutely necessary.”
You have to start somewhere. That is a good place to start.
A dog turd will never become a diamond.
Obama’s time in office will be recorded by history as one of the worst results of having a very ignorant electorate. Obama himself will be characterized as causing the most harm to this country in its history to date.
History will also have a great deal to say about the state of journalism in this time period.
Judgmental terms -- different folks will feel differently, and the academics and the historians are likely to define him as they wish, not how he was.
I think we can say this: Obama is a pivotal president. He changed things. The spending, the racial policies, the cult of personality, Obamacare, possibly gun control -- there will be America before Obama, and there will be America after Obama: but Obama will be the dividing line that makes a difference.
On the one hand, America might conclude: What a disaster! We must never pursue progressive politics again!!
On the other hand, America migth conclude: We cannot manage freedom. We need government to control all aspects of our lives because only Washington has enough wisdom.
Whichever way it goes, history will look to Obama and say: This Was When It Changed.
Obama’s mentality is no different that a “gangsta rapper” from MTV. With him it’s all about bling, mo money mo money mo money, fancy belongings, high dollar ride etc. (sarcasm off)
My prediction: Obama will go down in history as either Americas:
1) Hitler(white conservatives = Jews)
2) Stalin(repeat of Holodomor)
3) Mao( GREEN Leap Forward)
4) Mugumbe(More white persecution)
5) Mussolini(Cult of personality + Fascism)—MY PREDICTION
6) Pol Pot(extreme environmentalism communism)
7) Castro( Communism)
8) Chavez(Marxism)
9) Ayatollah Khomeini( Muslim Brotherhood coup)
10) Last President before split up of USA
The author is correct on several points.
-He’s not all that bright.
-He does not have the backbone to make the sorts of decisions that render one a historically significant POTUS.
-He appears to enjoy the trappings of the office (the adulation, vacations, endless rounds of golf and chilling with celebrities) far more than the job itself.
-Continuing indications are that someone else is actually pulling his strings (Moochelle, Valerie Jarrett, George Soros, perhaps all of the above)
-Benghazi reveals very clearly that his administration is a rollicking fustercluck that would be enjoying Nixonian levels of approval were the media not in full-time 24/7 cover-up mode.
He personifies incompetence!
He appears to wanna be the Garbageoff of American Presidents.
Ummm, “Duh!”
I keep up my hopes that nopbama will be the first president imprisoned in a Federal Supermax.
What is more scary is the possibility that the feckless Republicans could lose the House in 2014, thus giving Obama another chance at ramming through his agenda by the Dems holding the House, the Senate and the White House.
I keep up my hopes that nobama will be the first president imprisoned in a Federal Supermax.
Fiscal liberalism will most certainly suffer a setback, as the coming inflation will be attributed to Obama, IMHO.
Great divider, great government grower, great spender, great gun grabber, great power grabber,...
5.56mm
He's doing exactly what Clinton did prior to the OKC bombing.
There's a terrorist attack coming down the pike, and they are trying to make it appear as if the “right wing extremist” have teamed up with the terrorist to wage war against the US govt.
They have already tried this once in his first term with the fertilizer car bomb in NYC. They knew then Zippo wasn't going to get a second term.
Had that bomb gone off and not fizzled he would have done it then.
You are right, the only way he was reelected is voter fraud and they didn't even come up with that until after the terrorist attack in Libya.
That attack was supposed to set Hillary up to run against Romney in 2016.
The plan was to make it appear as if Romney and the repubs had collaborated with the terrorist to make Zippo look like Carter.
Just like when Hillary started the left wing rumor mill blaming 9-11 on Bush when she held up a paper saying BUSH KNEW, she tried to start the same left wing rumor mill with her statement after the attack.
Worsted.
wrote CBS News political director John Dickerson at Slate Friday evening in a piece astonishingly titled Go for the Throat! Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2979970/posts
And in an unrelated story..... sarc
Former Secretary of State Rice joins CBS News
Published January 20, 2013
| Associated Press
WASHINGTON Just in time for inauguration coverage, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has joined CBS News as a contributor.
Obama Legacy:
1. - America’s first black skinned president
2. - America’s last black skinned president
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