Presidential Candidate Accomplishments

[erfalf]

Alright, let's call this a collaborative work. I'd like to see what the forum believes are the most significant accomplishments of the two Presidential candidates side by side. Should be interesting. Feel free to edit, add, move up/down, whatever. I'm just starting with the first for now. Hopefully this will be a good discussion.

Obama                                                                                             Romney
1. Affordable Care Act, 2010                                                            1. Founding Bain Capital, one of the largest PE firms in the world.

[Conan71]

Alright, let's call this a collaborative work. I'd like to see what the forum believes are the most significant accomplishments of the two Presidential candidates side by side. Should be interesting. Feel free to edit, add, move up/down, whatever. I'm just starting with the first for now. Hopefully this will be a good discussion.

Obama                                                                                             Romney
1. Affordable Care Act, 2010                                                            1. Founding Bain Capital, one of the largest PE firms in the world.

2. Successfully removed Gaddafi from power with minimal                   2. Romneycare is considered a major bi-partisan political coup
expense and American bloodshed

[Gaspar]

For President Obama, I figure we can take the 2008 campaign promises and add the yearly SOTU pander list, then just go down the list and check off all of the promises he completed.  I see a couple.  Anyone else see any?

1. Affordable Care Act, 2010                                                           
2. Drive unemployment below 6%
3. Close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center
4. Save GM
5. Balance the Budget
6. Increase the capital gains and dividends taxes for higher-income taxpayers
7. Expand the child and dependent care credit
8. Create a foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners
9. Create a mortgage interest tax credit for non-itemizers
10. Require automatic enrollment in 401(k) plans
11. Create a retirement savings tax credit for low incomes
12. End income tax for seniors making less than $50,000
13. End the war in Iraq (according to the exact same timeline as the Bush administration)
14. End no-bid contracts above $25,000
15. Run the most transparent administration in history
16. Create a $60 billion bank to fund roads and bridges
17. Repeal the Bush tax cuts for higher incomes
18. Phase out exemptions and deductions for higher earners
19. Sign the Employee Free Choice Act, making it easier for workers to unionize
20. Lift the payroll tax cap on earnings above $250,000
21. Forbid companies in bankruptcy like AIG from giving executives bonuses
22. Allow workers to claim more in unpaid wages and benefits in bankruptcy court
23. Allow imported prescription drugs
24. Prevent drug companies from blocking generic drugs
25. Allow Medicare to negotiate for cheaper drug prices
26. Double federal funding for cancer research
27. Fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
28. Create a National Commission on People with Disabilities, Employment, and Social Security
29. Provide a $1.5 billion fund to help states launch programs for paid family and medical leave
30. Require employers to provide seven paid sick days per year
31. Work with Russia to move nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert
32. Secure ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)
33. Reinstate special envoy for the Americas
34. Seek independent watchdog agency to investigate congressional ethics violations
35. Create a public "Contracts and Influence" database
36. Expose Special Interest Tax Breaks to Public Scrutiny
37. Allow five days of public comment before signing bills Bwahahahaha!
38. Tougher rules against revolving door for lobbyists and former officials
39. Double funding for afterschool programs
40. Sign the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act into law
41. Increase the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour
42. Restore Superfund program so that polluters pay for clean-ups
43. Support tax deduction for artists
44. Re-establish the National Aeronautics and Space Council
45. Pay for the national service plan without increasing the deficit
46. Reduce the number of middle managers in the federal workforce
47. Strengthen the Age Discrimination in Employment Act
48. Give annual "State of the World" address
49. Reduce earmarks to 1994 levels
50. Work to ban the permanent replacement of striking workers
51. Establish a low carbon fuel standard
52. Enact windfall profits tax for oil companies
53. Create cap and trade system with interim goals to reduce global warming
54. Use revenue from cap and trade to support clean energy and environmental restoration
55. Require plug-in fleet at the White House
56. Mandate flexible fuel vehicles by 2012
57. Double federal program to help "reverse" commuters who go from city to suburbs
58. Sign the Freedom of Choice Act
59. Allow penalty-free hardship withdrawals from retirement accounts in 2008 and 2009 (sure would have helped some folks)
60. Negotiate health care reform in public sessions televised on C-SPAN
61. Introduce a comprehensive immigration bill in the first year

As for Mitt, he has far fewer intensions and far more results.

1. As governor, he brought Mass back from a deep recession and balanced the budget by vetoing over 800 spending bills from the mostly Democrat lawmakers.
2. Eliminated a $3 billion dollar deficit without borrowing a dime or raising taxes, and created a $2 billion surplus.
3. Salvaged the 2002 Olympic games from bankruptcy and disaster, actually turning a profit.
4. Bain, of course and the companies they saved.
5. Dropped unemployment in his state from from 5.6% to 4.7%
6. Paid 14% or less in taxes on his vast fortune. 
7. Never wrote two books about himself.
8. Took long trips in station wagons and included the family pet.
9. Never ate the family pet.
10. Out-raised his competitor in campaign funds without once using a teleprompter.
11. Selected a running mate with a reputation for financial brilliance causing economists Gary Becker, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell, Myron Scholes, and Edward Prescott–all Nobel laureates to throw their support behind him.


I'm sure there are more.

[Teatownclown]

2. Successfully removed Gaddafi from power with minimal                   2. Romneycare is considered a major bi-partisan political coup
expense and American bloodshed

agape  

I fer sure thought you'd brag about Willard's Winter Olympics


Gassie, what's with you? post that link....


Winning!

[Gaspar]

agape  

I fer sure thought you'd brag about Willard's Winter Olympics


Gassie, what's with you? post that link....


Winning!

What link?

[erfalf]

2. Eliminated a $3 billion dollar deficit without borrowing a dime or raising taxes, and created a $2 billion surplus.

I guess now that the Supremes have dictated, Mitt actually did raise taxes while governor of Massachusetts.

[erfalf]

If I were Romney I would just be pounding on team Obama for his promises of transparency and things were going to be different. It has been anything but, well it may be different but not much. Many of the major pieces of legislation that many people are aware of were rammed through at break neck speed. It's something many people are aware of and understand.

[Townsend]

If I were Romney I would just be pounding on team Obama for his promises of transparency and things were going to be different. It has been anything but, well it may be different but not much. Many of the major pieces of legislation that many people are aware of were rammed through at break neck speed. It's something many people are aware of and understand.

...some people say.

[Hoss]

...some people say.

...chuckle...

[Townsend]

...chuckle...

It's my new thing.

[Gaspar]

...some people say.

I like "Word is out. . ."

[erfalf]

...some people say.

Touche.

[heironymouspasparagus]

nathan posted a list of accomplishments a couple years ago that occurred in the first two years of Obama's regime.  That still applies.  And then the obstructionist movement shut that down, so the last two years have been on hold.  (Don't get me wrong - not complaining too much about nothing much going on - every minute Congress doesn't pass a bill is an opportunity missed for them to do something more to hurt us.)

[Gaspar]

Don't get me wrong - not complaining too much about nothing much going on - every minute Congress doesn't pass a bill is an opportunity missed for them to do something more to hurt us.

That is accurate.

[Teatownclown]

MICHAEL LEWIS REVEALS: How President Obama Made The Most Controversial Military Decision Of His Presidency



http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-lewis-vanity-fair-profile-how-obama-made-the-decision-on-libya-2012-9

For months we've known that Michael Lewis' Vanity Fair profile of President Barack Obama would be something special — the access he was being granted was unprecedented.
Today, we obtained a copy of Vanity Fair's October issue to read Lewis' moving piece, which is called Obama's Way. (A partial preview has been posted here.)
Lewis describes a man whose brain is wired to subvert the establishment and to think outside normal parameters.
This deeply affects the way he makes decisions.
Take Obama's decision to invade Libya, for example. Lewis had the privilege of learning how the President sends American troops into battle.
Lewis describes a scene in which the normal cast of characters had been assembled, either physically or virtually, in the Situation Room in March of last year (Think: U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff).
They had set out to decide if the U.S. would intervene in Libya. Then-dictator Muammar Qaddafi was racing across the desert in jeeps and tanks heading for the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, a city of 1.2 million. He had threatened to "cleanse" the country house by house.
Naturally, as Obama's advisors described in the meeting, that meant a massacre.
Before the President goes into a meeting, he is told who will be there, and what they will contribute. It's a road map. In this particular meeting, after each attendee shared something about Libya, Obama would decide if he would do nothing or, as European leaders had proposed, create a no-fly zone over the country.
According to Lewis--and as is Obama's practice when decisions are truly difficult--he went off the road map and asked, "'Would a no-fly zone do anything to stop the scenario we just heard?'
After it became clear that it would not, Obama said, 'I want to hear from some other folks in the room.'"
And so Obama changed the question. It became 'Should we act in Libya?' — the details would come later. The President heard from his speechwriter, who would have to explain Obama's decision to the American people, and an advisor to Joe Biden who had been in attendance at the meeting and served under President Clinton during the Rwandan genocide. Both said they felt intervention was necessary.
Lewis writes:
"His desire to hear from junior people is a warm personality trait as much as a cool tactic, of a piece with his desire to play golf with White House cooks rather than with CEO's and basketball with people who treat him as just another player on the court; to stay home and read a book rather than go to a White House cocktail party; and to seek out, in any crowd, not the beautiful people but the old people. The man has his status needs, but they are unusual. And he has a tendency, an unthinking first step, to subvert established status structures. After all, he became president.
Obama sent his staff from the meeting saying that he wanted an alternative to the no-fly zone — something real that actually solved the problem in Libya.
At the team's next meeting in the Situation Room, they presented the option to push for a U.N. resolution to take "all necessary measures" to protect the people of Libya and use America's faster, more powerful air force to eviscerate Qaddafi's army. The Europeans would be in charge of the clean-up.
This option was distasteful to basically everyone, but Obama.
As you know, Obama decided against inaction — "That's not who we are," he told Lewis.
From the piece:
"Then Obama went upstairs to the Oval Office to call European heads of state and, as he puts it, 'call their bluff."
SEE ALSO: Michael Lewis had the experience of a lifetime while writing about Barack Obama >


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-lewis-vanity-fair-profile-how-obama-made-the-decision-on-libya-2012-9#ixzz25dPdag1q

I look forward to this issue of VF.

Let there be no doubt who is better prepared to take on foreign affairs.