The Obama administration’s most public face, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, has tried to climbed down from angry remarks he aimed at leftwing critics, calling them “crazy”. In an interview with The Hill newspaper in Washington DC, Gibbs revealed frustration at attacks on the administration from liberal Democrats and others on the left, in terms likely to make relations even worse:
“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”
The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”
Within hours of the interview being published, Gibbs tried to walk back his remarks, calling them “inartful”.
His remarks reflect the White House’s sensitivity at criticism from the left of the Democratic party, who are unhappy that Obama has too often appeared to compromise on domestic policy while continuing Bush administration policies on Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as a continued failure to close Guantanamo prison.
Of course he is right, it is crazy to believe in campaign rhetoric.
29, Phydeau,
Which is why I brought up a bellwether state.
You’re cherry picking. I agreed to JB’s comment of that or military leadership. Regardless, you need to start with a generally accepted baseline. Community organizer doesn’t fit the bill.
The very core of an executive position is a leadership position. In addition, you’re lumping together ineffective executives with the good ones. It makes your comment self-serving. Who wants an unsuccessful executive / leader of a business to lead our country? Duh.
People are inspired by SUCCESSFUL business executives. Not every executive is cut out to be a great leader. But even the bad ones know what are clearly bad policies that an otherwise naïve community organizer would not know.
All attributes of great executives. You’re not making any noteworthy comments here other than trying to split hairs of your nuanced perspective. That being said, you seem to make no distinction between a good versus a bad leader. Imagine that. 🙂
And through Chairman Obama’s social re-engineering / justice program, he’s slowly killing our economy.
Ya, ya, ya. And if I recall correctly you were one of those liberals who was bragging about how you voted for Obama because he was the smart choice. Whatever. 🙂
Because you believe Big Government isn’t? LOL. Look, big business gets that label because see them as greedy.
Greed motivates big business to make more profits. How do they generally do this? They provide goods and services that people want. Big Business produces results and improves efficiencies. Big government doesn’t care about better results or improved efficiencies.
Taken from an e-mail I got a while ago:
31, Phydeau,
Being a military officer does make him a military leader. Now as to whether or not he’s a good military leader should be based off of his evals or comments of those who served under him.
Well he did own the Texas Rangers and was governor of one of the largest and resource richest states in the country.
Speaking of Vietnam, didn’t Clinton flat out dodge the draft? And didn’t Al Gore get into the Army as a journalist (thanks to his dad’s connections)? Not that being a pilot in the Air Guard is any less dangerous as an Army journalist. LOL.
#6 “jbenson…how many presidents come to the job with any experience?”
Quite a few, actually. The last two consequential Democrats in the WH, Clinton and LBJ, are good examples.
Clinton was both an historic governor and president because of his depth of policy knowledge. Obama can describe a problem well, but he doesn’t seem know who is trying what and what works.
LBJ was a superb legislator before becoming president. His knowledge of the process and willingness to twist arms allowed him to craft truly historic legislation.
Obama has not delivered a proper national healthcare system, reinstituted the post-Depression era banking restrictions that successfully stopped credit panics from tainting the entire economy, or significantly developed public goods with a jobs program.
These are not difficult problems to understand, and there is secretly widespread agreement among legislators on how to address them.
We needed a quality administrator and ball breaking legislative organizer. Instead we got a winning smile and a nice speech. Call me crazy…
#32–Guyver==when you detail out that there are good executives and bad executives what you are admitting is that executive experience alone is not sufficient to determine whether or not someone will perform well as POTUS.
Logically, it is some elusive other thing.
But it is amusing to see in detail so specifically how wrong you can be. When in creating your list did you lose track of what it was you were arguing?
Well Done.
Guyver==thats actually an interesting puzzler you pose: which is more evil, big gov or big biz? Or are they both good and its only being “big” that is evil?
Well, even granting that big is evil still leaves us with the original poser. Interactive aren’t they?
““But even the bad ones know what are clearly bad policies that an otherwise naïve community organizer would not know.” /// Like what?
Gibbs must be trying to start his own tea party, where he insults his base by being a wingnut loon.
They probably should be drug-tested, but not because of anything they said about Obama.
#32 Being a military officer does make him a military leader. Now as to whether or not he’s a good military leader should be based off of his evals or comments of those who served under him.
…
Well he did own the Texas Rangers and was governor of one of the largest and resource richest states in the country.
Shows what you know, pal. (1) He didn’t “lead” anyone in the military. He learned to fly airplanes, that’s it. (2) He had a tiny ownership percentage in the Texas Rangers. And when they were sold, he got profits out of proportion to his ownership stake. Once again, his rich daddy’s friends throwing money at him. (3) Thanks to the Reconstruction after the Civil War, the governor of Texas is basically a do-nothing position. He’s a ceremonial figurehead. The real power resides with the Lt. Governor.
You may disagree with Obama (and I do plenty) but he’s got intelligence that Bush never had.
#32 And another thing Guyver… you better hope that Walmart never starts selling whatever your company makes… because you’ll be out of a job so fast your head will spin. It’ll all be outsourced to China to preserve those low low prices Walmart is famous for.
It figures someone would hold WalMart up as an example of success. Everything wrong with America today is typified by what Walmart does.
#6
Every President, until Obama, has had at least some leadership and management experience.
#30
1. Having a vision
2. building a team
3. Learning from mistakes
4. courage to take risks
5. being reality oriented
Obama fails on 2, 3, and 5. By the way, there is a vast different between courage to take risks and having an ability to effectively measure risk assessment.
#31
W is the only President that has a MBA. He was governor of one of the largest states in the Union. He ran a couple of large corporations. I.e., Bush had experience leading people.
#41
I’ve met plenty of brilliant people that couldn’t lead to save their life and I’ve met plenty of people of only better than average intelligence, but not brilliant by any stretch, that were vastly superior at leadership. Leadership is all about getting people to follow you and on that measure, Obama is an abject failure. He can’t even get his own party to follow him.
We can quibble all day about whether the direction Bush was going was right or not, but measured on their effectiveness as a leader, between Bush and Obama, it is no competition: Bush was the better leader.
#44 Thomas, you are truly living in a dream world. To think Dubya was any kind of leader. He was not any of the things you so wishfully attribute to him. I gotta give you credit though for sticking by him, even after being rated the worst president of the modern era by a wide range of historians. (http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0701/nations-leading-presidential-scholars-bush-worst-president-modern-era-5th-worst-history/)
Most of your fellow wingnuts have scurried away from him, denied they even voted for him.
In summary: bailed out by his dad’s rich friends his whole life (ran a couple of small corporations into the ground), ceremonial do-nothing governor, ceremonial do-nothing president while Cheney ran the show.
Oh, and he ignored the intel gathered by the Clinton administration that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike in the U.S. Thanks for f*cking nothing.
#45, and the Democrats still lost to him. Pretty sad candidates they’ve been putting up.
As to the actual post, it is silly to say Obama is like Bush. His deficits are about a trillion dollars a year more.
#46 I agree, Democrats have put up some pretty gutless candidates lately.
Bush’s deficits were bigger than he let on. He fought two bogus wars off budget, spending billions if not trillions and hiding the expenditures. Until he skedaddled, and the next guy came in and had to clean up his debt.
#44–Thomas==I could quibble with your analysis but at least you are doing that and I’m sure after a few hours of defining our terms we would come to some rough agreement.
or maybe not.
With the analytic powers you do demonstrate, how do you reach the CONCLUSIONS you do?
Something missing.