Some figures in...
May. 14th, 2020 08:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnny9fingers... about Obamacare being good for people:
www.snopes.com/ap/2020/05/13/study-ties-obamacare-to-fewer-cancer-deaths-in-some-states/
Who would have thought it? How strange. Anyway, we will have the figures for Trump's first term soon. I'm sure they will be better, bigger, huger or whatever description Trump uses to show us all what a brilliant POTUS he is. The best ever. Dealing with the biggest problems better than anyone else.
Mitch McConnell told a couple of fibs about Obama not having prepared for a pandemic, or having a plan. Every single vanity-driven example of destruction of US capacity because Obama put it in place is now being shown up in this crisis. It's all coming back to bite him on the ass, as our American cousins say.
Who thinks that if Obama had been in charge the US would still have had quite as bad an outcome? (Mind you the Red states would just have ignored him anyway.)
In fact, given the polarisation of US opinion and politics, is there any leader who could have steered America through this crisis? Without a leader who can unite the US no-one is going to be able to get the US to co-operate with itself, never mind other nations.
The one thing I will say is that Americans do have three extant ex-presidents who seem to get on reasonably well on a personal basis; none of them were without sin, so to speak; though Obama probably has cleaner hands than Clinton or Bush depending on your viewpoint. And I bet they all care about what is happening to America; and though they can never have office again, they still wield influence in their parties.
America needs better than this. Both parties have to stop putting vain and stupid people in positions of power. We need able folk in charge, not fucking celebrities or personalities devoid of education or even good sense. Able strategists, tacticians, administrators and like-minded boffins were traditionally relegated to backrooms. So you get Nero in charge and the efficient chaps running around putting out fires. This is, to go all Malcolm (Tmesis) Tucker, completely-fucking-backwards. Put Nero in his playpen with appropriate toys, and fucking deal with the problem without recourse to his stupidity.
www.snopes.com/ap/2020/05/13/study-ties-obamacare-to-fewer-cancer-deaths-in-some-states/
Who would have thought it? How strange. Anyway, we will have the figures for Trump's first term soon. I'm sure they will be better, bigger, huger or whatever description Trump uses to show us all what a brilliant POTUS he is. The best ever. Dealing with the biggest problems better than anyone else.
Mitch McConnell told a couple of fibs about Obama not having prepared for a pandemic, or having a plan. Every single vanity-driven example of destruction of US capacity because Obama put it in place is now being shown up in this crisis. It's all coming back to bite him on the ass, as our American cousins say.
Who thinks that if Obama had been in charge the US would still have had quite as bad an outcome? (Mind you the Red states would just have ignored him anyway.)
In fact, given the polarisation of US opinion and politics, is there any leader who could have steered America through this crisis? Without a leader who can unite the US no-one is going to be able to get the US to co-operate with itself, never mind other nations.
The one thing I will say is that Americans do have three extant ex-presidents who seem to get on reasonably well on a personal basis; none of them were without sin, so to speak; though Obama probably has cleaner hands than Clinton or Bush depending on your viewpoint. And I bet they all care about what is happening to America; and though they can never have office again, they still wield influence in their parties.
America needs better than this. Both parties have to stop putting vain and stupid people in positions of power. We need able folk in charge, not fucking celebrities or personalities devoid of education or even good sense. Able strategists, tacticians, administrators and like-minded boffins were traditionally relegated to backrooms. So you get Nero in charge and the efficient chaps running around putting out fires. This is, to go all Malcolm (Tmesis) Tucker, completely-fucking-backwards. Put Nero in his playpen with appropriate toys, and fucking deal with the problem without recourse to his stupidity.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-14 11:03 am (UTC)I thought Obama was an awfully weak President although of course, he was the President I would most like to have had dinner and drinks with.
The last good President from an administrative point of view was Clinton.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-14 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-14 04:05 pm (UTC)To my mind, Obama had to deal with the 2008 Financial Crisis when he came into office and went about dealing with it in exactly the wrong way. (Much as I loathe Trump, the idea of making loan $$$$ available to small businesses through the SBA is a much smarter solution to a fiscal crisis than bailing out corrupt financial and insurance conglomerates simply because they were "too big to fail.")
Apart from that, for his first two years in office, he had a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. What's "sabotage" in that? He decided to blow his political capital on a really poorly put-together health care bill.
Rahm Emmanuel, his first chief of staff, tried to get Obama to change his mind. Do these things first! It will increase your political capital and then in your second term, go for health care.
Obama refused because he didn't have enough political experience to understand how those things work. He was coming from a stance of This is the right thing to do!, which may have been true but competence in a political sense is all about a deliberate battle strategy.
I'm not saying health care isn't important. In fact, in retrospect, in the AD (After Disease) universe we all live in these days, it may well be the most important thing.
But Obama's bill is very unwieldy. Super-complicated in unnecessary ways. (Yes, I actually read it! I'm a health care economist by training.)
Personally, Obama remains the X-President I like the best just because his personality is so charming, and we share so many of the same tastes and values.
But I would rank him as a mediocre President at best. He shot all his political capital on a badly designed health care bill.
In general, former Senators don't make particularly good Presidents because while they may have policy experience, they don't actually have adminstrative experience.
And the Presidency is actually an administrative job.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-15 06:44 am (UTC)Given that, we understand that all of the small businesses would have gone under anyway, on top of the big ones. Which is why the big, corrupt corporations were bailed out. Like all long-term parasites they have altered us to need them.
I agree he ought to have gone with a single payer, but too many of the House Dems were in actual thrall to the medical corporations, so they had to ensure their employer's cut.
Your politics is quite as crappy as ours, alas.