Pat Oliphant for November 18, 2010

Two years ago we said there is no there, there. He spoke so well and looked so good nobody believed us. He did not have one day of management experience. We have had 2 years of on-the-job-training. That is why many previous presidents had the experience of being governors.

From the liberal Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111202846.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Give it up Lib…the righties never really cared about Obama’s qualifications, and this cartoon has nothing to to with that anyway It’s about the fact that he keeps wanting a consensus with the Party of NO.

Two years ago, conservatives thought Sarah Palin was qualified to be President…and a lot of righties STILL believe that.

You also had nooooo problem with a one-term governor of TX as Prez 10 years ago.

One can be brilliant and yet not have certain abilities. A senator/legislator has totally different responsibilities than a governor/mayor. Obama served in the legislature and as a Senator (less than one term). He never had one day of managerial experience and that is simply not his forte. That is one reason why he is failing.

Many libs here apparently fervently believe in the right to commit suicide. Obama did not move to the left not because he didn’t want to but because the Democrats in the Senate wanted to get re-elected. In 2010, 6 did not. More will fall in 2012. They refused the progressive agenda you above want because most Americans don’t want that.

The US is center-right. Sorry if that doesn’t fit your desires but it is a fact of life. if you are center-left there are many other countries that agree. See Canada/Western Europe. But they too are rapidly moving right. A progressive philosphy is not sustainable. Another unpleasant fact of life.

well said billdog. True rational thought is anathema to these right wing corporate lackeys and lapdogs. Where were all these knuckleheads when Bush was destroying the country, letting Wall Street run the country, ruining our infrastructure, creating historic deficits, ruining our reputation overseas and laying out the red carpet for the energy boys to destroy the environment while reaping huge profits. Is this what you get with an “experienced” executive? Obama has tried to get cooperation from the repubs but they were firmly committed to saying no to him about everything, even to the point of disagreeing with his choice of a dog! I suspect that the republicans will hang themselves with the rope they’ve gotten from this election and after the reelection of Obama in 2012 and his new majority in congress you’ll see a man less inclined to sidle up to the right wing. At least that’s how I see it.

You sound just like an editorial in 1862, Libert., as newspapers bemoaned the terrible job Abraham Lincoln was doing. In addition, there was much griping & moaning over the ineptitude of your beloved Ronald Reagan in 1982—and he had had eight years as a governor.

George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, & Franklin Roosevelt are our three greatest presidents. Only Roosevelt had been a governor and for no longer than President Obama was a senator. Lincoln had no executive experience at all, and Washington’s was merely fighting a war, which he never had to do while president.

Amongst the presidents slightly below these three are Thomas Jefferson (never a governor), Andrew Jackson (once a governor—for eight months), Theodore Roosevelt (governor for two years), Woodrow Wilson (governor for two years), Harry Truman (never a governor), & James Polk (governor for two years).

Bill Clinton was a governor longer than was any other president, yet you never braved the Manhattan winds to vote for him, did you?

Obama has hardly moved to the left, unless you consider ensuring that equal pay for equal work and stopping terrorists in Afghanistan & Pakistan are left-wing positions.

The U.S. is a center-left country. Our media are center-right, which may have you confused. If you want to live in a right-wing country, then feel free to move to Saudi Arabia or Iran.

More Democratic senators will fall in 2012, because a huge number are first-termers up for re-election. This is the reason that the House had such a huge swing. Many of the Democratic members who lost seats had represented Republican districts for only two or four years.

The only sustainable philosophy is progressive, no matter how loudly you shriek that African-Americans are the intellectual inferiors of European-Americans.

Crook

The US is a center-left country.

Absolutely correct. We have elected noted liberals as President. Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush.

We have rejected noted conservatives. Humphrey, McGovern, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry.

I am convinced by your impeccable logic.

gotta admit, tho, i think we would really be in dog-doo if mccain had gotten it. he didn´t even have the oomph to get repub voters out of the can. bho came in at the 2nd lowest voter turnout in recent history. he didn´t win so much as the repub voters staying home and mccain gave it up. i seriously doubt obama will have that luxury in 2012. not another shellacking, but a royal tarring and feathering.

America DID elect Al Gore, Libert., and Kerry lost only because of electoral shenanigans in Ohio.

Since the time of Hubert Humphrey & Richard Nixon, we have acquiesced to legalizing a woman’s right to choose. We have states that have legalized same-sex marriage. Indeed, the military is about to accept soldiers of varying sexual inclinations. The number of state-killings is shrinking, and more people think that state-killing is wrong. We have more diversity in all walks of life, in all careers, and in all ranges of wealth. We have taken an enormous step toward universal health-care. We now insisted on a government that sees one of its fundamental duties as protecting us from the corruption of avaricious Big Business.

Yes, we still have a far ways to go, but whenever you actually speak to individual Americans, you find that they are tolerant, that they want the best for their fellows, and that they want everyone to have a place to live and food on the table.

Indeed, we have a center-right media (which helps knock down more progressive candidates in favor of less progressive ones), and we have a government still owned by Big Business, but even w/in those terrible strictures, Americans want to move forward to a more egalitarian society and not backward to a society that more emulates a third-world country.

lib 1 and jack, one of the authors of WashPost op/ed is Pat Caddell, a Clinton pollster who has made clear his hatred for Obama from the gitgo, before he was elected. He was probably the pollster on the Fox News program that jack mentioned. Same person. (Caddell is a regular on Fox now because of his disdain for obama).

center-left, center-right, blah blah. They’re meaningless labels that add nothing to discourse. People can have opinions that range from the right to the left, as others choose to label them. I do.

As if flunking out a derelict oil business set up by pappy and being the owner of a half-rate baseball team was training to be a governor and then president. If you want to talk about vapid political leadership, one need look no further than the last republican bozo we had in the executive office. And then of course, there’s that other republican “gubernatorial mark of intellectual excellence in leadership” from Alaska… .

” electoral shenanigans ” I hope that’s not possible in our free electoral processes , or is it ?

Ohio 2004. Bush’s final official count margin, was he won by 118,457 votes. I will repeat the number 118,457!!!

“electoral shenanigans”? Please try and be real. If it were 457 votes we could have a discussion but 100,000+. Do you just like to see your name in type?

The difference between Bush-Dick’s & Senator Kerry’s totals in Ohio in 2004 was just two percent of the total vote. The Republican state government in Ohio placed fewer voting machines in Democratic districts and more in Republican districts, which caused long lines in Democratic districts, which caused a great many people (up to three percent of the registered voters) to abandon their wait and, thus, not vote.

Ninety thousand ballots in Ohio were not counted for president, because of problems with the punch-card system. Republican Ken Blackwell, then secretary of state, refused to count 135,000 provisional ballots.

We do not need to discuss this further, though, Libert. In four out of the last five presidential elections, the majority has gone to the center-left candidate over the regressive candidate: Bill Clinton twice, Al Gore once, and President Obama once.

Indeed, the only time that the regressive candidate beat the center-left candidate over these last eighteen years was in the aforementioned 2004, when the center-right mainstream media and the Republican Party fomented fear of terrorism in the still-fresh post-9/11 country.

Baseball fans know when an announcer says batter X has 5 hits in his last 9 at bats he could not possibly have had a hit on the 10th at bat or else it would have been included.

Strangely 4/5 Presidential elections went a certain way. Let’s change the time frame and suddenly it is 4/8. Forgetting Bush1 and Reagan is very convenient. How about Nixon?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45376.html

I went with five elections, Libert., because I figure that you can count to five, and five elections covers twenty years, essentially a human generation and, considering that the voting age is eighteen, an electoral generation, too. They are the five most recent elections, after all.

If we go back another five, then we have America’s voters voting for the center-left candidate over the regressive candidate half the time. This statistic hardly supports your opinion, but it shows a trend toward the left.

By the way, I have reported your slanderous comment made yesterday at the forum under Glenn McCoy’s cartoon.

Russell, I agree with you that in relation with many other countries—though hardly all of them—the U.S.’ parties are not particularly progressive. On the other hand, we could certainly find countries in which our Republican party looks leftist.

Sociobama won’t be re-elected. ‘nuff said

Will, too.

Impeach already.

Flushing a country down a toilet doesnt seem to be enough for them, maybe if obama starte an equal tax of rich and poor alike, that may work to get him a swift impeachment.

Then, we could nominate a Canadian as president, that way we don’t look too racsist from the canadian side.

“Flushing a country down a toilet doesnt seem to be enough for them, maybe if obama starte an equal tax of rich and poor alike, that may work to get him a swift impeachment.”

Bush actually broke laws and violated the Constitution. The economy was already circling the drain during his administration. Obama’s and the Congressional Dem’s biggest problems are they’re too chicken s##t to stand up to the Republicans. It’s not a valid impeachment argument. Turn off the Republican noise machine for a change and try independent thought. It’s highly underrated.

Obaama is trying to attend every meeting and give every speech to the world to keep his ship on course. He doesn’t realize he has people delegated to do those tasks and he should be spending his time managing the job of the presidency. Perhaps his ego is the problem…..he doesn’t think anyone under him can give “his” speech?