By what standard?
And I ask this question for a specific reason. For some reason P/R discussions seem to come down to these ideas of self-evident human rights that no one agrees on. I can explain why right now. Ted and Bob are the only two people left on Earth. Ted kills Bob. If Ted's the only person left on Earth, why was killing Bob wrong? Who's around to tell him that?
This means that all political discussions are basically subjective. I can propose a logically valid reason why gun ownership is a good thing because it deters potentially violent criminal behavior. If you think criminal behavior is a good thing, there's probably not a discussion to be had. Maybe you think this way because you believe criminals are evolutionarily superior, in which case I could try to convince you that criminals are an evolutionary failure because as a class of people they don't adapt well to change. But most likely your thinking is even more far removed from mine than that.
So how does this relate to Bush and Obama? At some point, I'm not really even sure how we could debate the question. What do you value more? Equality of opportunity or result? If your answer is the latter, I'm not sure how we could agree on anything. What do you think the goal of America's foreign policy should be? While I would say we should treat other countries and people to the same liberties we expect for ourselves, I believe flat out we should be trying to make ourselves more economically and militarily powerful. If you think the military should only exist for self-defense, I don't see how there's a debate.
The subject line still says this is an Obama vs. Bush debate, so I'll make my brief case. In terms of social policy, I see it as a wash. Obama's continued trying to make our civil liberties irrelevant, but Bush got the ball rolling. Who's worse, the fool or the fool who follows him? Foreign policy is also hard to tell. For all the talk of how we're more liked abroad, I'm not really sure we're more respected. When you give region incompatible DVD's to the British prime minister and make submissive greeting gestures to other foreign leaders, you look like a stupid bitch. Sorry that wasn't more eloquent. On the other hand, it took the 2006 election to convince Bush he should actually try to win the Iraq war. This is so shocking I actually can't mentally process it.*
It's economics where Obama is clearly inferior to me. Economic policy has two goals. The first is letting people make consensual business transactions governed by the reality of market forces. The second is keeping the government running within budget. The government debt is continuing to balloon at a faster rate than under Bush, and business decision making is more and more regulated by the government.
I wouldn't even be bitter about this except the Obama administration is so clearly dishonest and corrupt. Government positions are filled by lobbyists and ex-businessmen while Obama claims we need to reduce their power. Obama spends two years talking about how we need to be less partisan, then spends two years ignoring the Republican Party.** Every speech Obama gives about business is about how we need to preserve capitalism. Then he supports and enacts policies that introduce more government intervention into the market. He says Wall Street needs to create real value instead of inflating numbers, then gives them tons of money so the some corrupt businessmen as before can stay in charge of their companies so they can make illogically high profits that the government defends as legitimate.
I'm sure that depending on what you care about Bush's stupidity impacts you more philosophically and tangibly. And since that's completely subjective I'm not sure how to debate it. But is there any philosophical common ground here at all? Or do we get to see yet another P/R thread where people (including me) type posts full of righteous indignation because we really think our completely subjective opinions should be universal law.
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*Seriously think about this. We had American soldiers dying in Iraq for no reason other than to look like we're staying the course. In terms of achieving our strategic goals we were failing miserably, and Bush sat around and let it get worse because politically it hadn't hurt him yet. I find Obama's Afghanistan policy incompetent, but at least he put Petraeus in charge and made some tangible changes without being forced to by an election.
**Someone will inevitably say that the health-care bill was heavily watered down by Republican intervention. Not quite. The bill was watered down by democrats from conservative states and districts who didn't want to lose due to passing legislation perceived as being so left of center.
Topic: Super Dude: Obama Definitely Isn't Worse Than Bush? (Read 2708 times)