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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   38806 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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2024 Vance resume = 2008 Obama resume.

Which, to be fair, people criticized Obama as inexperienced. But in the end, it was a pretty hollow critique and Obama led competently for 8 years (whatever you think of his politics).

Obama governed horribly -- Obamacare, IRS political targetting, enshrining disparate impact, fast and furious, Benghazi, ISIS, etc etc

Democrats don't think he governed horribly. Obamacare was a generational success for Democratic policy goals and more than makes up for the rest. The biggest problem of the Obama administration is that he left the economy perpetually understimulated, letting the nation languish for years in a sluggish recovery from the great financial crisis and leaving the door open for Trump to adopt a more expansionary fiscal policy and revitalize the economy.

I think the bigger problem was too much stimulus. Rip the band aid off.

Don’t conflate wicked with impotent. That’s a long list of political accomplishments, even if you think they’re malevolent!

As someone who voted for him one time and stayed home the second, it didn't feel like he governed horribly. I think subsequent events have revealed extremely serious problems with his tenure, but at the time, in a blue information bubble, he seemed like the best president in quite a while.

Lighter resume I would agree. Though I would argue that Obama had a previous life. A decade plus as a law professor at UC. Vance’s professional career is just 3 years at big law and then being Thiel’s buddy, calling himself a VC, and investing in Rumble.

Obama you would obviously call an academic lawyer. I don’t think you would call Vance any particular career.

I wouldn't call Obama an academic lawyer (or really much of a lawyer at all--I don't think he's ever really practiced). He doesn't have a PhD, he never published any original research (I think he may have co-authored a couple of law review articles of no significance), and he kept an unusually light course load. He spent relatively little time on campus and apparently did the absolute bare minimum required of him while he was there (from what I can recall, it's been a long time since I looked into this).

He was a charismatic local politician with a part-time adjunct professor job teaching introductory con law. And even that is fairly charitable--I would not be surprised if his TAs did almost all of the work apart from his actual lectures (and sometimes even those), as was the case with both of the "celebrity" professors I've had the displeasure of taking classes with.

But law professorships are worthless sinecures that do and produce nothing of value. His stint as a community organizer was unironically much more important and impactful.

I have a much lower opinion of academic lawyers than guys that pal around with Peter Thiel for a living.

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