GOP criticism of Obama’s policies totally hypocritical: Award-winning US journalist

The Republican criticism of US President Barack Obama’s policies is totally hypocritical because they had not allowed the Democrat Congress and the president to do anything during his first term, an award-winning American investigative journalist says.

Dave Lindorff, the author of Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV while commenting on Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio’s assertion that Obama has failed to lead the US properly.

Rubio said on Saturday that though the US “had bad presidents before and bad governments before,” American exceptionalism cannot be stemmed from Obama’s two terms of leadership.

Obama’s poor economic and foreign policies have been a cause for concern over deteriorating US influence, Rubio argued, citing the state of the country’s jobs market as the most important flaw in Obama’s leadership.

“The critiques of Obama both on foreign policy and the domestic economy from Republicans are valid in a sense that Obama could have done things differently and things would be probably better on both fronts than they are,” Lindorff said.

“His drone campaign has simply made more people angry at the United States as well lowering the general adherence to rule of law in international relations, globally, because they are totally illegal,” he added.

“And also his continuance of the war both in Iraq and in Afghanistan has been disasters for the people of those countries and also for the US, because we are losing on both fronts,” he stated.

“Economically, he probably could have taken a much harder line for more stimulus spending in the beginning of his first term when he had been elected with a huge majority in the United States – he in fact controlled both houses of Congress – and instead he chose to try to compromise with the Republicans,” Lindorff noted.

“But at the same time, we would have to say that the criticisms from the Republican candidates, who want to run for president now, are totally hypocritical, because Republicans had made almost for the Democrat Congress when it was in power and for the president to do almost anything,” he emphasized.

“They blocked even minimal efforts to try to create deficit spending to boost jobs in the United States, and they blocked things like efforts to close Guantanamo; they pushed for higher defense spending... and so on,” the analyst observed.

“So all of their policies if they gotten them would be far worst,” Lindorff concluded.

GJH/GJH

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk