my political compass
Jan. 27th, 2014 21:44![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
piranhano big surprises. but i guess voting in a US election, even if i could, would present a huge problem:
the good news is that the paramour, while 3 pts to my right economically, is only 0.56 pts to my right socially. i rub off. ;)
the also -- by now -- unsurprising fact that obama is just slightly less authoritarian and socially progressive than mitt romney is probably something that by now no longer escapes any but the blindest apologists. that's pretty much my own biggest failure of the decade when it comes to political assessment before he got elected the first time. the whole "hope" razzle-dazzle managed to fool me thoroughly.
from the political compass.
the good news is that the paramour, while 3 pts to my right economically, is only 0.56 pts to my right socially. i rub off. ;)
the also -- by now -- unsurprising fact that obama is just slightly less authoritarian and socially progressive than mitt romney is probably something that by now no longer escapes any but the blindest apologists. that's pretty much my own biggest failure of the decade when it comes to political assessment before he got elected the first time. the whole "hope" razzle-dazzle managed to fool me thoroughly.
from the political compass.
no subject
on 2014-01-28 06:23 (UTC)For all of Obama's legion of faults and disappointments, I can't see any justification for placing him that close to Romney. But then, I never believed he was anything other than a centrist politician.
no subject
on 2014-01-28 06:56 (UTC)That being said, I do suspect they may be too close for a slightly different reason. I think US Presidents act much more right-wing and authoritarian as president than they run as. Romney never became president, so if they're judging him on either what he said while he was running or what he did as governor of Massachusetts, I could see that comparing fairly closely to what Obama actually did in office (which was not what he said he would do on things like Guantanamo).
That means that if Romney had actually been elected, I think he would move sharply up and right.
no subject
on 2014-01-28 07:43 (UTC)specific about the US 2012 elections: http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2012
and those of 2008: http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2008
from those i derive that their placement is not static, but since i haven't read everything yet, i don't know exactly how they measure it. the way i'd do it is by answering the test from public statements of the person at the time, ie. during the run-up to the elections.
i used to think of obama as centrist as well, but no longer; he feels more centre-right to me now. do you actually feel the country has moved to the left since bush, which it should have if a centrist president were at the helm? i don't; i feel it has slid even more to the right, affordable health care act nothwithstanding. of the progressive things obama promised, few have come about, and some of them have come about with no help from him (DADT). "Obama poses something of a challenge to The Political Compass, because he's a man of so few fixed principles." -- yeah. sounds a lot like romney to me.
i agree with eagle that romney would have likely moved to the right and up if elected, but i do wonder how much. would have depended on who lined his pockets, i guess. they do differ from each other; i still think obama is more of a mensch, while romney doesn't give a fuck for those less fortunate. that difference is important, but it hasn't informed obama's policies all that much either.
no subject
on 2014-01-28 22:34 (UTC)I think you also have to look at:
"If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin." (Of course, Romney could not say this, but he would hardly say, "If my esteemed opponent Barack Obama had a son ...")
"Marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol."
Support for gay marriage.
The deal with Iran, which is really important.
And the stealthy remarkable improvement in rights for trans people, which gets very little press even among trans bloggers.
I cannot imagine any of these things coming from Romney (okay, maybe when he was governor of Massachusetts, but he has long left that image behind).
no subject
on 2014-01-29 04:35 (UTC)he certainly differs from romney in that he grew up black in racist america, understands the challenges better, and seems to care more. i've noticed the political compass survey has very limited race-related questions, which might not represent that sufficiently.
on marijuana, obama did inhale way back when, and he says it's less dangerous than booze now, but by the time election 2012 was rolling around, his administration was cracking down on even medical marijuana manufacturers. this is one of those cases where he talks like a progressive, but acts like an authoritarian.
support for gay marriage? another case of pre-election talk and not much action. he dragged his feet every step of the way, and then "made up his mind" just a few months before the election, after test balloons had been raised by several high level administration officials coming out in support of gay marriage, and when it was pretty clear he was losing a lot of liberal support because he had dragged his feet. in 1996 when running for senate he was pro same-sex marriage (which his staff later denied, but that was a lie), in 2004 he was against it, in late 2012 for it again. i grant "evolution" to people who continuously develop, not to those who reverse themselves when it's expedient. in his favour, he did always vote pro civil unions and pro equal treatment for gays, and he made things happen to bring the latter about.
which is eerily similar to romney in parts -- who in 1994 was also pro same-sex marriage, did you know? he still was pro when running for governor, but when in office he changed his tune to only supporting civil unions. sounds familiar. then he diverges from obama: in 2005 he had "evolved" to not even support civil unions. both men were nicely twisting to the tune of their main constituencies, it seems to me.
the deal with iran IS important. but that hadn't happened yet.
yes, there have finally been some nice T benefits, though stealthily (incrementalism, *cough*spit*choke*). but obama avoided ENDA again in his latest SOTU address -- apparently it's all stealth all the time. it'd surprise me if romney had ever even uttered the word "transgender". the survey has no T-specific questions, so doesn't account for that.
these points of difference are important, but pale before all the corporatist crap, drones, extrajudicial killing, anti-whistleblowing, enhancement of the surveillance state. and all that accounts, to me, for obama being just a bit to the left and down from romney when it comes to policies (not talk), at least in 2012 (by which time we didn't even know what we know about the NSA now). i'm kinda tempted to try and answer the test for obama, but that'd be a lot of work, and i am pretty sure he'll end up in the upper right quadrant anyway, and not particularly close to either axis.
i still think obama is clearly better as a president than romney, but it's a small consolation. he has continued the bad course even further down the stream, and the further it goes the harder it will be to reverse. dope smoking and even GLBT rights are just blips in a wholesale surveillance state.
no subject
on 2014-01-28 15:09 (UTC)Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.36
I'm nearly in the bottom left corner. :)
no subject
on 2014-01-29 02:48 (UTC)i can't find the last time i did this, so i don't know whether there was much movement, but i doubt it, and with one exception it would be to the left. i know one point has changed, the death penalty, which i used to be against.
no subject
on 2014-01-31 06:52 (UTC)And here I'm in favour of a stronger monarchy, too.