Obama vs. Thomas Jefferson

ErdricK

In Runtime
Messages
326
Thomas Jefferson was an amazing guy. He is one of the most well-known presidents. He's one of only a choice few presidents who is on their currency. He's on Mount Rushmore, he wrote the declaration of independence. Clearly he is one of the presidential super-stars.

And yet the surprising thing is that he wasn't a very good president. He made some poor choices, and was ineffective for most of his two terms.

So why is he SO famous? Why does he get to be on the American nickel and two dollar bill?

Because the idea of him was so good. He was a brilliant thinker, a mastermind behind the forming of their nation, eloquent beyond belief. He was a very remarkable person, just not a great president.

And so far, this is the direction Obama's presidency is going. Admittedly, there is still plenty of time for anything to happen, but just looking at his performance so far he reminds me very much of Jefferson: he is intelligent, filled with good ideas (almost to a fault), but somehow unable to cause movement in the stagnant American system, so dire in need of movement. His health care reforms are the latest of his attempts to implement change that are seemingly torpedoed by the powers for status quo.

Some presidents, like Ronald Reagan, had this amazing ability to implement change even in the face of this inpenitrable beaurocracy. But so far at least, Obama does not look like he's going to be one of those.

We'll have to see, though. He's barely out of the gate so far.
 
You won't be able to judge Obama as a President until years from now when you can look back at the results of his presidency. The same applies to Bush. It could turn out that Bush actually was a great President and had he done things differently something great wouldn't have happened. Look at Truman. He had a very low approval rating while he was President, but now he is seen as a good one.
 
Jefferson was fucking amazing because his feud between hamilton represented the beginnings of the American party system

and because he drafted the declaration of independence
and cuz he doubled the size of the us
and cuz he was secretary of state/president/congressmen/legislator/representative (house of burgesses)/govenor/minister

and he has done a lot more stuff that can be listed
 
Interesting thread.
LIES!!!!




you can't judge obama until years after he's gone, and probably until after he's dead even.

and then another hundred years or more after that when classified stuff gets de-classified
 
Back
Top Bottom