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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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To: alexander_busek

The Nobel Prize, Harvard, MSM, journalism and basic honesty and integrity have all been trashed by these scum.


41 posted on 12/30/2011 2:10:01 PM PST by mcshot (Neither handsome nor handy but took an oath and will vote to save our Country.)
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To: SECURE AMERICA
Obama has absolutely been found to wanting!

As the moving finger wrote on the wall... (Daniel 5:1-4.)

Some creative FReeper here should kindly paste BO's visage over that of Belshazzar.


42 posted on 12/30/2011 2:14:26 PM PST by thecodont
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To: thecodont; All
"Obama: Is it too soon to judge his presidency?"


43 posted on 12/30/2011 2:19:48 PM PST by musicman (Until I see the REAL Long Form Vault BC, he's just "PRES__ENT" Obama = Without "ID")
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To: Mustang Driver

You forgot tobacco chewing, snuff dipping, cigarette smoking etc.


44 posted on 12/30/2011 2:20:26 PM PST by RipSawyer (This does not end well!)
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To: oldbill

Off the charts alright, off the BOTTOM!


45 posted on 12/30/2011 2:21:46 PM PST by RipSawyer (This does not end well!)
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To: Lakeshark; All
"Then there was the kind that would soon learn just how bad he was........."


46 posted on 12/30/2011 2:22:18 PM PST by musicman (Until I see the REAL Long Form Vault BC, he's just "PRES__ENT" Obama = Without "ID")
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To: oldbill

Actually it IS too early, he may turn out to be even worse than what we know, if that is actually possible. The chance of his turning out to be anything other than a complete disaster is nonexistent.


47 posted on 12/30/2011 2:25:47 PM PST by RipSawyer (This does not end well!)
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To: thecodont
Zakaria agreed: "[W]e cannot really tell the quality of a leader judged from the noise of the present. We need time and perspective."

Firstly, it has been generally admitted by many supporters that Obama uses the unusual technique of "leading from behind". This makes it clear that Obama's leadership is seriously deficient.

Even further, it should be noted that three years was more than enough for the mouthpieces of the main stream media to make a decision on the quality of President George Bush's leadership ability. Fareed Zacharia is engaged in crystal pure hypocrisy and high angular momentum spin.


48 posted on 12/30/2011 2:26:05 PM PST by magooey (The Mandate of Heaven resides in the hearts of men.)
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To: thecodont

Too soon?
We knew what he was going to do even before the election of ‘08................


49 posted on 12/30/2011 2:28:22 PM PST by Red Badger (Every child should have a meadow to play in..............)
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To: DemforBush
“...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.


The only problems Obama has that “ very few presidents have ever had to address.” is the world wide economic collapse of the same anti liberty, anti productivity and innovation Socialist Welfare State model that Obama is currently trying to impose on the United States and cram down American’s throats.

Europe has run out of other peoples money and so has the United States.

Obama and the Democrats are actively creating their own (near term) future crisis by borrowing trillions of dollars to float the system and dole out enough payoffs to keep enough Americans from truly realizing this simple fact until after he is re elected in 2012.

The true unemployment rate in the country is 16-22 %, as high as in the Great Depression, but we don't have soup lines- we have Government welfare EBT cards and 99+ weeks of unemployment checks to disguise the seriousness of the situation.

Regardless of who is elected in 2012, the country is going to have to go through a painful withdrawal from it's addiction to the spending of borrowed money to fund a professional welfare entitlement class with government transfer of wealth payments

In reality, what Obama has done is prolonged and intensified the inevitable downturn while at the same time squandering assets to hide and whitewash our problems so when the day of economic reckoning finally hits, our country will be flat broke with it's cupboards bare, too far in debt to allow for more borrowing and spending, and with with about 45 million long term unemployed people as the STARTING POINT for the downturn

Very scary to contemplate what these profoundly destructive people are in the process of doing to our country.

50 posted on 12/30/2011 2:29:45 PM PST by rdcbn
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To: thecodont

Obama doesn’t have the traditional sense of history, he has an unshakable sense of his own greatness. Given that he’s utterly without accomplishment in his life with the exception of his attaining the presidency this makes him an ass...(and we his fools)...


51 posted on 12/30/2011 2:32:29 PM PST by TalBlack ( Evil doesn't have a day job.)
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To: thecodont
At 25, Alexandra Le Tellier is a veteran of LA’s nightclub scene. As Editor and Producer of the Nightclub beat on LA.com, she knows the ins and outs as well as the insiders and outsiders of LA’s booze and boogie havens. From dive bars to invitation-only; from Goth to Geisha, La La Land’s reigning nightclub goddess gives us the straight dope.
52 posted on 12/30/2011 2:39:04 PM PST by Castlebar
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To: thecodont

From the NYC flyby to the Harvard intervention to Chevy Volt to the SEIU, Obama presented more than enough evidence of ineptitude to be judged ..in his first freaking six months..


53 posted on 12/30/2011 2:41:38 PM PST by cardinal4 (Bolton/Arpaio 2012 "Kick the UN across the border!")
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To: Mustang Driver

Trailer Trash


54 posted on 12/30/2011 2:42:31 PM PST by razorback-bert (Some days it's not worth chewing through the straps.)
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To: muir_redwoods
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.

Now, now, we at FR must be accurate...it was a full 12 days after he took office that he was nominated! (That is actually a fact AFAIK...may have been 11 days)

55 posted on 12/30/2011 2:43:11 PM PST by Seeking the truth
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To: thecodont

Mrs. Lincoln, is it too soon to judge the play?

Captain Smith, is it too soon to judge the Titanic’s maiden voyage?

General Pickett, is it too soon to judge your charge against General Meade’s forces?


56 posted on 12/30/2011 2:47:32 PM PST by Pollster1 (Natural born citizen of the USA, with the birth certificate to prove it)
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To: magooey
Spelling correction. Zacharia -> Zakaria.

And while we're at it, Obama is President Downgrade. The first downgrade from AAA bond status for the United States occurred on his watch. He has also engaged in war in Libya without consultation of Congress, a breach of the Constitution and the War Powers Act. His record is so poor that Hugo Chavez of Venezuela found it necessary to advise him to get to work on fixing America's problems. Chavez must realize that if the USA economy is wrecked, it will cause harm to his own country and many others.


57 posted on 12/30/2011 2:54:40 PM PST by magooey (The Mandate of Heaven resides in the hearts of men.)
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To: thecodont

58 posted on 12/30/2011 2:59:47 PM PST by CASchack
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To: Mustang Driver

...granny-killling, puppy kicking...


59 posted on 12/30/2011 3:58:33 PM PST by TrueKnightGalahad
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To: thecodont

60 posted on 12/30/2011 4:04:00 PM PST by BenLurkin (This is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire; or both)
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