HE'S GONNA CUT SS!!!! (didn't happen) HE'S GONNA INVADE SYRIA!!! (didn't happen) HE'S GONNA NOMINATE

[markpkessinger]

185. It was hyperbole, just as much of your OP is...

You caricature each of the positions you deride as having been 'bullshit':

"HE'S GONNA CUT SS" -- Actually, we expressed our very strong disapproval over the FACT that the President had included chained CPI in his budget proposal. If it really wasn't the President's plan to include it, then it was an incredibly reckless risk in gambling that the GOP would save him from his own proposal. To say the President deserves credit . . . for what, exactly? If he did intend to include chained CPI, then it was indefensible. If he didn't, then he was taking a needless gamble. I fail to see where particular 'credit' is due the President over this issue.

"HE'S GONNA INVADE SYRIA" -- Everybody here understood that an invasion was not part of his official plan. But many of us were concerned that even a limited military engagement could rapidly escalate. We were concerned about the FACT that he was pressing the case for the U.S. to undertake a violation of international law. We recognized, too, that the U.S. would have a major credibility problem with the rest of the world as regards its high moral dudgeon over the use of chemical weapons.

"HE'S NEVER GONNA LEAVE IRAQ" -- No. The concern was that the President's plan called for a substantial force to remain behind in Iraq for an indefinite period. And yes, we have (mostly, not entirely) left Iraq, but that was at the insistence of the Iraqi government, and was not what President Obama was planning on. So what, I"m supposed to give him a gold star for NOT defying the express wishes of the Iraqi government?

"HE'S NEVER GONNA END DADT" -- Well, I never made that argument, so I can't speak to it. In fact, I was 100% supportive of the President's handling of that issue, and as a gay man myself, I give him all the credit in the world for it. (Guess that kind of pokes a whole in your theory that we're all out to criticize the President no matter what he does.) Actually, though, this points to yet another way in which you totally caricature those who dare to criticize the President: that is, you lump all of these unrelated issues together, implying that it is the same group that is uniformly opposed to the President across all of these issues. That simply isn't the case (Although I realize that such a theory serves to buttress the Palace Guard's collective fantasy that anybody who criticizes the President on any front is nothing but a detractor seeking to bring him down on all fronts, and that this fantasy, in turn enables the Palace Guard from ever having to seriously consider any substantive criticism, because they have already dismissed it all as being nothing but nay-saying. Convenient that.)

"HE'S GONNA NOMINATE SUMMERS" -- So, are you seriously suggesting that Summers was NOT the leading contender, even after the President made a point to mount a vigorous defense of him in a meeting with members of Congress? And in any case, Summers withdrew his own name from consideration, so how does that accrue to the President's credit? The very disturbing fact remains that the President was very seriously considering him. And that is disturbing enough in and of itself.

The suggestion that the President "listens and responds to" the political left is, I'm sorry to say, laughable. If that were indeed the case, he would never have appointed people like Geithner and Summers to his economic team in the first place. He is, rather, a shrewd enough politician (most of the time) to recognize when he is about to run his political ship aground, and to make a necessary course correction. (And that's an admirable skill for a political leader.)