This is straying way out of the scope of the original argument which involved what made a good president and something along the lines of who is more credible to discuss qualifications of a good president.
I will concede perhaps you know more about economics (whatever that means) than I do. Yet the way you construct your arguments, the components you choose to analyze, and your overall approach to simple problems seriously makes me question your claim that you're in law school. If you're actually in law school, I pray to god for the clients you hopefully one day won't represent. Nevertheless even if you do attend law school, its definitely low TTT and you will never get a job. I will sleep well at night.
I digress (haha): perhaps Obama's economic policy might not seem good, there is still only so much he can do. He can appoint new leaders and chairmen when available to various departments within the executive, and also the board of the FED. He can issue directives but every other block of the bureaucratic pyramid still remains the same. He also must consult numerous aides, all competing for attention, all contradicting each other. This accounts for slowness, which I obviously do not approve of, but such slowness is a characteristic of the presidency itself, not any one particular president.
But what I am saying, what I am critical of the Obama administration for, is his attitude that because the United States is so powerful, so wealthy, that it must take care of its citizens regardless of citizen output (or input into the country). This EXPECTATION attitude, as opposed to maybe a rewards attitude, lays the foundation for his economic policy. His decisions reside within the bounds of his partially subconscious partially conscious conception of social norms.
I think we need a president that inspires some more intelligent, self responsible, individual practices that separate the successful from the non-successful (and spoiled), the "cool" kids from the "losers," the ladies men and the chumps, the selfmade and the parasites, the valuable from the needy. Much of what creates success involves simply personal mindsets and paradigms-I know from personal experience.
I still hold the belief that improving individual paradigms will help the economy more than simply changing the rules. After all, the rules will always remain accountable to the executive, people will never hold themselves responsible, and will always try to find ways to break them. Then when the economy collapses they blame economic policy, when at the end of the day its still the people that make the economy. Economic rules, activity, theory, whatever would not exist without people.
You can blame all the policy you want, actions by firms, that created such a permissive environment, but even in this financial crisis you still had to have people who would buy houses they knew they couldn't afford simply because they started believing housing prices would increase without doing anything. Mindsets like these don't just manifest through economic policy or actions, but also from the people in general.
My original argument, which you attacked ad hominem was that Americans are too pessimistic. You called that "animal spirits." But you cannot deny the pessimism and you cannot deny that confidence or lack thereof affects lots of economic activity from stocks to jobs to consumption.
The president has a lot of influence in the confidence of people. From what I am reading, after 1980, the Cold War closed down, after a period of ended detente and widespread pessimis, because nationalism and confidence increased, radiating all kinds of ripples.
I believe modern media unnecessarily checks the president, who these days almost always tries to please everyone. Joe Klein outlines this in his famous book, Politics Lost. Some people believe media checking increases transparency and holds politicians accountable.
I argue that if the framers of the constitution believed the executive needed another check, they would have included such a check. The widespread media coverage imposes a completely unnecessary, perhaps even an impeding check upon the executive. The media doesnt hold the president accountable for egregious violations of power-- it holds the president accountable for his beliefs. In other words, the media depletes the president of his core beliefs and removes his fundamental leadership capacity. Instead, the media turns the president into a puppet of the people. We already have a puppet of the people-- its called congress. Congress has all the powers which today people mistakenly-yet-understandably attribute to the president.
Yet Congress has already learned to abdicate to the president, and the president has learned to abdicate to his enormous bureaucracy. If something goes wrong, he just blames his bureaucracy, switches the head of involved departments, and life goes on.
This cycle of abdication only removes the president's own beliefs from the democratic process. The president's beliefs are the very reason we elected the president, and its the very purpose of the executive branch of our government. The president is SUPPOSED TO BE AN EXECUTIVE. The Constitution says the president is the executive of the country NOT SOLELY THE EXECUTIVE OF A BLAMELESS BUREAUCRACY.
Look at Obama: He said he wanted to close gitmo- not done; he wanted to try terrorist in civilian court- not done; he wanted to end wars- hes trying but he is getting us involved into new ones. He has traded his spine for approval ratings, probably because the thousands of people around him, extensions of media saturation, advise him to obey.
At this point, if you have the capacity to read this far, you're probably wondering why I said i support obama for 2012. I don't believe a presidential candidate from my party, the GOP will fare any better in the personal beliefs department and will only disrupt foreign policy which at this point in American hegemony's lifetime is very fragile.
At the end of the day, I want a president who can give a speech like this, defy his media adivsers (like insisting against repeated deletions from his advisors, to include "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.").
I don't want a president who appeases, which is exactly what ALL of them have done since Clinton because of cable news.
