Kevyn wrote:
There’s no doubt the majority of Americans are yearning for Barack Obama’s leadership right now. It’s palpable. You can feel that around the country. He led us through the financial crisis, Ebola and several other crises. For eight years he stood at the podium and said, ‘I take responsibility.’ Now we have the antithesis of that.
Obama inherited an epic trauma of his own, the 2008-09 financial meltdown, which, supporters claim, would have developed into a Great Depression but for the actions of his administration. He also had to deal with an outbreak of swine flu, which killed an estimated 12,469 Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ebola in west Africa in 2014-16 raised further alarm but only 11 people were treated for the virus in the US. Obama’s White House Ebola “czar”, Ron Klain, is now a regular TV and podcast critic of Trump’s disorganized response to the coronavirus. On Wednesday, Klain tweeted a video of Obama in 2014 warning of the need to be ready for the next pandemic.
Obama’s former national security adviser Susan Rice told the Washington Post that Trump’s failures “cost tens of thousands of American lives”.
The ex-president himself, however, declines to speak out directly against his successor. But he has tweeted more frequently than usual: 33 posts in the past month, many of which offer advice on stopping the virus spread, pay tribute to healthcare and other essential workers or share inspiring stories.
What a shame Obama was term limited, he would have trounced Trump in 2016 and we would have a qualified educated leader in this time of crisis instead of an arrogant clueless buffoon. Term limits in this instance have cost more Americans their lives than the 9-11 attacks. It is time to do away with them and give American voters the right to choose who they want in public office rather than forcing qualified public servants out of office after an arbitrary timeline.
There’s no doubt the majority of Americans are yea... (
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I am one who is in total agreement with term limits. George Washington set precedent when he left after two terms. The political members of this country have made a fallacy of citizen leadership. When a member of Congress serves for twenty, thirty, or forty years they are no longer citizen politicians but have become entrenched bureaucrats. Myself, I am not sure they accurately do represent the people they say they represent. I will give one example. I wrote a letter to my congressman about saving land for an endangered elk herd once. I received a form letter from his office about bike paths he was endorsing in another part of the state. I think he was too long in Washington and too far removed from constituents. I realize you can respond that his office staff sent the reply and not him but he was the representative and so therefor the reply reflects on him, not his staff. Never voted for him again. I believe that a citizen politician who must leave office after a certain time will be more representative of is constituents than one who has made a career of whatever office. I also believe that a person elected to office votes first for himself;f, then for his constituency. A career politician in effect becomes a king, an earl, a baron, or whatever but is certainly not a representative. I voted for term limit when I lived in California but saw them turned into a travesty when the elected officials just swamped jobs with each other as they termed out of a position.