You realize how unrealistic the bolded part is, right? In other words, you're saying that people who supported Bush have no right to criticize Obama? Your statement seems to be of the same type as those who are saying "Well, Bush was the worst ever, so anything else is good."

It's not unfair for Bush supporters to criticize Obama, any more than it's unfair for Obama supporters to have criticized Bush. That's politics.

ETA: I disagree with a lot of what Bush did, and I can't say I'm his biggest supporter. But if you're going to start talking about fairness, it's unfair to silence a whole group of people because they supported the previous administration.

You're entitled to your opinion on the issues, but it bothers me when you say that people essentially don't have a right to criticize the administration.

I also never answered your previous point, on Congresspeople asking for the President's autograph. The red flag for me is that it just seems unprofessional, given their position. That's obviously a debatable point, but it raises a red flag in my mind, no matter whether they're asking for the autograph of Obama or Bush, Democrat or Republican.

Where do you live that you saw wide acceptance of Bush's policies?

What constitutionally granted rights of people in this country do you feel were stomped on? I'd prefer that you answered specifically rather than just "Patriot Act." It's gotten to be anti-Bush boilerplate language but what specifically grinds your gears?

Has it already been mentioned what it kind of suggests about issues with separation of powers and checks and balances?

Sure, Presidents have to be popular and powerful enough to get their agenda through, but if there's a suggestion that Congress is acting like 15 years old girls at a Jonas Brothers' show, it makes you wonder if things will function like they should.

ETA: sorry, it was tweens at the Jonas Brothers' show. And yeah, you mentioned overriding vetoes, etc.

It seems that Bush was almost universally panned by all but the most die-hard of the conservatives, and already the media has published pieces that don't look kindly on his Presidency (see the widespread distribution of the Presidents list that placed him near the bottom). There has been criticism of his domestic and foreign policy, almost across the board.

Of course, there are some people who supported his Presidency and supported some of his policy decisions, but it seems like deepimpact2 is looking for something like 100% disapproval of his Presidency.

To be clear, I am not doing this to be part of some "mob" mentality against deepimpact2. I am simply stating my disagreement with their statement.

In my mind it's more of an issue of how it appears; in my mind, it gives the wrong appearance when Congresspeople are acting like excited autograph-seekers around the President.

It's not the worst thing in the world, no, and I don't even know that I would personally question their ethics. I just think some people would, and as a Congressperson, you have to be extra careful in that regard.

Are these types of disclaimers going to to be necessary when typing directly or indirectly to certain posters? Count me out.

I agree with you, there will not be 100% approval or disapproval. There doesn't need to be. This is all politics. The substantive as well as the superficial and petty. Every camp has rhetoric, some of it is just more annoying on the surface than others to me. The hypocrisy is when people on either side pretend that every tax payer does not have a right to critique and criticize anyone they choose and however they choose, based on the info that is available.

On another note, Sean Hannity was ripping Obama, liberals, and Dems a new one last night regarding the deficit and rhetoric. I agreed with some of what he said although I think some of the language was a bit harsh, even for me. Not to mention Hannity's response to David Letterman's comment about Rush Limbaugh's look.

Exactly; it comes with politics, and every President is going to have their supporters or detractors. No matter how bad people think President Bush was when he was in office, there were people who were quite happy with his performance. No matter how much people think of President Obama's first couple of months in office, there are some people who are unhappy with some of his decisions.

I think it gets very dangerous when we start saying who is or is not allowed to have an opinion on an issue. There was a lot of talk in the last administration about how people felt that their voices of dissent were quashed. I hope those same people aren't trying to quash debate now.

I used to listen to Hannity every once in a while in the car, and he would occasionally have interesting topics mixed among his rants. The problem for me was that there was too much of the latter (the rants) and not enough of the former (the interesting topics). He also seemed to have an anti-intellectual bent that got annoying after a while.

lol

KSigkid, this bothered me too. I am an Obama supporter, but when I saw that, I totally thought that was a little weird. That's never happened to any other president, at least not to my knowledge.

This is going to be a very ROUGH 4 years and not just because of the economy. People are trying to rewrite the rules for the political game to suit their fondness for Obama and some are still uncertain and are playing it safe for the first black POTUS.

People need to understand that criticisms of every administration and its policies are based on the theoretical and the substantive. "Change" has different interpretations. One fear that has led to criticism is that the Obama camp is trying to change the Democrats into a European-esque labor party, which theoretically can give rise to a socialist party if our (unpure) capitalist economy continues to crumble and fails. I don't think it will EVER happen but if there is a transition, it will be unpure socialism that is more of a combo of capitalism and socialism. Some say that's what we have now. But it's unrealistic to not expect those who fear this to be critical of the path they THINK we are taking based on the information we have available and the unknown.

Anti-intellectualism has taken over across the political board.

Though I agree with you on the fact that criticizing is a right that everyone has no matter what. I think the point that DeepImpact is trying to make is that the criticism of Obama seems unfair because he has been in office for less than 2 months and the criticism he is getting could be considered extreme as compared to the way that the same critics treated GWB for the first 5 or 6 years he was in office. No one would argue with the fact that GW made some horrible decisions. One of them being the Patriot Act and another being the war in Iraq and how it was handled. GW has gotten criticism for these, but he has not been criticized (to the same extent) for lack of oversight of the economy and other really bad decisions that he has made. The sentiment I believe that Deep Impact and others like her are trying to convey is that there is nothing wrong with criticism from anyone, but there is something wrong with criticism on one part and indifference or lack of criticism on another. If you're going to criticize Obama on oversight of these companies getting tax payer dollars then you should be equally willing to criticize the lack of oversight it took for these companies to need tax payer dollars. That's just one example.


Idk where DeepImapct lives but I live in America where for about 4-6 years people tolerated and accepted Bush's policies. Hell they re-elected him. If that isnt wide acceptance I dont know what is. It wasnt until the end of his last term when people realized that the country was screwed that Bush's policies became "bad" or intolerable. I dont get why some people act like the American people were totally against Bush the whole time he was in office. Bush had a lot of support until the last half of his last term.
I agree that nothing will be 100%. I didnt disagree with all of Bush's policies. In fact I liked some that many other people hated. I believe some of his policies had potential. One in particular was the no child left behind act. Had the act been given the proper care, attention, guidance, and funding it could have helped our schools. It wasnt. It didnt. I agree with the wall/fence border idea. The issue I have with people who want to criticize is that if they are not willing to actually critically think while doing so their criticism is just a bunch of bull. I also dont get why someone cannot be of the opinion that the criticism is unfair. Sometimes it is. Thats life.

The same goes for people who are supporting but don't critically think while they are supporting. In fact, the FANS of every president have done this and get extremely emotional when someone questions why they are in support or when someone is critical. Speaking of Obama specifically since this thread is about his administration, I know rational Obama supporters but unfortunately 7/10 of the Obama supporters that I come across are the emotional ones.

For some of these supporters who are black: There are some touchy topics that black folks, in general, will figuratively whoop your butt or take your imaginary black card over if you question what they consider to be conventional black folk wisdom. Now Obama is one of those things for some of these folks.

They can. There's a difference between thinking something is unfair (opinions) versus automatically dismissing any dissenting opinion as unfair or claiming that people don't have any right/rhyme/reason to criticize yet.

As long as it's too early to criticize him it's too early to credit him, as well.

Yep.

Respect the role of POTUS and support Obama in patriotic optimism. Other than that, we need to all be sitting on the fence waiting. Yawn.

Can we credit him with being hot, though?

Not that he's actually the MOST physically attractive man, but he's not fugly, and power is sexy.

I understand your elaboration on deepimpact2's points, but that doesn't lessen my disagreement with them.

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar...tion/na-bush18

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5800960/

http://www.cato.org/research/article...en-030728.html

These are all articles that criticize Bush over the economy. A quick google search with the terms "Criticism of Bush over economy" brought up over 5,000,000 hits. There's a whole Wikipedia page devoted to the various criticisms of Bush's presidency. So, the idea that Bush has somehow escaped criticism for his presidency seems a bit odd to me, to say the least.

If people are saying that the criticism of Obama is extreme...well, these are extreme times. Taxpayer money is being used

Also, while it may seem a bit hypocritical for people to give Bush a pass and then criticize Obama, I'm guessing that some of those same people who were calling for Bush's head will give Obama a free pass on his policies. For a quick example, will all of the people who criticized Bush on detainee issues now be criticizing the Obama administration because it hasn't acted quickly enough on certain detainee issues (the administration is still keeping the Bush DOJ's protocol on fighting habeas corpus petitions in a number of cases? Or, will they give President Obama a break on that issue? Like it or not, hypocrisy is a part of politics, and we've all been guilty of hypocrisy whether we like to admit it or not.

In my experience, people don't mind the hypocrisy as long as their candidate isn't criticized. I'm ok with that viewpoint, as long as people are honest with themselves about it.

There are a couple of issues with this statement. First, the re-election of Bush had a GREAT deal to do with the fact that the Democrats were unable to produce a viable candidate. They brought someone who has spent his career trying to ride Kennedy's coat tails and who has made a career of refusing to work "across the aisle."

This chart shows Bush's approval ratings over the years: http://www.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/Approval.htm

In it you can see that his ratings were only particularly high in the wake of 9/11; other than that, it wasn't like there was an outpouring of support for Bush. I would also disagree with your conclusions as to when people thought the country was "screwed" because of his policies, or that re-election automatically equates to "wide acceptance" of his policies.

My opinion is that there are always going to be voters and people who feel that the President isn't receiving enough of the credit or enough of the blame. The people who say that Bush got a free pass, in my opinion, are analogous to the people who talk about how the media was out to get Bush. They are two sides of an extreme, and I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

LOL. No because I don't think he's hot. He's not fugly which makes him average looking. :)

I'm surrounded by hot and sexy black educators and hot, sexy, and powerful black businessmen.

The power of POTUS isn't sexy to me. It is much more stress and trouble than its worth. I like power that comes with a level of autonomy among other things. That is sexy. :)