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Obama: Is it too soon to judge his presidency?
Los Angeles Times / LATimes.com ^ | December 29, 2011 | 12:34 pm | Alexandra Le Tellier

Posted on 12/30/2011 1:25:43 PM PST by thecodont

[...]

And yet, here we are at the end of 2011, with Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and discussion boards still teeming with intemperate quick takes. President Obama has taken considerable heat this year, but isn't it too soon to accuse him of being an ineffectual leader? Isn't that one lesson from the Tucson incident?

On a Christmas Day episode of "GPS" on CNN, Fareed Zakaria interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, who reminded us that it's too early to cast Obama's legacy in stone. Here's an excerpt from their interview:

I admire him very much, and I think that his -- his time in office presented him with problems such as very few presidents have ever had to address. And given the complexity and the gravity of those problems, I think he's handled himself very well. My -- my hat goes off to him, my heart goes out to him. […]

All of our -- all of our best presidents, without exception, have had a sense of history, and I don't think that's coincidental. And one of the things that a sense of history gives to a person is not just an appreciation, an understanding of what happened before we came along, but the realization that we, too, are a part of history and we, too, are going to be judged by history. […]

And that's extremely important. Today's polls, today's -- tomorrow's headlines, are not going to matter.

Zakaria agreed: "[W]e cannot really tell the quality of a leader judged from the noise of the present. We need time and perspective."

(Excerpt) Read more at opinion.latimes.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2012election; disaster; epicfail; nightmare; opinion; potus
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No. Not too soon at all.
1 posted on 12/30/2011 1:25:50 PM PST by thecodont
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To: thecodont

No.


2 posted on 12/30/2011 1:26:42 PM PST by oldbill
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To: thecodont
President Obama has taken considerable heat this year, but isn't it too soon to accuse him of being an ineffectual leader?

Yeah, sure... why not give him 20 years?

People are such meanies.

3 posted on 12/30/2011 1:28:48 PM PST by mylife (The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts)
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To: thecodont

No, I don’t think it’s too early to judge his presidency for what it is.

If it turns out that any of his legislation turn out well, I’ll give credit where credit is due.


4 posted on 12/30/2011 1:29:51 PM PST by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults.)
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To: thecodont

Is it too soon for the rookie Hussein to be vetted?


5 posted on 12/30/2011 1:30:38 PM PST by Libloather (The epitome of civility.)
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To: thecodont

ALL of the rules have to be changed to defend the ineffectual and corrupt wannabe dictator.


6 posted on 12/30/2011 1:30:42 PM PST by Spok (From hope and change to change is hopeless.)
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To: oldbill

I am shocked by this rudeness. How judgmental of you bigoted, inbred, hypocritical, violent, Sarah Palin-loving, Fox News-watching, Rush Limbaugh-hearing, Bible-thumping, tea-bagging, beer-swilling, moonshining, gun-slinging, truck-driving, non-recycling, high school dropouting people.

Did I leave a stereotype of conservatives out?


7 posted on 12/30/2011 1:31:12 PM PST by Mustang Driver
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To: thecodont

Well everything up until now has been either Bush’s fault or the fault of the Republican Congress. It probably is too early. /s

And we haven’t even gone through his “it’s the media’s fault” phase yet.


8 posted on 12/30/2011 1:31:18 PM PST by DoughtyOne (Santorum..., are you giving it some thought? I knew you would.)
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To: thecodont

These people are the biggest bunch of intellectual douche bags the world has ever seen.

Oh if only we could see him in the fullness of time... blah blah blah...


9 posted on 12/30/2011 1:31:54 PM PST by mylife (The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts)
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To: thecodont
his time in office presented him with problems such as very few presidents have ever had to address.

Yeah, like the Civil War, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, the British attack on Washington, slavery, - Obama has it so much tougher.

And I used to respect David McCulloch as a historian. Maybe he's hanging around Michael Beschloss, who rated Obama as the most brilliant president ever, with an IQ off the charts (no doubt gleaned from Obama's school records).

10 posted on 12/30/2011 1:32:23 PM PST by oldbill
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To: thecodont
Well, it wasn't too soon to nominate him for a Nobel Prize two weeks after he was elected, was it?

Regards,

11 posted on 12/30/2011 1:32:42 PM PST by alexander_busek
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To: thecodont

The judgement on him has been made a long time ago. Guilty as charged.


12 posted on 12/30/2011 1:34:15 PM PST by lbryce (BHO:The bastard offspring of Satan and Medusa.)
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To: thecodont

They judged him worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize about an hour and a half after took office so three years in makes it easy to judge his presidency an abject failure easily positioning him way to the rear of Jimmy Carter as, not only the worst president but very possibly the worst person ever to hold national office.


13 posted on 12/30/2011 1:35:09 PM PST by muir_redwoods (No wonder this administration favors abortion; everything they have done is an abortion)
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To: alexander_busek

Touche!

LOL!


14 posted on 12/30/2011 1:35:37 PM PST by mylife (The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts)
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To: thecodont

“...his time in office presented him with problems such as very few presidents have ever had to address.”

Oh, I am so sick of hearing that talking point. We don’t live in a perfect world, and every President inherits problems from previous administrations. Some have more than others, true. Bill Clinton inherited a lot fewer domestic problems than Reagan did, for example. But what matters is how a President *deals* with them. And on that count, Obama most certainly *can* be judged. And I think most people would agree it’s not the “B+” grade he gave himself earlier in the term.


15 posted on 12/30/2011 1:36:58 PM PST by DemforBush (A Repo man is *always* intense!)
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To: thecodont
Obama: Is it too soon to judge his presidency?


16 posted on 12/30/2011 1:38:21 PM PST by Old Sarge (RIP FReeper Skyraider (1930-2011) - You Are Missed)
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To: alexander_busek
Well, it wasn't too soon to nominate him for a Nobel Prize two weeks after he was elected, was it?

POTD. Well done.

17 posted on 12/30/2011 1:38:21 PM PST by Hoodat (Because they do not change, Therefore they do not fear God. -Psalm 55:19-)
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To: thecodont

He is in the Top 5 as the best of all time ............just ask him


18 posted on 12/30/2011 1:38:21 PM PST by al baby (Hi Mom)
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To: Mustang Driver

Freeping.....?


19 posted on 12/30/2011 1:39:44 PM PST by al baby (Hi Mom)
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To: thecodont
Nope. It will be a long time before we have one worse. Correction, if we ever have one that is worse, it's over.

And I thought Carter was bad...........

20 posted on 12/30/2011 1:42:41 PM PST by Lakeshark
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