Does President Obama deserve to be re-elected?

[Straha]

It's been almost two years since President Obama took office, which has given us enough time to get a measure of the man as President. With this in mind, has he earned a second term as President on his own merits, or ought he be replaced with someone else?

NOTE: The question here is NOT "Is Barack Obama better than the alternative candidates for President?", it's whether or not he is a good, or even adequate, President, one who deserves to be re-elected in his own right. We can go to any number of other threads and discuss the failings (or lack thereof) of the opposition parties and candidates, this is about Obama by himself, so please do not post "Yes, because he's not a Republican!" or something of that ilk.

Also, I've created three separate categories for voting. Democrats, U.S. Citizens, and Everybody Else. I think this way the poll could be most interesting and educational is if we can see how the perception of registered Democrats and the rest of the United States compare to each other and how they compare to the international perception of Barack H. Obama. So please, vote in the proper categories, and don't vote as a "Democrat" unless you are a U.S. Citizen either registered as a Democrat or too young to register as a Democrat yet.

[General Zod]

Essentially? No. At this point I don't think I want to see Obama in office next term after all the disappointments, repeated inability to grow a spine and wikilieaks reveals, so I'll either be voting Libertarian or leaving the field blank.

[Knife]

Voted no, I'm not a Democrat, but I did vote for Obama in 08. He sold himself as X and turned into Y, and I don't want Y. So no, I don't think he rates it again in 2012. This is, as the OT says, all in a vacuum and doesn't reflect other problems associated with it.

[Serafina]

Absolutely not.
His best achievements have been mediocre at best (i am talking about the economics program).
Other than that, he has not only not kept his promises, but often done the outright opposite - on such things as civil liberties, gay rights etc.
As for international relationships - "better than bush" is not an achievment. And the current releases have pretty much shown that his actual politics are not much of an improvement.

Now, he might be the best candidate available. But if he get's re-elected, it's not because he DESERVES it - it would be merely because he sucks less than anyone else.

[ShadowDragon8685]

On his own merits, he does not deserve to be President again. I say this as a Democrat who voted for him the first time, and celebrated his victory.

My reasons for this are as follows, in no particular order:

He hasn't brought the Bush junta to justice, which I know he never promised but which he unambiguously took off the table from day 1.
He dropped the ball completely on healthcare.
He dropped the ball completely on Gitmo.
He dropped the ball on the Iraqisnam and Asscrackistan pullouts.
He dropped the ball on "Change!" (tm)
He dropped the ball on sexuality equality.
He dropped the ball on taxes.
He dropped the ball, most damningly, on being a leader. He's not fit to captain a sailboat, let alone the ship of state. He's let the disloyal opposition tread shodrough over him like a pack of English soccer hooligans and foist upon him the blame for everything that they caused. He's tried to compromise time and time again, only to be bitten each time. I won't begrudge a man holding out the fig leaf of peace to his fellow man, but after being stabbed in the hand once (let alone as many times as he's been,) you withdraw the fig leaf of peace and brandish the pistol of hostility. He seems incapable of playing rough with the GOP, while they only know how to fuck him (and by extension, all of us,) roughly, in the ass, without even the goddamn human decency of a reach-around.

So, no, I don't think I'll be voting for him in the Primaries. Of course, if it comes down to a choice of him or a Republican for president, well...

Spineless incompetence beats actual malevolence. Not by a lot, but it is the lesser of the two evils.

[Zixinus]

Everything I have heard of him is that he is more of the same that was Bush. Either he is such a coward that he does not dare to move the government away from the course Bush set it or he is OK with what the man has done. Which considering that it involves things like military coverups of civilian deaths, his unwillingness to do anything to BP during the oilspill, unwillingness to get the economic idiocies in order and the countless shit that the wikileaks has shown.

So no, I don't think that having the first black president of the USA has turned out to be that much revolutionary thing as everybody hoped for.

[Talhe]

No. His style of administration would work in better times, but with the Tea Party in power and extreme partisanship displayed, the Democrats need someone who isn't afraid to say no to the idiocy of the Right.

I don't regret voting for him in '08; I regret what he turned into.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

I certainly won't vote for him at this point, though I voted for him in 08 and generally vote Democrat, unless things turn around spectacularly in the next 18 months or so. I'd rather "waste" my vote by voting for a Green or other minor party left leaning candidate to send a message to the Democratic party than condone the status quo, even if it results in Republican victory, because I do not see Republican majority government behaving that much worse that the Republican minority government that we've had up to now. With any luck the Republican candidate will be an ineffective raving loon rather than a dangerous one and things will actually swing back towards sanity afterwards. Or it will simply prove that voting is a massively insufficient mechanism for influencing government positively. (I know that's rather obvious at this point).

[Themightytom]

Personally I think the climate WILL be better for him if he is re-elected. I mean I am pissed at the compromises he's made and his apparent inability to manage opposition effectively. On the other hand i voted for him because I found his positions more reasonable than those of the Republicans.

I don't think he's dropped the ball on any particular issue, I do feel he could have made more progress, and would have liked to see him do it, but at least he hasn't done any damage, and conditions are slowly improving for the US as a whole. Which is what I would be voting for. On my perception that he's effective, but not very, I would give him a second term to see him continue the work he's been doing.

Though the next year may prove telling. He hasn't done any damage while in control, but his methods may permit the Republicans to do considerable damage, which I would blame him for.

[Xisiqomelir]

I cannot answer this question until I see who the opposing candidate is.

If it's Palin, then I'll take 4 more years of appeasement, thank you very much.

If it's Bloomberg, then let's get ready to Michael!

[General Zod]

I cannot answer this question until I see who the opposing candidate is.

If it's Palin, then I'll take 4 more years of appeasement, thank you very much.

If it's Bloomberg, then let's get ready to Michael!

Then you didn't read the op. It doesn't matter who the hypothetical opposition candidate is.

[Sea Skimmer]

If we are going to get Republican policy out of him, I would far rather prefer a real Republican because that would be so insulting and it would mean less stupidity on cutting military R&D for no reason. Obama has no political will and rolls over like a pet trying to appease its master. I can't stand it. He reminds me of the UN. He values an agreement because it is an agreement even if to make that agreement its watered down into something which is worse then doing nothing. He will not face failure, and yet this causes him to fail completely. I don't see it changing; though I damn well hope it will.

[J]

Of course he should be re-elected, it will make the eventual conquest of the US by Canada that much easier.

Speaking seriously, in my entire lifetime I've never seen a greater failure nor a president less worthy of re-election.
Everything he touches turns to poop. Everything. I'd rather have wonder chimp in office, he's that bad.

[TimothyC]

Edit: I don't think that any politician deserves to be reelected, they have to earn it, and President Obama hasn't earned it.

I am openly mocked here for the issues that I voted on in the last election (missile defense and nuclear power). In the face of the decisions the current administration has taken I feel vindicated in voting against him in the last presidential election, and if he is the Democrat nominee I will vote against him again.

[General Zod]

if he is the Democrat nominee I will vote against him again.

Uhm, what? The only way he wouldn't be the "nominee" is if he stepped down, since he's the incumbent.

[Gandalf]

I'd say that he doesn't deserve it, but unless the Republican candidate is somehow magically great, he deserves it more than anyone they could run. He's (just) the lesser of the available evils.

He's the perfect argument for a third party.

[Sea Skimmer]

Uhm, what? The only way he wouldn't be the "nominee" is if he stepped down, since he's the incumbent.

Just because you are incumbent doesn't automatically mean you get the party nomination. I can’t think of any specific case when the incumbent didn’t get the nomination in the end, but we have had instances in which an incumbent was challenged by members of his own party. The way Obama is sliding down the hill it’s hard to think at least someone won’t strongly challenge him. Its entirely possible, indeed likely, the democrats will abandon him and we could have a three way election in 2012 if he doesn’t at least try to shape up. A fair bit will depend on who looks like the top Republican runner though.

[Junghalli]

I'm not sure because I'm honestly not sure what would realistically be achievable to someone in his position, but from my impressions ... no, I think he does not deserve to be re-elected. He seems to make only the most token and half-hearted efforts to push through the agenda of his supporters, and bends over backwards to compromise with people who have little interest in compromise.

I probably will vote for him in the next Presidential election, but only because the only credible opposition is likely to be even worse.

[Akhlut]

In two words: Hell. No.

I held my nose and voted for him instead of my beloved Socialists or Greens because my wife convinced me that he was the best hope and that I should show some solidarity for his Change and so on. I still predicted he wasn't going to be all the good of a president, but I thought he might actually accomplish something. But, I voted for the man, damn it.

And, then, the past two years unfolded before me. And I sighed, deeply. I originally thought he was going to be so much different from John Kerry, who had the main qualifications of "Not-Bush," because Obama talked a good talk and seemed to have some framework of a plan developed.

But, I was wrong. This man doesn't have the spine or guts to accomplish a damn thing. He keeps failing and fucking it up and rolling over and trying to play nice with people who think he's a Muslim Commie-Nazi and who wouldn't cooperate with him for any reason at all.

He deserves to be re-elected as much as Buchanon or Hoover deserved it. He's sitting on his hands during a crisis and is doing jack-and-shit to fix it up. Unless the Ghost of Christmas Future shows up in a few weeks and tells him to get his shit together, I'm pretty sure he's a one-termer.

[Alyrium Denryle]

He's dead to me. between duplicitousness and having no spine, he has betrayed everything I hold dear. He can fuck himself, regardless of candidate, i am voting Green, and then hopefully leaving the country.

[TimothyC]

One thing I remember that people liked and Akhlut noted was President Obama's "Oratory" and "Communication" skills. One thing I make a point of doing is listening and reading speeches as opposed to watching them. I do remembering being underwhelmed by what I heard and read. I honestly wonder how much of the aforementioned skills were real and how much were the product of people's imagination.

[Gandalf]

One thing I remember that people liked and Akhlut noted was President Obama's "Oratory" and "Communication" skills. One thing I make a point of doing is listening and reading speeches as opposed to watching them. I do remembering being underwhelmed by what I heard and read. I honestly wonder how much of the aforementioned skills were real and how much were the product of people's imagination.

I imagine he's being judged relative to his contemporaries.

How many other prominent American politicians can speak well in public? Not just adequately, but well.

[Soontir C'boath]

On Obama's own merits, no.

1. The people and the organizations that mobilized to get him elected seemed to have evaporated. There should have been a push to keep people involved like appealing for donations to air commercials or send infocards, hold public rallies, etc
2. An extention to that, there was no real pressure applied on the media to stop the bullshit spewed (death panels, et al).
3. Appointments of people like Bernanke instead of more honest and valid people (his and her names escape me at the moment).
4. Gitmo is still around
5. No real support on DADT and the Dream Act

And the list goes on and on.

I think one thing that was really telling of how Obama was handling his Presidency was about how he had admitted that his advisers told him people would be frustrated by now... If I was Obama, I would have fired them.

I will be voting third party and I do not care if a Republican gets in. For all intents and purposes we have one in now.

[Teebs]

I'm not a US citizen but he hasn't fulfilled anything like what I expected (and I had fairly reasonable and cautious expectations). So no. Even from a pure electoral success view the answer is still no. Not only has he failed to provide anything for his base, he's also managed to end up being painted by the everyone else as an extreme leftwinger. It would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

One thing I remember that people liked and Akhlut noted was President Obama's "Oratory" and "Communication" skills. One thing I make a point of doing is listening and reading speeches as opposed to watching them. I do remembering being underwhelmed by what I heard and read. I honestly wonder how much of the aforementioned skills were real and how much were the product of people's imagination.

I imagine he's being judged relative to his contemporaries.

How many other prominent American politicians can speak well in public? Not just adequately, but well.

The sitting President does not speak well. His oratory skills aren't an improvement over either Clinton, and he lacks the delivery of a trained actor like Uncle Ronnie. He speaks better than Bush the Lesser, but that's really not hard to do.

On topic . . . would I vote for him again? What has he accomplished in his first two years in office:
- Getting health insurance reform passed . . . but he loses most of his credit by letting the GOP dictate the tone of the debate and allowing them to drag the debate out for so long that reform became "a love letter to the insurance industry."
- Getting financial reform passed . . . but, again, he loses most of his credit by letting the GOP dictate the tone of the debate and allowing them to drag the debate out for so long that reform became "a love letter to Wall Street."
- Committing the US to a draw-down in Iraq . . . only to send them to Afghanistan instead.
- Revoking a bunch of Bush the Lesser's executive orders . . . and then signing a profoundly anti-reproductive-rights turd of his own.
- Being held in higher esteem than Bush the Lesser among the international community. He won a Nobel Prize . . . for not being Bush the Lesser. And his esteem only diminishes with things like America's shameful conduct at Copenhagen.

So, we can say he's a sum-zero President. Were this peacetime and the economy were in decent shape, he'd likely be an okay President. In a less-contentious Congress, he'd probably get more done and he'd have plenty of time to learn the art of triangulation that Clinton perfected. In this political climate, his inability to whip the Democratic Party and harangue Congress into giving him what he wants makes him only modestly better than a McCain Presidency. McCain probably could've been talked into doing sensible things with the Democratic majority if he thought they'd improve his re-election chances in 2012; but with the Tea Party Queen a heart attack away from the Oval Office, this doesn't seem at all likely.

In the end, I voted for him because he wasn't a Republican. On his own merits alone, I'd not re-elect him. On the near-certainty that whoever the GOP ends up running in 2012 will be batshit insane, I'll vote to re-elect him.