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What is Barack Obama’s legacy? Did he have accomplishments historians will reflect on 30-40 years from now? Jonah Goldberg from National Review joined Neal and Jay to talk about President Obama’s legacy, from domestic policy and national defense to foreign policy and national security. And of course, more importantly, Jonah weighs in on the important question: Can Tom Hardy play James Bond?
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Hey Goldberg, how come you always criticize Trump but never have had a bad word to say about Obama? Er, oh, never mind.
Jonah Goldberg and National Review don’t have a problem with Obama having raised taxes. They have capitulated on that issue.
BD1
Jonah Goldberg and National Review don’t have a problem with Obama having raised taxes. They have capitulated on that issue.
Yeah, you tell them! They should have called for a bloody revolution! Why didn’t NRO filabuster or something. Oh, that’s right. They aren’t elected representatives.
Hey, BD can you point to a single editorial — or even article — in National Review to back up this claim? Honestly curious.
Jonah for an entire hour – fantastic!
Tom Hardy is the second baddest ass in Hollywood (after Danny Trejo) but he is no James Bond.
This guy is
@badgawfer Who is that guy? A bald Bond?
Jonah Goldberg: “As my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru….has argued, cutting top marginal rates were a priority when President Reagan took office in 1980 because they were at 70 percent. Now they’re at 39.6 percent, so maybe other forms of tax relief should take priority.”
Ramesh Ponnuru, NYT: “Cutting corporate tax rates may or may not be a good idea, but we don’t need to make it a priority to preserve our competitiveness.”
So “not top priority” now means “capulation”? And over an hourlong discussion of Obama’s legacy, that’s your thought worth sharing?
National Review’s tax “priority” is tax credits, something which Hillary Clinton supported as well, and which you don’t need a Republican president to get passed. And the Ponnuru quote says the corporate tax rate doesn’t matter, not that it’s not a priority.
I read National Review regularly and haven’t seen them take any editorial stance on tax credits that Clinton would have supported. A preliminary google result shows the Ponnuru quote to be from 2007. I’d hazard a guess his views have evolved since then, as economic conditions certainly have.
Also, here is National Review executive editor Reihan Salaam writing in the NYT with Ross Douthat, July 15, 2016:
“So Republicans trying to demonstrate that they have learned something from the Trump trauma should consider a new tax pledge. The party will still back tax cuts for the middle class and revenue-neutral tax reforms. But there should be no new income tax cuts for households earning $250,000 or more.”
Turn that picture of Ronald Reagan to the wall. Bill Clinton is the new face of the Republican Party.
I agree 100%. Great week. Glop and Jonah solo at 5th estate. I love it.
@jonahgoldberg Great discussion – re: your point that while Obama saw himself as being entirely practical and logical while only his enemies were ideological, it was the fact that he was so ideological on foreign policy that made him completely unable to adapt to the changing facts on the ground:
– correspond with the mullahs as president elect and make a deal with them despite their violent crackdown of the green movement, despite the intelligence gathered from the bin Laden raid showing the Iranians’ ongoing material support for al Qaeda, despite their atrocities in Iraq and Syria, etc.
– unable to react to the Assad regime crossing his red line and using chemical weapons, because, why would they? It’s not logical or practical according to him. Why wouldn’t Assad let him be clear and do what Obama tells him to do. Additionally, how can America act as a force for good and punish Assad when we’re the problem to begin with.
@jay-caruso (can’t figure out Neil’s @) – Tom Hardy has already played a British secret agent. He was Ricki Tarr in the 2011 version of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”.
Great discussion.
One thing I think deserves to be mentioned approvingly under foreign policy: killing Osama bin Laden. I don’t think that came up in the podcast; if it did, I missed it. If we’re talking about his “achievements” (the word came up early in the discussion, more in the context of domestic “achievements”, but not really later in the foreign policy segment), I’d include killing bin Laden as a positive achievement – maybe his best one. I’d like to separate “achievement” from “legacy” a little bit, though. It was kind of a one-off achievement. I agree entirely with the discussion about his legacy.
I’m OK with the US military killing US citizens who are making war on the US. Otherwise slavery would not have been abolished. My great-great-grandfather was one of the US citizens who was killed by the US military back then. He made his choice and suffered the consequences.
The US military goes to great effort to minimize civilian casualties, but it happens.