is obama a good person?

Not President. I mean as a person.

No.

What's your definition of a good person? He has children, and I'm sure he's a good father. A good husband? Who knows...

I'm sure he's a good family man and good to his friends. I'd have a beer with him if I weren't a teetotaller, but I think he's basically Bush 2.0 politically.

Like Bush, Obama's personal qualities are irrelevant to my criticism of his politics from my position as a Democratic Socialist.

Who knows.

@callous_adherent: in some areas, he's Bush 2.0, in many areas, he's 100x better.

He seems nice enough.

Ehhhhhhh........

@superguy1591: He's up to a century late with his healthcare policies and a good decade late with his support of the LGBT community. Which I guess is progress for America.

...and we're suppossed to know how...? None of us here has ever met the man personally - so saying he is or isn't is simply an opinion formed out of conjecture.

@callous_adherent: A century late? I'm not sure what you mean. And he's a politician who acted based on the polls, but he wasn't a decade late at all. DOMA only passed in 1996, Obama "evolved" on this issue in 2010.

Of course.

@eisenfauste: George Bush is the worst president America has ever had. History will put him down as the worst president America has ever had, even worst that Hoover.

Bush did NOTHING for America except set us back a decade. I'm not saying Obama belongs on the list with Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Teddy or Eisenhower, but he's on par with Bill Clinton.

He's easily a top 15 of 44. Bush is 44, Hoover 43.

Bismarck had universal healthcare for the Kaiserreich in the 1800s.

@superguy1591: Meh, there's 2 president's off the top of my head that were worse than bush.

@callous_adherent: But Obama wasn't the president of the United States in the 1800s.

@eisenfauste: This I gotta hear, name the two.

Pretty sure he's an all right guy.

Probaly but we will never know.

@superguy1591 said:

@callous_adherent: But Obama wasn't the president of the United States in the 1800s.

I'm saying he's behind the rest of the developed world.

God damn Vladmir Lenin legalized Homosexuality in the 1920s while America didn't regard Sodomy laws as unconstitutional until 2003.

Denmark had gay marriage legalized in 1989, the United States has a process of state by state legalization ahead of it that will almost certainly leave one state in particular *cough*Mississippi*cough* as the last bastion of marriage discrimination that I don't expect to be over until the 2020s.

As a Scandinavian, colour me unimpressed by him accomplishing what the rest of the first world did years or even decades or a full century ago.

HE'S A MUSLIM!

@callous_adherent: That's not his fault though. The American Congress passes laws, he just enforces them. The Christina majority in America makes equality a hard thing to have.

Hes actually a Christian. Dont listen to the idiots on Fox news

Hell ye, lets blame obama for isht other countries did before obama was president...

Congress has always tended to the right as far as WE is concerned.

The problem in America is that you don't have mandatory voting like say; Australia, thus the more rabid and vocal elements of the political process get elected, instead of a saner base that would be elected if the entire voting base had to vote or pay a fine.

Also Gerrymandering to try and rig the game in the republicans' favor is class A political scummery.

Who is?

The whole "born alive" legislation kind of answered that question for me. I can understand someone making the case that a fetus is not a life or that a woman's rights to her body trump the right of a child to life, but there is no excuse for allowing a born infant to be murdered.

Good person? Maybe. Good President? Lol no. He hasn't changed anything.

@karazor-el:

Can you list a single time a FOX host said President Obama is a Muslim?

I want to clarify that when I said no it was about some bullsh*t Family Guy quiz not about Obama.

@callous_adherent:

I agree that gerrymandering is a real problem, but I don't think mandatory voting is any kind of answer to our problems. Trying to get a better class of politician by forcing everyone to vote is like trying to get a better class of kids by forcing everyone to parent. Those that have no interest will be most likely to half @ss it and add to the problem.

"I've never spent three seconds thinking about a political issue, but OMG I love that guy's butt! I'm going to vote for him."

This post has been altered to say "yes"

While Fox News is lying through it's teeth when it claims to be "fair and balanced" this isn't a claim they make out loud (it'd be career suicide), but it's definitely something said by loudmouthed wingnuts lurking at the edge of polite political discourse.

As for Mandatory voting: From what I see in Australia, it actually works fairly well, although they did get an idiot like Abbot into office.

How dumb is Abbot you ask?

Makes Bush look like the epitome of tact and intelligence dumb.

@callous_adherent:

Regarding mandatory voting, you seemed to indicate yourself that it's not working well. Personally, I think we, as a society, need to work on discussing political matters civilly. Too often we just demonize the other side and never think a problem through. I think if Americans could discuss things civilly and intelligently, informed voter participation would go up naturally.

Regarding FOX saying President Obama is a Muslim, you've admitted this is not so. I agree there is a fringe element that believe this among conservatives, but it's not in leadership nor is it mainstream. There are conspiracy theorists in every group; during the Bush administration, many liberals believed 911 was an inside job.

The Australian parliament works well, but the Prime Minister is a dunce.

In addition there's a great deal of just complete apathy in America, people don't feel like they can make a difference anymore, especially as anyone they elect immediately gets lobbied to hell and back, a practice which I feel really has no place in democracy. Voting should be what decides policy, not who can throw around the most money. That's corporatism, not democracy.

When you get to the ends of the any spectrum of thought, you find lunatics. Extremism just seems to attract all the worst in humanity. As a Democratic Socialist (yes it's different from Social Democrat) myself, I get flamed by both ardent communists who think I'm a dirty reformist and petit-bourgeouisie scum (my support for the Scandinavian monarchies and belief that revolutions tend to cause more harm than good pisses a lot of them off in particular), and by the right who think I'm some godless pinko commie out to get the winners in life and help some free-loading moochers.

I find both of them to be nutcases, though here in non-Anglophone Europe, Socialism isn't a dirty word in the United States (partly because we don't have a still lingering red scare outside of the actual fascists and tend to know what it actually is, rather than what they're told it is). I'll admit that even by Scandinavian standards I'm well on the left and towards the liberterian (in the classical sense where I value a person's social liberties over any "traditions") or south side of the axis, while also generally possessing dovish tendencies (the list of times I would consider a war "just" is very short) ends of the three dimensional scale.

Wow. Lots of people on comic vine have met the president, apparently.

@callous_adherent:

As far as the actual effects of mandatory voting in Australia, I can't really judge since I don't follow Australian politics. Just from a common sense perspective, it doesn't sound promising to me. All my experience has shown that when people are forced to do something, they give as little effort as possible get past it. I would think the least interested people would invest the least time and therefore be the most likely to fall for empty slogans, promises and smears.

Your political position is very interesting. If you are up for it, would you like to discuss each other's beliefs in detail? We could politely question each other's values systems so that we can better understand one another and how other people think. Or we can not. I leave it to you.

I'm a Libertarian as well though I'm pretty sure the American connotation of that word is different than your use when applying it to yourself since my concept of Libertarianism is incompatible with socialism. You may know my philosophy by the name classical liberalism.

I believe that man has certain self-evident rights such as life, liberty and property; these three I consider the most important of these rights. The role of government is to protect these rights; they don't guarantee a certain quality of life, but they make sure others can not take your rights away from you.

I believe that freedom, the ability of people to do wha they please with what is theirs, is fundamentally a good thing, and since every law limits freedom in some way, the government that governs best is naturally the one that governs least. Government is of course a necessary evil, but it's important to keep it small so it doesn't get out of hand.

I believe the rule of law is crucial for any society and therefore the Constitution should be followed to the letter. It can be amended, but it can't be changed on a whim via reinterpretation. To do this is to make the law subjective and therefore meaningless.

People should be able to shape the government to their desires, (to the extent it does not violate the constitutions) but it's best to do most programs on a local level to give individuals and communities the greatest control. I am 1 voice in 30,000 in my city, 1 in 3,000,000 in my state and 1 in 300,000,000 in my nation. The smaller the circle, the better individual communities can meet their needs.

Anyway, if you are interested in exchanging philosophies, I would enjoy hearing more about yours. If not, you can disregard this.

@sog7dc:

I never me Ghandi or Stalin, but I have some well formed opinions about their character as well.

Fair enough. I just think it's hard to judge the character of most people in positions like the presidency. It's a complex question imo. Some people would call Truman a good person, others would call hm cruel. It's not nearly as simple as judging a life long humanitarian and a murderous dictator.

My N!gga

@sog7dc:

That's true.

I think I've seen enough of President Obama to make an informed guess on his character, but you can never know for sure what is in a man's heart.

Which brings up a question that came to mind the other day. Did Hitler think he was a good guy? Did he go to bed thinking, "I did good work out there today," or did he go to sleep thinking, "My mom would be do disappointed."

And for clarity, I am in no way comparing Obama to Hitler.

His heart is in the right place, it just does not connect with the rest of his brain.

No