American Presidents: Totalus Rankium - 44.3 Barack Obama

Episode Date: April 6, 2024

In part three we look into the presidency of Obama. He has one of the hardest starts of any presidents: the economy is down the toilet and the country is embroiled in not one but two wars. So what is he to do? And why does the GOP keep inviting him to a tea party!?

Welcome to Totalus Rankium. This week, A Rack of Bar Part 3. Hello and welcome to American Presidents Totalus Rankium. I am Jamie. And I'm Rob, ranking all of the presidents from Washington to Biden. And this is episode 44.3. It's the final part of Barack Obama. Oh, I'm going to miss these good presidents. Well, good, good subjectively. Well, I mean, that sounds like you've uh you're feeling very positive so far about obama um well i i know enough to kind of go yeah uh he seems like a genuinely nice person yeah he has stood out as not being a bleep which you can't say for all

the presidents let's just say that no uh. Of the ones we've covered, and potentially future ones. But still, hey. We'll see. Hey, let's... Let's roll with the good times. Yeah, let's make the most of this episode, shall we, before I have to start researching the next one. Yeah. Let's start with a backdrop of an American flag blowing in the breeze. A big American

flag, is that what you're saying we should start with? Yeah, just like, flapping, you know, it's like the screensaver kind of thing. I'm being very kind to you here. I mean, it's a very American start. It's very apt. It works. Okay, start with that flag. And then it's

all sort of CG graphics. That's the kind of flag it is. And then suddenly just whoosh across the screen. Breaking, breaking, breaking news. And then it just whoosh across the screen. Breaking, breaking, breaking news. And then it just has more flashing things come up saying, urgent, watch now, watch now, please don't turn off. There's adverts coming soon.

You need to watch those. Lots of news stuff. And then you realise you're watching Fox News, Jamie. Oh, why would I be watching Fox News? Well, you're in a hotel lobby somewhere. There's no escaping it. And there's a bunch of friends on screen. Fox and

Friends they are, possibly. Oh! Yeah. To be honest, I genuinely don't know if Fox and Friends was a programme back at this time. I'm going to say it was. I don't know when Fox and Friends started. Zoom in on the presenters' faces. They look concerned, confused because they're listening to a voice coming.

It's just audio. Just someone's phoned in to their channel. Yeah. And the voice is saying something along the lines of, I just don't think he was born in America. Oh, yeah. Someone came to me, tears in their eyes, and said to me, Sir, I don't think Obama was born in America, so I'm going to have to look into this, says the voice.

And then the presenters say, well, thank you very much, that was Donald Trump with his opinions. And then it cuts, and everyone turns to each other and just goes, well, that's probably the last we're going to hear from him for a while. And then everyone looks at the camera in a foreboding kind of way and it smashes to obama part three yeah so that's how we're gonna start oh 2016 was a really bad year so many people died 2016 is where something went wrong in the universe yeah it's like someone does the university of judah someone somewhere was in a tomb or something and picked up an artefact that cursed the world because nothing has been good since 2016.

Incidentally, Jamie, we started Totalus Rankium in 2016. We did, and we're living proof that nothing good has come from it. Yeah, there we go. We are part of the bad timeline. Right, okay, let's go into this, shall we? We left Obama after he had been sworn in And he is now President of these United States Hell yeah

Yep That's what everyone said So, what's on the to-do list, Jeremy? What's it going to do? Lots Because there's currently wars going on There are The US has got its finger in

Yeah There's a whole... Just everything, really Well, there's a whole... Just everything, really. Well, there's a whole host of things he wants to focus on, such as reversing some of the more extreme Bush policies. Various things to help the poor in the country and the more marginalised. These are things he campaigned on,

and this is what he wanted to get to work on, straight away. But no, Jamie, there's no time for that, because the economy, the economy is on the floor. It's on the floor, passed out, drunk. No one's even put it in the recovery position. It's just choking on its own sick. That's what it's doing. So that's what he needs to deal with. Now, as covered in Bush part three, the economy fell apart because, brief summary here, a bunch of rich idiots with more money than sense couldn't understand the very system that they helped create.

Yep. So convinced had they become that being owed money was the same thing as actually having money, they just led the world economy off a cliff. Yeah. Quick summary there. Yeah. No need to go into malty houses this time. Quick summary there No need to go into

Malti houses this time One aide said to Obama And I quote Number one priority is going to be preventing The biggest financial crisis in possibly the last century From turning into the Great Depression Oh, too late Well, it's not too late just yet

I mean, it's on the way To being as bad as the Great Depression But there's still time All the experts Depression, but there's still time. All the experts say that there is just still time. Just enough. Obama put together a team during the campaign and then after he'd been elected, but before being sworn in, to deal with this. He knew that this was a big issue, and he met with them before he was inaugurated. The person in charge of explaining to Obama all the details, Christy Romer, opened up her presentation with,

and I quote her, Mr. President-elect, this is your holy s*** moment. The room filled with chuckles until Romer did not smile. And then she started. I'm not joking here. Because over half of the 25 major financial institutions had already failed.

And a lot more looked like they were going to go under soon. The stock market had lost 40% of its value. 2.3 million homes faced foreclosure. Household wealth had dropped 16% already. This is five times more than after the 29 crash. This is not messing about no no this is like levels of financial crashing that can topple governments not good that's quite that's quite ominous like good first day on the job yeah good good first day he's not even on the job yet this is just the

like the introduction it was one of his first meetings uh one of the aides with him afterwards apparently said to him it's like that's got to be one of the toughest meetings an incoming president's ever had. And Obama just laughed and went, that's not even the toughest one I've had this week. But we'll talk about the other problems America are facing in a moment. Anyway, that's a dire summary of the financial situation Obama was told. But this was just the beginning because soon people are going to stop spending because they don't have as much money. And as soon as they do that, that's going to hit

retail and industry. Mass layoffs would then occur, which had already started in major companies such as Boeing and Pfizer. So with no jobs, people would have less money. So they would spend more, etc, etc, etc. It's going to spiral out of control. Do you think there's someone in the government going, you know this company more, etc, etc, etc. It's going to spiral out of control.

Do you think there's someone in the government going, you know this company Pfizer, they might be quite handy. Try and keep them afloat if we can. They might be helpful. Well, Obama asked how bad unemployment was going to get. I mean, how many people are going to lose their jobs? A rough ballpark figure.

I'll quote what the reply was. It'll probably be in its millions. This is, again, dire. The chances of it being as bad as the Great Depression was one in three. I mean, that's quite high. Yeah, really quite high. So, what to do? Well, let's go back to the basics of economics, shall we?

If no one else is spending, then the government needed to be the spender of last resort. This is Keane's basic economy. The government needed to spend to keep the economy moving around. Because if no one's spending anything, there's no liquidity, everything just stagnates. So we need to spend. It seems counterproductive. There's no money left. The government starts spending money, but it will help. Now, FDR had tried this in the Great Depression, but even though it was opposed at the time, as we saw in his episodes, modern thinking is that it didn't work too well because he didn't go far enough, because he was opposed.

So Obama's decided, well, that's what we need to do. We need to actually go far enough. How much money are we going to have to spend in a stimulus package? He asks his advisors. Eight dollars. A little bit more than that. Roma says, maybe a trillion. Ooh!

Is the noise. That doesn't even sound real. That's the noise everyone made around the table. Oh, what? Ouch! Yeah, everyone in the meeting were utterly aghast. The public were already very angry about the bank bailouts under Bush. Obama was told by several of his aides that that would never get passed.

Current climate in Washington, we will not get this through Congress. Republicans and Democrats would refuse to look at anything with the word trillion in it. Well, Obama turns to his vice president, Joe Biden, who at this point simply nodded in a kind of, yep, we're not getting this through our own party, let alone the GOP. So this isn't going to fly.

Okay, so Obama then says, well, what could we get through Congress? You're telling me we need a trillion, but you're telling me we can't get it. What can we get? It was finally agreed that 800 billion would be ambitious, but that's what they're going to have to go for. So much money. So much money.

Well, okay, we've got to spend money to keep the economy going. What should we spend money on? That's the next topic of conversation. What would you spend money on? You've got 800 billion. What are you going to do with it? I guess trying to keep the economy going. What should we spend money on? That's the next topic of conversation. What would you spend money on? You've got 800 billion. What are you going to do with it? I guess trying to keep people in work. So you'd give it to businesses to keep their employment going

so people have their money to spend in the economy, that sort of thing. I mean, keeping people in work, yes, but there's an easier way of keeping people in work and that is to pay for work to be done as the government. Oh, so like roads and things. Yeah, you've got it. Yeah. Infrastructure was considered the best way of doing this,

because you can get lots of people working, which means money is circulating, and you get better infrastructure out of it. So it's an investment into the country. It's pretty good. So roads or things like an improved electric grid for the country, things like that. No. The levels of spending that they had to do meant that they could genuinely get something top quality here. Let's turn this problem into a positive and let's actually get something good for the country. But as soon as these conversations start, they're shot down.

The problem with this is that most things that would benefit society and America as a whole, like a new power grid, would take a very long time to plan and do well. Yeah. We don't have time. We need results immediately. So we need infrastructure work, building work that requires no planning. Well, that's repairs. Oh. Yeah. So that means fixing potholes, repairing the sewer pipes. I mean, it will work, but it's hardly a great investment. You're just patching up crumbling infrastructure. Still, it's better than nothing, so that's what they're going to have to do. Immediately, Obama receives pushback from the right.

Government spending means government control and higher taxes. There were various people making the case for the opposite of what the new Obama administration were doing. The opposite? So let the economy stagnate? Yes, austerity. Stop spending money. Oh, yes, of course. Because it always works, doesn't it? If you can think off the top of your head, a government that really lent into that.

Really lent into it. Really lent into that. Really lent into that. Really lent into that. Like elbow deep. Yeah, we're still suffering from that in this country today. Anyway, so there's a big debate. Should the government be spending to stimulate the economy, or should they be keeping money close to them as austerity measures? Anyway, three weeks before the election,

an author appeared on the Jon Stewart show to promote her book. And this book was called The Forgotten Man. And it argued that the New Deal had made the Great Depression even worse. Going against what pretty much all historians say. And that

leaning into the free market would have resulted in the Great Depression fixing itself much quicker. It's like believing in fairies, isn't it? Well, I mean, this was a qualified person who knew what they were talking about. Anyway, Jon Stewart told his audience, and I quote, Now, Jon Stewart was well known for satirically attacking both sides, but he also is well known for not being a conservative. So the recommendation really boosted the book outside of the right-wing bubble that it was

mainly in at the time. The likes of Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani came out and said how good this book was. Before long, all of the GOP in Washington were mentioning it in interviews and even carrying it around like a little book, just holding it in their hands to hold on to. A little talisman. A talisman of truth. Whenever a reporter talked to them, they could just hold up the book. No, austerity is the way forward. Free markets, just let the chips fall where they may and It will all work out in the end. Now, it turned out in the end that Schlaes, the author of the book, had used, and I'll just put it bluntly, dodgy data of the unemployment levels to support her arguments. And a consensus in economic circles was that the book was a sham, especially as time went on. The book has not aged well. It's been

ripped to shreds. It's just nonsense. However, at the time, there was a big push. No, this is what we should be doing. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugan dismissed the book entirely, saying, obviously, it had come out of, and I'll quote here, an intellectual industry mainly operating out of

right-wing think tanks devoted to propagating the idea that FDR actually made the Depression worse. In other words, this is just political hackery. We should not be paying any attention to this book. Unfortunately, though, it was very popular. I bet Ben Shapiro bought a copy. Oh, I'm sure he did.

Meanwhile, Obama was trying to make his idea of parties working together for the common good a reality. Remember, he's been pushing on positive, bringing the country together, end to this rise in culture wars. All through his campaign, he'd been talking about this. So it's time to try it out. Let's actually get a cross-party consensus on what to do. So he approached some Republicans with his proposals. They just hissed at him and threw things and went away.

Back, devil, back. Yeah, how many would support him? One high-ranking Democrat in the Senate came to Obama with some bad news. The Republicans, Mr. Obama, are not going to cooperate at all. In fact, the head of the House Appropriations Committee had approached the highest Republican on the committee and asked, what do you want to see in any upcoming bills on the economy? We want to work together on this. And the response he got back was that all Republicans had orders, and I quote, up from high, not to cooperate at all with anything.

That really, oh, it's, it's, that's's not a country can't run that way it can't not not not not in his best way like no it could be so much better just like you give and take that's how it should work i feel like you're gonna get frustrated this episode jenny oh i know i i know i know he becomes a lame duck in his second term yeah well you're not the only one getting frustrated obama one getting frustrated. Obama's getting frustrated here. The economy is definitely the biggest problem. But he had a plan, and he just needed to get it through the political machine.

What he wanted to do was move on to what he hoped would cement his legacy, which was healthcare. His aides told him that recovering from this crisis is enough to cement your legacy. You do that, you'll go down in the history books, because we are in, like, not unprecedented, but this is dangerous times. So if we can weather this storm, we can get through it. Plus, it's going to be tricky navigating through the political machine right now, because the Republicans, their whole plan is just to see you fail until the next election comes along. So let's not push anything too hard. However, Obama wasn't having any of this.

He did not want to go down in history as a president who simply stopped an economic crash. So knowing that healthcare was what he really wanted to get done, Obama was hesitant on calling in too many favours and using too much political capital up on the economic bill. He knew he was going to need some of this later. capital up on the economic bill. Yeah. He knew he was going to need some of this later. Now, in the end, a bill does go through. Even with the Republicans pushing against it, the Democrats have a huge majority at the moment. Yeah. So they're able to get it through. A stimulus package of $787 billion. Yeah. Many on Obama's team suspected that this was probably about half of what was needed.

Ooh. But with the Republicans opposing on all fronts, this was probably the best they were going to be able to get. Yeah. Now, they were not to know it, but all of the fears around this stimulus bill proved to be completely unfounded. There were people who approved it. There were people who really riled against it. But it turns out that this stimulus package ended up turning the tide.

Good. Roughly the time of this bill passing marked the height of unemployment and the low of the stock market. And over the next months and years, the economy slowly recovers. Now, it's still very painful for many, but a second Great Depression does not happen. Good.

And it is very arguably because of the work of Obama here, and to give Bush his credit, what Bush was doing at the end of his term as well. So between the two of them, they turned the tide. So that's nice. Yeah. No great depression.

And listening to experts as well, listening to people that this is what you need to do, and having the insight and the wisdom to just go, yeah, you know more than me, let's do it. Yeah. Not only this, though many americans gained things they probably never ever associated with the saving of the economy because that money was spent on stuff high-speed internet was extended greatly across the country using these funds just loads loads of small things like traffic lights across the country started using low energy led bulbs instead

of like the big ones that you used to get back in the day just energy saving saves the country money in the end but you need to invest in it to get up and running that never happened but from this they needed to find things to spend money on so they spent money on that. Tuition aid programs were created. There are just many, many things that I'm not going to go into, but most of it was hidden. There was some discussion whether Obama should publicly claim more credit for these things. There were good things happening in the country, and no one knew that it was Obama behind it.

But it was decided that the political scene would make this hard. The right-wing media had become more and more extreme in their opposition in recent years, as we've seen. And Obama's team figured that claiming credit for more efficient streetlights, for example, would probably just lead to Fox News running stories about how all Obama cared about was traffic lights and how he was coming after your light bulbs. And actually, it would just be not worth it in the end, all the ridiculous stories that came out. So it was decided, we don't need to boast about this. What we can do is just watch America slowly get better and people will realise

that spending this money has done good for the country. We shall see. We shall see. Meanwhile, Obama was dealing with international things, because Obama had ran a campaign that strongly suggested that he would be pulling back a lot of the things that the Bush administration did in the name of anti-terrorism. Yeah. Now, things looked very good to begin with when Obama announced within the first couple of months that he was going to shut down Guantanamo Bay. Ah, the torture centre. Brilliant. The torture centre, yes. Sorry, detention facility. The detention facility had become a symbol worldwide that America did not care about the rule of law

and would simply do what they wanted, up to and including abducting people and torturing them without due process. Anyway, Obama wants to shut Guantanamo Bay down. It is a symbol to the world that America have gone down a certain path. But he hits a problem immediately. Congress refused to spend the estimated $80 million to shut it down. Now, $80 million sounds like a lot, but we've just been talking about billions. This is a drop in the ocean. This was Congress saying, no, we don't want to shut it down. So Obama had a choice. He could fight this

and use up his political capital, or he could let it slide and save that for things like healthcare reform. So he decided not to fight it. Guantanamo Bay remains open to the bitter disappointment of most of his followers, who had been very happy to hear that he was going to close it down, and then he didn't. However, it's not like he did nothing. If he wasn't going to be able to shut down Guantanamo Bay, what he could do is stop the torture, he says.

So he puts in place an executive order that forbade the CIA to use torture. That's nice, isn't it? Yeah. Or enhanced interrogation techniques. Yeah. Whatever you want to call them. Also, all those black sites around the world, they were closed. They were the dark side of Guantanamo Bay,

which is a very depressing statement. Yeah, if Guantanamo Bay was the acceptable face, then you could only imagine what was happening in these black sites. And they're shut down. So there you go. That's good. However, the goodwill that he won from this was dampened when he announced that the people who had put these torture programs together would not be prosecuted. I'll quote Obama here,

now is the time for reflection, not retribution. It was also decided to declassify memos about the torture, but not release the photos. That's probably a good thing. Well, that's what they thought. In fact, I'll quote here, they might well provoke such international outrage and put our troops and diplomats in danger. That's how bad these photos were. They feared that people would start storming the consulates and the embassies. That's the word I was looking for all over the world. So yeah, let's just pretend those photos don't exist. But the memos were released because Obama wanted some form of transparency, and oh, it was not good. So, some progress in shutting down some of the Bush-era stuff.

However, despite these steps, in other areas, Obama just carried on from the Bush administration. Over the next few years, Obama increasingly had meetings called Terror Tuesdays. They were on a Tuesday, and they were all about terrorists. These meetings were very simple. The relevant people got together, they had a look at who was the largest threat to America, and they decided whether they were going to assassinate any of them.

Oh, wonderful. Yes. This was a continuation of the Bush era, and one that Obama continued. There was a top 20 list from the CIA, and then when one of them was killed or captured, a new person was added on the list. So that top 20 list always stayed top 20.

Obama himself said that ordering people to be killed did not come as a surprise to him. He kind of expected this was going to be part of the job, and he just gets on with it. I'll quote him here. I had no joy in any of this. It didn't make me feel powerful, but the work was necessary. That's quite hard to wrap your head around a bit, isn't it? Yeah. Now, this might have surprised many of his followers, but Obama's main problem

with the Bush approach to counterterrorism was its illegality. Obama quickly shut down all the things that broke international laws and conventions, but he saw it as his job as fixing the problems of the Bush administration rather than tearing it all down and starting something new. So he continued a lot of the widely criticised aspects of the Bush counter-terrorism approach. Well, that's how they ended up getting bin Laden, isn't it? Oh, yes, so we'll get into that because he's number one on that top 20 list, as you can imagine. Yeah, so the assassinations stay in order to reduce the possibility

of the loss of American lives and because technology had been improving steadily, Obama decides mostly to use drone strikes to achieve these assassinations. Now, this obviously does reduce the chance of American

lives being lost, because you're using drones, but equally it vastly increases the chance of civilian casualties. Collateral damage. Yeah. It was decided the trade-off was worth it to save US lives. That's one that could be debated,

for sure, but that's the decision that was made. Meanwhile, he had one more thing to focus on before he could start work on healthcare, and that's obviously the wars. Iraq and Afghanistan were ongoing, and Obama wanted out. Now, Iraq was relatively easy. The Bush administration had already started the process. Obama just needed to say whether this should be sped up or not. He wanted troops out in 16 months. The military wanted significantly longer. So Obama compromised

and announced that even though he had campaigned on 16 months, now he was president and he knew a bit more, it was now going to be 19 months, but the troops were coming out. Afghanistan, however, far more tricky now. Now, Obama had never seen the point of being in Iraq, nor did a lot of people, but he did support being in Afghanistan. He saw the return of the Taliban as being very dangerous and creating a launchpad for terrorist attacks in the United States. We need a stable Afghanistan. There's a reason why we weren't in there, and we need to complete that mission.

Unfortunately, because the United States had spent six years in Iraq fighting that war for, uh, reasons? Yeah. We did a whole episode on it. Why were they in Iraq? I forget. I'm sure it was important. They're in Iraq for some reason. Yeah. Anyway, six years, Jamie. Because of that, things in Afghanistan were very perilous and had been for some time. It just hadn't been the focus. So to begin with, Obama asked for clarification on the mission objective. What are we doing in Afghanistan? He asked his generals. Everyone kind of looked at each other. Stability? Well, it's to get rid of the Taliban, isn't it? No, no, no. We're trying to, it's regime change. We're trying to install a

pro-Western democracy. Are we? Or are we just getting rid of the terrorists? Oh, oh, I thought I knew this, said the generals. It turns out no one could really agree. The various agencies and military arms did not agree with what their actual objective was in Afghanistan. But coincidentally, the price of petroleum had gone down quite a lot. They knew why they were in Iraq. They just weren't allowed to say. Being in Afghanistan was definitely more tricky to say in a clear way. So Obama ordered exactly that. We need a clear vision to be put together.

Because as soon as we know why we're there, we can then get out when it's done. So the Joint Chief of Staff agreed, but said before they could start on figuring out what they're doing in Afghanistan, we need 30,000 more troops in the country, which meant doubling the number of troops in the country. Obama was very sceptical at this, but most of his advisers agreed. Yeah, no, if the military is saying they need more troops, they need more troops. Only Joe Biden voiced his opposition.

After the meeting, the vice president stopped Obama and said, and I quote, Listen to me, boss. Maybe I've been around this town for too long. But one thing I know is when these generals are trying to box in a new president, and then Biden leaned right into Obama and stage whispered, don't let them jam you. Sounds a bit like gangster mafia. That sounds quite cool. Well, it's Joe Biden being the old wise statesman. He's too old for being like the front and centre person,

but he's just wising in the wings now, isn't he, as Biden? Yeah, and that's, I think, a really good position for him. Good. Yeah. Anyway, in the end, Obama agreed to send 17,000 more troops. Not the full 30, but he does send a significant amount of troops there. While a report was written with a clear goal. And this is the goal that they came up with.

To disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And to prevent their return to either country in the future. Well, I'm glad that worked. Well, the report also made it clear, if they had not gone into Iraq, we could have done this by now. Yeah, going into Iraq has achieved... Yeah. Anyway, the report estimated that it would take around three years to do this,

and an increase in the amount of troops. Obama was not happy. He campaigned on ending these wars, and this is an escalation. But the alternative was worse, because if they failed in Afghanistan, then literally everything they had done in the Middle East post-9-11 had been for nothing. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. That's very, very true, isn't it? Yeah. All the loss of lives of American troops would have been for literally nothing. So, to the anger of many anti-war supporters, Obama publicly announced

that they would be doubling the troops in Afghanistan and they'd be staying for a good while longer. Still, with all the hangovers from the Bush administration at least being dealt with for now, Obama now has time to focus on what he really wants to focus on, and that is a move towards universal healthcare. Yes, as we have seen, it's not something that ever really got anywhere in the United States, despite every other developed country in the world taking it up. Yeah. Yeah. Teddy Roosevelt had campaigned on it when he ran as an independent, but he lost.

And then during World War II, more and more companies started providing healthcare as part of their employment packages, something that the unions were more than happy with, because this meant that they had something to negotiate over. And if they could negotiate better than another union over healthcare, their union would get more members. So because of that, companies and unions were more than happy to have this strange healthcare that was linked to your employment. And there was no push for a national healthcare service. At least for a while, Truman tried to push for it a couple of times. He failed. Meanwhile, the drug companies poured a fortune into the idea that national healthcare would lead to rationing and poverty. After all, look at the Brits. They've just taken it up over there and look, they're still on rations. Probably

because of the healthcare they've just started up. Having to do with the war-torn country. No. No. Must be the healthcare. Yeah. LBJ and the Great Society paved a way for some progress, because this is where we got, if you remember, Medicare and Medicaid, which provided assistance to paying for health services for the old and the poorest, respectively. By the 80s, roughly 80% of Americans were indeed covered by their work or Medicare, Medicaid provisions. So 80% of the country could have access to healthcare. That meant one in five, Jamie, in the 80s had no access to healthcare. That's crazy.

Yeah. I say no access. Obviously, technically, they did. But if they didn't have the money, they obviously weren't going to be able to use it. Nope. So, essentially, they did not have access. Just don't break a bone. Yeah. Yeah. Don't.

Just don't. Don't have a baby. Don't. Don't do anything. Just sit in a room. Just go to work. Very quietly. And make sure you don't injure yourself.

20% Jamie. One in five. That is insane. For a developed country to have that is odd. It's very odd. Also, by this point, drug companies were vastly overcharging and hospitals were over-diagnosing in order to get more money from the insurers. It's like a vet. Vets do that.

Oh, yeah. Essentially, the health care service was not in a good state. By Obama's time, the United States was spending more on healthcare than any other advanced country in the world, and had the worst results. Now, just to be clear, pockets of the healthcare were the best in the world. Yeah, if you're rich, wonderful. Yeah, the average citizen could not get anywhere near that yes you had house there in princeton oh yeah yeah he's on his mri machine every other day just for the hell of it yeah why not um but just really scared patients i can't afford this house tough you need it yeah but no for most people that wasn't available so good quality health healthcare existed in the country, it just was not accessible for a vast

majority of people. Now, the steady destruction of the unions since Reagan's era also meant that companies providing healthcare had been able to slowly but surely provide worse and worse coverage over time. Now, those advocating for change were saying all of this as loudly as possible. Just look around the world. Look at the state we're in. Look at how frustrated you get as a person when all this bad healthcare stuff happens. Surely we need to change this.

Advocates even pointed out that this was harming industry. I mean, look at the car industry. Every car that comes off a production line has a hidden cost in it because that company has had to pay for the health care of their workers so even industry is harmed by this now that's a debatable argument because it's got to come from somewhere the money so whether it's a tax after the fact or its company's paying for it money is coming from somewhere but the idea that this private style of health care that was being used is somehow not costing anyone anything was attempting to be debunked.

Yeah. However, there was still a very large pushback. Socialised medicine was seen by many as the way of the enemy. Commie talk. It sounds like communism. And also, look at Britain. Look at them. They're probably still on rations over there,

they said in the 80s. Yeah. Get a National Health Service, then it's nothing but queues. Or your doctors. I don't know, Martians or something. But these thoughts were in the minority. Most of the country realised that the health service

in the country was subpar and needed to be improved. Obama wanted to fix it, but this is dangerous. His advisors pointed out to him that if he fails this, it's going to blow up in the Democrats' faces. Obama will come across as a president who made things worse. Plus, with all the economy stuff going on right now, you'll be a one-term president.

If you tinker with the healthcare system, make it worse and the economy falls flat, who's going to want you in charge? So... It's a big gamble, isn't it? It is. However, Obama and his chief advisor, Axelrod, he's still around. Oh, Axelrod. He said. The two of them pointed out that, no, no, the time this is the only time the democrats have all of congress and the white house it doesn't happen very often if we don't do it now then when now fortunately obama didn't need to work from scratch here massachusetts governor mitt romney of all

people had already enacted a program that had proposed a model that many interest groups and democrats had adopted as a goal. So here is a system that could work. All of the nitty-gritty details had been worked out already. It just needed that political drive to get through. Now, the plan was not to rip up the very flawed model that was already in place. That would probably be best, yes, but it's impractical. People fear change. We won't do that. Instead, Medicaid would be greatly expanded to cover far more people, not just people who were way under the poverty level, but now everyone up to the poverty level and people slightly above it as well, just to give people a bit of a cushion. Because is that heading more towards the middle class as well?

Yeah, exactly. Or just the working class? Yeah. Also, insurance companies would be forced to cover all applicants and not reject people based on pre-existing conditions. So, I mean, I could get... Yeah, you could actually get some health insurance, Jeremy. Oh, nice. I mean, you'd still be having to spend an absolute fortune on insulin

until Biden finally sorts that out. But mean, you'd still be having to spend an absolute fortune on insulin until Biden finally sorts that out. But anyway, that's for a future episode. Insurance companies now had to pay at least 60% of the fee under this new plan. Something which, amazingly, they had not been doing. You had to get this insurance

and the insurance companies weren't even paying 60% of the costs. That's crazy. Oh, insurance. The only thing we've got close to this in this country is car insurance. Yes. You legally have to have car insurance. And they are absolutely awful.

You don't get anything from it. You spend a fortune. And when you do have an accident, you never go through the insurance company. Because it will just cost you more in installments later on. Imagine that with Havka. It blows my mind. It really does. Anyway, lots of details. It looks like this will be a better system, according to the people who supported it anyway. Now, jumping ahead slightly, it does not go smooth sailing, but the Affordable Care Act, which is what it is, but it's known as Obamacare, does eventually go through.

And generally, by all measures, is a success. An all-time low of 8.8% of people were uninsured by 2016. So more people had insurance in the country than ever before in history. It's still scary that almost 10% don't. Yeah, still scary, but it's much better than it was. It's still scary that almost 10% don't. Yeah, still scary, but it's much better than it was. Yeah. 60% of people who had treatment after the new coverage kicked in

said that they would have forgone treatment before because although that they were insured, they still wouldn't have been able to afford it. So that's how much more healthcare was being done by people who had insurance before, but their insurance was now just better. I've heard even just getting an ambulance, you get charged for ambulance usage. Yeah, I don't even want to go into how depressing it all is.

Now, we don't have time to go into all the ins and outs of Obamacare. It certainly isn't perfect. There are certainly areas that did not work out well, and there were some people who ended up in worse positions, but they certainly were the exception rather than the rule, and generally this is a good thing for the country, not just in my opinion, according to the people who live in the country. The polls show that Obamacare is popular. So popular, in fact, that even Donald Trump literally a few days ago reluctantly came out and said he would not try and get rid of Obamacare.

Because he tried to, didn't he, before? Yeah, I mean, I say he came out and said he wouldn't. He came out and said that I've never said that I would destroy Obamacare. You can pull up the tweet where he said, I will destroy Obamacare. But hey, that's for a future episode. Anyway, jumping ahead slightly there, because I went into the fact that Obamacare worked out, so let's pull it back. Because for now, Obama needs to get the bill passed. But there's a problem. GOP were in no mood to play. As we have seen, the far right of the party

that got Reagan in did not go away after Reagan. Gingrich, as Speaker of the House, had continued the approach of grinding the government to a halt and spending as much time as possible attacking the Dems rather than getting bills through. They had come to the conclusion that they didn't need to be in charge to achieve their goals. Small government could be obtained by grinding the government to a halt, and we don't even need to be in power to do it yeah now as we saw gingrich suffered a blow over the clinton scandal as most people saw him as petty and vindictive however the fashion hadn't gone away and in fact if anything they were getting stronger and then bush bailed

out the banks and the extreme right of the party protested they saw this as against the principles of the free market it's like how how far do principles go before the country collapses it just baffles me it's like the country would have collapsed what did what do you want to see do you do you think you won't be affected by this because if the economy collapses that hard there will be riots and revolts and the political class will be literally ripped out. That's what happens when economies fall over completely. It just seems so blinkered to me. But anyway, going off on a tangent there. Back to the GOP. Supporters of these politicians who were criticising Bush bailing out the banks loudly started putting pressure on the moderates of

the party. Washington was full of corrupt politicians who put power interest groups ahead of their constituents, they said. Which is hard to argue with, because this was true. It just was. However, just don't ask the right of the GOP about the special interest groups that they actually support, such as the NRA and the drug companies. Those ones are fine, apparently. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, this group soon have a name. It's the Tea Party. Oh! Yes. They wanted a Tea Party to protest against Obama, so they called themselves the Tea Party. The politicians in the House who were Tea Party members

or supported by the Tea Party called themselves the Freedom Caucus. So, in other words, Freedom Caucus are the politicians in Washington. Yeah. They are supported by the Tea Party, which is a sort of grassroots movement. Anyway, the Tea Party's biggest problem was government spending and federal overreach. Small government, that's what they want. Although this was, to put it bluntly, full of holes, because they were more than happy with things

such as veterans' benefits. So there were plenty of things that the government did that they were fine with, which was big government. But anyway, if I tried to give the Tea Party the benefit of the doubt, I would say that, like I say, they're a grassroots movement following a tradition of anti-government feelings that dates back to the revolution. However, there are definitely links to wealthy Republican donors such as the Koch brothers and right-wing think tanks putting money into these groups to put pressure on the moderates in the party. Essentially what I'm saying is that there is a concerted effort from the right of the Republican Party to take over the whole party happening at this time. Yeah. Yeah. A push that we have not seen

since the 70s. Anyway, this wing of the Republicans had enough power to ensure that the GOP would not compromise at all with Obama on anything whatsoever. Fortunately for Obama, at the moment, he had a super majority in the Senate. That meant he had 60 seats. You need 60 seats because if you've got 60 seats, you can get anything through without a filibuster stopping it. As long as everyone on your

party's in line. As long as everyone in your party's online, yes. But at the moment, they were. The Democrats were very united. Good. It's the Republicans that are completely fractured at this time. Anyway, in March of 2010, the ACA bill passes, which is nice. Then in the summer, the Dodd-Frank Act was passed. This was an act designed to prevent a financial crash like what had happened happening again.

It introduced a whole load of new regulation agencies and improved powers of existing regulation agencies. It did things like make it illegal for lenders to lend money to people who they knew couldn't pay it back. Just really common sense stuff like that. Sensible stuff. There was obvious pushback from the Republicans, who again opposed anything that involved regulation. That's not free market. And obviously they opposed anything that Obama proposed. But again, Obama's got the votes, so it goes through. And then more good news.

Things are going well for Obama. Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Oh, I remember this. It's a bit dodgy. Well, it was around 6am when Obama was awoken by an aide to be informed that he'd just won the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama's first question was, what do you mean? And then he was told again, and his second question was, what for? Which I am really pleased to learn that Obama's reaction to him winning this prize is identical to mine. Yeah. So why did he win the Nobel Peace Prize? Well, I'll tell you. I will quote from the committee. For his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples, multilateral diplomacy has regained a central

position with emphasis on the role of the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. In other words, he got a Nobel Peace Prize for not being Bush. Oh. Yeah. Cool.

Now, I know I mentioned it last episode, but if you are American and you don't realise this, it's really hard to overstate just how much the rest of the world sighed in relief when bush was replaced with obama yeah very much so and people were happy so why not give him an obama peace prize yeah a slightly confused obama held a press conference where he said the prize should really be shared with those around the world who toiled with no recognition on peace. But he wasn't going to give it back.

He's got a Nobel Peace Prize. It's gone on the shelf. Yeah, so that's nice, isn't it? Yeah. That's nice. But then things start going downhill, because then the Democrats lose the midterms. Or at least they lose the House in the midterms.

They've still got the Senate. A jubilant Mitch McConnell, who was the current Senate minority leader, announced that this meant Republicans could now go and finish the job. Mitch McConnell was then asked, what is the job of the Republicans in Congress? And McConnell replied, and I quote, the single most important thing for us to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president. So it's not about the country, it's just about... This sums up the Republicans at this time.

The only thing that they want to do is bring down Obama. Let's hope Obama doesn't do anything embarrassing like wearing a different coloured suit. Get to that, Jamie, don't worry. Got a whole section. 18 paragraphs. Anyway, the new Congress had around 40 pro-Tea Party members.

Enough to block anything Republican Congress put forward. Now, because of this, the Speaker, John Boner... Is that how you say his name? Boner? B-O-E-H-N-E-R. Boner. Yeah, that's Boner. That's Boner. That's Boner, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. Decided to embrace the Tea Party. Now, he personally found the Freedom Caucus too extreme, but better the devil you know, try and bring them on board, unify the Republican Party, he thinks. Now, as a result of this,

the Republican Party shifts ever further right, which we have been seeing over the last couple of decades, but we're going into unprecedented territory here. What used to be seen as the extreme fringes now is starting to be seen as normal. Government shutdowns, I mean, they were

considered just absolutely no, can't happen, just a couple of decades ago. Now, why not? Why not use it as a political tool? Every week, yeah. Refusing appointments for no actual reason other than it would really annoy Obama? Go for it. Does it harm the president? Does it slow the government down?

If the answer's yes, let's do it, regardless of what it's linked to. How is this acceptable? Like, even if you're a Republican, you could see this is harmful to the country. Unless what you want is for the central government of the country to have less power. In which case, this is chipping away at its power until slowly and surely it becomes useless. But that's not good. If you think a strong central government is good, then no, it's bad. But if you don't want one, then I can see the logic behind it.

I completely disagree with it, but I at least can see where they're coming from, which I never used to be able to do. But at least now I can. You'd vote Republican, wouldn't you, Rob? Yes, I love their ideals. yeah i know you see if you see if you delete that out on the episode that'd be fun no i did i voted for trump last time and i'd do it again um yeah uh voted for him 18 times you seem to be getting frustrated jam, Jamie. Do you want to know who else is getting frustrated? I imagine Obama's getting a bit...

Yes, it is. It is definitely, definitely Obama. He's getting very frustrated that he's having to do battle against a Congress that seemed to have no interest in governing, or even self-preservation, as long as it hurt him. So intense had the anti-Obama push become, from the right-wing press, conspiracy theories start to crop up. Oh dear. As covered before, the Fairness Doctrine had been removed by the Republicans in 87. That meant news programs could now just be openly biased. Hurrah. Excellent.

Fox News had been born from this, and now, a couple of decades on, is at its peak. A study at the time found that a vast majority of the Republican supporters only listened to Fox News, whereas Democrat supporters tended to listen to a wide range of news outlets. Just not Fox News. Yeah. Yeah. This led to echo chambers. Different portions of the electorate were hearing vastly different versions of what was happening in their country. Many non-Fox News viewers hadn't even heard the latest Fox talking point, which was that Obama was not American. Like, literally. Not, oh, he doesn't believe in America, he's literally not American.

Accusations about this, let's be honest here, stemming from racism, had been happening since before the election. This wasn't brand new at this time, but few took notice. It was obviously ridiculous. However, that changed when a famous estate mogul and reality TV show host Donald Trump appears on Good Morning America on ABC. Not Fox News. Oh.

Trump talked about the Bertha conspiracy and about how he was, and I quote, a little sceptical that Obama had been born in the United States. And then Trump starts doing the rounds on all of the news programmes. The conspiracy hits mainstream outside of the Fox bubble, and the news programmes programs seeing trump as a bit eccentric but will get listeners and viewers in are happy to have him on their program to talk about it he's a funny man he can you know it's all these crazy wild ideas but yeah pretty much now obama's team felt that this is fine this is is an easy win. Obama in particular was like, fine, just release my birth certificate.

So they do. One aide says, this is beneath you, and Obama just says, yes, I know. It's also the quickest way to just get it done. They released the birth certificate, and Trump, who was getting into Twitter at this time, announced that he had a credible source that said that the certificate was a fake. A credible source.

Obviously, just completely made up. Anyway, shortly after this, there is a White House Correspondents' Dinner. Have I talked much about those before? I'm sure I must have mentioned them before. I don't know. I'm a big fan of them, though, and I think Obama's are brilliant.

Well, for listeners' benefit, if you don't know, this is when a lot of people high up in media and politics get together and have a formal dinner, and there's lots of guest speakers, and people make fun of each other in their speeches. It's meant to be light-hearted, but it is also a highlight of the social calendar. It's a way to prove that you now are in the big leagues politically and within the media.

So anyone who is anyone in either sphere needs to be invited to this thing. And the president usually gives a speech, which Obama does. He decides to address the issue of him not being born in the United States head on. And because this was a room full of who's who in the country, Trump is well connected. He works in the media. He is very wealthy. So of course, he's able to get a ticket. So Trump is in the audience. Obama, in his speech, starts with, my fellow Americans, stress on fellow, and lots of people laugh. And then he talks about the birth conspiracy for a bit, and then finishes with, no one is happier

to put this birth certificate matter to rest than Donald. And that's because he can get on with the issues that really matter, like did we fake the moon landings? And then Obama goes on to quite brutally, if you actually watch it, mock Trump's lack of experience. How he is

running The Apprentice whilst Obama is running the country. Trump sits in stony silence. See the video, yeah? With a room full of people who he wants them to be looking up to him and they are laughing at him. Trump is humiliated.

He's also, at this point, openly talking to people about running for president in the future. This probably seals it. So, this isn't an episode on Trump. No. But just know that Obama has poked the bear. Bone spur bear. Yes.

But Obama has very little reason to think about this popularity-seeking celebrity for too long, because he's very busy. Because he had been informed recently that they may have found Osama bin Laden. And the operation to kill or capture him was literally hours away. So if you go and look at that speech again, just know that Obama, in the back of his mind, is thinking about the upcoming operation to get Osama bin Laden. When you finish this bit, I've got an interesting fact.

Unless you've included it already, I don't know. Oh, we'll see, we'll see. Okay, a little nugget teasing there. Yeah, bin Laden, obviously, number on that that top 20 list since 2001 a vast amount of money and work had been put together to locate him uh i don't have time to go into it all now but essentially simple version they had located a man that they knew had contact with bin laden and they'd followed him and they had a building guy walking through a village a massive army of american commandos sneakily followed with goggles

the guys got a package which just says to osama on it that's how they knew that's how they knew yeah occasionally turn around the whole army would just duck. High-pied-a-bow. Yeah, that's the simple version. What they had was a building that a high-up member of Al-Qaeda was in. They were certain of that. They didn't know whether it was bin Laden. They suspected it might be, but if it wasn't, it was one of his high-up lieutenants. So it was decided the evidence was strong enough to approve a strike. But what would this look like?

If they blew it up with missiles, they would not be able to prove that bin Laden was dead and he would become an undefeatable ghost. They definitely can't do that. So what's the only other alternative? Well, let's send in a team. Let's see if they'll kill or capture. And that was the plan.

Relatively simple, if you don't go into the actual details. A SEAL team would helicopter to the compound, land, kill or capture, then get out of there. Yeah. On paper, it seems really simple. Yeah, there was lots of

talk about the nitty gritty, but that's essentially all we need to know for now. Obama and his chief advisors and staff, including Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, gathered in the Situation Room to watch the operation live. This is the only time Obama ever did this. For 20 minutes, they watched grainy dark footage of the SEAL team sweeping through the compound. Obama later said that he couldn't really tell what was going on. It was not clear. It was just grainy, distorted images. He knew it was a success when he finally heard the confirmation that bin Laden had been ID'd

and he had been killed. Hearing that, Obama simply said, and I quote, we got him, as Biden squeezed his shoulder and said, congratulations, boss. And then they sat very tense as the team extracted and got away. Once the mission had been completed successfully, Obama phones Bill Clinton and George Bush to inform them both. So, yeah, we got him. And then third, guess who he called after those two? Genuinely surprised me. I don't know.

David Cameron. What? Yeah, yeah. I've got a wonderful film idea for you, David. Oh no, David Cameron. I thought, oh, I was thinking of the film director. Oh, I messed up. Don't worry. I can cut that.

The UK Prime Minister. No, no. It's fine. I can live with hum right, yeah. Don't worry. I can cut that. UK Prime Minister. No, no, it's fine. I can live with humiliation, Rob. It's fine. Yeah, no. No, not Cameron the film. Not James Cameron. Not James Cameron. David Cameron.

Prime Minister. The Prime Minister. Prime Minister David Cameron. Got it. Yeah. That kind of makes sense. I mean, you've got to tell world leaders at some point. It just surprises me that the British Prime Minister was top of the list.

Before, in fact, the next person, which was the President of Pakistan, whose country they had just illegally invaded. Yeah, I mean, it's probably good to at least let them know. Well, Obama had a feeling that al-Isidari was going to be upset by this because they had, without permission, just gone into his country. But apparently, no, the Pakistan president was very congratulatory to Obama, just said, well done for getting him. So there you go.

So he's told a bunch of people. But now it's time to tell the country. Can I tell you a fun fact? Oh, go on then, what's your fun fact? So before Obama did his press release, the information was released on Twitter by one person. The first person to announce that Osama had been killed, and it was Dwayne the Rock Johnson, the wrestler.

Was he there? People don't know, but he was the first person to announce it, almost to the world, on Twitter. I did not come across this. No, it's weird, isn't it? I'm really sad I didn't come across this. Okay, well, I can only assume he was in the SEAL team. That would make sense.

Maybe he's preparing for a film. He's got really into it. Yeah, okay. Fair enough. Right. Thank you for that fact. I'm going to enjoy it. Yeah, okay. Fair enough. Right, thank you for that fact. I really enjoy it. Yeah, it's all right.

Anytime. Editing Rob here, I thought I'd jump on because this was an amazing fact by Jamie and I obviously then had to look into it, which I've done. So, unfortunately, Jamie is not quite correct. The Rock the Dwayne Johnson was only the second person to announce the death of Bin Laden on Twitter, because he was beaten by 24 seconds by Keith Urban, who was the chief of staff at Donald Rumsfeld's office, who got the

inside scoop through a connection with a network TV news producer. But it was a very close-run thing. I could say 24 seconds later, The Rock, the Dwayne Johnson, tweeted, just got the word that will shock the world, land of the free, home of the brave, damn proud to be an American. And then later on, he did not release his sources, so we still don't know about me, unless I just can't find it. But again, I'm just going to restate that I assume he was on the rate, because why wouldn't he be? He was obviously on the rate. Anyway, back to past me and Jamie. Thanks, Editing Rob. Yeah, anyway, the response from the country was, for editing, Rob. Yeah, anyway, the response from the country was, for once, pretty much united.

This was the end of a chapter that had united the country more than anything since Pearl Harbor. It's very hard for the country to be divided on this one, and it wasn't. Even Obama's biggest critics could find very little to criticise. People in America celebrated the death of their biggest bogeyman of the generation. Meanwhile, various other things took place that I will have very little time to talk about, so it's going to be a bit of skimming over things for a little bit here. The Arab Spring had erupted in several countries in the Middle East. Not going into that. Nope. Politics behind that is insane.

Let's put the lid back on that comment. I was going to say that's happening and it's important, but I'm not going to go into why. That's for a different podcast. The biggest, arguably the biggest outcome from this was the death of Gaddafi in Libya. But the biggest impact in the United States was the attack of United States diplomats in Benghazi, killing four. Now, I'm not going to go into this in much detail. If we had ended up doing a Hillary Clinton episode, I would spend

much more time talking about this, because there's a lot that happens due to this attack in Benghazi that plays with Hillary Clinton. To sum up, it can be argued that the Secretary of State, Clinton, was responsible for the safety of the citizens and should have done more to protect them. Now, the Republicans decide to use this as a way to attack Obama and Clinton. Clinton is seen as the frontrunner for 2016, so they want to bring her a peg or two down. as seen as the front runner for 2016, so they want to bring her a peg or two down. A stupid amount of time and effort was put into trying to prove that either Obama or Clinton had done something

that could directly link them to the deaths. Obviously nothing was found. I mean, this was never going to go anywhere. They were there holding the guns. To this day, you still get people passionately talking about Benghazi. Yeah, I remember during the 25th, 16th election, there's just people hashtagging it. As if it's some kind of

smoking gun. And I did think I'd go into it a bit, but it's not, it's more Clinton than Obama, and it's just not worth the time. Just know that it is something that the Republicans are going after Clinton and sort of Obama for. Nothing ever comes from it because there was never anything there to begin with.

Good. Yeah. Anyway, other things that are happening. At home, Obama comes out in support of gay marriage to the horror of the right and the delight of Fox News. Because Fox News can now, they've now finally got something to attack him again after the whole

unfortunate incident of him doing something they couldn't criticise. And now they can criticise him again. Hooray! The date for declaring the Iraq war comes and goes and it's declared over. Officially, this is the end. Obama, like we've said, has always seen the war in Iraq as a waste of lives and resources. And was very glad that it was over. But there is no denying that the country, as in Iraq, a waste of lives and resources, and was very glad that it was over. But there is no denying that the country, as in Iraq, was in a state, and the pulling out of the

United States troops could potentially lead to more instability. Vacuum. So let's hope that doesn't happen. No, definitely not. And then, in November of 2012, Obama wins his re-election. He'd been up against Mitt Romney, pushed from the moderates in the party to try and get some control of the extreme rights

on their fringe. There's little to report in this election. Obama was popular outside of the right-wing bubble who despised him. This is a very large bubble, but it's not a big enough bubble to keep him out, so Obama comfortably wins re-election, with 332 electoral college seats to 206.

They also, the Democrats, gain seats in the House and the Senate, which sounds great, doesn't it? But it's not as good as it sounds. The gains in the House were not enough to take it back off the Republicans. So the Republicans still have the House. Despite the fact the Democrats had won the popular vote,

they just don't. It doesn't add up and they don't get the seats in the House so they still can't get it back. There had been, incidentally, a lot of gerrymandering going on recently. Both parties were up to it, but the biggest culprit by far is the Republicans. Not only this, but with Mitt Romney losing, the far right of the party then feel vindicated and grow in strength.

From this point on, Obama can get practically nothing through a paralysed Congress, which really comes to the fore shortly after when the tragedy of Sandy Hook occurs. Because on the 14th of December 2014, a 20-year-old man entered an elementary school and killed 26 people, 20 of them small children aged around eight. Now, although only briefly touched on in this podcast, mass shootings in public areas have done nothing but increase in recent times. If you remember, Clinton put a ban on assault rifles. Is it like a 10-year ban? Yes, well, that's up. in recent times. If you remember, Clinton put a ban on assault rifles.

Is it like a 10-year ban? Yes, well, that's up. And that did stop the curve. It did. It levelled out. But no, as mentioned in Clinton's episode, as soon as that ban lifted after the 10 years, owning an assault rifle almost became a political statement. So sales of the assault rifle went through the roof. They were more popular than ever as soon as the ban came out. So that happened. More people had more

access to more guns, and mass shooting goes up. Now, this is so simple, a five-year-old could get it. However, as discussed before, the NRA has become a very powerful lobbying group by this point, and it was far more about politics and guns. As discussed in the previous episodes, they had by this point a stronghold on the Republican Party. Ties between the NRA and the Republicans are close-knit. If a Republican was not approved by the NRA publicly, then they would be run against by someone who was. And the NRA approved person would get the seat, because they would have money being poured in from the NRA. Plus, there was a very strong overlap between the Tea Party, the Freedom Caucus, and the NRA.

So this isn't just a Republican Party problem, it is very much tied into the far-right extreme of the Republicans. Now, this all leads to the fact that the far-right of the GOP would defend gun rights against anything. So everyone thought. But was it anything? Is there a line, surely, somewhere? Well, Sandy Hook turned out to be a turning point, because never before had the country faced such a horrific mass shooting. It was absolutely appalling. Distraught families filled the TVs as the country watched on in horror. You're going to mention what's-his-name, aren't you? Who?

The conspiracy guy. Oh, yes, I'll mention him in a moment, don't worry. An emotional bomber gave a speech to the press office. He spoke about how heartbreaking it was as he wiped away tears from his eyes, and then he listed many other mass shootings from recent times that the country had suffered from. Seeing the public mood, most of whom were angry at the gun culture that had led to this, he called for stricter gun controls. Polls showed that this was overwhelmingly supported.

And I mean overwhelmingly supported. Two bills were proposed, to cut a long story short. There was a ban on assault weapons. Let's reintroduce that. And then a second one was the introduction of universal background checks. Great idea. Well, this second bill had a 92% approval rate from the public. Wow. 92.

So if you were a democratic country, you'd definitely bring that in, wouldn't you? Well, you'd think so. So you've got 92 92 support from the public and the democrats had a huge majority in the senate so how can this not get through the house well the nra and the freedom caucus and the wider tea party swing into action at this point because it is a turning point we like dead children well how dare you stop us from killing children? This is it. This is why it's a turning point. Because this is when the pro-gun people decide that, yes, we can even accept the deaths of small children.

Really? Yeah. We're not even... Bloody hell. Before, everyone kind of assumed if there was ever a mass shooting bad enough, then the argument from the pro-gun people would collapse. Fortunately, it hasn't happened, but if it did, it would destroy their argument. But no, this happened, and the pro-gun rights people doubled down. Fox News repeatedly interviewed people who claimed that the solution was, you've guessed it, more guns.

If Sandy Hook Elementary School was not a gun-free school, those kids would still be alive, they said. Yeah. The NRA made it clear to politicians in pro-gun areas that if you support this, we will pour money into replacing you next election. The Freedom Caucus made it very clear to the Speaker of the House, we will not support this and we will block every attempt to get this bill passed. And in the more extreme cases, you are right, popular shock jockeys like Alex Jones simply called the whole thing a hoax to take the guns away.

They were paid actors, weren't they? Yeah, which gained a depressing amount of traction. It's easier to say that the other side is lying than admit that you're on the side that accepts children being killed as a price for your hobby. So it can't possibly be true. Otherwise, I'm a bad person. So they must be lying.

Although it has been satisfying the last couple of years. He's got... Oh, yeah, he has. One of the fathers didn't. They took him to court. Yeah, yeah. He's had everything taken from him, which is good. Anyway, despite the push by the right-wing media,

the public support did not waver. The public want gun reform. Yeah. Overwhelmingly. Because that's not against the Second Amendment. It's just... No, not at all. Just make sure you haven't got a serial killer with a gun.

Yeah. But the efforts of the NRA and the Freedom Caucus win out. The bills do not pass. Mass shootings continue to rise and increase in size and scope. Obama, at the end of his presidency, said that this was his biggest failure. I wouldn't say it's his failure.

So, there you go. Meanwhile, world events are taking over. The Arab Spring has caused a huge disruption in the Middle East, obviously. Many countries going through some sort of rebellion, revolt, or civil war, depending on which country it is. Syria, in particular, was fighting a bitter and complex civil war. And in Iraq, a new state was emerging, filling the power vacuum left by the United States war.

This obviously is Islamic State, or ISIS, or ISIL, depending on which faction of it we're talking about. I'm just going to call them ISIS. It will cover all of it. It's easier. Anyway, Obama, opposing many of the previous wars in the area, was reluctant to get involved in this. Obama really does not want to send troops into the Middle East. This whole thing was taking them out of the Middle East. He was already unhappy that he'd sent more troops to Afghanistan.

So he publicly called for regime change in Syria, but did very little else but give a go-ahead to some Pentagon and CIA-led operations that just went nowhere. Now, at one point, he stated to Syria and Assad that there was a red line that the Syrian government could not cross without the United States getting involved. And that was the use of chemical weapons. If you use chemical weapons, we're coming in. It's a red line. So when Syria used chemical weapons and happily jumped over that red line, Obama, still desperate not to get the United States into another war, decided that he would go to the public instead. he's in a very tricky situation here he's very publicly said if you do this i will do this well syria's done it so what's

he gonna do well what he decided to do was ask congress if they should get involved maybe he could use the deadlock in congress to his advantage for a change. Because if nothing can get through Congress right now, then excellent, this won't get through. I don't actually want to do it. I just said that I would. So a political fight was set that might lead to another war. It really could have done. Fortunately for everyone, the Russians came along with a plan.

They said we'd negotiate the removal of the chemical weapons, and they did, and it works. Yay. Yeah. So America and Obama pulled out of the coals there by Russia, of all people. Thank you, Putin. Yeah. Now, there are some politics behind that that I'm not going to go into for time reasons.

It certainly wasn't completely altruistic from Russia's part. However, the fact is Obama faced a huge criticism for saying that there was a red line and then not acting upon it. However, I'm personally quite impressed that he threw it to Congress knowing that it would just become deadlocked. It's like using his opponent's strengths against them. Yeah. Quite impressed with that. However, he's struggling with ISIS even more. The Islamic State was made up of angry young men

who had been imprisoned and radicalised in the United States prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is where the people were coming from. Surprise, surprise, the heavy-handed approach from America in recent decades has led to this. Made people a bit resentful. Yeah, and Islamic State were not good, regardless how I'm going to sum it up. Yes, they were making headway, creating a brand new country by taking advantage of the destroyed political infrastructure of Iraq and then Syria. The tactics were very simple. Fear.

We will scare people into submission. Mass killings and beheadings were common. Pressure was put on Obama to do something about this. You're meant to be leading the West. You're meant to be the most powerful man in the world. This is awful. You should be doing something to stop it. But Obama could not see an exit strategy,

so therefore refused to be moved on it. If we go in, we'd be trapped in another Middle Eastern war and the cycle would just go on and on and on, he argued. People argued back, but they are doing awful things and no one's stopping them and it's America's fault, so you should take responsibility for this. You can see arguments on both sides there, at least I can. Anyway, I'll quote Obama here, there are going to be times where tragically we have to refrain from jumping in with both feet. However, when Islamic State took Mosul,

it was clear that something had to be done, because it looked like they were actually going to be able to create a new country here, and that would not be good. So they're going to have to send some troops in. This was a huge decision, and one Obama did not want to make, but had come to realise was necessary. And this is when the biggest scandal of his presidency takes place. Because on the 28th of August of 2014, Barack Obama, the President of the United States, wore a tan suit.

Oh my... what? It was a suit. Oh my... What? It was a suit. But instead of a dark colour, it was a tan colour. I used to have so much respect for Obama. It's just... It's odd when you're doing an episode and it just swerves so much like this

yeah because you build up a sense of what someone's like from looking in their lives and their presidency and you can kind of predict what kind of things they do but this comes out of nowhere it's just there, on the 28th of August he wore a tan suit

what did the media say? August, he wore a tan suit. What did the media say? Well, understandably, they were shocked, Jeremy. Absolutely shocked. I should probably explain, just in case anyone is listening and does not know about the tan suit thing. He wore a tan suit whilst talking about the needs to put troops to fight ISIS. He had a press conference to talk about the situation. He stated that the United States response was not final yet and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Tan suit, tan suit, tan suit. He was wearing a tan suit. Fox News ran the story non-stop for a week. A week. Other channels picked it up. One GOP House member said, and I quote here, Yeah, Jamie, this really happened. This actually happened.

Huh? No. Oh. Yeah. really happened this actually happened no oh yeah i mean i admit it's not the best color to wear for a suit i get it but yeah i just i mean reagan wore a tan suit by the way oh what a monster yeah fox news didn't mind that but this note, this shows how far the culture divide has come and what Fox News has become. Because this comes from Fox News. They are looking for anything to attack the president on and to get their followers to hate. And this is all they can find, a tan suit. and this is all they can find, a tan suit. And yet, because of the power of Fox News by this point in the country, the other media stations start taking it on as well, and it spreads. So it's no longer just a right-wing bubble thing. This is a everyone in the country is talking about a tan suit, whilst Obama is trying to talk about whether they are going to put troops into another

country to start another war. Now, in the end, troops were sent into Iraq once more, and Obama stressed that it was for a limited amount of time, and they're there for training Iraqi forces. In the end, 4,500 troops were sent in to support the Iraqi troops. This stays roughly constant until 2021. So, but that's all unimportant. Tansuit, Jeremy. Tansuit. Yeah. Still makes my blood boil.

Meanwhile, all this is happening to a background of government shutdowns. Like I say, the government is not functioning. Obamacare was about to come into effect, and the Republicans, led by Freedom Caucus member Ted Cruz, Oh, what on f***? Sorry. Yes, I've heard of him. Yes, yeah. Hoped that they could kill it off by defunding it. They could do this by refusing to raise the debt ceiling and therefore shutting down the government. We've come across this before. And when this was going on, they could use that to pressure the Democrats to defund their own bill, essentially killing off Obamacare.

So to put it very simply, we're going to blackmail you guys to taking away Obamacare. Because if you don't do it, we will shut down the government. Brilliant. Now, as we have seen, shutdowns have been rare. It only happened usually for hours, a day or two at the most, until Clinton, where the GOP, under Gingrich, used similar tactics to put pressure on Clinton, and the government was shut down for 21 days. Well, this time the Freedom Caucus put pressure on the rest of the GOP to refuse to raise the debt ceiling. The Speaker was

essentially told, if you cave on this, the Tea Party will replace you next election. So the GOP decide, let's shut down the government. Obama sticks to his guns. He refuses to butch. He was not going to let his biggest achievement fail at the last hurdle. So in the end, after 16 whole days, the Speaker cracks and gives in. This is unsustainable. The public are not with the Republicans. This is obviously the Republican Party playing politics and letting people suffer. There are people not being paid because of this. So eventually the Speaker cracks. Obamacare remains fully funded. And although the rollout was a rocky one, there were many problems with the rollout,

it does go on to be beneficial, as I briefly talked about before. True to their word, the Freedom Caucus rally the Tea Party movement, and the Speaker is shortly ousted. So if you don't get in line with the far-right of the party, that's it. Even though they are a minority of the party, they are by far the most powerful faction. Yeah. Anyway, the midterms then come along and the Republicans gain the Senate. Yeah. And that's it for Obama. He was paralyzed before and now it's just impossible to do anything. Anything at all. So much so that our episode pretty much ends here. There is very little noteworthy to talk about in this last couple of years because he can't get anything done although one major thing to highlight just how he can't get anything done was when a year later a seat opened up on the supreme court judge scalia was a very conservative judge and he

had just died this was seen as a huge win for the democrats because that meant they could replace one of the really hardcore conservatives with a more progressive judge. The new Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, announced that any nomination would be null and void because they were so close to the next president being elected. Which was, and I'm guessing he quickly started counting on his fingers here, ten months away from the election. Ten months. Obama was incredulous. This went against every norm in American politics. A new judge could be in place within a couple of months.

There was plenty of time. There was no reason not to do this. But also, it's one of those things where no one had thought to write it down that this shouldn't happen. Obviously, you should not be in a case where a political party can just say no to a president putting someone in place.

Yeah. But there wasn't a law to stop the Republicans doing this, so they did it. When asked about it, a very frustrated Obama said, and I quote, we haven't seen a substantive argument against his jurisprudence. This is just raw politics. And then addressing the Senate, he said,

give him a fair hearing and then up or down vote. If you don't, then it will not only be an abdication of the Senate's constitutional duty, it will indicate a process for nominating and confirming judges that is beyond repair. The reputation of the Supreme Court will inevitably suffer, faith in our justice system will inevitably suffer, and our democracy ultimately will suffer as well. We'll see whether that comes to pass. Yeah, I remember that very well. The GOP sticks to their policy of opposing Obama at everything and grinding the government

to a halt. There is nothing the Democrats can do as the rest of the year plays out. Merrick Garland is not put in place as he was the nominee. He just never gets a hearing. So the Supreme Court seat stays open until the next president comes in, which we will discuss next time. Anyway, not going to go into the madness of the following year because politics was dominated by Trump announcing that he was running for president and racing against Hillary Clinton. Obama supported Hillary Clinton in the campaign, but ultimately, as we know, Trump wins the election. He does. Yes. Yes, he does. It's democracy, Rob. It's democracy.

If you want to hear... Oh, maybe I'll try and find something to put in here. Because we have done something that didn't occur to me until one of our listeners mentioned it on Discord. We've caught up with ourselves, Jamie. Have we? We'd started our podcast by this point. Ah. The Roman one. Yes.

I remember ranting at the beginning of the episode. Yeah, there was a part of one of our episodes in the Roman series after we've just found out that Trump's won. So I'll see if I can find that and I'll just put it in here. So this was our reaction to Trump winning. Hello and welcome to Roman Emperors. So tell us, rank you. I am Jamie. And I'm Rob, ranking all the Roman Emperors from Augustus to Augustulus, episode 28, Maximinus Thrax.

Oh, I'm looking forward to this. And here we are, post-election episode for our American listeners. We're staying non-partisan. Yes. So congratulations or commiserations. Yep. I'm just going to stay silent yeah

yeah interesting anyway back to the episode right yeah there you go yeah about right okay so that's it Obama stops being president

he then goes and finds a beach somewhere and drinks lots of cocktails and, I don't know, does some surfing and listens to jazz and writes lots more biographies. Yeah. Makes some very long speeches. Makes some long speeches with pauses in. So there you go.

That's Obama. What do you think? Yeah, it's weird to hear, because he does come across as someone that's morally in the right place. Whether you agree politically with him, you can see what he wanted to do. A bit boring, maybe, as a human being.

So I would love to sit and have a meal with him. That'd be great. But I think after maybe the first course, I'll be looking like, oh, yeah, OK. So the qualifier you just gave there, when you said a bit boring, I just imagined him looking really sad. And then you were like, oh, no, no, I just mean as a human being. Yeah, just in his soul. It's fine.

What I did like, though, he released a lot of White House videos about him and Michelle and Biden. Did a lot of mini-documentaries about the White House. Yeah, transparency was a huge thing for Obama. He really wanted to make sure people could see what being president actually entailed. Yeah, they started their own brewery at the White House as well. I did not know that. Yeah, there you go. First basketball court at the White House as well,

because he's a fan of basketball. Oh no, I did know that one, I did. There is, I'm sure, many listeners thinking, why didn't he mention that? There's just too much to mention everything in our format. Every single president we have covered, we have missed out just as much. It's just we all remember Obama,

so there's going to be loads of stuff that you'll be able to think of and go, oh, we didn't cover it up. But you can't cover everything, can you? No. It gives us a sense of Obama. I think it gives us enough that we can judge him, so let's do it, shall we? Statesmanship! Okay, two big ones, I'd say, for statesmanship.

Number one, he oversaw the recovery of the economy. He did. He inherited an economy in worse shape than any modern president. And by the end of his presidency, everything was growing and stable. This is very important and something that I think a lot of people forget. It almost seems inevitable that we managed to come out of the banking crisis, not in another great depression but yeah there was a very real chance that the economy would have completely fallen off a cliff and it didn't

and obama's detractors said that if they do this it will make it worse and it didn't it improved it so they did the right course as far as i can see yeah um so much so that the next president took credit for it oh it's still still growing now the economy in america is still going pretty strong and considering covid happened that's not too bad so yeah however like i've always said economy and the president it's uh the two things don't go hand in hand perfectly. But it is in situations like this where you can actually see policy having an effect, where it's the closest you get to it. So I think Obama definitely needs credit for dealing with the banking crisis.

And then the second of the two big ones, the Affordable Care Act. More people in America have access to health healthcare they can actually use than ever before. This is undeniably good. And yes, there was and still are many flaws in the system, but they are not flaws that did not exist before. The flaws have just shifted around slightly. Yeah. The fact is that Obamacare has become more and more popular

as time goes on, and people realising that the fear-mongering during its introduction has not played out. That's true. There's a great, like, you know, these late-night chat show things. They went to a Trump rally and said, would you take on Obamacare? No, absolutely not. What about the Affordable Care Act? Oh, yeah, I've got that. That's really helpful for me. Same thing.

Yeah, yeah. Having Obama's name on it has been a curse, but also a blessing depending on what you're looking at. And I mean, for Obama, it's really solidified his legacy. I think that will only improve as time goes on. I did a quick look into it. Currently, Obamacare is more popular than ever with a 60% approval rating. Now, in the highly partisan world that we live in right now, that is a very high.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's done nothing but steadily grow. The graph for popularity is just on the up and up. So unless anything major happens policy-wise, that will probably carry on. Anyway, there are other things as well. Things like the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was repealed,

which is good. Gay marriage becomes illegal. Generally, it's easier to live as an LGBT person under Obama than it has been under any other president in history. So that's all very positive. Various education reforms help curb the problems with Bush's disastrous no-child-left-behind policies. Test, test, test. Yeah, so generally some pretty good stuff. Yeah. Then, on a wider scene, international, he didn't get America embroiled into any more wars. No. And he wasn't Bush.

Like I say, from an international perspective, that was seen as very positive. America's reputation as a country suddenly goes from being in the gutter to soaring again. And many polls done by people like the BBC World Service indicate that America is seen as a leader in the world once more, which it had not been under Bush. So America's reputation is on the rise, arguably because of him. So that's good. I think there are some undeniably good things there. Bad. His continuation of many of the Bush administration's approaches in the war on terror has been criticised widely. Yes, he did shut down the black sites, which I think is very important. We give him credit for that. And he stopped the

torture. Yeah, a good thing. But stop the legal talk. Stop the illegal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But Guantanamo Bay stays open because he lost the political will to fight for its closure. And then there are the assassinations. In the first couple of years, Obama had ordered 52 deaths. This is more than Bush did in the whole time he was president. Yeah. Now that sounds shocking, doesn't it? Why did Obama go kill Happy? Well, in the end, it was around 200 assassinations he ordered.

Most of these were drone strikes, which resulted in civilian casualties. Oh. Yeah. But why? Why is he doing this? Well, according to one high up in the CIA, it was because Obama didn't want the black sites. Before, these people were being swept up and taken off the grid, just disappearing. No one knew what happened to them.

Obama didn't want this. That was very illegal. So to keep it legal, they could do strikes. And I'll quote this CIA source here, once the interrogation was gone, all that was left was the killing. So it's just the judge. Yeah. And the executioner. Although on first look it looks like Obama went on a crazy assassination streak, which eclipsed even Bush's, actually it probably didn't.

We just don't know what happened to most of the people under Bush because they simply disappear and they don't count in statistics. Because those black sites were doing who knows what. We literally don't know. I mean, if they've disappeared and they're still not here, then that's a fair indication, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. So it's not that Obama was ramping it up. He changed it and made it more transparent, and it was hideous. Just calling for assassinations from people from your room is not a good look. However, say it's not a good look,

it was overwhelmingly popular with the public at the time. 83% of the population supported the drone strikes in one poll conducted. The poll unfortunately didn't go into reasons, but I don't think it's too wild to speculate that it's because US lives were not being endangered and the country is sick of war. And these were targeting people who were targeting America. Let's not forget, the people being targeted were probably not innocent people. But again, it's hard to know because we're not told these things. We've just got to trust the government. However, it is undeniable that these drone strikes killed innocent people

far more often than swooping up people, for black sites did. The Obama administration released all the details to show transparency and claimed to have killed 116 civilians. This number is hotly contested by many organisations, saying that it is significantly higher than this. That wouldn't surprise me. No. So, that is bad.

What are you thinking? I've gone reasonably high. I'm thinking around the eight mark. Because for the country and the potential future, which is tricky to say, potential future, it's a really good thing. He tried to get things done, but was blocked for it that would have benefited the us but he wasn't perfect you know and no one is i guess but um i'm going eight

the two the two i'm taking away is because of killing and saying yes kill this person that yeah for me that's a bit oh i could go down to seven well i think that eight is fair but i'm gonna knock another point off because he really only did things for the first couple of years and then slowly but surely was unable to do things i know that's not his fault but we're judging statesmanship how good of a president he was. Well, he was pretty much not there the second term. So I'm going to knock another one off for that. But he did a couple of big good things, and he did a whole spattering of other positive things. And he tried to curb the divide culture wars that were developing in the country,

which everyone, I think, would agree, everyone's sick to death of by now. So attempting to do that is good. I think overall it's positive. It's not the best we've seen. No. But it is generally pretty good. I'm going to go seven.

That's a total of 15. This is crazy. Okay. He wore a tan suit. Yes. So minus ten. Yeah, minus ten tan suit. Yes. So, minus ten. Yeah, minus ten for me.

Okay, next round. Silver! No, no, no, that's not it. No. In all seriousness, I wasn't expecting this to be high before going in. But I am surprised just how clean he is. Yeah. On a personal level, he is easily one of the nicest presidents we have covered.

I could find nothing about his personal life that seems dodgy. He seems to have lived a life where he got on with everyone. He genuinely wanted to help people. Yes, he had an ego, but you're not going to be president without an ego.

No. I am struggling to think of anyone we've covered who isn't... The lollipop. Yeah, Hayes. Hayes comes to mind. Hayes was really nice. It's just not, it's not scandal. No, not at all. One thing I will talk about though, do we put the drone stuff in here? Because a lot of criticism you do see about Obama is the fact that he did those assassinations with drone strikes. I think with the amount of civilian deaths, it's definitely worth consideration. Well, I've been thinking about it. I think that goes in statesmanship. Yeah, to be fair, we didn't talk about it in statesmanship. Yeah, it's true.

We talked about it in statesmanshipmanship it's part of an act of war they were policy decisions that although weren't great and i don't fully support i do understand where they came from you know if you're president you do have a responsibility to stop terrorist organizations attacking you it's not good i know but i think we addressed that in the last round i don't think this is a personal disgrace gate. I think that's a policy thing. Although I know we will get some pushback here because we scored Truman

really high for the atomic bomb. In fact, you scored him full marks, which I personally disagreed with, but I still scored him high. We both ripped Truman apart for his use of weapons in this round. So why are we not, if you agree with me that it's not in this round for the drone strikes,

why are we not with Obama? We've got to be consistent. That's the one thing we are is consistent. I would argue that the atomic bombing dropped started a new epoch in global warfare that directly targeted civilians in mass quantities well so so did drones drones are now a thing if i look at look at russia and ukraine it's that it's now a new thing that's being used it's new but it's it's just a new delivery system is something that we've already got and it hasn't completely changed like amazon or the royal it's not a new weapon yeah it's not a new weapon and this is the's not a new weapon. And this is the important thing.

It does not target civilians. That's the problem with the atomic bomb. It targets civilians. Yes, that is a fair point. And that is, in my mind, a huge difference between ordering of the atomic bomb and use of drones in warfare, is that you are

saying, let's kill those civilians to scare the enemy, instead of yes, there are going to be civilian casualties, but we don't want there to be. And I think that's a huge difference. And that flips it, in my mind, from a disgrace gate into a statesmanship.

I think low-ish disgrace gate, I think, is fair with... I'm going zero. That's pretty lowish I just I can't there's nothing there. No He didn't do anything in his

life on a personal level. No He spent years of his life just trying to work with poor people Jamie we've literally never seen that. He has no affairs. He's not racist He didn't own any slaves. He just seems like a nice guy. He is a nice guy. Yeah, I'm

going to go with Zeratul. Which, I know some people won't be happy with because they will say that the drone warfare should be in there. But, oh, what? Can we take off minus one just for the Tansu, because it'd be quite funny. I mean, we could, but that means Fox News is one.

That's a good point. Right, plus ten for this round. For his Tansu. Right. For being brave. Okay, zero. Silver Screen. Okay, so he's scored incredibly well in the last round.

And he scored reasonably well in the round before. So let's see how he does in silver screen, shall we? I don't think this will be his round. Yeah, I really don't think this is going to be his round. He was born in Hawaii. He moves to Indonesia. Now, straight away, that's interesting because it's different. We've never seen anything like that in this podcast.

He then moves back to Hawaii. His dad visits. He doesn't like it. He then moves to California and he goes to the school that's already in all the films. So that's good. He's in the clueless place. So that's silver screen, surely. He goes to New York and he studies jazz and moody poetry. He becomes a very serious young man at this point. He goes to Chicago and he works with the poor. And then he goes to Harvard. He meets Michelle. He'd do a bit of a romance thing there. And then he becomes a state senator and he works. And then he becomes a senator and he works. And then he becomes president and he gets some decent bills through, but not many because he can't get anything through Congress There's quite a

I can't remember what I saw it's a video of him trying to ring senators for the Affordable Care Act and he spends like the night trying to ring people and trying to convince them and stuff and he manages to do that that'd be quite dramatic Yeah you would be able to get some stuff there but let's face it

it's not, it is certainly not the best I've seen. What we do have is a unique aspect that we've never had before, because obviously Obama is the first black president. And therefore, there will be a whole level on all of this, which came across when I was doing my research,

him trying to find his identity when he was younger, where does he fit in, the race problems he had, and on top of that, the fact that he is mixed race means that he is getting stuff from all over the place that he's having to deal with. All of that would make for good drama, But it's not the driving force. And although being the first black president is impressive and important, it might edge your points up slightly in this round, but it's not automatically getting

you a huge score. And to be honest, it's one of the more boring ones. It's not really bad. Going to Indonesia in his childhood, being chucked in a swamp, remember, by his bullies. You do have some good stuff there that is good.

I think I'm going to go for a five. A high five? Wow, okay. I think I would have said four, but I think I'm giving him a bonus point for the fact that you can have all the crisis of identity and stuff he went through throughout, I think tips it up to a five. I'm going for a three.

You're going for a three, fair enough. It hurts his score, he was doing very well up until that point. Canvasability! Right, Jamie. Canvasability. This came out... This is the really cool picture. No, it's not, Jamie. This came out after we started the podcast In one of our very early episodes

It might even be our first episode We talk about canvas ability And we talk about Obama and he's sitting there amongst all the leaves And it's a very unique painting That is not his official portrait Oh son of a Presidents get two official portraits They get one for the White

House and they get one for their National Gallery, for their library. And we have always done the White House one. So that's what we have to use. So how do I search that? Because I keep getting the green leafy one. Well, you will get the green leafy one because it is by far the best one.

But we're not using it. So instead, just type into google the words official barack obama portrait white background white background yeah oh i found it okay the one who's wearing a gray tie what do you notice about that uh it looks like he's wearing linen suit yeah it's um, it's very unusual. It's just as unusual as the leaf one. It just, in my mind, is not very good. It is a photorealistic painting.

And there is no background. It is completely white. Well, I mean, if it's photorealistic, that would be a massive effort. So, I get what the artist thought. Yeah, he finally finished and went, oh, look how complex that background is. Oh, you know what? I'm just going for white.

Yeah, good. I mean, it stands out. It's really different and unusual. So arguably, you should get some points for that because when you put all of them in a line, this one will pop even more than JFK's, which is by far my favourite. However, even though it is interesting

and different, I personally do not like it at all. Really? I do. I quite enjoy it. Do you? I just... I like the photorealism of it and the fact it just stands... I mean, it looks like it's been cropped from another picture.

It looks like you have Googled Obama PNG and you've just got... It's like that doesn't seem like an official portrait. It seems like something that you use whilst you're doing graphic design work. And I can see the one with him surrounded by leaves. It's on my screen right now. And that is just such an interesting painting, which I can understand equally that people dislike because it is very interesting.

But I personally like it. And I like the fact it's not photorealistic. And I like the fact that it's different. If that had been his official portrait, I'd have been scoring him four marks. But it's not. It's this white one, which personally I'm giving him zero for the painting

because I just do not like it. I think it's... Really? It's just boring. It's very boring. It's a white background, which is boring, and it's photorealistic, which is boring. However, I'm not actually going to give it zero

because just how unique it is, I think it deserves a bonus point for its originality so i'm going to give it one right no i quite like it the fact is photorealistic is the first the fact you can see like the shine on his forehead the the the folds in a black fabric like when have we seen black fabric painted like that on one of the presidential pictures? That's interesting. The white background. I think it makes it interesting. I'm not giving him...

No, I've got him behind that. So you'll give him one. Because I'd say that it's a very divisive painting, so it makes sense. It's divided us. I personally don't like it. You personally do, so... Fair enough. I'm not going to go with top marks. Is it out of five? No, no.

We score out of ten and we divide it by four. I think I'm giving it a healthy six. I'm quite impressed by it. Because it's so different, it's interesting. Okay. And I think that's a fair score. Fair enough. So, that is a total of 1.75 for this round.

Okay, next up. Go, Lourdes! Terms, two terms, so an easy two points there. No assassination attempts, so no points there. And election, he scores one. He won, but no landslide in this very partisan era that we are in. So, that gives him his score. It's a reasonable score,

but it's not really high. That gives him a score of 27.75. See, what really worries me, Trump's going to massively ace that, I think. Oh, you think? You think? Well, there's been a film made about his life with

Johnny Depp playing him based on his book. Well, let's just say I'm a couple of days into reading a biography on him.

I thought it was going to be lots of bluster and excitement. Was it not? Business deals. Oh. Yeah. Okay,

that is a bit dull. But we will see. We will see. I'm assuming things get a bit more interesting later on because I'm still in the early 80s at this point. So we will see how Trump does. But hey, that's for a future episode because we are done with Obama.

He scores, I think he's going to be disappointed with 27.75. I think so. Because he got a reasonable statesmanship, in fact, a pretty good statesmanship. That puts him up there with some of the founding fathers and FDR, and yeah, that's roughly the place he is. So it's good statesmanship. He is joint best on Disgracegate,

along with Jimmy Carter, Eisenhower, and Hayes. It was looking so good for him, but then it's just a poor silver screen, which is just not that interesting. And his canvas ability is... I just don't like the painting. I don't. Sorry. No, I know.

I thought it was interesting enough. It stood out as being interesting. Yeah. I enjoyed it. Fair enough. Okay, well, we're not actually at the end, though, because we have one more thing to answer. American or American? I think this is a no-brainer.

I think this is just a definite yes. Yeah, I'd go for a for yes he made life better for american people yeah he you could argue he partly responsible for the area of islam bin laden which is you know yeah the boogeyman the time yeah he introduced uh same-sex marriage to the USA, which, yeah, is good. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. He should have it. He should.

Definitely. I might be rethinking my silver screen score. What did I give him? Did I give him five? Yeah, I did. You gave him... I gave him five. I might go up to six.

Really? I was just looking at some of the past scores we gave and noticed that we have given all the presidents who come from humble beginnings the fact that they went from just being a normal person to becoming president. We've kind of taken that into consideration and I forgot to mention that

he does not come from a rich, established family at all. I'm going to stick with three because, you know, it's just like a steady journey. There's some interesting bits of travelling, but that isn't... No, that's fine. Okay, I've changed it to six. He's now got a nine for that.

So he's now 28.75. That's where I'm going to go. I just feel like we've been slightly harsh for him on silver screen there. It's not exciting. It's not the most exciting but to put it this way, we gave Bill Clinton a 8 and I'd say Obama's life was

more interesting than Bill Clinton's. Yeah, but Clinton had the scandal and stuff. That's probably why. Okay, that's a good point. No, I'm sticking. I'm doing one more point. I'm going 6 and you're staying through. Cool. Okay, so that is a score of 28.75 now. That's where he is.

But we were discussing American, weren't we? Yes. Are we saying yes? I'm saying yes. I think if you're the first black president of the United States, you almost get it by default. And not only that, he was actually a pretty good president as well he is all right yeah yeah no yeah i i think he absolutely deserves it yeah so yeah i'm happy

to say american so well done obama you have american and that means jamie that uh that's the first one we've given out in ages first is it yeah first one we've given out in ages. Is it? Yeah, first one we've given out since Reagan, which was a reluctant... Yes. Yeah. And before that, it was Lyndon B. Johnson. Oh, wow. Yeah. 60s to 80s to 1000s kind of thing.

In the last one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. In the last eight presidents, only two have had it. That is a drought of Americans we've only really seen in the First Gilded Age. We really are in the Second Gilded Age, aren't we? Yeah. Right, well, there we go then. We've done it, Jamie. We have got

all the way to the end because there's only one more to do. Yeah. Potentially. By November, we could have another episode. Well, I say one more to do because one more to do until and then we do the rounds. There might be a bonus episode. In fact, there will be a bonus episode on Biden at some point,

but it's not going to happen before we do the rounds. He'd be too old to compete anyway. So, yeah, we've got one more to go. And who is it, Jeremy? Can you remember who comes after Bird Barmer? No, the name's slipped to my memory somewhat. You'll have to tune in next time to find out. We'll leave on that cliffhanger.

That's what we'll do. Right, well, thank you very much for listening. And thank you for downloading us, wherever you do download us from. It's really helpful. And I suppose we just need to say goodbye goodbye Right, we've got a briefing. We need to go harder on Obama. Has this come right from the top? Right from the Aussie himself.

Okay, right. Harder on Obama. We're going pretty hard on Obama. I've got part of his itinerary, where he's been in the last week and what he's done. Let's see if we can find something. I'll be honest. we're going to struggle. He's not done much recently that we can attack. I understand why the word's come down from up high.

I mean, it's been tricky, but okay, we've got to do it. We've got to do it. Go on. Well, the Imperator wants us to find something. So on Monday, he went to go and visit an ice cream parlor. That's going to be hard to spin as a negative, isn't it? Everyone likes ice cream. Could we say something along the lines that it belittles being a president,

that only children eat ice cream, therefore he is a child himself? Yes. It's weak, isn't it? It's really weak. It's weak. He only likes cold food. That means he wants to take away everyone's cookers. Oh, that's really far...

No, we can't use the ice cream parlor. It's ridiculous, I know. Who doesn't like ice cream? We can't use it. Oh, we all like ice cream. Move on, move on. What else did he do? He's so nice.

It's ridiculous. Next one. Oh, he went to visit a nursery for small children And read them a story But it was Little Red Riding Hood Okay Can we say that Little Red Riding Hood is pro-immigration? She wasn't really

She's more of a thief Maybe he's a thief Yes Anti-crime Anti-crime Because people commit crimes It's really Oh

Oh Non-American story is it German Oh Yes And that highlights the fact He's not American He's not

Here's an idea Can we just go with the Not him Not being American again? Yeah, I mean, we're doing that already anyway. Might as well. We need new stuff, don't we? Okay, go on to Wednesday.

What did he do? Wednesday, he visited a newspaper facility in Baltimore. A paper print. Clearly, he's trying to control the media. The media. Anti- technology. He wants to take us back to the past where newspapers are being

read. Yes. He doesn't have an email. No. There's nothing there. Thursday. Thursday. Oh, oh, oh. He he left you know he's presidential helicopter right it was really raining and he offered his umbrella to somebody else so he doesn't care about looking after the president he doesn't care about the presidency because he's

caring about other people that is some amazing spin I like it. He has damaged the president by letting the president get wet. Yes, he can get cold. It's basically treason. I mean, no one wants a soggy president. It can go all floppy. Yeah, squelchy. Okay, does it pass the test?

Say it again, but imagine the big man himself, the top Aussie, is listening to you. Do you feel scared? President tries to kill president by not using an umbrella. Doesn't work, does it? Doesn't work. Damn it, damn it.

Okay. Friday. Come on, Friday. Friday. Nothing really. He's just given an announcement about not really wanting to send troops to Iraq, but he might be. Might be able to use something there.

What does he actually say in it? Have we got the video? Let's, yeah, let's put it on. Andy, Andy, can you see what I can see? Oh, oh, I think I can. This is political gold. He'll be done within a week. Tan suit! you