There have been complaints that “we” spend too much time talking about Republican negatives, and not enough supporting Democratic positives. So, here’s D.R. Tucker, at the Washington Monthly, “Je Suis Barack“:
… This November marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of Reagan’s victory over President Jimmy Carter. For the past thirty-five years, Carter’s legacy has been relentlessly vilified by the right, with insufficient defense from the left. Sometimes, it seems as though progressives are ashamed of Carter—a man whose foresight on energy was remarkable, a man whose commitment to peace was unshakable.
Progressives cannot allow Barack Obama’s legacy to be relentlessly trashed the way Carter’s legacy was. Quite frankly, we need a Barack Obama Legacy Project, one that will recognize, today, tomorrow and forever, his true significance to America and the world.With two years remaining in his term, a compelling case can be made that Barack Obama is one of the greatest presidents of all-time. Look at the track record: an economy resurrected, Osama bin Laden brought to ultimate justice, the Iraq War ended, millions of Americans finally accessing health care, dramatic advances in equal treatment for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans, two brilliant Supreme Court appointees, sweeping economic reform, and an energy policy that, while imperfect, nevertheless takes the climate crisis seriously…
Generations from now, children should read about the courage and conscience of Barack Obama, his passionate love for this country, his commitment to the hurting and the hungry and the hopeless. Generations from now, Obama’s name should grace public schools and federal buildings. Generations from now, his name should be honored in the same way we honor the names of Washington and Lincoln and Roosevelt and Kennedy…
Inspirational videos and more at the link.
raven
And no RIP Ernie Banks thread?
Anne Laurie
@raven: Considering how you feel about my football posts, do you really want me trying to eulogize a baseball announcer?
Napoleon
The City of Chicago needs to rename O’hare to be Obama Airport right at the end of his term.
rikyrah
I will sign up to defend the President.
Napoleon
@Anne Laurie:
He was a player
rikyrah
@Napoleon:
That would be too right for words.
rikyrah
@Anne Laurie:
He was Mr. Cub.
debbie
I think Obama will happily stand up for himself after he’s left office. It will be interesting to see the Right’s reaction to him actually pushing back.
different-church-lady
Allow it? Hell, seems like half the progressives in Left-Blogistan want to lead it.
Corner Stone
No, we really don’t. There’s no need to match the reflexive hagiography of the cult/rightwingers.
Jimmy Carter has been History’s Greatest Monster for 30+ years. I’m sure President Obama can shoulder the load.
Ayn Randy
That would be great, but it’s only going to happen if we end 2016 in good shape. Fairly or not, we only judge presidents based on what the climate was like when they left office. Obama has been a transformative president. Maybe not to the extent the emoprogs would like, but this country has made huge strides socially in the past six years. There’s still work to be done on the economy, but as long as we have a gerrymandered Congress, we’re stuck.
Ayn Randy
@Corner Stone:
Who says we need to make Obama a cult figure? It’s more about defending the accomplishments this country made while he was the president than making it about worship.
Davis X. Machina
@different-church-lady: I mean, did anyone listen to the state of the union address?
Not a single call on us to expropriate the expropriators.
No announcement about the seizure of the commanding heights of the economy in the name of the workers.
No declaration that property is theft.
I mean, when you elect a University of Chicago law professor, you’re entitled to a reasonable expectation of those things, right?
Oh, and he didn’t mention the public option so much as once.
another Holocene human
Of course we should push back on Republican lies but this guy sounds like he wants to deity BHO. I can think of few endeavors more counter-productive for democrats.
The truth that needs to be owned here is that Clinton and Obama are and were much better politicians and more effective presidents than Carter. And Dems mostly don’t defend his legacy because they tend to dislike him or feel he was a disappointment.
Betty Cracker
Obama will stand damn tall in history without our help.
Corner Stone
@Davis X. Machina: He didn’t even mention the public option either, for dog’s sake.
Right? I mean, amirite?
Ayn Randy
@another Holocene human:
Yeah, and he’s a punching bag the Republicans will gladly hang around the neck of a Democratic candidate, which is what Democrats should try to avoid Obama becoming. Anti-Obama hate will always run strong in blood red parts of the country, but there are other more moderate parts where Democrats need to build up a teflon defense against anti-Obama sentiment.
Davis X. Machina
@Ayn Randy: What accomplishments?
He’s had six years.
By now this country should look like Denmark, but with nuclear weapons…. maybe.
Corner Stone
@Ayn Randy: Ummm, did you not see this part?
Frankensteinbeck
I would just like Obama to get some credit for the things he’s done. How many people even know there’s been a huge technological leap in renewable energy because he packed the stimulus and every bill he could manage since with green energy money?
Tree With Water
That paean sounds like an audition for a job interview at the [eventual] Obama presidential library.
Lest we forget, Obama’s beau ideal of an American president remains Ronald Reagan (weirdly similar to Richard Nixon having taught Bill Clinton “what it means to be an American”- according to Bill Clinton, anyway). And if The Simpson’s have taught me one thing, it’s that Jimmy Carter IS history’s greatest monster, and there’s no two ways around it.
Corner Stone
@Ayn Randy:
Obama is black. He’s going to be hung round the necks of Democrats for at least the next ten years. Then demographic changes may actually get him his due.
Elie
Obama will be fine but it is important for Democrats to trumpet his and our accomplishments — against a strong head wind…
Obama will be young when he leaves office with plenty of brain power. Could see him on the Supreme Court, except he might find it boring… I look for trail blazing stuff, lighting up the stratosphere from Michelle…. She was taking all this in and she will be a big factor…
Cannot wait — wonderful!
Corner Stone
@Frankensteinbeck:
Ghost of President Stuck, is that you?
Ayn Randy
@Corner Stone:
…so? Our country promotes Lincoln and as long as lunatics stay out of the way, we always will. Are we using his legacy to promote better policy or deifying him? I’m going with the former.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tree With Water:
He said he wanted to change the direction of our government with the same power Reagan did. I think that would be a good idea, too.
different-church-lady
@Davis X. Machina: How many wars has he started at this point — five? Six? Two dozen? We’ll never know because THEY’RE ALL BEING CONDUCTED IN SECRET!!!
Ayn Randy
@Corner Stone:
Like I said, there are parts of the country where he’s going to be History’s Greatest Monster for generations to come. The Paulites still haven’t forgiven Lincoln and it’s been 150 years.
I know from the experience of being a Republican that using Bill Clinton’s name as an attack will backfire. We used to mention Carter instead. I don’t want to see Democrats in swing-ish districts be called “Obama Democrats” as a pejorative. The only way I see this being avoided is if Democrats strongly defend his record. No, not everyone will be convinced, but it would be very bad for the party to ignore his legacy.
gogol's wife
@rikyrah:
Me too!
danielx
All of which Republicans are salivating to eradicate.
Arclite
@Frankensteinbeck:
Really? I’d like to read up on that. Links?
What Kind of Prescription Medication Are You Taking
Has anyone checked the 2014 midterms?
2010?
And, some of you believe that not only Democrats, but the entire country, except for the worst lunatics will Say Nice Things?
Good Luck.
Should it happen?
Yes.
Will it happen? Have any of you been paying attention?
For Fun: What is the single biggest grossing movie in Hollywood this month?
Answer: Not Selma.
Cervantes
Tell that to, among others, the East Timorese.
scav
I could really do without an Obama on Rushmore sort of silliness. Keep rolling the rock foreward, not carve it into idols and sit around admiringly.
Corner Stone
@What Kind of Prescription Medication Are You Taking:
Isn’t it one of the Sex in the City franchise?
Pogonip
Retrieverman.net has some beautiful winter pictures up, with his dog in most of them. Also, traffic to his wildlife cam is picking up!
Tree With Water
@Frankensteinbeck: That take is way too generous. When Obama cited Reagan, it was to laud his political philosophy. If it were otherwise- as you would have it- he could more easily have cited FDR as a democrat that changed the direction of the country in the interests of the party’s rank and file.
Southern Beale
I once got in an argument with a person calling from the DSCC or DNC (can’t remember which) for a donation (or more accurately their telemarketer). I wasn’t going to donate and of course you tell them that and they start arguing with you and somehow “who was your favorite president” came up, something like that, and I said Jimmy Carter. And the guy actually said, “Oh my God Jimmy Carter was such a joke!” Like, you want me to give you money and this is what you say?
Jimmy Carter is a great man, I really believe it. As president and as a post-president. We are a better country because of him.
Southern Beale
@Corner Stone:
American Sniper, yes?
Not seeing it. Maybe when it comes to cable.
We saw “Whiplash” this afternoon. Highly recommend.
Pogonip
@Southern Beale: I always thought he was a smart man who should have been listened to more.
Mike in NC
@Corner Stone: Obama’s reputation will have improved considerably once the current crop of 70 and 80 something white bigots are six feet underground.
Anna Granfors
…um…not feelin’ it. Jimmy Carter was (IMHO) the last president we had who wasn’t an actor or a stooge, save Bush 1, oddly enough. With Obama, if you’re charitable, he was what he said he was–someone who wanted to bring the two sides together. And from day one, he should’ve realized that wasn’t going to happen, as GOPers made clear. As has been said too often, we wrote what we thought he was going to be on candidate Obama, with not inconsiderable help from Obama himself.
Obama embodied one of my favorite Steely Dan lyrics–”hot licks and rhetoric don’t count much for nothing”. The SOTU last week made that clear, but his actions over the last six years don’t paint a picture of a man who was truly fighting for change. Yeah, yeah, the ACA. Better than nothing, but Big Pharma/insurance companies (despite their best fainting couch affectations) like it just fine. And one could go on pointing at broken campaign promises and awful military actions ad nauseam, but that’d be tiresome.
We really don’t have a democracy; we have a corporatocracy/oligopoly. It’s all about Wall Street. Whoever holds the office doesn’t really make much difference. A GOP president’s going to look more effective simply because their interests align more closely with those in the .01%.
I wish Elizabeth Warren would run, but she clearly doesn’t want to. And who can blame her? It’d be suicide.
Goblue72
@Frankensteinbeck: Very few. But then again, emo-libs are known for being circular firing squad bed wetting masochists.
I want BHO’s face on Mt Rushmore.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tree With Water:
Nope, he was specifically talking about the power Reagan had to reshape the country’s politics, not Reagan’s goals. I looked up and found six times he mentioned Reagan’s policies, but they were all to shame Republicans because Reagan supported something liberal (like rich people paying more taxes) at some point in his career.
Obama is not ideologically aligned with Reagan. Stop spreading that ridiculous narrative.
Keith G
Something is off here. It shouldn’t be about the accomplishments of a former (or soon to be former) chief executive. It should be about what narrative a political party is constructing now and projecting into the future. It’s about what a political party and its supporters can do to make tomorrow better.
MomSense
@Frankensteinbeck:
Obama also said that Reagan’s politics changed the trajectory of American politics but that he didn’t agree with him and was in fact organizing in opposition to them. He also said he was doing this while Hillary was serving on the board at Walmart. I got the feelng he was yanking Bill’s chain as much as anything and it worked.
Groucho48
It’s not that we need to defend Obama’s legacy so much. It’s that we can’t let the right define his Presidency as a failure because he was such a far left whackadoodle. That will just encourage future Dem candidates to run away from liberal policies.
I regularly post, on another forum, that Obama has been the best and one of the most successful Presidents of my lifetime. This, of course, is met with howls of laughter from the right wingers. But, when I challenge them to name who was better and why, they generally don’t get very far before they give up and go back to the usual debating games the right loves to use.
I do think it is important to do this against the incessant drum beat of the right wing noise machine. If we don’t, it will be conventional wisdom, in a few years, that Obama was as bad a President as Carter. And, Carter was a decent President. He had great ideas but wan’t very good at working with others to get those ideas into law.
Omnes Omnibus
@Frankensteinbeck: @MomSense: Reagan cited FDR in the same way.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: This
The President was elected to two terms and his approval rating has been going up.
Betty Cracker
@Tree With Water: Christ on a Triscuit! That was a stupid line of bullshit back when the PUMAs were peddling it in 08. I can’t believe it’s still a thing.
ruemara
Interesting theory. I wonder who’ll do that?
@Tree With Water: That’s such a dumb ass interpretation of what he said. Reagan changed how people looked at the government. He redefined government as a universal evil, lacking worth and an obstacle to individual progress. He’s also a hell of a lot more current than FDR. It took me less than 3 minutes after reading the outraged report the first time on FDL, finding the full quote in context, reading it and understanding exactly what he meant. The fact that anyone could still be using it today boggles the mind.
JPL
This last election was unusual in the sense that ISIS and Ebola was on the news 24/7. Of course the repubs will invent another crisis for the Presidential election, so that’s what we have to prepare for.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
I had forgotten about that until you brought it up. I did spend the Reagan years with a “Jane Wyman was right” pin on my backpack. Most people had no idea who she was except the real Reagan haters. Great way to identify my tribe.
Corner Stone
@Southern Beale: Possibly. But it might just as well have been a My Little Pony sequel.
Same same.
Corner Stone
@ruemara: Probably because you are over invested.
MD Rackham
@Davis X. Machina:
I would have settled for just one “Kill Whitey”.
Omnes Omnibus
@MD Rackham:
According to Twitchy, he said that 18 times during the SotU address.*
*Not intended to be a factually accurate statement.
Baud
I propose the Barack Obama Reagan Washington National Airport.
Also, the best way to honor Obama’s accomplishments is to elect another Democratic president who we can instantly criticize as not being ad good as Obama.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: “Don’t mourn, organize!”
Corner Stone
@MD Rackham: DMX is more than a kind of a douchebag.
IMO, his wise entreaties should safely retreat to the safe ensconces of LGM. For that is where his quick wit is most prized.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Even the Republicans eventually gave up on Solyndra.
Citizen_X
It’s a pretty fucking simple principle, people:
Work the refs. Damn straight the other side will.
Don’t nobody here know how to play this game?
Pogonip
I don’t think Obama’s the best president ever, but I think he’s done reasonably well for a center-rightist, and he’s certainly better than his nutty-right opposition would have been. McCain in particular spooked me. He’s got PTSD written all over him. I sympathize–most of us would be as bad off as he is, if not worse, after what he went through–but he was way too unstable to have his finger on the button. ( Many people were worried about Palin’s finger–I wasn’t. Being too dumb to have her own opinion, she’d have gone along with whatever she was told, most likely by the Joint Chiefs.)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tree With Water: There’s this new thing that’s called “The Internet” that tells me you’re wrong. NY Times:
I don’t see much “lauding” of Reagan’s political philosophy. You need to read, and remember, more carefully.
Cheers,
Scott.
different-church-lady
@Corner Stone: Probably because you are over invested.
Elie
@Keith G:
I agree. This is about what the Democrats/progressives accomplished and prioritize going forward… Great to give O credit for his leadership –but he is young and we have time to talk about HIM. More important to grab a hold of what we truly want and have delivered for this country as progressives — again, against a very strong head wind…
Elie
@Baud:
LOL — THIS
ruemara
@Corner Stone: I can follow the lead of yourself, because responding to that and pretty much anyone else who isn’t scoffing at the idea shows how uninvested you are.
Another Holocene Human
@Davis X. Machina: Um, I always associated University of Chicago with disaster capitalism. To say the least.
Another Holocene Human
@Ayn Randy:
Truer words and all that. I find myself much in agreement with Corner Stone’s analysis. Black media online is like a window of the future. 10 years from now … well, thankfully some of the gray heads will be dead but damn some heads will asplode and I’m loving it.
Another Holocene Human
@What Kind of Prescription Medication Are You Taking: UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH!
Another Holocene Human
@scav:
Exactly!! This is why I said deifying the man is counterproductive. He was trying to TEACH us what WE should do for ourselves!!!!
Damn I feel like an ass, that’s exactly what they said about Jesus and look how that turned out.
mainmati
@Cervantes: Oh c’mon. The Portuguese Empire: Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe and East Timor collapsed simultaneously in 1974 (i.e. “liberated” without any support whatsoever from impoverished Portugal). Suharto invaded East Timor with the support of that supreme A**hole, Kissinger. By the time Carter became President, it was all a fait accompli. It was Clinton that put pressure on Suharto to let the referendum go forward for independence in 1999.
Corner Stone
@ruemara: Hmmm. You do speak English, right?
Another Holocene Human
@Groucho48:
That’s because righties are full of piss and vinegar, not ideas or coherent thoughts. At least the lefties have reasons to hate Obama even if they’re stupid reasons. The right hates him because they hate him.
Obama has accomplished a fuck-ton, he outdid Clinton. Sorry, wasn’t there for Carter but he wasn’t reelected and his fiscal policy plunged the country into a horrible recession that strengthened the hand of the union busters, so great accomplishment there, sparky. Obama’s been transformative like JFK, people at the time thought JFK and RFK didn’t do enough on civil rights (they had to be forced into whereas I think with Holder he honestly has been cleaning up an EPIC, DELIBERATE mess that Bush II and his shitty AGs left in Justice). Obama could be compared to FDR. He could run a third time and win. Fuck the haters. And pardon my French but the Republicans haven’t had a good president in the 20th century, oh yeah, including Eisenhower (coward), although unlike the rest of the lot he was relatively honest, the rest were warmongers, cock-ups, and paranoid shitheads. Fuck defending Bush I, I’m not going to pretend I don’t know about all the shit he did as Veep.
LWA (Liberal With Attitude)
I think its also critical that we go on the offensive, and begin pushing apart the boundaries of the conversation.
Like I have been mentioning with guns, and now with progressive taxation, when we stop just reflexively accepting the rightwing framing, we can advance the goals.
Why a right to own a deadly weapon? Force them to explain and settle for, if not the complete abolition of the 2nd Amendment, tough registration and tracking.
Why an unlimited right to amass wealth? Force them to justify why wealth in excess of some norm is legitimate. Settle for, if not confiscation, progressive taxation.
When I read the history of the Progressives, of the early unionists, the suffragettes, and the Catholic Social Teaching during that era, I am stunned at how casually and cheerfully they all embraced sockulism, the real thing, without even a shred of the defeatism and flinching that we see today.
JPL
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Thanks for posting that.
Tehanu
@Southern Beale:
Thanks for saying that, you just beat me to it. Yes, if there’s going to be any hagiographing, it ought to start with Carter — not that I disagree with this guy Tucker about Obama’s record, or with scav and various other commenters here about the value of hagiography (zero) versus actually defending and promoting the ideas rather than the men (100%).
mai naem mobile
Barack Obama will do just fine thankyouverymuch. I don’t see him sitting back and developing a Jimmy Carter like reputation. He’s too media savvy for that. Also, him being the first black president almost immunizes him against a truly negative reputation even if he wasn’t competent which he is. I would like to wind up the RWNJ and have anything named after him called the Barack Hussein Obama xxxx. It’ll be nice to see just his name turn them into the conspiracy sputtering nutjobs that they are.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud:
The only reason I am not eagerly awaiting this moment is that Barack Obama will not be president any more and the thought gives me a sad.
mai naem mobile
@Tehanu: if this country had listened to Carter regarding energy, there’s a pretty good possibility we wouldnt have been in the Iraq or Afghan wars and possibly the first gulf war. Our economy would have better green energy jobs already and our environment would be in better shape.
Trentrunner
Defending Obama’s legacy and shaping his image after he’s out IS an excellent way to further Democratic goals:
Just look how “Reagan” has become a positive one-word touchstone for whatever right-wing goal some lesser Republican wants. They glom onto the golden name and bandy it like a magic wand.
We need to have ours, and I’d much rather have it be “Obama” than “Clinton.”
Pogonip
@LWA (Liberal With Attitude): They were orthodox ( and probably some were Orthodox) Christoans, following the dictates of our faith. Nutty-fundamentalist Christians had no political power until the 1980’s.
Tree With Water
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I still read him as lauding Reagan’s political philosophy. I don’t understand at all what political zeitgeist it is that you have Obama articulating- it’s more in keeping with a critique of victorious presidential electioneering, rather than address the point of the exercise, which is the job of governance.
“I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom”. Are you kidding me? Obama loves Reagan. Deal with it.
Pogonip
We can has topic about late winter and the garden planning that goes with same, please?
schrodinger's cat
Was it Carter or Reagan’s administration that thought it would be a great idea to supply Afghan Mujahedin weapons?
Another Holocene Human
@mai naem mobile: Oh bull fucking shit. People luuuuuurve Clinton and he did all kinds of crapola that BHO would never get away with in a million years. This is more attempting to say that Blacks, minorities, have some sort of special affirmative action and you know, bullpucky. Someone in an ethnic community may get additional support within that community if he/she did a lot for that community and they’ll assume any ‘persecution’ (prosecution) is just because of anti-our-community-ism but this is so far, far afield from any discussion of Barack Obama. No, BHO is not getting a “black pass” from the white majority, which are still, huh, the majority, and still dominate cultural institutions and media.
Does Sharpton get a black pass? How about Jesse Jackson? What about Michael Jackson?
No, I think a previous generation had a sharper take on the way it really goes down. In the 1970s Star Trek cartoon, we’re treated to a flashback of the original halfrican, Mr. Spock, as a little boy, being lectured by his overprotective father. For the other boys to fail, Sarek says, is no dishonor. But if you fail there are those who will call you a failure all your life.
Jackie Robinson didn’t happen into MLB. He was chosen. Because the club knew how crucial it was to choose the right man. He would face unbelievable hazing. And if he wasn’t a good player, wasn’t a good sport, and didn’t have a squeaky clean personal life, he might be the last Black player in the MLB for a long time.
Obama broke open a door and it’s going to stay open because he’s fucking good at what he does. I never believe a person is ‘the only one’ but he part of an elite frigging crew, okay? You can’t just take any old village idiot and make them preznint, bad shit happens. And you can’t have the first person to breach a barrier be a joke.
Was Margaret Thatcher a joke? No, damn her to 7 hells, she wasn’t. QED.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tree With Water: Did you read all of the words in the order that they were printed?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Is this thread too dead to tell you your’e a fucking moron?
Another Holocene Human
@Pogonip: Holy rollers didn’t vote. Politics was dirty. The Moral Majority organized them politically and even though I think that particular front folded, the GOP understood how important they were. They worked the churches so hard they broke them and drove a bunch of people out of the movement because they were disgusted by the union of politics and religion.
I think there are some danger signs in Black church with the complete tie-in to politicians. It’s one thing to do souls to the polls. It’s totally different to have someone in a primary race give Pastor a big donation and be brought to the front of the church to greet the congregation on Sunday morning. That’s bullshit and you gotta wonder how long people are going to put up with that.
eta: I’m not a church goer but I do follow religious issues online
JPL
@efgoldman: I saw that on weather.com. Never trust mild winters.
Another Holocene Human
@Trentrunner:
I think we gain a lot more by learning from his amazing campaign organization and also, if we can, learn from his negotiating skills. It’s easy to complain of his missteps. It’s a lot harder to successfully pull off what he has done right. He is a master of political judo.
Look, defending O’s legacy is important, after all he advanced so many things we believe in. The best defense of that legacy is to keep Dems in power so the GOP doesn’t roll it back! Right?
I’d rather win the election than win an online argument!
Another Holocene Human
@mai naem mobile: Reagan was listening. That’s why he took those solar panels down and cancelled all the funding for alternative energy.
Those *#$@&#@($^#ers were exactly who we thought they were.
opiejeanne
@Baud: Did they? A comment about Solyndra from my dad’s stockbroker was just a wee part of my search for a new one.
AxelFoley
@rikyrah:
As will I.
AxelFoley
@different-church-lady:
Sad, ain’t it?
Baud
@opiejeanne:
When was that? I haven’t heard anything for a while now.
AxelFoley
@Corner Stone:
Exhibit A
Knew this fuckwad wouldn’t let me down.
mai naem mobile
@Another Holocene Human: i guess I didn’t express myself properly. My primary point is that being the first black president is such a big deal that its going to overshadow.any negatives and unless hes a disaster to the degree of Dubbya or Hoover, his primary claim to fame would be first black president.
mainmati
@Another Holocene Human: Chicago’s Economic School is part of the “freshwater” school of mainly near Great Lakes university economists that espouse rational expectations markets philosophies and similar anti-government intervention policies. While it is complicated, “freshwater economists” tend not to like government intervention and are pro market solutions. Needless to say, this has little to do with the U of Chicago Law School or Obama for that matter.
Mike in NC
@Trentrunner: Those idiotic reverse mortgage commercials always invoke the sacred name of Ronald Reagan, hero to conservative elderly white Real Americans everywhere.
Mike in NC
@schrodinger’s cat: Both
Corner Stone
@AxelFoley: Yep. One Note Troll. You fulfilled your spot.
Obama can and will survive the over sensitive douchebag hyper-supporters such as yourself.
No need to deify him, friend.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Tree With Water: Nobody’s kidding, unless it’s you.
Maybe you weren’t there. Reagan changed things. He had lots of new ideas. Those ideas did challenge conventional wisdom.
Things like “cutting taxes will balance the budget”, and that “ketchup is a vegetable”, and that “trees cause air pollution”, and that the Attorney General should write a federal report on pornography, and that WWII battleships have a place in a modern navy, and that it was possible to fight a “protracted nuclear war”, and …
I challenge you to find in that quote from Obama where he says that Reagan had “good” ideas…
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cervantes
@mainmati:
Arguable, more or less.
What is this “it”?
By my estimate, and most other estimates, roughly 30% of the East Timorese population — 200,000 of 700,000 people — were slaughtered in the period 1975-1978. This killing did not begin with Carter’s presidency, I agree, but it did not end when he was inaugurated, either. In fact, the worst of the atrocities (by time rate of killing) occurred in 1977-1978 while the Carter Administration was helping to arm the Indonesian military.
There are other reasons to condemn the Carter Administration for what happened in East Timor — US-sponsored shenanigans at the UN, for example — but, by my lights, what’s outlined above is enough to be going on with.
PS: Is that “playing dead” merely literal or is there something more to it?
Corner Stone
@AxelFoley: Thanks for this, ONT.
Pogonip
@efgoldman: That’s when you really need to get out the seed catalogs and graph paper and get busy planning so you don’t look out the window!
JPL
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: As Ernie Banks said “You can’t convince a fool against his will.”
Raven should be happy now.
Mandalay
@mainmati:
Exactly so. And not only with the support of Kissinger, but with the explicit support of President Ford, and also the Australian government. Ford’s Administration were queasy about what alliances a weak but independent East Timor might form, and were hardly in the mood for another excellent adventure in south east Asia.
Trying to lay the blame for the situation in East Timor at Carter’s feet shows an ignorance of history.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@JPL:
:-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Cervantes
@Tree With Water:
He wasn’t exactly praising Reagan’s political philosophy. He said the Republican approach seemed new at the time, and people wanted something new so they tried it — but it failed (you get this sense in “the Republican approach, I think, has played itself out” and again later in “Well, we’ve done that. We’ve tried it.”)
If you’re saying that it was a bad idea for Obama to credit the Republicans via the phrase “the party of ideas,” I agree. That phrase is too laudatory. If the Republicans have been “the party of ideas,” it is only in the same sense that Jeffrey Dahmer was a paragon of haute cuisine.
By the way, in that quotation, I also disagree with something Obama said about the Clinton era. Those deficits in the late ’80s and early ’90s really were becoming ridiculously unmanageable. Clinton did something about it in ’93 and it cost him (and us) a Democratic Congress — so to say that the trajectory of the country was unchanged, well, I don’t think that’s exactly correct. (Clinton made other mistakes, of course.)
Cervantes
@Mandalay:
Luckily, no one here said it was all Carter’s fault, and to imagine otherwise shows an ignorance of how basic English works.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: SQUIRREL!
Anonne
Obama, like most politicians, is a mixed bag. You have progress on some things, but you have continuations of some of the worst abuses of the Bush Administration. I don’t think he needs any help in defending his legacy, it will speak for itself.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anonne: Did he move us backwards on anything?
jibeaux
Unless the economy tanks badly in the next couple of years, he won’t need any rehabilitating to stay unCartered. He may not get all the credit he deserves, which I’m happy to help with, but there’s just a lot more concrete accomplishments to point to with Obama.
gwangung
@Another Holocene Human: This seems to be wholly ignorant of the place black churches have ALWAYS had within Democratic politics and the civil rights movement.
Being skeptical of black churches is to be skeptical of the African American vote.
mainmati
@Cervantes: I agree with you. I lived and worked in Indonesia for more than 15 years, including the 1980s-2000s. Where I disagree is that the Carter (or for that matter Reagan) administrations were actively supporting the suppression of East Timor. East Timor is a tiny place; it played no significant role in US foreign policy after the Kissinger period until the Clinton Administration. USAID supported its coffee economy and basic services during the Suharto Era but there was little leverage beyond that (the other half of Timor is still part of Indonesia). I am happy that Timor Leste is independent but its history is complicated and involves Australia as much as the USA.
As for the nym, it was supposed to be mainmata, which means “flirting” (eye play) but got messed up in the original registration. And evidently can’t be changed on this blog.
cckids
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Yep. Also, too: if we ignore AIDS long enough, it will kill off all the gays then go away. Fucker is roasting in hell for that alone, if there is a god.
Alexis Marlons
Great post! Thanks for sharing your article about A Rallying Cry for Democrats. I enjoyed reading it. I will definitely share this to my friends.
mak
@Tree With Water: If you are “still read[ing] him as lauding Reagan’s political philosophy,” then you cannot read.
JoeShabadoo
This misses out on one of the biggest reasons Carter was vilified, he was a loser. He lost his second term. No one wants to stand up for someone who the people just dropped overwhelmingly.
Obama won’t have this problem, “I should know, I won both of them.”
Zinsky
While I agree people on the left have not defended Jimmy Carter as he deserved and that Obama deserves a lot of credit (particularly in rescuing an economy on the brink of collapse), Democrats should not engage in hero worship. One thing the right does so much better than us is to push forward ideas relentlessly. Democrats invest all of our mojo in one person (John Edwards, Hillary, Obama, now Elizabeth Warren), thinking that if that person just gets elected, everything will be sunny and rosy. That isn’t how it works, folks! We should be relentlessly pushing liberal ideas – universal single-payer health insurance, green energy, decentralization of money and banking, defunding the military, equal rights for all) and not be so focused on who the vessel of those ideas is!
Cervantes
@mainmati:
OK, but here’s the crux of what I said above:
If you agree with this, how can you exonerate Carter? Those weapons he — we — supplied weren’t just sitting on a shelf.
You continue:
East Timor is a tiny place, indeed, but there is oil in them thar seabeds.
But even without broadening the discussion, I count the providing of weapons alone as active support for the Indonesians. The East Timorese did not experience our weapons as benign neglect.
I agree.
Having to play dead when what you really wanted was to flirt?
Ouch!
Patricia Kayden
Thank you, Mr Tucker!!! I’m furious that so many Dems can’t rally behind and support our President. Will be interesting to see if they’ll have Hilary Clinton’s back.
Emily68
@Napoleon The City of Chicago needs to rename O’hare to be Obama Airport right at the end of his term. : No. They–maybe not the city of Chicago, but who ever is in charge of such things–should rename Reagan Airport after Obama.
tobie
On a related note, about killing your own, what the heck is going on with Leon Panetta. His book was bad enough, published just in time for the November elections and to fan the hysteria about ISIS, Ebola, etc. But now he’s back on the airwaves, trash-talking the administration he worked for. Fine, he doesn’t respect Obama, but how in God’s name does he believe that this will help the Clintons, to whom he is slavishly devoted? Weird.
Cervantes
@Emily68:
Over the objection of all the relevant local interests and then some, a Republican Congress, and Bill Clinton, decided to rename the airport as a birthday present to Ronald Reagan — who was turning 87 and was quite unable to understand any of the proceedings.
samiam
There should be more Reagan bashing. He was a mediocre president at best with some major screw ups. There should be more talk about Iran/Contra for example. If Carter did that it would be all we ever hear about non-stop. He was fortunate enough to have a lot of big changes in the world during his time. Like the Berlin wall. He was also given majorities in all 3 houses of gov’t. I believef Also he got cooperation from Democrats.
Chris
Unless something catastrophic happens before January 2017, I wouldn’t be overly concerned.
Carter’s legacy is relentlessly trashed because he had a presidency that lent itself to that kind of trashing. The economy was bad and the spectacle of the hostage crisis would’ve sunk any presidency. I think a lot of it was just bad luck and bad timing, and I doubt if any other president would’ve done better, but it’s true nonetheless. Under Obama, on the other hand, the economy’s gotten better, not worse, we’ve pulled out of two unpopular wars, and there’s no equivalent to the hostage crisis PR disaster.
Don’t overestimate the wingnut media machine. Remember how much effort they put into sinking Clinton’s presidency? If it was up to them, Clinton would be just as much of a byword for disaster and incompetence as Carter is. But he’s not. Because people remember the Clinton years, and as much as the 27% want to convince us that it was a dark age, the rest of us know it’s just piss and wind. They’re never going to be able to salvage George W. Bush’s legacy either – they’ve tried calling this “the Obama recession” and occasionally cute pictures of Bush that read “miss me yet?” and it’s not taking.
Turgidson
@Tree With Water:
I’m sure others got to this already, but no. No it wasn’t.