Excellent point. I do believe the reason many Democrats/liberal look upon Clinton’s presidency as favorable and act like Obama is just Bush part 2 are either wildly deranged or looking through their racism glasses.
I think it probably has more to do with the fact that most of the people saying this were 6 when he left office.
But even in that light, most of the (political) stuff Clinton is most famous for has finally come to fruition under Obama. According to the gallup website, at this point in Clintons career (900 days in) he was riding nearly 9% higher in approvals, and that was in the midst of a federal shutdown (according to this website).
The (relative) week that Bin Laden was killed, Obama and Clinton were tied at 51% approval, even though the last thing Clinton had dealt with was the Oklahoma bombings just 2 weeks previously.
Here’s the thing, I have some issues with things the President has/hasn’t done. (NDAA, hello, can we just admit this is the first step towards legislating the US as a police-state? Well, SECOND step, as the flippin’ Patriot Act was the first.)
I don’t think the President is a failure, a bad person, or acting from a place of megalomaniacal/theomaniacal intent.
I want the President to do better, yes. I also realize he is dealing with Democrats in the House/Senate, who are just as bad, if not worse than their Republican/Tea Party counterparts. (The Dems lie to pretend just a little bit more, that they’re not in the pocket of corporations, and most blue dogs are just Republicans distancing themselves from the extremists.)
We’ve lost the ability to say, “In doing X-Y-Z, this President has been successful. In doing A-B-C, less so. Perhaps we should see whether we can create a circumstance where the President has a chance of accomplishing A-B-C, yes?”
We also seem to have little to no understanding of exactly what the Executive powers are, and what they are not.
Then, of course, we’ve got the Dems who bitched and moaned about Bush’s, “Imperial,” presidency and then when Obama took office, wanted him to fix everything by imperial fiat. Yeah, doesn’t work that way. You want a democracy, you damn well better be prepared for it to be messy.
