Blogs by David A. Schwinghammer
Worst President Since WWII?
7/7/2014 8:01:37 AM
Is Obama the worst president since WWII?
Fox commentators were drooling over the recent Quinnipiac poll, declaring Obama the worst president since WWII. But this isn’t the first time Quinnipiac ran a similar poll. At the same point in his second term, George W. Bush was declared the worst president since WWII with a higher number, if only two points.
Although Republicans and Democrats differed, Republicans voting for Obama, and Democrats voting for Bush, there are some reasons your typical open-minded Independent would vote for Obama.
Foreign policy: Obama was reluctant to send weapons to “moderate” rebels fighting against Assad in Syria because the weapons might fall into the wrong hands. First off, we did this once before in Afghanistan when we sent Afghan freedom fighters weapons to ward off the Russians, and those fighters turned out to be the Taliban (Reagan was president). Secondly, some of the “moderates” have joined with ISIS to fight Assad. Finally, if we bomb the rebels, we’re bound to hit civilians, and that would anger even peaceful Arabs. But we’re got to do something. Seems like we’re doing it; the most respected American fighting force is special forces, and we’ve sent them over there to advise the Iraqi army. They’re had a bit of success. They either captured Tikrit, Suddam’s birthplace, or control part of it. Also, the new caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, made the mistake of giving a sermon in Mosul the other day. We now know what he looks like, and there’s a ten million dollar reward on his head. No matter what anybody thinks ISIS’s blitzkrieg had nothing to do with Obama; the Iraqis refused to fight. ISIS was badly outnumbered; it should have been a cake walk for the Iraqis, but they threw down their weapons and ran away, leaving American military equipment for ISIS. The military hates al-Maliki more than the rebels.
Obama is also right when he says the first step needs to be a rapprochement between the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds in the Iraqi government before we can drive ISIS out of Iraq, which would be hard enough for the well-equipped American army, since they are now embedded in Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul; however, the American joint chief of staff, Martin Dempsey, maintains that ISIS is spread very thin after moving so fast and now is the time to strike, if we’re going to attack at all. Nobody really wants ISIS to be in charge, especially if they really did execute 1700 captured soldiers as they claimed. These people are religious zealots, like the Taliban, one reason al-Baghdadi calls himself a caliph. Women are stoned for adultery; thieves have their hands chopped off; American “spies” are decapitated. Baghdadi was once a prisoner in American hands; when the Americans turned him over to Iraq, they let him go. Seems like they’re getting what they asked for.
If anybody is the worst of anything it would be the House of Representative and the Republican minority in the Senate; McConnell and Boehner declared early in Obama’s presidency, while the recession was still going on, to “just say no”. They opposed Dodd-Frank, the financial regulation bill which would have brought a semblance of sanity to Wall Street; they opposed the stimulus, which Wall Street asked for; they opposed the auto bailout, which could have led to a depression if that many workers had lost their jobs. Romney claimed that a managed bankruptcy would have worked, but no bank was willing to give them any money. And now, the big three--Ford (who managed without a bailout), General Motors, and Chrysler---are doing better than ever.
Republicans claim they want to stop the wanton spending in Washington D.C., but they weren’t worried about that when they borrowed the money to fight their war in Iraq from China and Social Security. There’s also the little know fact that, prior to Obama, 80% of the national debt resulted from the presidencies of Reagan, Bush and Bush II, and that Obama started his presidency with the budget overflowing by at least a trillion dollars. The GOP tried to say it was only 450 million, but they weren’t counting the two wars or the money they borrowed from social security, which goes into the general fund.
Republicans also can’t escape the fact that the Dow is sitting at over 17,000 and unemployment is down to 6.1; during the last three months the economy has added in the area of 825,000 jobs. Texas likes to brag about how many jobs they’ve mustered, but Texas is a “right to work” state, which means they have to right to work for less, and many of those jobs are part-time and minimum wage. They do have multiple jobs on the oil fields, but we all know they’re not going to help your great-grandchildren when we run out of fossil fuels. Republicans oppose solar energy and wind power to name only two renewable sources. Yes, solar energy companies have failed, thanks to cheap Chinese panels, but so do oil companies. See the two George W. Bush managed before his daddy bought him a baseball team.
What would Americans say if asked whether the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court are the worst in history? Considering the House only passed fifty-four bills and got paid on the average of $174,000 each, and the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people, I think you know what the answer would be.
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