Top Ten Differences Between Bush & Obama First 7 Months
Obama, unlike Bush:
1. Has no plans to invade any new oil countries.
2. Knows who president of Pakistan is
3. Knows how to safely consume pretzels
4. Does not take orders from his veep
5. Not on vacation 40% of time
6. Clears away Bush's harm, rather than clearing brush on farm
7. Worried about 47 million uninsured, not about 47 thousand idle rich multi-millionaires
8. Not removing oversight from bankers on theory that financiers would never steal from own bank!
9. does not believe US menaced by Gog and Magog
10. Not ignoring threat of al-Qaeda
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 8/23/2009 01:09:00 AM
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29 Comments:
ouch
You should send this to David Letterman! lol
Perspective is always good.
Juan,
I love your blog and and its ability to give the average American an in site to the Middle East. However, do we really need to keep bring up Bush to further on? Even as a conservative, who has never liked Bush, I feel we must carry on to much more sophisticated sarcasm.
Keep up the good work,
Joe
Juan, what's the purpose of this jocose posting? We know the differences, however, at least Bush stuck to his guns without deviating from his pre-election platform, despite being half-baked. I usually expect a little more substance and less punditry.
11. We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals
11) Obama has impressed the entire world with his oratory, Bush made the entire world laugh at his.
I have the impression that this post is saying, « Oh well, at least Obama is better than Bush overall. »
Ok, I still hope that Obama will make major improvements over Bush’s policies (he never really promised major changes during his campaign), but I am not optimistic. Some real improvements would be to bail out people who are losing their jobs and homes before bailing out the bankers, speculators, etc., prosecuting the authors of the Bush administration crimes instead of covering them up, mobilizing the voters to push for universal health care as a basic right, and shutting down the hundreds of military bases and prisons overseas which are there to protect U.S. hegemony (that is really the point of his escalation of military missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, isn’t it?) over the world economy.
Do you really think Obama will do the sort of things I mention here?
Let's ask Cindy Sheehan her opinion of Obama vs Bush. She is now in Martha's Vineyard to protest Obama's war policy. I would like to join her. Afghanistan will be Obama's/America's Vietnam!
"better than bush" is a flawed standard.... how about a list of the top ten things obama is doing that are risking the nation's future; e.g. allowing powerful private sector groups from finance, banking, real estate, insurance, health care, and pharmaceuticals to drive policy; continuing highly questionable national security policies that sacrifice liberty; appointing centrist technocrats to the Supreme Court; failing to incorporate the full range of voices by giving them real seats at the table; and so on
if folks only keep saying, 'better than bush', then bush/cheney/rove will have achieved yet one more victory on our way to national decline
11. Presents a vague and noncommittal leadership style.
1a. Doesn't intend to force "regime change" anywhere.
So, yes, Obama sounds much better and seems like a nicer guy.
Actual difference in facts on the ground? Not so much.
Just like everyone remembers Clinton as a great guy. Everyone forgets about the million Iraqis who he killed.
It is damning with faint praise to have a list so long in what he is not doing, and so short on the what he is doing.
Better than Bush is a meaningless measure of a president. Bush was the worst president in US history. Obama's skill with words is certainly impressive, but I've always heard it said that talk is cheap. Strong trees bend in a wind. But arguably strong men shouldn't. Re Bill Clinton.. he was far better at lying to the US people than George Bush was. That is why most still do not grasp that both Bill and George lied us into illegal wars under false pretences, and both lost the wars they lied us into spectacularly.
The natural response is
Top 10 Similarities Between Bush & Obama
1. Supports unconstitutional, indefinite detention without due process
2. Supports secrecy of White House visitor logs to prevent public from knowing embarrassing details of big business execs get backroom deals; secrecy over which banks got bailout funds
3. Endorses primacy of private profiteering, trumping all other considerations
4. Happy to expand wars whose primary victims are civilians & indifference to deaths among civilians
5. Happy to farm out assassination to Blackwater (or 'Xe')
6. Happy to funnel money down the bottomless pit of Wall Street
7. Hostile to greater public oversight of financial institutions and Treasury's and the Fed's dealings with them
8. Thinks that key to passage of legislation is to coddle right-wing idealogues
9. Threatens long-time allies to prevent release of facts embarrassing to US
10. Dismisses, ignores or disparages progressives and left-liberals
I don't think any of us would have a done a better job than Obama if we were in his shoes.
Obama at least brings a broad approach to fighting terrorism, realizing US can thwart Al Qaeda as an organization butnot defeat the idea, only marginalize it.
[In his first public appearance as the White House counter-terrorism advisor, John O. Brennan said that President George W. Bush's policies had been an affront to American values, undermined the nation's security and fostered a "global war" mind-set that served only to "validate Al Qaeda's twisted worldview."
"Rather than looking at allies and other nations through the narrow prism of terrorism -- whether they are with us or against us -- the [Obama] administration is now engaging other countries and people across a broader range of areas," Brennan said.]
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-terrorism-brennan7-2009aug07,0,1770866.story
It's nice to look at the 'sunny side' occasionally, but I ABSOLUTELY AGREE with Anonymous (7:05 AM edition).
GW could make ANYONE look good in the Oval Office, including, but not limited to, someone who is possibly, as a British Marxist pundit put it so aptly in the late 60s, a "...pretty little Fascist".
Not that I'm making that claim about Barack Obama... But it's going to take generations to set the damage the last few decades of gun-barrel diplomacy have done to the US reputation and economy.
Who Americans elect in the NEXT few presidential administrations will be just as, if not MORE important, than the potential 8 years of Obama's.
It's also going to require "CONSTANT vigilance", as one of the founding fathers put it. In the current mileau, I'm skeptical. Americans think voting is enough... But it's only the least thing that is to be done.
Taking responsibility for OUR OWN actions, material desires, and how that causes our policies to be played out in US foreign policy, and oversight responsibility for who we elect AFTER we put them in office, is AT LEAST as critical as who we vote for.
The looming extractive resources rape of the African continent is a classic example... so our kids can have an mp3 player for $19.99 thanks to African Copper pit mines while Somalis on the other hand are branded 'pirates' for reacting... as if the earth raping corporation Freeport-Moran, Parsons etc bear no responsibility in our mind's eye.
Here's a recent statement by an employee of one such company:
"We are serious about the integrity of the environment," says Neville Huxham, the country director for Paladin Energy Africa.
"We're taking the uranium out of the ground, we're exporting it to be used for productive purposes, so we should be getting a medal for cleaning up the environment." (Source)
How convincing... but only to the rationalizing and denying minds of the affluent of the planet.
Houston! America! We HAVE a problem... and our presidents CANNOT help us with it.
...and just so EVERYONE knows that ol' GW didn't create the security mess we're in single-handedly: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted in an interview a while back, that the US was ultimately responsible for the creation of the Taliban (and FWIW AQ, but she didn't extend her comment that far), and she seemed OK with that, except for that pesky "roosting chickens" problem.
11. Actually learned something in graduate, i.e. law school. Appears to understand the basic principles of our form of government. Compare to Bush who, apparently, learned in business school how to destroy an economy.
12. Thinks knowledge is useful rather than Bush who thinks ignorance is funny.
13. Knows the importance of acknowledging a mistake and correcting it versus Bush, who looked for the missing WMD under the lectern. With Obama, course corrections are possible.
14. His father was from another country. Bush's mother is from another planet.
15. Got elected without resorting to campaign workers and his own brother throwing the recount.
16. Actually did useful work before public office.
17. Has a wife who supports him because he's right, not because he is "the husband."
18. Accepts the consequences of his own actions rather than letting the next guy take the fall.
19. Knows that there is more than one branch of Islam.
and (drum roll please)
20. Is not afraid to go hunting with his VP.
Nice posting and comments. Bush-Cheney admin was a bar so low that besting them could be done with an only somewhat negative effort.
Voters that went for Bush-Cheney twice would be likely to make a similar mistakes again, given similar input and perceptions.
In Afghanistan, Obama leads us into an expanding Asian land war, territory that Lyndon Johnson trod in 1964, with no clearer mission or strategy. We're going to "hit 'em where they aint?" Please.
It's easy to lose sight of the fact that Rahm Emanuel engineered the ruling majority to the right, pushing pro-war candidates, thru the last two cycles.
Obama is just the President; he doesn't select decent congressional candidates and get them elected.
Why let others' dreadful standards and execution create the bar by which you judge performance. Obama's presidency - though it will surely be compared to that of Bush's in many ways - must stand on its own merits.
Juan writes: "Obama, unlike Bush:
1. Has no plans to invade any new oil countries."
Living here in Venezuela, I have a chillingly personal perspective on whether or not Obama has "plans to invade any new oil countries".
The Obama administration has signed an agreement with Colombia to put 7 new U.S. military bases in Colombia, which shares a long border with Venezuela, some 5 hours from my home city.
One of those bases will be on the very border of Venezuela's oil rich Zulia State.
These 7 new bases are in addition to the U.S. base on Curacao, which is within sight distance of Venezuela's Punto Fijo peninsula, and the U.S.base on Aruba, a short distance from Venezuela's east coast.
Then we have the U.S.'s Fourth Fleet which has been patrolling off Venezuela's Caribbean coast.
Put in moth balls after World War II, the Fourth Fleet was re-established in 2008 by the Bush administration. According to the Chief of U.S. Naval Operations, Adm. Gary Roughead, who announced its restoration:
"Reconstituting the Fourth Fleet recognizes the immense importance of maritime security in the southern part of the Western Hemisphere, and sends a strong signal to all the civil and military maritime services in
Central and Latin America,..."
What kind of a "strong signal" was intended other than to threaten
Latin American countries with the reappearance of U.S. military
imperialism in the Caribbean and Atlantic?
President Obama has taken no steps to dismantle these military threats to Venezuela; he is increasing them.
Venezuela will soon be surrounded by 7 U.S. bases to the west in Colombia, a U.S. base to the north in Curacao, one on its east coast in Aruba, and the U.S.Fourth fleet on its north and east coasts.
Considering that the U.S.likely contributed equipment and intelligence services to Colombia's illegal invasion of Ecuador last year, and has been funding oppositionist groups in Venezuela through the National
Endowment for Democracy and other quasi-governmental groups, including supporting secessionist movements in Zulia State, it is clear that the U.S. definitely "has plans" for Venezuela, whether or not Obama will carry out those neo-conservative plans remains to be seen. I certainly hope not.
If a dem president needs this much argumentation to explain why he is better than the worst US president in the 20c, he is in a bad trouble.
One may need 10 points to sell Zardari over Musharraf, but comparing a dem with a neocon is supposed to be straightforward!
Instead of 10 points, one needs just 3: strong stimulus package, meaningful health care reform with strong public option and really peaceful foreign policy, both wars stopped.
The problem is, these points do not seem to be in the picture. But dancing with McCain goes on and on.
Juan, I share the frustration of many that Obama is not going far enough to reverse Bush's failed policies. In particular, the power of shadowy corners of the military-industrial complex (the CIA, large portions of the DoD, and the lobby efforts of exploitative industries like pharmaceuticals & dirty coal) have hindered real change.
But still - #9 on your list is priceless. I busted a gut laughing. Thank you.
Justina, they're 'just plans' right now. Destabilization yes... Cia ops... Yes.
But we don't have the Marines to spare right now.
They're all quite busy in what's left of Afghanistan.
See: Backgrounder - The Colombian Cross-Border Incursion Into Ecuador And Latin America's New Mutual Aid Alliance (March 3, 2008) - Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary
http://www.archive.org/details/tth_080303
In other words, when he signs over the ownership of America to Chinese financial interests, he will do so with dignity.
11. Does not issue terror alerts to divert public attention from policy embarrassments.
@ Justina:
How do you know those plans weren't being readied under Bush II?
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