Should Barack Obama be impeached?

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That is exactly what some Germans said about Hitler. How strange!

ruveyn

There were comparisons of the Bush Administration to the Third Reich made by the left with a straight face.

To simplify it, Wiemar era Germany was in the dark and Hitler was the only one with a flashlight that worked. They followed him without thinking of where he'd lead them just because he had the flashlight and took the lead. The US is getting closer and closer to that same in the dark situation with each passing year.

For one, Bush holds the title of this country's shittiest president.

Another, Obama is protecting American citizens against religious lunatics.

The charge that he's doing this for the sake of his supporters doesn't hold water, as he's in his second term and doesn't need to face another election.

And finally, Lincoln killed and blew up plenty of American citizens - they were called the Confederacy.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

How is it that President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney, who appeared on Fox News Sunday defending the NSA's vast surveillance program, find themselves on the same side of so many highly controversial national security debates? They subscribe to different ideologies, belong to opposing political parties, and differ dramatically in background and temperament.

For all their substantial differences, Dick Cheney and Barack Obama share one leadership trait: they trust their own judgment so thoroughly, and value it so highly, that they recklessly undermine all institutional and prudential restraints on their ability to exercise it whenever they see fit. Indeed, like Kobe Bryant at the end of a playoff game, they both harbor a barely suppressed, supremely arrogant belief that behaving in this way is their responsibility, or even their burden.

Seeing all the ways Obama is different, many miss the trait in him. But consider the evidence. Unlike Cheney, Obama doesn't believe, as a matter of longstanding ideology, that the executive branch ought to be far more powerful than it was in 2000. As a senator, he warned against the trend. True, he's embraced the powers given him as president, and expanded them in various ways. All the while, however, he's never stopped warning Americans about the perils of our present course -- most recently in the speech where he advised us to end the War on Terrorism. Perhaps this isn't a contradiction at all. Obama mistrusts these powers deeply ... except when he's the one empowered by them. When he's in charge, the stuff he warns about isn't sufficient reason for change. Hope in his person is enough (Obama would surely frame it as everything good about America being personified in him, but it all amounts to the same heavy-handedness).

Obama thinks it's important, under a not-Obama, to have institutionalized rules governing drone strikes. But he "placed himself at the helm of a top secret 'nominations' process to designate terrorists for kill." Judge, jury, and executioner for me, institutions and process for thee!

Obama thinks "it is illegal and unwise for the President to disregard international human rights treaties that have been ratified by the United States Senate," but decided that "looking forward" was more important than investigating and prosecuting torture, a binding treaty requirement.

So long as others are in office, Obama regards the War Powers Resolution as binding law, and believes that "the President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." But legal and prudential standards, however genuinely praised, do not trump Obama's ad hoc judgment in situations like Libya, where he violated the War Powers Resolution.

And surveillance on Americans? Well, Obama "welcomes debate" on the tradeoffs between liberty and security -- except when Obama decides that significant legal interpretations and sweeping new policies should be kept secret, having already carefully balanced things himself. Debate is less important in the singular case in which the judgment of someone as wise as Obama can be substituted.

Do you see the similarity now? When it comes to doing whatever the hell one wants, or not doing it, due to legitimate constraints, Cheney's avowed preference and Obama's revealed preference are the same. In their own ways, they both subvert whatever it is that gets in their way. Obama thinks of himself as balancing lots of complicated factors -- and somehow it always comes out that he has to assume more power than he thought prudent when others were exercising it.

In fact, many of Obama's decisions since taking office have been imprudent. His arrogant insistence on preserving his own ability to act as he pleases, in every circumstance, comes at a steep cost. Having maximized the prerogatives of the one man he trusts more than anyone on earth -- Barack Obama -- he's expanded the prerogatives of all the presidents who'll follow him, many of whom he won't trust. His shortsightedness has been irresponsible and discrediting.

Rather than correcting the "process" problems of the Bush years and the tendency to subvert the law, he has compounded them, and given them the veneer of bipartisan acceptance. Thanks to Obama, who had the chance to reverse it, Cheney's notion of the executive is winning. The U.S. desperately needs a leader who values institutions and law more than his or her own judgment. Or at least a Congress that isn't so impotent as to let the executive branch behave so arrogantly.

What Lincoln practiced was an early version of American ur-fascism. Statism, fascism with a smile, low calorie tyranny.

The son of a b***h had people tossed in jail without the privilege of habeas corpus. He closed down newspapers because the editors opposed the War.

If Lincoln can be called "great" for extending the power of the State, why not Barak Obama?

ruveyn

ruveyn

And perhaps he should have been impeached for it, but sic semper tyrannis! kind of mooted one.

Bush got us into two quagmires which Obama got us out of. Bush had allowed his Wall Street friends almost wreck the country, while Obama had pulled the country out from the precipice.
Obama's still the better president.
And I'll remind you - Cheney had lied us into a BS war with Iraq. When has Obama ever done anything of that magnitude?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Another deflection... Color me surprised...

Not a deflection. My honest opinion.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

That conveniently avoids answering any of the charges I leveled. Obama is so indefensible, all you can do is point to Bush and claim he was worse, which is cruelly ironic considering how closely Obama has followed Bush's policies. I'd say try evaluating Obama objectively, but I don't think you can do that at this point, due to stubbornness or something else I couldn't say.

He's only followed Bush with national security issues.

But again, Obama has been detangling us from Bush's wars,

and is trying to fix the economic mess Bush and company left us with.

Sounds pretty good to me.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Bush got us into two quagmires which Obama got us out of. Bush had allowed his Wall Street friends almost wreck the country, while Obama had pulled the country out from the precipice.

You mean the same ones he explicitly campaigned against? The same ones that you undoubtedly vocally opposed when Bush was at the helm?



By following the withdrawal timetables and agreements put into place by, wait for it, Bush?

Also, by entangling us in Libya, Somalia, Syria, Pakistan, and Yemen? You've got a funny definition of "disentangling" there...



By handing out tax dollars to his cronies and saddling us with a useless giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry disguised as a healthcare law? I don't think you're using the word "fix" in the same context I would here, as in he's "fixing" things like you'd "fix" a fight or a card game.



Of course he does, you'd still support him if he personally f*cked your wife and shot your dog, cause at least he's not a Republican.

Have you noticed that you can't seem to praise him in a vacuum, all you ever do is compare him to Bush or just the vague idea of a Republican? All you can muster when backed into a corner is gay rights, which he only moved on when it became clear that it wasn't going to cost him politically (And who was there years ago? Dick. F*cking. Cheney.), and things he's said, nothing he's actually done, and you then blame the Republicans for "obstructing" him even in areas where he could use an executive order or has acted unilaterally.

Further, when presented with irrefutable evidence of his many crimes and misdeeds, the most you'll do is grudgingly admit that *maybe* his treatment of whistle-blowers has been a bit harsh, ignoring the ruinous foreign policy, the Constitution mocking executive power grab, all the broken promises, the federal crackdown on medical marijuana growers, the record deportations, the -oh why am I even bothering? Your daddy was a union man, so you're a union man, no matter what. I'm sure your daddy was a Democrat too, so you'll be one too no matter what, and just stick your fingers in your ears when ill is spoken of them, and cover your eyes when their true nature becomes so plain that even you can't help but see it.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with being a party man, it's not for me as I prefer to order my opinions a la carte, but there is definitely something wrong with willful ignorance and self deception, and when it comes to the Democratic party and Barack Obama in particular, you're up to your eyeballs in both of them. Be a Democrat, not a useful idiot.

Are you sensing that I'm a little frustrated with you here, Bill?

No, he did not. The timetable to exit Iraq and Afghanistan were already drafted BEFORE Obama took office. At best, he might have accelerated them, but only time will tell it if was a good or bad idea when we see what kind of governments become dominant without us being there.

I'm not saying Bush was right to get us into those wars, but we pretty much had the Taliban back in power in Afghanistan not long after we supposedly ousted them.