Obama is not a good president

Because my opponent is 1) very new to this site and 2) well under his max character limit for round 2, I invite readers to join me in considering his links which were posted in the comments section without any penalty being applied to him, even though Pro admittedly should learn how to incorporate them into the debate itself. It is generally not advisable to use space in the debate itself to respond to reader’s objections in the comments section, and I don’t really feel the need to respond to any of this first part. Obamacare: Pro’s link is quite fascinating to me. It is a sequence of appearances from Obama in which he is claiming that “if you like your insurance, you can keep it” which has been set to ominous music, followed by a reporter who is trying in vain to trap a senior Obama spokesman at a press conference into admitting that Obama was lying. In the long explanation which followed, the spokesman essentially said that in many situations, people can keep their inferior plans if they want to by being grandfathered in. However if your policy is being phased out, the plans that will be offered in their place will adhere to a set of guidelines that makes them provide more and be standardized for the same price or less. Let me put it this way. Obama’s statements like “if you like your plan you can keep it” or “no one is taking your plan away from you” may not be true in the strictest sense. If plans do change on you, it will generally mean that you are instead getting something both better and less expensive. Assuming things go the way they’re supposed to and as he describes, then giving consumers either the same (if “grandfatherable”), or more for less (if not) strikes me as a pretty strange thing to demonize the man for. I realize that some of my tea-drunk critics will point out that any government promise actually coming true is a very big “if”. Fair enough, but I reiterate that in the context of this debate, Obamacare is too new to consider a failure or a broken promise just yet. If we have a rematch a few years later you might be able to nail me to the wall with the facts by then, but as of this moment the President still deserves a fair chance to make this work. Syria: In the clip Pro provided, Obama was pretty clear in defining who his message was directed to – Bashir Assad, not the American people. International diplomacy is often a game of brinksmanship, a poker match where deception is currency. As Robert Greene wrote in commentary of Sun Tzu’s famous axiom “All warfare is based on deception”: Warfare is based on strategy. The art of war is to win with minimal bloodshed, by making your enemy completely weak even before the battle has commenced. You do not announce your strategy to the enemy. You play with layers of deception. The better you deceive, the more you keep your opponents off balance, and the easier it is to win without bloodshed. All competitive forms of human interaction, including business, are determined by strategy and therefore deception. Not understanding this is a grave mistake. [4] Obama may not be the greatest of liar, but I give him credit for trying. He would have been a fool to announce to Assad “Go ahead and do whatever you like. The weakly recovering US economy combined with a war weary and politically polarized citizenry puts us in no position to confront you with any real kind of punishment regardless of what you do, especially considering that your enemies are for the most part jihadists which are also our enemies, so we actually don’t want the rebels to win this civil war. We ultimately need you to win in order to regain stability for this region, even though we despise you. ” That’s probably a lot closer to the truth than the firm stance which Obama took, and Obama was right to try to hide our weakness, even though Assad ultimately saw through it. High stakes geopolitics isn’t played with all one’s cards sitting out on the table for rivals to see, it isn’t a game where the most honest player wins, and so if there is any criticism of Obama that should be leveled, it is not that he lied to our enemy, but that he needs more practice at lying more convincingly. All things considered though, I am not displeased with the direction things are headed. In exchange for not attacking Syria, their Iranian allies are more willing to come to the negotiating table and trade a halt on their nuclear program in exchange for the elimination of sanctions. The benefits of trade rather than war with Iran should also provide the US with an (admittedly modest) increase in economic growth as we, the Great Satan, fill the Persian branch of the “Axis of Evil” with Kentucky Fried Chickens. Mwahahahaha. *ahem* The last point of Pro that I feel the need to address for this round is his claim that he cannot think of one thing Obama has done that significantly affects America in a good way. This is argumentation from ignorance, and probably shouldn’t do a lot to impress experienced debate judges. Either way, I’ll be glad to help my opponent take a trip down memory lane. 1) Obama made the call to kill Osama bin Laden even though we would have to go into Pakistan. Risky, but necessary. Bush backed down and couldn’t bring himself to take the chance when presented with the same kind of situation. Obama passed his test of resolve. 2) Obama made the correct call in handling the 2009 Somali pirate hostage situation with snipers. Negotiate with them? Sure. *pop*, *pop*, *pop*… “Targets down, negotiations complete. Welcome aboard, Captain Phillips. ” 3) Financial crises are some of the worst kind of economic downturns with some of the most long lasting negative effects. For comparison, Japan has endured over two decades of economic stagnation and debt increase from its real estate/finance bust. European austerity has plunged the continent into stagnation. Only the United States with our fast response and aggressive government intervention has any prospects of an early rebound. And indeed, because of increasing revenues from a recovering economy, Obama has overseen the fastest deficit reduction in American history. 4) Obama’s leadership on tolerance towards homosexuals fulfilled an important campaign promise he made to the LGBT community to fight for the rights of all Americans, and led to the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the legalization of gay marriage, and anti-bullying campaigns to protect homosexual children from bigots. 5) Wall Street reform, which I mentioned in the last round and my opponent dropped. 6) Ended the War in Iraq 7) Began drawdown in Afganistan 8) Toppled Mommar Gaddafi and told Mubarak to go 9) Improved America’s image abroad 10) Achieved START treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear arsenals 11) Gave FDA power to regulate tobbacco 12) Invested heavily in renewable technology Those are just a few accomplishments, a more complete list is found here [6] 4) . http://poetry.rapgenius.com... 5) . http://www.prnewswire.com... 6) . http://www.washingtonmonthly.com...