I agree with Palantir on a lot, but disagree here. Leadership is an important aspect of the President’s job. Also “machinations” is not the right word here (maybe it was autocorrect), perhaps he meant “machinery.”
Presidents can be ok even if they don’t have leadership abilities, but part of the point of a head of state is to provide leadership so that policy doesn’t become a jumbled mess of incoherent rules for the sake of having rules, and to ensure that updates and changes follow reasonable principles rather. If a President is not a leader (at the very minimum, a leader of their party) it’s hard to get things done, but in normal times, the President can be effective without leadership just by “not screwing up”.
What is odd about Obama is that the campaigner in 2008 really seemed to be someone who could get people behind him and to back him and enthusiastic about him. And then he took the oath of office and somehow morphed into Captain [Mostly] Spineless. He’s not a spineless bad guy, or a sellout like Hilary, but it’s emminently frustrating when somone who is supposedly defending the middle class’s first move on encountering any resistance is to give up half of his objectives and hope that will not simply stiffen the opposition’s resolve.
It’s not all his fault. The opposition in Congress explains a lot in terms of what didn’t get done, but it’s still odd that we still have Guantanamo, which is something that he could close by executive order or just as commander-in-chief.
^O is the leader of his party though (by far). There is no way he can be the leader of his country if the response to his every action is negative from certain quarters.
I don’t totally fault him for Afghanistan, going into that country to attempt to kill terrorists was not off base after 9/11. The fact that they started another war on a concept (war on drugs, war on terror, war on poverty etc. are all stupid “wars” that are unwinnable) & the way they went about it was stupid.
Right on the wars, I think Afghanistan was undesirable but necessary, and Iraq was a terrible idea (at least at the time, it’s hard to imagine what would have evolved without the Iraq war 10+ years on). My liberal friends are frequently horrified that I think the Afghan war was necessary to uproot Al Qaida’s command center and the regime supporting it, they want me to be against all wars, and I just don’t think the world can operate that way, even if I’d like it to.
The problem with these wars (aside from the Iraq war being started on a bunch of largely cooked-up data) is just that we aren’t very good at nation-building, so it’s not clear what to do in the aftermath of them.
Leadership?..I would just prefer a president that enforces the law as it is written. I believe they take an oath to do that. And use executive actions to enforce those laws, not write legislation.
This guy doesn’t even enforce the laws his people wrote. And nobody cares…
He has even used executive action when he has previously argued that he has no authority to act. He must laugh himself to sleep.
look what your side did – bunch of douches. no, look what YOUR side did – bunch of turd sandwiches. dam it’s a great time to be a politician. with morons like you all arguing over the details, they get to divide up the pie however they want for themselves with no one watching.
I don’t know if you were responding to my point or others’, but if the former, I was simply saying that there are some times when a “caretaker President” can work, and that typically doesn’t require much leadership, but it’s dangerous if any true crisis emerges. All that said, leadership is an important quality to look for in Presidents, since crises can happen at any time.
Presidents that lack leadership skills but are caretakers tend to be elected on the coattails of a president that does lead (e.g. GHWB).
My main point was that leadership skills vary from President to President. Sometimes that variation is critical, other times it can pass under the radar. But you do want a President that has some kind of vision and has hope of marshalling the organization and resources needed to make that happen.
Confirmed: Republicans do blame everything on Obama, and yet people demand that Obama be a leader when half the country will hate him no matter what he does.
Sarah Palin Somehow Links Son’s Domestic Violence Arrest To Obama
Well she certainly won’t blame a fellow republican for sending him over there, now would she?
Although I agree the way we treat veterans in this country is terrible. I would prefer if we just gave them Medicare/Medicaid (whichever is the one people like) and let them go get the care they need and we foot the bill. The fact that leaders of this country are so willing to send young men into harms way and so stingy when it comes time to care for the problems that creates is pathetic.
