Quote:
Originally Posted by Irenicus
That's an F (U) from the Atheist crowd! 
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Hey, I'd think it'd get massive ratings from the athiests, because it'd finally put to rest the debates about religion (including its fallacies). But saying Obama would get an "A" for raising Jesus was a bit presumptuous - most people would probably only rate that an A-. The point deduction would come because it was only Jesus Christ Himself, rather than God Almighty. If you're going to have high expectations, why settle for anything less, right?
Quote:
Originally Posted by LynnieS
Actually and personally, if we are to talk of ratings, I would rate Barack Obama's administration, so far, as a C at best and a D on average also. Sorry... 
Even though he has only been in power for less a year. He still has troops stationed in places and an economy in the doldrums. Even with a strong charisma and popularity, taking on an ingrained establishment like healthcare right now is very risky, IMHO; if he can do it, he would go down in history as one of the better presidents, though, but my gut feeling is he'll fail in all but the small bits. Healthcare isn't like Social Security (the proverbial third rail of American politics), but it has its strong players also. Obama will need to dance really well to make things happen, IMHO, and that'll be hard to do with other problems on his plate. Real estate (personal and commercial) looks bad as well.
Taking on too much and not consolidating your gains before doing something new is risky and prone to backfiring. Everything together is looking like a shotgun approach, and unless you have strong and loyal lieutenants, can be risky. |
That's a fair evaluation. On the whole, he's been advancing the agendas that he had promised. He alone can't fix everything or make things happen, yet we're already seeing troop reductions in Iraq (finally). It's counter-balanced against increasing the troop size in Afghanistan, but I feel that one is slightly justified.
Furthermore, the military is finally getting smart. Rather than taking the "we killed X bad guys" approach, they've recently adopted a new strategy of not focusing on the kill count, and instead focusing on protecting the civilians and encouraging stability that way. I think that's a much better approach. I'm not sure how much of it can be attributed to Obama (if any), but it did happen under his administration, so he gets partial credit at least.
The healthcare thing seems really badly placed in terms of timing, but who knows? We're in a rebuilding sort of stage now; maybe this is actually the better timing to do it. And even if Obama fails at it, I'd rather that he try than not.
Someone has to take that risk and accept a few cuts in their ratings to even suggest it. I don't imagine that his potential failure at implementing it would make it any harder to implement in the future.
Maybe I just have low expectations. I want the president to make peace with other countries and, to but it bluntly, make it his priority to not piss other people off. That's about it. Congress should be doing the rest, not the president. Obama lost some of my approval by very early taking sides in the Gates vs. Crowley race issue, but at least that was a domestic thing, not an international one. I'm still pretty happy with what he's doing. I'd be even happier if he'd stop increasing the debt, but I guess you can't do that without having people complain that you're doing too little. Hell, if the average American doesn't understand the importance of saving in their own life, why should they understand why it's important on the national level?