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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I think there's a significant distinction to be made between Obama and Hillary -- one which makes it easy to understand why someone would call him a great man, and her a typical politician.

Obama was forced to triangulate and play ball with Wall Street. Wall Street had already won, via the bailout, before he took office. He had no choice but to follow policies that allowed it to rehab itself because, otherwise, how was the bailout + interest going to be repaid? It seems quite clear from his policy platform and many comments he made through the Great Recession that he'd have liked to have been able to take a different approach. Most notably, recall, he admonished the CEOs of the big banks at a White House meeting in 2009 so badly they whined like little bitches to the Journal for weeks afterward. Obama was not Wall Street's water carrier.

Obama does not get enough credit now for how he handled the situation he inherited. That said, Obama and Democrats set themselves up for political pain by failing to hold individual bankers responsible. He "admonished them so badly" that they whined to the Wall Street Journal? Where are my fainting salts? Michael Vick served time in prison for fighting with dogs, to take just one example, but the bankers who wrecked our economy didn't. If many people were willing to believe Trump when he said that Hillary was corrupt, that has to be one of the reasons why.