Obama - What is your opinion so far on his Presidency
Obama has been President since 20 Jan, 2009
He has faced many difficult decisions and policy changes / implementations
Afghanistan
Banking
Economy
Oil Spill
To name a few
What is your opinion so far - Has he done as promised take the partisanship out of Washington
What Policies has he succeeded at
What are his failures
What do you see him doing over the next 2 years or so.
Too early to say for sure yet, but so far I'd give him a C+. I doubt if any of the things you've mentioned will be totally straightened out in one term. I'm not sure if his healthcare program will be an improvement.
I think he handled the Oil Spill in a disasterous way - Tell the truth - it would take months - Turned down expert assistance from the netherlands that would have contained much of the damage -
Dutch have ships that could have filtered most of the oil while returning the water with a small content of oil back into the Gulf
Berms - Again Dutch expertise was offered and was brought over- but they would only allow US companies to build them - again a bad decision - They did not get built in time for many areas.
Blaming BP - which was correct but getting into a pissing match instead of laying out the truth was terrible Leadership.
All around on this I would give Obama an F-
Leadership - Planning - and getting it done - He failed on every count.
My opinion?
You don't want to know my opinion.
One moment Obama reminds me of Alfred E. Newman, the next moment he reminds me of Pinnochio.
Obama is about the same as the last guy.
:lol :I would give him a 'B' so far.
Yep, most politicians are pretty much tarred with the same brush. "There is honour among thieves"..................
Obama - What is your opinion so far on his Presidency
Under the circumstances he has been good.
He's a pretty cool dude too. Lots of confidence and very good at clearly communicating some complicated issues.
Confidence Yes - Great speaker - yes - leadership - No on some issues.
How would you rate his response to the spill in the gulf?
His spending is out of control!
His spending isn't as out of control as Bush's was, he just put all the Iraq-Afghanistan crap into the budget instead of using supplemental bills to fund them (which was Bush's answer). Couple the fact that he was also saddled with a lot of the stimulus promises from Bush and the impetus of his deficits and it puts Obama in almost the same kind of position Mulroney was in when he took over from True-dough.
Yep, for all Bush's blunders I doubt if they can hold a candle to the mess Trudeau left Canada in. Took us from a few million in the black to over 1/2 trillion in the red in 16 years.
His spending isn't as out of control as Bush's was, he just put all the Iraq-Afghanistan crap into the budget instead of using supplemental bills to fund them (which was Bush's answer). Couple the fact that he was also saddled with a lot of the stimulus promises from Bush and the impetus of his deficits and it puts Obama in almost the same kind of position Mulroney was in when he took over from True-dough.
I think he was blindsided by BP regarding the spill. He probably did not think that BP would low ball the estimates of oil leaking to such an extent. Initially BP was claiming a leak of 5000 barrels a day, which is a minor leak and not really worthy of the attention of the president. So Obama did not get involved for a long time.
Now it turns out that the leak may be well in excess of 100,000 barrels a day, and in hindsight, more drastic action was required from day one. If Obama could be faulted, it would be for putting too much trust in a big corporation.
SJP - Your opinion on this - Blind sided or not - Obama wears a part of this disaster the same a Bush with Katrina
Quote has been trimmed, See full post:
Avertible catastrophe
Some are attuned to the possibility of looming catastrophe and know how to head it off. Others are unprepared for risk and even unable to get their priorities straight when risk turns to reality.
The Dutch fall into the first group. Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway.
"Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour," Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide,
giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.