October 22, 2010
-
President Obama and Unemployment
Here are the unemployment averages for the last several presidents:
Harry S. Truman (D) – 4.26%
Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) – 4.89%
John F. Kennedy (D) – 5.99%
Lyndon B. Johnson (D) – 4.22%
Richard Nixon (R) – 5.00%
Gerald Ford (R) – 7.77%
Jimmy Carter (D) – 6.54%
Ronald Reagan (R) – 7.54%
George H.W. Bush (R) – 6.3%
Bill Clinton (D) – 5.2%
George W. Bush (R) – 5.27%
Barack Obama (D) – 9.3%
Here is the link: Link
Is President Obama everything you had hoped for?
Comments (106)
Well, Herbert Hoover certainly disappointed people too.
no
And then some ♥
The financial crisis placed us in such a deep hole that climbing out will very slow. Employment gains have been made in the private sector, but government jobs continue to be cut. (Conservatives should be happy–less government spending!) I doubt that unemployment would have been any different with a Republican president.
@redhairedgrrl - Agreed.
Unemployment rate at start of Bush’s first term: 4.2 percent
At end of Bush’s second term: 7.2 percent
The lop-eared leftist is everything he said he was going to be. Hope and change was for dummies.
@redhairedgrrl - The two highest deficits on record are this year and last year. And the Democrats are the ones who engineered our economic disaster. They’ve been in power for 4 years. Blaming others is getting to be lame.
Unfortunately he’s not. It would be nice to be able to work a job that I went to college for.
I was hoping someone else would win the election.
He can keep his change, I don’t want it!
Conservatives taking back Congress is 2010 and taking back the White House in 2012! YEA.
Yeah, pretty much. I don’t have very high hopes for any politician of any party.
No. I wanted him to have numbers similar to those other guys even though they had 4-8 years and he’s had less than 2…
He isn’t anything that I hoped for…..I expected little and he delivered even less
…and more…
@Rob_of_the_Sky - What he said. And plus, Bush’s reign was the start of the decline. Obama is trying to pick up the pieces, but nobody is cutting him any slack. Things like unemployment just don’t happen overnight.
@atticusfin - Same here.
@tendollar4ways - LMAO! comment win.
Excuse me, but Bush LEFT the rate that high for Obama. All Obama can do is try to improve the rate after Bush made them so high.
No, he’s not.
But I’m glad he’s the president.
So are those two year averages, or the average unemployment rate for their entire presidencies? If it’s the latter, you’re wasting my time, let’s talk in two years.
And yes, I am too lazy to check. I’m waiting for a sleeping pill to kick in.
@radicalsounds - Unemployment isn’t expected to drop till 2012, at least that’s what the article has stated.
Why wasn’t Hoover included?
I SMELL BIAS
Nope, not at all what I hoped he’d be.
shoveling all the blame on obama is far from fair. theres arguments that go back to clinton’s administration, but either bush or clinton, the fact is that obama inherited a shitty economy. the blame however, is not constructive. i feel like unrealistic expectations were expected of obama, as though he was some super president who could fix everything. you can whine and squeal about how obama hasnt picked up the economy and given more americans jobs, but this isnt an authoritarian government where the president has that much power. again, the finger pointing isnt improving anyone’s economy.
Yes, he is. I ca’t believe that people don’t realize what shape the 8 years of Bushim left this country in. It takes time to climb out of two wars and financial disaster. That being said, I think the Democrats have been too wimpy, so if the Repugs take over then they get what they deserve, and God help America.
oh yes, and maybe that Nobel peace prize that was HANDED to him will encourage him to continue on his path of greatness!!!
Of course he’s not “everything” I hoped for, but having lived through all of the Presidents on your list (except Truman) I can honestly say that most of them were nothing I hoped for.
Well, he’s even an worse president than he figured he would be. He’s just been a total disaster on domestic policy. The only reason he’s done halfway decent with the military is that he left Mr. Bush’s Secretary of Defense in place.
He’s worse than I thought he’d be. I actually find myself harking back to the competence and maturity of the Bush administration.
I never hoped anything would come out of his liberal agenda so I got what I hoped for.
BB..some lessons on levelheadedness, patience and total support to the President can be learned from the Camp Hope experience in Chile. That problem/crisis was not politicized nor was the time spent to blame the President or company. Instead, everyone was patient in one voice and agenda(SUCCESS), time not withstanding.
BB.. B..e..w…a.re that rash and hasty actions in this era destroyBeware before you D..Day in the eleventh month. Beware of your number position in the world 2day as many Nations are aspiring. Dont be a pack of cards.
yep he is…it could have been worse if mccain/palin stepped in. They had no clue. Bush really wreaked the country. The unemployment lay offs started to trend in 2004!!
@mammaquiet - I agree ! Dems need to get more real with them Rebubs!
While I understand that there is no such thing as a “super president” as I’ve seen the phrase used in past comment, I must say that claiming that the president has NO power is a cop out. The president has AS MUCH power as the House & Senate (respectively, not combined). It’s called the balance of power. They can all deadlock & block each other – but even those moves can be powerful.
So I agree – while I’d LOVE to claim those stats as being completely correct & fair, after looking into it – they aren’t. I didn’t want to believe that Bush left it off higher than the 5% but on another site (NOT wikipedia as anyone can input that stuff in themselves), it seems to have been left at 7%. And agreed – those are their entire term rates.
HOWEVER, I do not believe that Obama has delivered on his campaign promises – didn’t he say that in 18 months he’d begin bringing our soldiers home? Instead, they are going out in more force to Afghanistan now. Which is even more dangerous an area to be in than Iraq. I don’t pretend to know all of the reasons behind everything, but still – he promised & now he’s reneging. I won’t get into the other policies he has that are either immoral or just not good for our country.
I’m not American … so I’m not entirely sure my opinion is one of interest.
But I was rooting for Obama to become President. He did, I was happy. But in all fairness, I’m not noticing a massive change.
I think he’s a great guy, and he could be good for America, but I don’t think he’s made any drastic changes (or minor changes that will lead to drastic changes in the future) as of yet. And it’s a little disappointing. :/
Obama = Bush on unemployment
Obama = Bush on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
Obama = Bush on rewards to Wall Street bankers
Obama = Bush on Middle East
Obama = Bush on invasive wars in foreign countries
Obama = Bush on Guantanamo Bay
There is no Change and, I’m afraid, there is no Hope.
@redhairedgrrl - LESS GOVERNMENT SPENDING?!?!?!?! did the fact that the deficit for the past two years is the HIGHEST it has ever been escape you???? and yes, that is converted into real dollars with inflation factored out. also, i don’t know if you remember this, but obama and pelosi and all the other insane democrats claimed that the “stimulus” would work fast to create jobs. they said unemployment would turn out and decrease within a year. well, it’s been over a year and all the “stimulus” has done is cost us more money that we didn’t have the first place. in states that received money for education, this was supposed to save teachers jobs. well, it hasn’t done that as more and more teachers and education employees are still getting laid off and schools are closing. obama is a joke, a big fucking joke, and it’s time to stop blaming the republicans because they’ve been out of power in congress for over 4 years and out of the presidency for 2.
Also another thing (I don’t know if anyone else mentioned it) but you should be looking at which Prez’s which were in charge during wars that makes a difference because of course more people will be employed during war then after war we’ve lost so much money that it hurts the economy and people lose the jobs they had.
I have pretty much given up hope on anyone fixing this.
You can’t blame one man for the state of a nation.
The President wasn’t responsible for what happened to Wall st. So the unemployment rates mean very little in perspective.
Having “hope” for any politician is a lost cause, even if he is the first mulatto president. Politicians are kind of like David Blaine doing street magic, we watch the tricks and are left staring like we just saw a Unicorn, then the dust settles and we want to see it again but we want to see it this time with two horns. It will never change.
@Teufels_Hofnarr - Or FDR for that matter– 25%.
@LoBornlytesThoughtPalace -
The two highest deficits on record are this year and last year. And the Democrats are the ones who engineered our economic disaster.
Hey , you may know this, but the economy doesn’t exactly reset between Presidential elections. The recession started under Bush’s watch. And it were Republicans since Reagan who systematically dismantled the post-depression economic safeguards to precipitate the recession.
Dishonest much?
@Elegast - Obama and the Democrats are using the exact same policies to ruin the economy today as FDR did back in the 30s. And they are getting the exact same results: economic melt down. Wait until after the election when the actual numbers on unemployment come out.
@Elegast - The Democrats have controlled Congress for 4 years. That’s not a reset, it’s policy. Bush was a terrible president when it came to domestic policy and standing up to Congress. When the Dems took Congress in 2007 he supported their efforts at government control of the economy and Senator Obama was there voting for the entire thing.
Yes, the Democrats are to blame for the economic collapse because they are the ones who legislated it into existence. Again, after 4 long years of Democrat control, blaming Bush is long past lame.
@LoBornlytesThoughtPalace - …When the Dems took Congress in 2007 he [Bush] supported their efforts at government control of the economy and Senator Obama was their voting for the entire things.
It wasn’t the presence of donkies in the Capitol building that caused the economic meltdown. I don’t know why you think coincidence is causation.
Yes, the Democrats are to blame for the economic collapse because they are the ones who legislated it into existence.
Which piece of legislation?
Please, don’t invent bullshit.
How do you expect somebody to fix all of Bush’s problems? Thats gonna take YEARS to accomplish. He’s only been in office for so long.
Heres a list of things he HAS done.
the HOPE Act, which increased Pell Grants to $5100The Coburn-Obama Government Transparency Act of 2006The Lugar-Obama Nuclear Non-proliferation and Conventional Weapons Threat Reduction ActThe 2007 Government Ethics Bill The “Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act.Summer Learning demonstration projectObama’s Global Poverty Act of 2007Amendments, that have all passed:
S.Amdt.159 to S.Con.Res.18 – To prevent and, if necessary, respond to an international outbreak of the avian flu.
S.Amdt.390 to H.R.1268 – To provide meal and telephone benefits for members of the Armed Forces who are recuperating from injuries incurred on active duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom.
S.Amdt.670 to H.R.3 – To provide for Flexible Fuel Vehicle (FFV) refueling capability at new and existing refueling station facilities to promote energy security and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
S.Amdt.808 to H.R.6 – To establish a program to develop Fischer-Tropsch transportation fuels from Illinois basin coal.
S.Amdt.851 to H.R.6 – To require the Secretary to establish a Joint Flexible Fuel/Hybrid Vehicle Commercialization Initiative, and for other purposes.
S.Amdt.1362 to S.1042 – To require a report on the Department of Defense Composite Health Care System II.
S.Amdt.1453 to S.1402 – To ensure the protection of military and civilian personnel in the Department of Defense from an influenza pandemic, including an avian influenza pandemic.
S.Amdt.2301 to H.R.3010 – To increase funds to the Thurgood Marshall Legal Educational Opportunity Program and to the Office of Special Education Programs of the Department of Education for the purposes of expanding positive behavioral interventions and supports.
S.Amdt.2605 to S.2020 – Expressing the sense of the Senate that the Federal Emergency Management Agency should immediately address issues relating to no-bid contracting.
S.Amdt.2930 to S.2349 – To clarify that availability of legislation does not include nonbusiness days.
S.Amdt.3144 to S.Con.Res.83 – To provide a $40 million increase in FY 2007 for the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program and to improve job services for hard-to-place veterans
S. Amdt 41 to S. 1 To require lobbyists to disclose the candidates, leadership PACs, or political parties for whom they collect or arrange contributions, and the aggregate amount of the contributions collected or arranged.
Give the guy some time; hes not a Magician.
Barack has Written a total of 890 Bills and Co-sponsored Another 1096 since he started serving in the U.S. Senate
oh wow. thats already more than Bush has ever done
@LoBornlytesThoughtPalace - Obama and the Democrats are using the exact same policies to ruin the economy today as FDR did back in the 30s.
Yeah. Macroeconomics.
@Elegast - Chris Dodd and Barney Frank wrote the banking legislation that destroyed the economy. They also refused to heed multiple warnings on the impending collapse. I listened to congressional Democrats excoriate regulators who issued the warning.
I didn’t expect much of anything.
I think people are always going to sort of hate whoever’s in charge anyway. We all need someone to blame.
Needed to change it….Dan you are a Fox New type hack….and utterly dishonest, I get soooo fucking tired of Conservative Dishonest…the GOP subsidies US companies moves oversea with Tax Breaks and credits (they fillabustered during Obama term when Dems tried to eliminate this break). The GOP repealed the Glass Steigal act in 99 and this deregulation caused a housing bubble which burst and when it did…..at the end of Bushes term…we were left with no manufacturing base (jobs). + the construction industry was ruined. You friggin liars, crooks and cheats bring out some statistics which don’t look at the true picture and blame Obama.
Dark heart homey. You conserves have a really dark, nasty, dishonest heart.
I don’t know if it’s because of the age of some of the commentors above me or if we all just have a short memory. But the “housing crisis” was the result of the government mandating that banks give out “sub-prime”mortgages, which was the political move that President Bill Clinton made towards the end of his last term. He wanted home-ownership to be higher when he left office to boost his stats. He knew at the time, his advisors and wall street was warning Him and the Democratic congress that it would end up in the worst economic disaster since the great depression. 9 years later, exactly what they predicted and the Democrats ignored happened. He also removed restrictions on the stock market to allow the .com boom to make more millionaires in our country faster than at any time in our country. A practice that caught up to President Bush right after his first year in office when the stock market crashed. (anyone remember the recession in 2001-2002?) Through creativity and sound economic policy, the Republicans and Bush rallied the economy higher than it has ever been. Unfortunately they didn’t fix the mess that Dems got us in (the sub-prime mess) and the market crashed.
So for all of you who don’t know your history, open a book, read up on what was really going on. Not just what CNN/Fox News tell you. Democrats (for the past 20 years at least) have been about selling ideas, not tangible results. The sooner we realize this, the better.
I said I would give him a year before I started blaming him for current conditions.
It’s been more than a year. I’m blaming him.
Still not sorry I didn’t vote for McCain/Palin, though.
I think far too often we want to blame our leaders for the unfortunate circumstances around us when it’s really US, the people, that created these situations; yet, we’re expecting someone else to fix it.
Obama has been president for 2 years, a number of the others have been president for four or more years. There’s an old Yiddish proverb “Never show a fool half-completed work.
If you are implying that the current financial crisis is all Obama’s fault, then I disagree wholeheartedly. He is doing the best he can with the staggering mess of debt caused by eight years of war and a housing collapse. The housing market collapsed due to “derivatives” which basically means rich companies were buying insurance on things which 1) were destined to fail and 2) the companies had no ownership. In other words — it’s like buying lots of insurance on a car you don’t own, then parking that car under an old tree during a thunderstorm. As for individuals who are unable to manage their money, they can blame only themselves for lacking self control, responsibility, and enough brain cells to understand that “You should not spend more than you make”. Regarding people who scrimp and save and try their best — life is simply not fair. My family grew up “poor” — saving, working freelance when needed, always making sure we saved up, and it was never enough. I was fortunate enough to work like a dog and make the most of my education and I eventually managed to pull myself out of the cycle of poverty. There should be programs in place for families who are in similar situations, but it is impossible to quantify motivation. Life is simply not fair.
Relevant: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/the-billion-dollar-gram/ Note how much is taken up by the Iraq War & Defense spending.
References and source data here: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/the-billion-dollar-gram/
@redhairedgrrl - Pretty much this.
I didn’t really expect anyone to get us out of this hole at all and expected it to slightly rise. In fact, my business management teacher mentioned something about reading an article that said that economic experts said that it would take us 8 years to get anywhere near getting out of the hole and it would get worse after the elections before it got better if the person elected did things correctly. So if my teacher and that article was correct, then I should be optimistic. But I haven’t done enough research of my own and I’m terrible at understanding economics so I’m just going to stay out of this debate really until I see someone doing something that doesn’t make sense to me (like going into a war we can’t really pay for while also cutting taxes from the people who can afford to pay higher taxes). Right now, what Obama is doing makes sense to me and it really is still kind of early if you think about how long it took for us to get to where we’re at.
var fctb_tool=null;
function FCTB_Init_79fb6ecaac8c2e44be457fa9e778337b(t)
{
fctb_tool=t;
start(fctb_tool);
}
I don’t have faith in any politicians even for the first of his kind.
So I came back and took another look at the numbers. Because we all understand that 1 statistic can adequately summarize Presidential performance. So clearly Obama is the worst President on the list, followed by Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. And the best President in the last 60 years was apparently Lyndon Johnson. Thanks for simplifying the political debate.
I did not vote for him. He is everything I feared and more.
The Bailouts and Banking regulations put in place to clean up the financial mess were done in such a way that they have worsened a bad situation.
Letting Lehman fail, but no other big bank? Clamping down on credit regulations, just when the Fed is trying to increase liquidity in the system? Creating an extremely uncertain regulatory environment in the corporate and banking sectors, just when we need corporations to be investing in labobr and Capital???
I could go on and on. But those who voted for him should really be examining the details this andiminstration’s actions and legislative changes, take a truthful look at what the fallout has been, and realize you can’t just blame it on the “bush recession.”
This is what you get with DOPE and Change. This douche bag is the worst President in the US history. He knows nothing about running a Super Nation. I think he needs to go back to community organizing. Someone needs to show this MORON to the door. I was not a Bush supporter but he would have done a better job then this Nappy headed boy.
If the “farther-right” conservatives have their way in 2012 and things don’t quite go as planned through 2016, I can see this…
1. They’ll blame the Obama administration for making things worse.
2. They’ll blame the Clinton administration for starting the decline.
3. They’ll be lenient on Bush Jr. because he was dealing with “tear-ruh” and there was no time to pay attention to our own economy because we were fighting the supposed “Axis of Evil.”
4. They won’t be paying attention to the shrinking middle-class as long as they’re not on the short end of that stick. If they are on the “poor side,” they may (just maybe) simply individually blame themselves for not “working hard enough” and start praying to jump the gap into the “haves” rather than “have-nots.”
(NOTE: When I say “farther-right conservatives,” I’m not talking about the politicians/business people that actually know what’s going on and are milking the system for their own ends. I’m talking about the ordinary people that don’t really think about what’s going on and simply think that everything is due to the bleeding heart liberals. I actually have more respect for everyday “centrist conservatives” that understand that our society and economic system is complex…perhaps a bit too complex. Thoughtful centrist conservatives (at least I hope) understand it’ll take more than just “less government” to get things under control.)
Yep.
A man, doing his best to make the world better.
What more can you ask for?
He’s everything I feared he would be, and more
@strife_caecus - the only time we are going to see less government is in the future, when they have the system down to where all of our money is being funneled throught them. It will basically be a monarchy, where the richest and most powerful just get to take turns being the king
@DEISENBERG - Fitting proverb. It is precisely what I had in mind. The guy isn’t even halfway into his first term and he is being compared to the entirety of past administrations. At this point, including the Obama administration in averages is misleading.
A more telling analysis would probably be of the peaks, I think. Reagan would top that list at 10.8% unemployment from the last couple months of 1982.
Obama walked into a terrible economic climate. Unemployment had been steadily increasing nearly a full year before he took office. It wasn’t entirely the fault of the Bush administration, however. It was, in large part, a culmination of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, otherwise known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act. The Glass-Steagall Act was written and enacted after the Great Depression to prevent such an economic collapse from reoccurring. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was passed through Congress by the Republican majority, with support from only one Democrat, and signed into law by Bill Clinton, who should have known better. So if you want someone to blame, there is quite a selection just in that group.
Aside from that, Obama’s first term is looking a bit like Reagan’s. Reagan walked in to find a 7.5% unemployment rate. Obama walked in to find a 7.7% unemployment rate. Reagan peaked around the end of his second year in office, hovering around a 10-11% unemployment rate. Obama peaked earlier with 10.1% unemployment at the end of his first year. One difference in Obama’s favor is that his peak at approximately 10% only lasted three months while Reagan had unemployment at 10% or higher for nine months. Unemployment has seemed to be almost in decline for the past year. If it finally tips and goes into steady decline next year, then he will be doing better than Reagan did.
This is my source for unemployment rates. It has the rates for each and every month since January 1948.
In my opinion, Obama is acting less like a liberal and more like a Democrat than I would prefer, but having run as a Democrat that is pretty much what I expected. His presidency is probably going to turn out a lot like Reagan’s with how much he is trying to appease Republicans.
@redhairedgrrl - exactly
@YourOuterCritic - Me too.
*rolls eyes*
@LoBornlytesThoughtPalace - what? I dont even, I, um, what? could you maybe cite your sources?
PROMISES! PROMISES! Over promise & under deliver. In my house I’m
called bad or a liar when I make promises and don’t follow through. If
you are in politics, you don’t have to answer or respond to your
previous promises . . .just say give me more time . . .WELL, TIME IS
UP! GET THEM BIG SPENDERS OUT before the grandchildren are born owing
$100,000 each!!!!
No, but definitely what I expected.
@Teufels_Hofnarr - Because then the numbers wouldn’t be nearly as pretty.
Gosh, how do you expect a point to be made with full disclosure and parallel comparisons?!
@brittybabyx3 - Thank you.
I knew it would end up this way. I’m so glad I decided to vote for McCain at the last minute when I was at the booth… I think I avoided having to be guilty later. Thanks to my intuition i saved myself again…
@saintvi - exactly
I dislike him >.<
I can’t wait to move back to Japan….
@curiousdwk - you can’t be serious or you don’t read a legitimate newspaper (I gasp).
Obama’s whole view on the role of the public sector versus private sector, regulation, redistribution of wealth, and a host of other economic issues is the polar opposite of the Bush administration’s.
Among non-political economists, there is no debate that legislative actions in these areas worsened the downturn, made recoery slower, and has increased business uncertainty in a way that has made it more appealing to sit on cash than invest in infrastructure, or labor.
@LoBornlytesThoughtPalace - I think you and I are the only ones on this post who actually read about current events, as opposed to purusing the headlines, and understand the repurcussions of the policies of this administration. Good for you
Don’t get me wrong. I was gung-ho for Obama during the elections when he was talking about Hope and Change. But that was talk. I’m not saying that he is like Bush in all respects, but I am saying that he has done little action in many ways that result in the same policies as Bush. (He has dismissed more people under DADT than Bush did.) In these areas, his actions have been nil. There are other ways that he has improved upon Bush (not hard to do) like cooperate with the United Nations, and push for Health Reform. But in these areas that specifically listed (which you conveniently ignored) he hasn’t done didley squat to change them or to give us hope that he will change them.
Just as an example: Guantanamo Bay. Or better yet, Israel and Palestinge. And he is still fighting DADT with his actions while his mouth is saying something else. I am addressing specific issues here. Can you rebut these specifics?
Presidents will never be what we expect them to be, whether they’re liberal or conservative. Any of you who have ever taken a class in politics should know this. It’s an
impossible job and somehow we expect he/(some day soon)she to do everything we want. We’re a diverse nation, and our ideologies reflect that. There’s no way to please everybody. Besides, President Obama has 2 more years to turn things around. In the meantime, would you like to see what he and the Democratic party have changed?
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/3/30/852426/-So-hows-that-hopey%2C-changey-thing-workin-out-for-ya
Check it out. Yes, it’s a bit biased (written/blogged by a Democrat), but the facts are correct.
@mammaquiet - you do realize that the wars haven’t cost the US trillions of dollars as everyone had feared, right?
The President. Has. No. Power. Over. Unemployment.
In reality he has less power than the other branches of government. He can’t promise jobs even though he did. Every president promises jobs because we’re too damn stupid to know that it’s not in his control. “Oh yeah, obama will make everything better.” No, he won’t. he can’t control the economy. HELLO REVENUE BILLS START IN THE HOUSE! So guess whose fault the deficit is?! NOT ANY PRESIDENT’S. (Even though they have the power to veto or approve or whatever… they don’t have as much power as Congress does. Read the Constitution!)
FDR was really the only president who made an impact, and the only thing he did was offer temporary solutions to unemployment. He tried to create jobs, but a lot of those programs were just a waste of money. Mostly, he just wanted to ease the suffering of those who lost jobs because of the stock market.
Any president can say whatever he wants, but he can’t create jobs.
Yeah, I regret voting for him.. What was I thinking? Now we’re going to have tax-payer funded abortions.
We cannot look at a number, attach it to a name, and hold that person responsible for that result, good OR bad.
President Bush had war going on for him. Of course there was employment during that time. Why don’t you compare the numbers of deaths Bush had during his administration and numbers of death Obama had during his? Obama pulled troops out.
Plus, people need to understand how the country works. The whole country is not ONLY under Obama’s point of direction. Saying that he is the cause for all this unemployment is like saying the Senate and the House of Representatives are dumb and don’t know anything.
I’m not saying that Obama is a saviour, or that he has done anything that is so great for the country. However, I want anybody who reads this to USE YOUR MIND to think about things before just attaching a name onto a number and forging a negative stigma onto that person. This is unfair and illogical, in the sense that YOU HAVEN’T thought it through.
I wouldn’t say everything, as I had hoped for an immediate solution to the health care scene. But I would vote for him again to keep people like John McCain and Sarah Palin out of positions of authority. That was my primary reason for voting for him – that he was NOT John McCain.
@gyromight - I love your answer. It is refreshing to know that yes, some people use their minds and not just accept all the drivel that erupts from the mainstream media. I am shocked that so many people in this country fall for the lies and the fear and the ignorance and the blame.
That being said I have strong opinions about certain things, and when Bush got elected the 2nd time around, my faith in our system was severely shaken; in my opinion he was an embarassment and I cringed every time he made a speech and rushed us headlong into a war. A world leader should have a command of the language, at the very least.
I am still glad I voted for Obama, but as I mentioned earlier I think the Democrats have been way too wimpy. this country is under the control of the big corporations and greedy, conservative right wings…(how’s that for labeling?:) )
Everyone’s right. Where’s hoover? It’s always easier to compare presidents when the economic times were good but the siginificance of the comparison means nothing.
AVERAGES?!? Oh, c’mon now!
Look at this chart:
http://x6c.xanga.com/ec2f6a5722233272194133/b217088986.jpg
What would you EXPECT his average to be?
And why go back to only 1948?
Look at this chart:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/US_Unemployment_1890-2009.gif
Your data is cherry picked!
How long did it take to turn around the great depression? What would it have looked like if actions had been taken to avert the depression?
Who was in office for 8 years when the current employment trend started? Huh? GW and some congressional democrats? Why not be honest about that? It makes arguments more convincing when you do not use cherry picked numbers – and ignore other relevent facts. There is plenty of blame to go around.
Cherry picking numbers like that displays an obvious bias not based in fact – and hence raises questions about all other assertions made by those doing the cherry picking…
If you want to pick on Obama, pick on the health plan – he pushed that hard. No one disputes that.
this post just makes me very angry. i don’t even think obama’s doing that well, but to post numbers with no explanation behind them and to ask such an emotionally-driven question seems extremely, extremely unfair.
the intricacies of government are far too many to count, and the president is not in charge of everything. he has to work with congress, and the two branches’ relationship is far from ideal. basically, he does what he can, all right?
hating on him is a poor use of energy. hating on bush didn’t get us anywhere, and i doubt hating on obama would. he was given so much shit to deal with and is only halfway through his term and already everyone is dying to rip him apart.
well he came in to the shit that the bush administration left. this unemployment rate is not his fault. it will take YEARS to repair what happened during the bush administration. why don’t people understand that?
@LoBornlytesThoughtPalace - So question, if Republicans win back congress this year, and unemployment remains high for the next two years, will you blame them, or will you still blame Obama?
@Donkey_Guy_10 - I love all these people who keep saying, “Well it’s better than the great depression” as if that were some kind of good thing. If the best you can say is, “I made the economy better than the depression” then you might as well just say, “I suck”
@phantomFive - If the Republicans are allowed by Obama to implement sane economic policy the economy will recover rapidly. But if Obama fights good policy just as he has implemented horrible policy, he will be to blame. Fixing the economy isn’t rocket science:
cut taxes across the board, reduce drastically government regulation on industry and capital formation, cut government spending. It works everything it’s tried.
Obama and the Democrats, during the last 4 years have done exactly the opposite. That’s why the economy is a mess.
So, I was unemployed for a year, but I didn’t start looking for a job until my money started to run out. Once I actually started looking, I found a job in less than a month. I also have another friend who found employment because the company was so desperate to find workers that they actually called him up and asked him to come to work. My brother found a job after three months of trying hard. I don’t know anyone who was actually looking hard for a job who couldn’t find one. My new company has open positions that they’re having trouble filling.
My argument is that the unemployment rate is so high because people want to take vacations. It is especially easy to do since congress has kept paying unemployment benefits. I think if congress stopped extending unemployment benefits, people would find work. I did.
@LoBornlytesThoughtPalace - We’ll see. Nice new profile pic, BTW
I have to say it WAS everything I expected. A total failure from start to finish. I guess bad policy has bad results … right? It is no surprise when Europe is failing at such an alarming rate due to overspending on social programs, that America would resist the “messiah” and his ridiculous socialist message. He is a fool and he surrounds himself with fools. They are all about tearing down the America we know and rebuilding it in a socialistic fashion. There will be civil war before that happens though.
Well I didn’t have much hope for him so I suppose he didn’t really let down my hopes…
I hoped that Obama would become unemployed the day after his inauguration. He’s only gotten worse since then.
So what if the unemployment rates are high? The recent recession has been compared to the great depression in severity, so those numbers are taken somewhat out of context. Standing alone, yeah it looks terrible. But in comparison the Hoover and Roosevelt, they aren’t that different. Its not one single persons fault that the unemployment rates are high, its a combination of a number of factors and should be treated as such. Not to mention Obama shouldn’t be getting blamed for everything. He came in at a very rough time, and has all the pressure to fix issues remaining from past presidents. Things don’t change over night, and we shouldn’t expect them to.
If he wasn’t black he wouldn’t be president, simple fact. His political experience is so small compared to his predecessors.
I feel it is not fair to judge so quickly. Averages of 2 years compared to 4 or 8 years??? The fall in employment started before Obama was elected and the recovery from those problems that led to unemployment will not come more quickly than it took to create them. I don’t understand why people don’t realize this fact.