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i know i ask this question ever so often, but it's time again.

c'mon, SURELY by now some of you're opinions of him have turned. surely by now people are starting to wake up to the fact that this guy is not a good president, and is not good for america, or at least the america we grew up with. i mean what success has he had for the country? the stimulus failed horribly, obamacare increases healthcare costs, there IS NO RECOVERY, the private sector is sitting on $2 trillion dollars out of uncertainty and apprehension, we have NO ENERGY POLICY, we're feeling inflation which they tell us doesn't exist, and there has been no forward progress for america. where is a true victory? where is the promise of one? there are none, because he doesn't believe in the same america we believe in.

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He's doing a much better job than the other administrators I've lived through.

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I say he is no better or no worse than the last 4 admins. He is exactly what I thought he was. Just another "grower of government". He is pretty much exactly like the last Pres. no matter what anybody else says.

Try to show me a difference. They both grew government. They both bow to certain corporate interests. They both lost control of the economy. They both talk like idiots when not reading a teleprompter. Neither one really cares what the other side has to say much less the citizenry. Both believe that his way is the only way.

Nope, no difference. Well, the only difference, that I can see,  is that GWB at least had an idea of what he wanted to do and didn't just leave it to an impotent Congress to draw his plans up.

Actually I take back what I said earlier in my post. Both Bush Sr. and Clinton were better.

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i would agree in many ways, only that obama has accelerated things much more. i think bush's major problem on the economic front, is that he was listening to these globalist financial guys like paulson and bernanke. obaMA+BUSh = MABUS? a joke that last bit.

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I notice that no matter your left or right views as president you are almost always pushed to the middle. Sometimes depending on the stance of the present congress of course. I really didn't expect anything different from Obama, as many people forget a republic is really governed by the congress.

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Originally Posted by Douglas Shireman:
I really didn't expect anything different from Obama, as many people forget a republic is really governed by the congress.

Something very important that everyone seems to forget.  It always annoys me to hear presidential candidates on both sides making all kinds of crazy campaign promises (ie lower taxes or create universal health care) that are completely beyond the power of the executive.  People eat this stuff up without realizing that its their Congressmen, not their President, who has this power.

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Originally Posted by Bryant Platt:

Something very important that everyone seems to forget.  It always annoys me to hear presidential candidates on both sides making all kinds of crazy campaign promises (ie lower taxes or create universal health care) that are completely beyond the power of the executive.

One thing that people always forget is that the president (no matter who he is) is a politician, and politicians will always say whatever they think they need to say to get elected, secure in the knowledge that once they're in, they can pretty much ignore/forget about any promises they made because they generally have 4 more years before people can effectively take them to task for broken promises.  And when it comes to politicians, people are dumb and have short memories. they'll vote for the same guy they did last time because he says he'll do XYZ, despite the fact that last time he said he'd do ABC and did none of it.

In Obama's case, the hype and the expectation was so much that there was no way he would be capable of following through on everything anyway, even if he didn't have every Republican in congress hell-bent on blocking everything he did. And he got such an easy ride into the presidency that he wasn't really prepared for the reality of the situation when he got into power - that there are bad people in the world who hate you and people who won't listen to you no matter how many speeches you make or what you propose, and you can never 100% get your own way. And this is what the die-hard liberals didn't understand either: in the euphoria of Obama winning, they forgot about that pesky thing called "reality" and started believing their own rhetoric, then started turning on Obama when they found out he couldn't just snap his fingers and everyone would do anything he wanted, worldwide.

Read these yesterday, are relevant here I think:

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/20116109015758458.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/201161912635848326.html

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that's all grand and good miles, but name one obama victory for the country, aside from nabbing bin laden, which any prez would've done. there isn't one. stimulus failed. obamacare is a failure. there is no recovery. there is no rebounding. there are no jobs. housing prices continue to fall, retail sales are a shambles, and the private sector is sitting on $3 trillion because they're afraid to invest their money. not one positive thing has happened for this country since he's come to office. in fact, he's exacerbated our plight even further. for two years he had the run of the show. the full run of the show. the democrats pushed through all the legislation they wanted, locking republicans out of the negotiations, didn't even pass a budget, and oh yeah, racked up a $4 trillion in deficits. so why would anyone re-elect someone like that?

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I cant find anything positive to say about Obama either.  Bill Clinton was a much superior president (and I wasnt crazy about him either).
Obama did manage to get Bin Laden, but has embarrassed us many times internationally (far more even than Bush Jr).
He's cut our throats economically by shutting down drilling.
He's insulted our greatest allies.
He has attempted to force his vision of healthcare onto the citizens of this country (rather than let it be a voluntary process).
He has insulted our nation's veterans.
And I'm sure given time I could think of many other negatives.

but personally, I dont think we've had a really decent president in my lifetime since Ron Reagan.  And even he wasnt perfect.