When You’re Wrong…
back in March 2008, former Republican and blogger John Cole had this to say about Iraq:
since I was as big a war booster as anyone, I thought I would list what I got wrong:
Everything.
And I don’t say that to provide people with an easy way to beat up on me, but I do sort of have to face facts. I was wrong about everything.
…and he proceeded to offer a very long list about what he got wrong.
It’s my feeling that when you get something like a war totally wrong that you should eschew making future statements and predictions about the desirability of military intervention. And that’s one of the reasons you haven’t seen much from me lately when it comes to the president’s decision to extend the Bush tax cuts, or his decision this past Friday to cave in again to the Republicans, giving them more spending cuts than they’d asked for and outrageously imposing restriction on abortion in DC.
Ya see, I TOLD YOU TO VOTE FOR THIS MOTHERFUCKER. I bought in, perhaps tepidly, to the hope and change bullshit. Part of this was due to Hillary Clinton’s pandering, a lot of it was due to still-justified anger over her husband’s record of shipping off jobs, and a lot of it was pressure from supporters like Upyernoz, who are nice but (IMO) misguided people.
I told you to vote for him. Why on earth would you be interested in my perspective now, considering how utterly, disastrously wrong I was?
My fiancee likes to joke “brendan is always right.” That’s not true obviously: I’m usually right, but that’s more due to personal life experience. When I’m wrong, I admit it.
I was so wrong about Obama that if I had a time machine, I’d go back and vote for Clinton in the primary. If my counsel was a factor in convincing you to vote for Obama, I apologize. Please remove me from your bookmarks and never ever listen to me again, because I’m a real fucking idiot for supporting this walking disaster of a president.
April 11th, 2011 at 2:53 pm
I think a President Hillary Clinton would have had basically the same policies and politics as President Obama. Either of them are light years better than a President McCain.
April 11th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
i don’t think a president hilary clinton would have extended the bush tax cuts and i don’t think she would have acceded to an extra $38 billion in cuts and I don’t think she would have dealt away part of her health care reforms either.
April 11th, 2011 at 3:28 pm
do you think president hillary clinton would have given away DC’s right to spend its own money on abortion funding? i don’t think she would have done that.
April 11th, 2011 at 4:37 pm
I dunno. I don’t think there was or is any way to know for sure. I suspect she would have had her pluses and minuses. But there was one big minus in my book: I think she would have lost to McCain.
April 11th, 2011 at 4:51 pm
hey, the link to me is broken. (and it looks like you were trying to ding booman as much as me).
but i basically supported obama in the primary because:
(1) i liked his foreign policy better than clintons, and
(2) i knew that the only reason that clinton voted for the authorization of the iraq war was to maintain her viability as president. i didn’t want to reward a vote in favor of killing people for political expediency and i was hoping that if the guy who was against the iraq war beat her in the primaries, it would undermine the conventional wisdom that democrats always have to vote for war, no matter how stupid, to be viable national candidates.
obama putting clinton in charge of his foreign policy pretty solidly undermined my reason #1 for supporting obama. as for reason #2, the jury is still out.
but i basically agree with mithras that i don’t think there is all that much difference on substantive policy between the two candidates.
April 11th, 2011 at 4:54 pm
oh and i guess i should add that i completely disagree with the starting premise of this post. just because you supported obama during the election doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to change your mind later. you still can make whatever judgments you want.
if later deciding you are wrong disqualifies you from expressing opinions than only the dishonest would be allowed to say anything.
April 11th, 2011 at 5:01 pm
i don’t know if she would have lost to Grandpa or not. I don’t think she would have caved to the republicans like Hopeless McChange has. She would have fought back hard.
This guy, holy shit if he was a car dealer he’d wind up paying me to take the car off the lot and thrown in a motorcycle and his wife for good measure.
April 11th, 2011 at 5:28 pm
@noz: I think once you’ve really fucked up, as i think i did by supporting this troglodyte in the white house, the wise thing is to shut up for awhile an marinate in the error before pressing forward.
I didn’t mean to ding you: you guys were well-meaning, but you pointed me in the wrong direction. Shit happens.
April 11th, 2011 at 9:17 pm
actually, i was just pointing out that the link under “Upyernoz” in the post appears to be broken (and based on the code, it looks like the link was supposed to be for me and booman)
April 11th, 2011 at 9:44 pm
Brendan-
Lots of people fell for Obama’s lines, because we wanted to believe them. Not cynical Clinton triangulation or Bush’s ‘Fuck you, I’m the Boss’.
We wanted to drop our own cynicism. So we went on faith that this guy would respect us in the morning.
Well, we were wrong (unless we’re Goldman Sachs).
Voting for him isn’t your fault and neither is the disappointment.
Stop blogging if you want to, but anyone who blames you for voting for O is a schmuck.