Good or Bad... Things Obama has done a generic Democratic President would not have done?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Good or Bad... Things Obama has done a generic Democratic President would not have done?

Not versus Kucinich, but versus the average character.positions/convictions of a hypothetical Democratic President circa 2008... a typical Dem.

Obama gets undue blame for some thing they all would have done and some undue credit for things they all would have done.

What has he done that was an only-Obama thing, for good or ill?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

1. I didn't want to bias the OP question

by offering any controversial opinion in the OP.

GOOD: Obama sometimes stakes out a position in an intellectual/principled (and politically detrimental) way that I admire. The typical Dem would probably not have waded into the mosque business the way Obama did and I cannot fault him for saying what is right, even if politically sub-optimal.

BAD: The bipartisanship shtick and taking too seriously RW economic thinking seems to be a peculiar and personal Obama trait. Everyone plays that game but he seems to really mean it. (He campaigned on it distinctly and repeatedly and has governed on it rather consistently so at some point it becomes weird to assume he doesn't believe it.)

[bowens43]

2. There in lies the problem......

He has shown us that he IS a generic democratic president.....we had hoped that he would be so much more then that.

He he led us to believe , falsely , that he would be more then that.

Change? Not likely.

[pscot]

7. +1

[rucky]

3. The GM rescue was pretty unconventional.

He gets one in the W column for that.

So's RTTT, but it's too soon to see how that'll turn out - I'm not very optimistic.

[pscot]

6. Really?

Reagan bailed out Chrysler.

[BlueCheese]

4. Great question.

I think one reason there's often a schism between people who still support Obama and people who've soured on him is because people in the first group tend to give him credit for doing general Democratic things, while people in the second group think those really ought to go without saying. The first group tends to compare him to Bush, while the second group compares him with Average Mainstream Democrat.

Take the Lily Ledbetter equal pay act, or SCHIP, as examples. The pro-Obama folks say, "Hey, look, he signed them, unlike when Bush was president!" The not-so-pro-Obama folks say, "Oh come on--any Democrat would have signed them. Even Joe Lieberman would have signed them."

The same I think could go for a lot of things--the stimulus, the Supreme Court nominees, and a lot of the routine decisions that presidents make. Any Democrat would have proposed a stimulus, and any Democrat would have appointed liberalish Supreme Court justices. On the other side, I think most Democrats would have kept more of the surveillance state than we might have hoped. While I'm unhappy with Obama's positions on wiretapping, state secrets, habeas corpus and the like, I'm not sure the average Democrat would have been better.

Instances Obama has done things differently might be these:

1. Bipartisanship. I think most Democrats who remember the 1990s and the years in which Republicans routinely called Democrats unpatriotic would not have spent so much time futilely trying to placate the GOP. This really led to crippling weaknesses in the stimulus and health insurance reform bills.

2. Auto bailouts. This took some courage and I'm not sure every Democrat would have done it. I think most probably would, given the sheer number of jobs at stake. I mean, we can maybe lose Chrysler, but GM?

3. Gay rights. Unfortunately, I think Obama is behind the curve on this, and farther behind than he has to be even if political calculations are the only consideration. At this point he risks being behind not just most Democrats, but a fair number of Republicans.

[geek tragedy]

5. In terms of policy orientation, I can't say he's deviated from

the generic Democrat on any issue.

In terms of efficacy, he helped get HCR done--something that had eluded every Democrat. But, his unity schtick and highminded nonsense have hurt the Democratic brand.

[Winterblues]

8. Let War Criminals walk free without recourse...

Which is against our US Constitution..