US Presidential Elections 3

[~Di]

So are people still up in arms about how Obama must inevitably get assassinated or did that go away.

 

The only place I've heard that Obama "must inevitably get assassinated" is by people around the globe determined to believe that the USA is such a hotbed of racial hatred that surely a black president would be hunted down like a dog by us redneck crackers. European newspapers are really playing this up. Thing is, if the USA was really such a hotbed of racial hatred, a black president would never have been elected in the first place.

 

We've had our share of presidential assassinations and assassination attempts... all against white guys. I figure if the secret service kept George Bush alive for 8 years when half the population would have cheerfully separated his head from his shoulders, they should be able to keep a president who is practically worshipped by 3/4 of the country alive.

Edited November 25, 2008 by ~Di

[Aristes]

I don't think that 3/4 of the US worships Obama. If you're citing the 75% of the folks who say that he won fair and square and are more than willing to accept him as President, then I fall in that number, and I didn't vote for the guy. I sure as hell don't worship him.

 

However, I agree with you about the way Europeans look at us. SteveThaiBin (I think that's how he spells his name) admonished me when I noted that the US is really no more racist than Europe. He said that the Brits have been praising the US, which is cool, but Europeans have a long history of talking up racism in the US.

 

I doubt that Obam will be under serious threat during his presidency. However, considering we've had at least 3 presidents assassinated while in office that I can name off hand, an attempt on at least one, and plans on others, we shouldn't call Obama's position peculiar to his 'race.' He might have some groups plot against him, but how far those plots go is a different story. Hell, Sadam Husein allegedly plotted to have Bush the elder assassinated.

[~Di]

I don't think that 3/4 of the US worships Obama. If you're citing the 75% of the folks who say that he won fair and square and are more than willing to accept him as President, then I fall in that number, and I didn't vote for the guy. I sure as hell don't worship him.

 

However, I agree with you about the way Europeans look at us. SteveThaiBin (I think that's how he spells his name) admonished me when I noted that the US is really no more racist than Europe. He said that the Brits have been praising the US, which is cool, but Europeans have a long history of talking up racism in the US.

 

I doubt that Obam will be under serious threat during his presidency. However, considering we've had at least 3 presidents assassinated while in office that I can name off hand, an attempt on at least one, and plans on others, we shouldn't call Obama's position peculiar to his 'race.' He might have some groups plot against him, but how far those plots go is a different story. Hell, Sadam Husein allegedly plotted to have Bush the elder assassinated.

 

Yesl Just... yes.

[Walsingham]

~Di, I wouldn't care to defend the European media against charges of racism towards Americans. In my opinion they ARE racist. Hell, the Independent is towards Yanks the way the Daily Mail is towards brown people.

 

However, US presidents do get assassinated with monotonous regularity. Frequently by racists. And that's white presidents.

 

Personally, I think the entrenched racism in the US is a function of the problems with the penal system you have. So long as you have racial jail gangs, you're going to have racial groups outside jail.

[Hurlshort]

The last president assassinated was JFK. That was over 40 years ago. How is that monotonous regularity?

 

I agree attempts will likely be made, but hopefully it will be like those yahoo neo-nazis who got caught robbing a gun store.

[Walsingham]

Ted Kennedy* was shot, and he was practically President. Reagan got shot, and only survived by a total fluke. There must have been plots against everyone else.

 

*EDIT: Bobby Kennedy. Wishful thinking.

[taks]

ah yes, but that hardly amounts to assassinations... attempts are frequent, yes, but not successes.

 

taks

[Meshugger]

Wasn't there an attempt on gerald ford as well?

[Meshugger]

Noam Chomsky agrees with taks and Guard Dog on Obama's supposed "Change".

 

He's even more sceptical than you guys

[Hurlshort]

Wasn't there an attempt on gerald ford as well?

 

Yeah, but the bullet bounced off. Ford then tackled the guy and beat him with the presidential seal.

 

 

My other joke was:

 

Yeah, but it hit him in the head. Fortunately, Ford didn't need his brain to be president.

[Gorgon]

Ford, lol.

[Calax]

Wasn't there an attempt on gerald ford as well?

 

Yeah, but the bullet bounced off. Ford then tackled the guy and beat him with the presidential seal.

 

 

My other joke was:

 

Yeah, but it hit him in the head. Fortunately, Ford didn't need his brain to be president.

actually no, it went like this

[Wrath of Dagon]

It was a woman who tried to assassinate Ford, from the Manson family. Anyway, the Secret Service has become so good at their job there's very little danger.

[Calax]

Actually there were two attempts on ford, both by women

 

the second one was a former army nurse who was also working as an FBI informant when she made the attempt.

 

Reading through the various assassination attempts on presidents is interesting

 

For example: Andrew Jackson BEAT his own assassin with a cane.

 

Teddy Rosevelt was shot, saved by a 100 page twice folded speech, and he gave that speech with the bullet still in his body

 

A pilot of a single engine Cessna tried to kill Clinton by ramming the white house (he missed and hit the lawn) and the clintons weren't home.

 

GW has a total of 4 possible, two confirmed attempts on his life.

Edited November 26, 2008 by Calax

[Enoch]

Yeah, I really don't think that Obama being black makes serious assassination attempts any more or less likely. Yeah, there is still a meaningful amount of moderate racism in the US, but only the most devoted of white supremacists would take their hatred to the level of presidential assassination, and those type of extremists probably don't see much difference between a president who is himself black and a president who, say, appoints a black Secretary of State. These people have been royally pissed at every president as far back as Truman.

 

 

Edit: It looks like the Obama administration is planning to have current SecDef Gates stay in his position for at least the first year of the new administration. WaPo. At least on economic and international/defense issues, Obama seems to be gathering advisors who are decidedly more to the political center than most of his more fervent supporters in the campaign were.

Edited November 26, 2008 by Enoch

[Walsingham]

Given the glint-eyed frothing enthusiasm of some of his supporters I'm heartily glad he's more moderate.

[Guard Dog]

Given the glint-eyed frothing enthusiasm of some of his supporters I'm heartily glad he's more moderate.

 

AMEN!

 

Still a long way to go though, but so far he is not as scary as I was afraid he would be.

[Pop]

I don't think anybody remotely informed about the guy should have seriously considered Obama to be a liberal. It's a testament to how far rightward the political dialogue has shifted in this country that Obama, who's assembling a center-right cabinet and is proving to be Clinton 3, was feared by many a mouth breather to be a socialist.

 

Most of his actual appointments or decisions will not matter all that much, honestly. The crisis-management oriented economic team likely would've been assembled more or less the same under McCain. The things that will matter will have to do with the war, primarily, if he chooses to address it, and he might not, and his foreign policy in general will be something to keep an eye on, what with Russia newly ornery and prone to swinging its **** around. The biggest and most important thing Obama will do will be retaining the current ideological makeup of the Supreme Court for another decade or two. That in itself was worth the election falling to him.

Edited November 26, 2008 by Pop

[Humodour]

I don't think anybody remotely informed about the guy should have seriously considered Obama to be a liberal. It's a testament to how far rightward the political dialogue has shifted in this country that Obama, who's assembling a center-right cabinet and is proving to be Clinton 3, was feared by many a mouth breather to be a socialist.

 

But he's going to use taxpayer money to build roads and upgrade switching substations. He's clearly a socialist! Are you a communist sympathiser?

 

What I like about Obama is that when it comes to implementation, he's pragmatic and accommodating, but in terms of the big picture, what guides him, he's fairly progressive.

 

Most of his actual appointments or decisions will not matter all that much, honestly.

 

This sounds too much like the typical claim about how the President is 'powerless' or "the President doesn't actually make decisions". I think after 8 years of Bush we've seen, for better or worse, how wrong that sentiment is.

 

The crisis-management oriented economic team likely would've been assembled more or less the same under McCain. The things that will matter will have to do with the war, primarily, if he chooses to address it, and he might not, and his foreign policy in general will be something to keep an eye on, what with Russia newly ornery and prone to swinging its **** around. The biggest and most important thing Obama will do will be retaining the current ideological makeup of the Supreme Court for another decade or two. That in itself was worth the election falling to him.

 

Amen. With potentially 3 SC judges retiring I shudder to think how that would of played out under a Republican administration.

 

But besides maintaining (and in many places re-instituting) the apolitical nature of the judicial system, the most promising aspect of Obama's tenure will be science and technology infrastructure. For example, he's pretty much got an energy reform mandate, but this financial crisis actually gives him the span to implement it as part of infrastructure stimulus.

 

Actually, another good thing about the financial crisis is that it significantly softens up Russia and Iran, giving Obama a far larger array of (importantly more peaceful) foreign policy options than was available just 3 months ago.

[Enoch]

Most of his actual appointments or decisions will not matter all that much, honestly.

As someone who scrutinizes federal agencies for a living, I don't entirely agree. Yeah, a lot of the bureaucracies do essentially run themselves, with the political appointees as window-dressing on the civil servants making the real decisions. But direction from the top can do a lot of good, particularly on internal management issues, where the career civil servants have little incentive to make waves.

 

One of the most frustrating things about the Bush administration has been the inflated hack-to-manager ratio in political appointees. Every administration has some dead weight-- party hacks with no skill or drive worth mentioning picking up a Deputy Assistant Secretary position or the like. In the Bush years, though, it has been extreme. Agencies that weren't considered important for the administration's ideological goals were often treated as afterthought and staffed with second-rate talent. (The most troubling example being the way in which the Bushies encouraged the Inspectors General they appointed to work collaboratively with their agencies and avoid publicly embarrassing them.) Some competent, aggressive managers running the federal agencies, focused on fixing big issues like contract management, federal human capital, IT stuff, and budgets could really help to improve the overall operation of the government.

Edited November 27, 2008 by Enoch

[Wrath of Dagon]

But besides maintaining (and in many places re-instituting) the apolitical nature of the judicial system,

ROFL, Obama pretty much said he doesn't care what the constitution says, he wants judges to make it up as they go along, based on their ideology, which is the prevailing liberal view btw.

 

Obama may seem like a centrist now, before he has power, and indeed his appointments so far have been quite reasonable. But there are several laws the Democrats will pass if they can which will do severe, long term, and probably irreversible damage to the US economy, as I mentioned before.

[Pop]

Uh, Obama is a constitutional lawyer by trade. You don't get degrees in **** you don't care about.

 

One of the most frustrating things about the Bush administration has been the inflated hack-to-manager ratio in political appointees. Every administration has some dead weight-- party hacks with no skill or drive worth mentioning picking up a Deputy Assistant Secretary position or the like. In the Bush years, though, it has been extreme. Agencies that weren't considered important for the administration's ideological goals were often treated as afterthought and staffed with second-rate talent. (The most troubling example being the way in which the Bushies encouraged the Inspectors General they appointed to work collaboratively with their agencies and avoid publicly embarrassing them.) Some competent, aggressive managers running the federal agencies, focused on fixing big issues like contract management, federal human capital, IT stuff, and budgets could really help to improve the overall operation of the government.

Of course, and thus far this cabinet seems to be more or less a technocracy, which is good. I would've pegged Clinton more as HHS or education, but I'm sure she'll surprise me as Sec of State.

Edited November 27, 2008 by Pop

[Humodour]

But besides maintaining (and in many places re-instituting) the apolitical nature of the judicial system,

ROFL, Obama pretty much said he doesn't care what the constitution says, he wants judges to make it up as they go along, based on their ideology, which is the prevailing liberal view btw.

 

Dear god you're an uninformed hack.

 

Obama may seem like a centrist now, before he has power, and indeed his appointments so far have been quite reasonable. But there are several laws the Democrats will pass if they can which will do severe, long term, and probably irreversible damage to the US economy, as I mentioned before.

 

I see. And I imagine that on inauguration day, the sky will split apart and fire will rain down from the heavens, as well?

[Guard Dog]

Dear god you're an uninformed hack.

 

Said the teenager from Australia. God how I love it when kids from other countries tell me what America and it's political process is like. As it happens Obama has made some assertions on the role of the judiciary in his speeches and books that should scare the living hell out of any semi-intelligent freedom loving American.

[Walsingham]

This is getting personal, gentlemen...