10-22-2016, 08:05 PM
Well, America is a better place because of him. He practically got re-elected on the slogan "General Motors is Alive and Osama bin Laden is Dead"... a 44th (one-term) and a 45th Presidency (also one term) by someone else might have General Motors dead and Osama bin Laden taunting us to this day. We might have an economic mess analogous to the Great Depression, perhaps having even less progress from it than Americans knew in the late 1930s. We could have cities looking as if they were bombed out even if there had been no war.
The President is not responsible for the times. Maybe we are doomed to weak leadership in a late 3T (just think of the awful governance of George III; the forgettable trio of Pierce, Fillmore and Buchanan before the Civil War; the two snoozers Harding and Coolidge followed by clueless Hoover; and of course the Dubya that we all love and admire -- irony intended). People want inattentive leadership that sees nothing wrong in corrupt booms, offer no significant reforms, and acquiesce to the idea that nothing is nobler than profit and those who grab it.
Barack Obama got to put an end to the most dangerous economic meltdown since the Great Depression, a meltdown effectively as severe as the one that began with the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929:
![[Image: 8c559f8f5789ad6d2da5480151ea9b62.png]](https://www.advisorperspectives.com/images/content_image/data/8c/8c559f8f5789ad6d2da5480151ea9b62.png)
If you don't see a case for a Nobel Prize in economics, then you have some explaining to do.
Barack Obama wanted to be the new FDR, reshaping American institutions profoundly in the wake of obvious necessity. He got to rescue the financial system first, as FDR also had to do.... but the difference is that FDR got his way after 1934 because Republicans who had committed America to policies reminiscent of the Gilded Age were largely disgraced -- reduced to trying to survive at a lower level, and unable to buy the political system. In the 2010 election, the plutocrats whom President Obama and Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress had rescued turned on their rescuers and funded the Tea Party "revolution". The plutocrats of our time are basically Gilded-Age plutocrats with none of the pioneering instincts or humility of Gilded plutocrats. America's economic elites reek of pathological narcissism and an ethos that holds that no human suffering is excessive so long as it turns, enforces, or indulges a profit.
Carly Simon's You're So Vain was clearly not written about Donald Trump -- but oh, does it fit.
I remember seeing the book The Culture of Narcissism that suggested that narcissism was becoming a part of the national character. That may have been so in the 1980s, but Corporate America was successful in repressing it among the proles. Boomers not in the elite are as humble as any generation now. Boomers in the economic elite could add to it all their lives with impunity
The economic elites entrenched their power seemingly beyond challenge for the indefinite future in 2010 by ensuring that their obedient stooges would control the House of Representatives and most state legislatures while winning several Governorships. A political order that elevates the likes of Paul LePage, Scott Walker, and Rick Scott is sick. Through gerrymandering, the Master Class of America has chosen the electorates for the US House of Representatives, conceding about 35% of the House seats and guaranteeing themselves a reliable majority. Except that the entrenched winners in the respective systems were or are Communists, that is how things worked for the Volkskammer in East Germany, and that's how the National People's Congress operates in China.
We no longer have a representative democracy. We have drifted into having a legislative system that in theory represents people but in fact represents economic interests capable of funding campaigns and the lobbyists who pull the strings on the majority of legislators. To paraphrase the Michigan state motto, "If you seek a pure plutocracy, look about you".
Maybe the elites didn't quite get to achieve their dream of an America in which Americans achieve German efficiency on Indian wages.... but if we elect Donald Trump, we will get to that plutocrat's paradise and worker's Hell that a few very rich people dream of.
The final question of how good a President Barack Obama is is who succeeds him. If Donald Trump should succeed him, then he suddenly becomes one of the worst Presidents ever. At the least, James Buchanan had Abraham Lincoln following him. But if Hillary Clinton succeeds him he is clearly above average.
The President is not responsible for the times. Maybe we are doomed to weak leadership in a late 3T (just think of the awful governance of George III; the forgettable trio of Pierce, Fillmore and Buchanan before the Civil War; the two snoozers Harding and Coolidge followed by clueless Hoover; and of course the Dubya that we all love and admire -- irony intended). People want inattentive leadership that sees nothing wrong in corrupt booms, offer no significant reforms, and acquiesce to the idea that nothing is nobler than profit and those who grab it.
Barack Obama got to put an end to the most dangerous economic meltdown since the Great Depression, a meltdown effectively as severe as the one that began with the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929:
If you don't see a case for a Nobel Prize in economics, then you have some explaining to do.
Barack Obama wanted to be the new FDR, reshaping American institutions profoundly in the wake of obvious necessity. He got to rescue the financial system first, as FDR also had to do.... but the difference is that FDR got his way after 1934 because Republicans who had committed America to policies reminiscent of the Gilded Age were largely disgraced -- reduced to trying to survive at a lower level, and unable to buy the political system. In the 2010 election, the plutocrats whom President Obama and Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress had rescued turned on their rescuers and funded the Tea Party "revolution". The plutocrats of our time are basically Gilded-Age plutocrats with none of the pioneering instincts or humility of Gilded plutocrats. America's economic elites reek of pathological narcissism and an ethos that holds that no human suffering is excessive so long as it turns, enforces, or indulges a profit.
Carly Simon's You're So Vain was clearly not written about Donald Trump -- but oh, does it fit.
I remember seeing the book The Culture of Narcissism that suggested that narcissism was becoming a part of the national character. That may have been so in the 1980s, but Corporate America was successful in repressing it among the proles. Boomers not in the elite are as humble as any generation now. Boomers in the economic elite could add to it all their lives with impunity
The economic elites entrenched their power seemingly beyond challenge for the indefinite future in 2010 by ensuring that their obedient stooges would control the House of Representatives and most state legislatures while winning several Governorships. A political order that elevates the likes of Paul LePage, Scott Walker, and Rick Scott is sick. Through gerrymandering, the Master Class of America has chosen the electorates for the US House of Representatives, conceding about 35% of the House seats and guaranteeing themselves a reliable majority. Except that the entrenched winners in the respective systems were or are Communists, that is how things worked for the Volkskammer in East Germany, and that's how the National People's Congress operates in China.
We no longer have a representative democracy. We have drifted into having a legislative system that in theory represents people but in fact represents economic interests capable of funding campaigns and the lobbyists who pull the strings on the majority of legislators. To paraphrase the Michigan state motto, "If you seek a pure plutocracy, look about you".
Maybe the elites didn't quite get to achieve their dream of an America in which Americans achieve German efficiency on Indian wages.... but if we elect Donald Trump, we will get to that plutocrat's paradise and worker's Hell that a few very rich people dream of.
The final question of how good a President Barack Obama is is who succeeds him. If Donald Trump should succeed him, then he suddenly becomes one of the worst Presidents ever. At the least, James Buchanan had Abraham Lincoln following him. But if Hillary Clinton succeeds him he is clearly above average.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.