Forums

from The Guardian

What the hell is Barack Obama's presidency for?

Barack Obama has now been in power for longer than Johnson was, and the question remains: "What the hell's his presidency for?" His second term has been characterised by a profound sense of drift in principle and policy. While posing as the ally of the immigrant he is deporting people at a faster clip than any of his predecessors; while claiming to be a supporter of labour he's championing trade deals that will undercut American jobs and wages. In December, even as he pursued one whistleblower, Edward Snowden and kept another, Chelsea Manning, incarcerated, he told the crowd at Nelson Mandela's funeral: "There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba's struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people."

If there was a plot, he's lost it. If there was a point, few can remember it. If he had a big idea, he shrank it. If there's a moral compass powerful enough to guide such contradictions to more consistent waters, it is in urgent need of being reset.

Given the barriers to democratic engagement and progressive change in America – gerrymandering, big money and Senate vetoes – we shouldalways be wary of expecting too much from a system designed to deliver precious little to the poor. We should also challenge the illusion that any individual can single-handedly produce progressive change in the absence of a mass movement that can both drive and sustain it. [...]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/23/what-is-barack-obama-presidency-for?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

Since I am new on these forums I was looking for what could be my first post about, untill i stepped on this thread. Barrack Obama's presidency. I can really say a lot about this, since I have lived through it and still am witnessing it. I remember the very beginnings, his candidacy, ellection, and all the fuss. Now we came even to see his second mandate. This whole thing has been intriguing from the very beginning, and by the end of it, we will look at it as nothing more than another 'failed' presidency. But to understand my standpoint better let me get back to the very beginings.
Back to the year 2008. At this point we are looking at the ending of G. Bush's presidency, 2 mandates full of war propaganda, racism and discrimination. The mainstream media has done their big share in all that. Overall USA, Bush and everything around it are somehow being presented in a bad light for the global population, something which clumsly went out of their hands and something they desperately want to fix. Don't get me wrong, at this stage, I was just as deluded as everybody else. I was waiting for this bad person's regime to be over and hoping for a new better person to step on his place and make the world better. In all that fog and confusion, an African - American appears, with suposedly a Muslim middle name. Never before had USA an African-American as a president, not even to mention the Muslim ties.
So this was it, I was thinking: " USA...you NEED to ellect this man just to prove the world that you are not a racist country as u have unintentionally demonstrated us in the last decade."
I think this is what the majority of people have thought. So, throughout the campaign, Obama gained more and more popularity, and at the end, the inevitable thing happened. He got eleceted! So many people were glad about it, so many people started to think the world is finally going to be a better place for us to live in. But soon everybody realized nothing has actually changed. Even by the end of his first mandate people knew he was nothing as he was supposed to be, but let us not be kidding, anybody else would not be anything better. The US president is nothing more than just a figure you can point your finger at, and attach epithets to for the governments actions. Nothing else than that.
So, getting back to the point, what is Barack Obama's presidency for? Obama's presidency is there for no reason, it is just the product of the US presidental policy. He was used back in 2008 to give people new hope for a better world and to lower the stereotypes of America being a racist country. But in fact, he is nothing more than just a puppet, as people like to call him, for the real ruling agenda which is behind all this: Corporations.

Quote from Evan S on April 14, 2014, 23:09
(saving thousands of lives and improving the quality of life for tens of thousands more).

What wonderful news! I eagerly await your evidence for this.

I'll chime in again by saying that Obamacare is an indisputably great achievement for this presidency. However, I must confess that Obama doesn't sound much different than a Republican nowadays.

It seems that Obama represented for America in 2008 what Justin Trudeau represents for Canada now: the idea of change. Obama had this fantastical campaign that offered the idea of something bigger & better that people wanted and needed. That is one of the reasons I think Trudeau is so popular in Canada at the moment. He is offering the people something young and fresh, as the public have grown tired with Harper's complete lack of concern for the environment, for example, and various other indiscretions. It seems that Trudeau offers the same thing that that Obama did: the idea and hope for change, but lacking a huge end result. Like someone stated above, Obama has, without a doubt, made change, but since it was not this huge change that people were hyped up about, everyone ends up disappointed. Again, this lead up and inevitable disappointment will be something that I think will be mirrored with Trudeau and his potential leadership should he come to power.