Friends... Peeps... Seekers... Let's try to remember. It was only a few years ago! Let's try to remember feelings of slack-jawed teenage adoration people felt for this guy. Hope! He never did anything in his life, never SAID anything, but got elected president and given the peace prize. In a time of multiple global crises, voters compressed their judgment into the most inane, irrational, somnambular selection they could find... And this was the robot they selected. Generations of Americans became so dismissive of effort, and the frictions that make life worth living, that they wanted to pretend there were no decisions to be made, no sacrifices to consider.

So any idiot cypher would do. And they went with the latest product of the Chicago machine.

If you voted for Obama, take a moment to give ten words about why.

Didn't vote for him the first time, don't plan to the second time.

I wonder what he'll run on this time, he doesn't really have a lot to go on. Vapid slogans might have worked the first time, but after 4 years people expect a significant accomplishment.

He doesn't really have that.

At this point, we'd settle for Chester A. Arthur or Martin Van Buren.

Hell, I'd be willing to settle for Bea Arthur

Barack Obama, quoted in a 2008 article:

"I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director."

Policy aside, there's something seriously wrong with the guy.

I held my nose and voted for McCain.

I don't want to settle this time. I want Washington, Jefferson, Reagan, or for that matter even Adams.

I don't want to settle this time. I want Washington, Jefferson, Reagan, or for that matter even Adams.

Yeah, a bottle of Sam Adams couldn't do worse than the current occupant of the White House...oh? wrong Adams?

..oh? wrong Adams?

Sam or John Q would make me happy. For that matter I'd vote for Gomez & Morticia.

What I'm waiting for is Ron Paul to win Iowa. Then the left-stream media will do all they can to destroy him. Even the right wing is against him. We're about due for another Reagan type moment.

But, but havent you heard? Ron Paul is a RACIST!!!!!

I thought that John McCain's enthusiasm for war (remember his "we are Georgians" response) was dangerous for our country, and if elected, risked a war with Iran that had serious potential to expand beyond the Persian Gulf.

"If you voted for Obama, take a moment to give ten words about why."

Sarah Palin. I don't really need the other eight words.

Yeah, we really dodged a bullet by not having Sarah Palin as VP.

Both FDR and LBJ expanded government.

"If you voted for Obama, take a moment to give ten words about why."

I'll take a couple more then ten words, but; I'll keep it relatively short. If McCain would have been elected we'd be in another protracted war with Iran right now. To call John McCain a warmonger would be an insult to other warmongers, McCain IS the face of the military industrial complex. That fact that he's a dinosaur and Sarah Palin wasn't qualified to be president didn't help either.

I don't agree with everything Obama has done, the healthcare law being my primary gripe, with slightly increased protectionist measures being other complaint.

But if you look at Obama's presidency he's been more successful at the neocons national security agenda then the neocons themselves. Bin Laden is dead, Gaddafi is gone, 14 of the top 15 al qaeda operatives have been killed or captured.

Not to mention if you're at all knowledgeable about mainstream economics, you know that the economic policies that Obama has been pushing are the correct ones. Of course with the exception of a couple minor protectionist measures [tariffs on Chinese tires for example]. Even those mistakes are offset by the free trade deals that are being passed for Colombia, Korea, and Panama.

I'll be voting for him again this year. I don't see any better alternatives coming out of the GOP.

tl;dr - Voted for Obama because the McCain Palin ticket was much worse.

" if you're at all knowledgeable about mainstream economics, you know that the economic policies that Obama has been pushing are the correct ones."

That is one amazing statement Mike.

@Robert:
"...after 4 years people expect a significant accomplishment. He doesn't really have that."

Whistling in the dark. Consider:

(1) Osama Bin Laden sleeps with the fishes.
(2) Johnny came marching home from Iraq.
(3) The GOP is probably going to run a Mormon haircut in opposition.

I won't vote for him (again) but I expect Obama to take the 2012 election.

(1) Osama Bin Laden sleeps with the fishes.

Yes, but some of the details came from the waterboarding of prisoners before he was in office. Besides whether it was the annointed one or a different person in the seat, do you think he would have told the operators on SEAL Team Six no?

(2) Johnny came marching home from Iraq.

True. But the SOFA was already in place to end in 2012. In addition there are probably still about 2K military between the Embassy Guards and training cadres assigned there. Not to mention the 5K-25K military contractors that don't count.

(3) The GOP is probably going to run a Mormon haircut in opposition.

I at least think he would be less worse than the anointed one.

Let me guess, you voted for Obama because you believed that...

...a man who had experienced the worst futilities of war would eagerly and immediately involve the country in multiple conflicts around the globe.

...a man who had never sponsored a bipartisan bill or voted against his party in his life would be more bipartisan than a man who had earned the enmity of his own party by frequently sponsoring bipartisan bills and voting against his own party.

...a vice presidential candidate with actual executive experience and a reasonably non-partisan executive record was scarier than a presidential and vice presidential candidate with no executive experience between them and highly partisan voting records.

...a vice presidential candidate who had been wrong on every foreign policy issue on which he commented actually lent credible foreign policy credentials to a presidential candidate with no foreign policy experience whatsoever.

...a man whose career consisted of a record number of "present" votes and who had avoided taking a stand on every major issue to come across his desk was ready to take on the most significant economic problems the US had experienced since the Great Depression.

...a man who could sit for twenty years listening to a radical preacher disparage America and found those sermons so harmless that he took his young children to listen to them would be good president.

...that a man whose closest confidants included some of the most radical homegrown terrorists America has ever produced, even going so far as to having one of them ghost write his autobiography, regarded them as mere cocktail party guests and had no political affinity with their views whatsoever.

...that a man who came to national prominence through one of the most corrupt political systems in the country would be a shining paragon of ethical probity.

I could go on.

(1) Osama Bin Laden sleeps with the fishes.

And Osama slept on the decision to go get him for 16 hours while Navy SEALs waited.

(2) Johnny came marching home from Iraq.

Johnny was coming home anyway.

(3) The GOP is probably going to run a Mormon haircut in opposition.

Why "Mormon" haircut?

Almost all politicians are mere haircuts. People of true substance rarely make it far in modern politics ... in either party.

"Not to mention if you're at all knowledgeable about mainstream economics, you know that the economic policies that Obama has been pushing are the correct ones. "

The sheer stupidity in that statement makes me want to just crawl under my bed and give up on America. I couldn't even read any further.

I think Obama is a mediocre present. Essentially, he's done what the average Democratic candidate would have accomplished had be been elected at the same time. I'd give him a WAR of 0.

a man who had experienced the worst futilities of war would eagerly and immediately involve the country in multiple conflicts around the globe.

That man's statements would lead anyone to believe that. Yep.

...a man who had never sponsored a bipartisan bill or voted against his party in his life would be more bipartisan than a man who had earned the enmity of his own party by frequently sponsoring bipartisan bills and voting against his own party.

Nope, that man whose party hated him supported poorer polices, especially in foreign policy, where they president's power is mostly unchecked.

.that a man whose closest confidants included some of the most radical homegrown terrorists America has ever produced,

This statement is idiocy. Ayers held a fundraiser for Obama, and blurbed his book. My dad hosted a fundraiser for Hillary where Bill Clinton appeared. Neither of them would consider my dad a confidante.

...a vice presidential candidate with actual executive experience

Who is either an idiot, or plays one TV. Given every chance, Palin has proven herself inadequate to deal with the national stage. I don't vote on VP candidates, but there's no doubt Palin did not help.

Regardless, only ideologues and the ill-informed voted for Obama thinking he was anything other than a conventional Democrat who can give a good speech. His platform and that of Hillary were more or less identical; his foreign policy has been basically that of the Washington establishment. People may have thought they were getting something else, but that is what he ran on; it's also how he has governed.

Re: Forgign Policy

1 How excaty was Gaddafi a threat to america?

2 And given how quickly the local heros were to shoot a bound, unarmed man in the head with out so much as an impromptu reading of charges against him(let alone anything resempbling a trial, or at the very least some primitive form of law and order) do you really think the kind of society built on such casual murder(and its joyous celebration) will be any better then the society under Gaddafi?

Your point #2 in important lujlp. Democracy in much of the middle east does not mean "government we like". Usually it means "Islamist government happy to empower or ignore those who hate the West and especially the U.S."

By the way, those of us who enjoy civil liberties are likely to have a good voting option n 2012. Gary Johnson has dropped out of the Republican field and will be running as a Libertarian. Don't vote for him if you oppose candidates with executive experience and small government ideals who actually deliver on those promises.

One more thing on Qaddafi - props to crid for the link

Alternatively, suppose Qaddafi winds up hanging from a lamppost in his favorite party dress. If you’re a Third World dictator, what lessons would you draw? Qaddafi was the thug who came in from the cold, the one who (in the wake of Saddam’s fall) renounced his nuclear program and was supposedly rehabilitated in the chancelleries of the West. He was a strong partner in the war on terrorism, according to U.S. diplomats. And what did Washington do? They overthrew him anyway. — Mark Steyn