Obama so far

[Harv]

I get:

1980
Budget Deficit: 73.83B
GDP: 2862.5B
2.6% of GDP

1988
Budget Deficit: 155.18B
GDP: 5252.6
3.0% of GDP

Source is usgovernmentspending.com

 

[Cutlass]

I know you're constantly questioning conservative labels here (including the label "conservative"), but isn't the general accepted definition of fiscal conservatism the attempt to "balance the budget" and reduce debt or slow down the rate of debt increase?

Shouldn't we judge the fiscal conservatism of a president by their ability to meet that standard, as questionable as it is, instead of looking at their methods to accomplish that?

Obviously Reagan was a terrible fiscal conservative by that standard as well.

I call Reagan a fiscal conservative because he was genuinely concerned with the budget deficit. And he did act, in multiple times and ways, to bring the deficit down.

Now he failed at that. And failed spectacularly. But you have to look at why that was true. And the why is that, first of all, he was utterly incapable of understanding economics, and second, because he was utterly incapable of acting as an executive/manager/leader/boss.

Reagan inherited a deficit, and a poor economy. He also inherited Carter's Fed chairman, Paul Volker (it was the Carter appointee Volker who was the engineer of the breaking of the cycle of inflation that had plagued the 1970s, but most of the actual doing of it took place after Carter had left office) who engineered a severe recession to break the inflationary cycle. So Reagan began his term with a deficit and a sharp recession. But economics was a mystical thing to Reagan, and he had gotten religion, so he cut taxes and raised spending (on the military, which is consumption spending, not on any form of investment spending, as Keynes would have suggested) and got a whole lot bigger deficit than he had ever contemplated. Now a big part of why the deficits exploded was that the Supply Siders had lied to him, and he wasn't bright enough to understand that. In fact, he hired them to run his economic policy. So the Supply Siders (David Stockman being the primary culprit) said to Reagan "If you cut taxes like we say, the economy will take off, and new revenue will raise tax receipts and there will be no deficit." But the Supply Siders, being a bunch of religious fanatics, had just made that crap up. And so the results were not what Reagan had been told they would be.

Now here's the part where Reagan was utterly incapable of acting as an executive/manager/leader/boss: Year after year the Supply Siders lied to Reagan, and he did not fire them.

And so Reagan was always making his budgets based on fraudulent information. And so he ran up more debt than any peacetime president before him. But, to his credit, he was always upset about those deficits. And he did try to act against them. And this is what makes him a fiscal conservative: He negotiated as much in the way of spending cuts as he could, and was willing to live with..
and
then
he
raised
taxes.

And then he raised them again, and again, and again. Reagan was president for 8 years, and in 7 of them he raised taxes.

Today's Republicans, I'm not aware of a single one of them on the national stage who is as fiscally conservative as Reagan. Why? Well they are even more utterly frackking clueless on economics than Reagan ever was. But they are also even more clueless on grade school arithmetic. None of them will even consider raising taxes, even as none of them will even consider a policy of a strong economy to close the gap. The Republican program today is endless deficits and endless weak economy until the system breaks. They won't even consider anything else.

 

[Cutlass]

Certainly not obviously. In fact, I am not sure you can make the case at all. The deficits dropped sharply during his eight years. The question is how much credit he deserves. As a rule, Presidents ride the economy as a passenger. Their input tends to be more a matter of timing than true effect.

Like Obama he started with huge deficits and a serious recession, but with markedly better results. Of course Reagan had a hostile congress while Obama had an unusually friendly one. We saw in the 1990s that opposite parties tended toward fiscal sanity.

J

Reagan had conservative majorities in both houses for 6 years straight.

 

[peter grimes]

Leadership is about being able to unify the legislature and the population so there is no significant opposition to your agenda.

Comrade! The Central Committee applauds your perspicuity.

Great Leaders Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Kim², and other lesser leaders (who nonetheless manage to unify the legislature so there is no significant opposition to the agenda) would surely honor you. .

I'm sure you don't really mean this, but your definition of leadership leads to this absurdity.

 

[Antilogic]

Regarding Carter and Reagan...wow...

I cannot speak for others, but I myself did not use the word conservative ones in MY post. As far as dream vs reality, what isn't true about what I stated in the quote below ignoring the last sentence which is of course subjective as hell.

I intentionally wasn't quoting anyone in my response because I was thinking of Fox News hosts and Rushbo when I wrote the response. One of my pet peeves, though, is the corruption of the word conservative from which I won't back down. When it comes to preserving the status quo, whether the profit margins for insurance companies, the negotiation of free trade deals like the TPP, the wars abroad, the Bush-era tax cuts, or the Bush-era security state, Obama is #1.

He's an embarrassment. I used to think he was ok, though I strongly disagree with the ACA as is I did think we needed health care reform. But check this out:

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/18...with-zach-galifianakis-president-barack-obama

Meanwhile he's not doing anything to address the crisis in Russia. He's too obsessed with his celebrity status vs being a competent leader. Why is he even on with a B list comedian who isn't even asking real questions? It's a mockery of the office.

Whatever, O'Reilly.

Yeah! I hear you! He's, like, a weak leader who's also totally a tyrant. He doesn't know how to lead & is always leading from behind & leading us into disaster. He's an ineffective, mom-jean-wearing weakling who's one Executive Order away from becoming a dictator. He should be strong like Putin. Except when he's trampling all over people's rights, of course.

I can only join hobbs in his incredulity.

+1.

 

[Commodore]

Comrade! The Central Committee applauds your perspicuity.

Great Leaders Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Kim², and other lesser leaders (who nonetheless manage to unify the legislature so there is no significant opposition to the agenda) would surely honor you. .

I'm sure you don't really mean this, but your definition of leadership leads to this absurdity.

For better or worse that is what "leaders" do. They influence those around them into believing their agenda is best. Really charismatic leaders can even get so many people on board with their agenda that any voice of opposition becomes irrelevant. I am not saying this is always a good thing, as that is determined by the agenda of such a leader. I am saying I wish Obama had that kind of leadership ability because I agreed with a lot of his early policies that he eventually had to abandon because he couldn't get Congress to play along.

As I said before, I completely disagree with Reagan's ideas and policies, but I admire the fact that he became so influential that Congress had no choice but to approve his agenda or kiss their political careers goodbye. That is what I was hoping to see from Obama and it just hasn't happened. He played it too nice in his first term, and now he has a Congress that doesn't listen to a word he says and pretty much does whatever the hell they want. Hell, his own party doesn't even listen to him and they support his agenda (mostly).

Although Obama is not a tyrant by any stretch of the word, he comes off as such by saying things like he is going to circumvent Congress. He doesn't have the political momentum or influence to say things like that without the GOP being able to turn that into anti-Obama propaganda and chip away even further at what support he has left.

 

[onejayhawk]

You're kidding right?


You're kidding right????

Yes. I'm kidding. 2nd column is constant $

1981 $79 Billion Deficit $203.08 Billion Deficit
1982 $128 Billion Deficit $309.93 Billion Deficit
1983 $207.8 Billion Deficit $487.79 Billion Deficit
1984 $185.4 Billion Deficit $417.57 Billion Deficit
1985 $212.3 Billion Deficit $461.52 Billion Deficit
1986 $221.2 Billion Deficit $471.64 Billion Deficit
1987 $149.7 Billion Deficit $308.02 Billion Deficit
1988 $155.2 Billion Deficit $306.72 Billion Deficit

There are those that compare 1983 to 1988 and see progress. I am not one of them. The growth in the economy fueled the reduction.

The more difficult issue is how much, if any, credit the RRA gets for the outstanding economy, which rolled for almost 15 years, with only minor bumps.

J

 

[Leoreth]

Whatever, O'Reilly.

Are you suggesting that O'Reilly's was the interview with a B list comedian that made a mockery of the office?

 

[peter grimes]

For better or worse that is what "leaders" do. They influence those around them into believing their agenda is best. Really charismatic leaders can even get so many people on board with their agenda that any voice of opposition becomes irrelevant. I am not saying this is always a good thing, as that is determined by the agenda of such a leader. I am saying I wish Obama had that kind of leadership ability because I agreed with a lot of his early policies that he eventually had to abandon because he couldn't get Congress to play along.

As I said before, I completely disagree with Reagan's ideas and policies, but I admire the fact that he became so influential that Congress had no choice but to approve his agenda or kiss their political careers goodbye. That is what I was hoping to see from Obama and it just hasn't happened. He played it too nice in his first term, and now he has a Congress that doesn't listen to a word he says and pretty much does whatever the hell they want. Hell, his own party doesn't even listen to him and they support his agenda (mostly).

Although Obama is not a tyrant by any stretch of the word, he comes off as such by saying things like he is going to circumvent Congress. He doesn't have the political momentum or influence to say things like that without the GOP being able to turn that into anti-Obama propaganda and chip away even further at what support he has left.

Interesting, and I see your point. I guess I think Leadership is more about method than results. Not that I'm trying to defend the position that Obama has good leadership skills, I'm honestly not sure.

The other interesting thing here is that I come to the opposite conclusion as you regarding the situation with Congressional Republicans. I don't think any amount of "leadership skills" can overcome resistance from a counterparty that works against you nearly every step of the way. Congressional leadership isn't beholden to the interests of their voters, they're beholden to the interests of their campaign financiers. And so the only leverage the opposite side has - appealing to the voters every 2 or 4 years - is pretty ineffectual.

 

[Takhisis]

Peter, you can be a charismatic leader and lead your country/tribe/family into destruction. It's the norm among Latin American caudillos, just to give one example.

 

[Hygro]

Yes. I'm kidding. 2nd column is constant $

1981 $79 Billion Deficit $203.08 Billion Deficit
1982 $128 Billion Deficit $309.93 Billion Deficit
1983 $207.8 Billion Deficit $487.79 Billion Deficit
1984 $185.4 Billion Deficit $417.57 Billion Deficit
1985 $212.3 Billion Deficit $461.52 Billion Deficit
1986 $221.2 Billion Deficit $471.64 Billion Deficit
1987 $149.7 Billion Deficit $308.02 Billion Deficit
1988 $155.2 Billion Deficit $306.72 Billion Deficit

There are those that compare 1983 to 1988 and see progress. I am not one of them. The growth in the economy fueled the reduction.

The more difficult issue is how much, if any, credit the RRA gets for the outstanding economy, which rolled for almost 15 years, with only minor bumps.

J

You really wanna talk about this, so why don't you head on over to that debt thread?

 

[RobAnybody]

That would be funny if that's what I said about him. But since I said nothing of the sort, your comments are outrageously stupid and show your lack of reading comprehension.

Ahem. I'll direct your attention to who started this thread. FWIW.

And who said:

...so he decided to go all dictatorial with everything. He's trying to compensate for his lack of true leadership ability by circumventing the law and seizing as much power as he can to push through his agenda

Hey, I appreciate your insults as a form of debate. That's always fun. But I'm not clear on what you're denying you said. I'm pretty sure you said he's going all dictatorial with everything. You're quite clear on that. I'm just pointing out how some people think he's a dictator tyrant (i.e you) & other people are saying he's a weak iineffective non-leader. It's simply amusing when compared to...

He's an abject failure at more or less all things foreign. Hillary did an admirable job in Obama's first term, for the most part, at covering up his obvious suckiassedness at foreign affairs, but she's splitsville now, and probably a good thing... give the country time to forget her role at Benghazi.

He just... sucks.

For example.

He's a DICTATOR TYRANT. He's also WEAK & also SUCKASSEDNESS.

I don't have a dog in this fight. I just find it funny when the criticism can't make up its mind what to criticize.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I had the same reaction to that quote, but Commodore already said he was using that hyperbole for comedy purposes. And usually it would have been recognized as such.

It's just unfortunate that he posted it in this thread where loonier claims than that have been made quite seriously. For instance the same poster claims:

He rammed through the worst possible health care 'reform' that could be thought up

He signed it. It happened under his watch. He could have vetoed it. But yeah, actually, great example of his "leadership" indeed. "keeping his hands out of it."

Which describes Obama ramming through healthcare ... with his feet?

So you see Commodore, this is why people have a hard time realising you were exaggerating for comedy purposes.

 

[onejayhawk]

You really wanna talk about this, so why don't you head on over to that debt thread?

I think the idea that debt is not so bad on par with the idea that Carter was not so bad--an objective rational person cannot hold the position in good faith.

J

 

[onejayhawk]

He's a DICTATOR TYRANT. He's also WEAK & also SUCKASSEDNESS.

I don't have a dog in this fight. I just find it funny when the criticism can't make up its mind what to criticize.

While that is not completely inconceivable, it does sound a lot like talk radio. It also sounds like what they said of Bush.

J

 

[Harv]

You really wanna talk about this, so why don't you head on over to that debt thread?

I think he was inviting you to dig up this thread.

It is on page for and a little over two weeks old.

 

[peter grimes]

I don't ever recall anyone saying that Bush was weak and ineffectual. Quite the opposite, both from his supporters and detractors. After all, his VP was one of the founders of the principle of the Unitary Executive - they feel the office of President became too weak in the aftermath of Watergate and have worked for 40 years to strengthen it.

 

[Cutlass]

I think the idea that debt is not so bad on par with the idea that Carter was not so bad--an objective rational person cannot hold the position in good faith.

J

Why not in good faith? No one is saying Carter was a good president. Better than Reagan, without a doubt. But not good.

 

[Leoreth]

I think the idea that debt is not so bad on par with the idea that Carter was not so bad--an objective rational person cannot hold the position in good faith.

J

If you think it is so easy to objectively prove those people wrong, you have even more reason to visit that thread. I look forward to reading your posts.

 

[Hygro]

I think the idea that debt is not so bad on par with the idea that Carter was not so bad--an objective rational person cannot hold the position in good faith.

J

Yes get it all out.

Then join me on the dark side.