Quote (Thor123422 @ 3 Dec 2020 23:18)
What war did Obama start? He got us involved briefly in Libya, but he didn't start a war.
Trump was indeed aggressively mediocre, and that requires one to be generous. He basically got nothing done. His only accomplishments are really because he didn't do much of anything. So "didn't start wars" are a symptom of that. Hardly an accomplishment really since doing nothing is the default.
Not starting wars is definitely not the default for American presidencies.
Obama got the U.S. involved in Libya, a war which ended in a total disaster. Here in Europe, we're still struggling with the aftermath of the mess.
Furthermore, the support of his State Department and intelligence agencies to islamist rebels was pivotal in the start of the Syrian civil war. They thought they could let their proxy forces do the dirty work for them and get rid of Assad. And last but not least, it was Obama's misguided Iran nuclear deal which handed Teheran's theocratic regime the financial breathing room for their proxy wars in Yemen and Iraq, and to increase their involvement in Syria.
Quote (thesnipa @ 3 Dec 2020 23:30)
1. I'd say Obama. i guess his pullout caused a resurgence via ISIS, but the pullout was wildly popular in 2008 during primary and general election debate stages.
2. i dont take unemployment numbers to be a complete indication of the economy and i dont like to attribute an economy to a single president. i like to look at what that specific president did, and in trump's case he got lucky to walk into a great recovery and that his promises of deregulation and a deficit exploding tax cut inflated an already ballooned economy. his actions have been fairly reckless and will bear some bad fruit, namely a gross deficit.
3. if u want to call a partisan judiciary good, ok. i dont, and already said that was his greatest credit.
mediocre is fairly subjective, but if we use the promises and boasts he's made as our denominator he has been a disaster in efficiency. crumbling cabinet, horrible budget, awful public appearance foreign and domestic, and utter lack of many core promises. not to mention lucky that he's cultivated enough of an unhinged personality to not get tested by the likes of Iran or NK. he's anti-hawkish by proxy of a reckless reputation.
Well, if we use Trump's grandiose, hyperbolic rhetoric as the measuring stick, then he has been an abject failure. But that's clearly not an expedient standard.
I dont think that he's anti-hawkish on foreign policy, he's been isolationist/non-interventionist. He's used hawkish methods, like blowing up Iran's top general with a cruise missile, but he has done so with the goal of keeping America out of protracted conflicts. (As opposed to the neocrons of the previous Republican admin, for whom getting America drawn into new conflicts was the goal.)
Quote (Thor123422 @ 3 Dec 2020 23:36)
You should do some reading on unemployment and it's shortcomings, and its origin as a way to artificially show a better economy than actually exists.
Gig workers who can only make 10 hours a week for instance wouldn't be counted as unemployed for instance. The job market is still incredibly competitive even at 3% unemployment for this reason.
That's a fair point, but the gig economy had been growing since the Great Recession. It complicates comparisons with the 80s and such, but a comparison of Obama's unemployment numbers in 2015 or 16 with Trump's in 18 or 19 is still feasible. The gig economy did not expand THAT much over this timeframe.
Also note that decreasing unemployment gets increasingly difficult the lower you already are. For example, going from 5% to 3% within an already very mature, perhaps overripe economic cycle, is a more difficult task than going from 10% to 8% during the immediate recovery from a recession.