Matt Damon: "We Bought a Zoo" Star Sez Country Would Have Been Better Off with a "One-Term President With Some Balls" Than Obama
The truly great actor Matt Damon (he's even good in Team America, fer chrissakes!) takes to the acid-free pages of Elle magazine to denounce President Barack Obama:
"I've talked to a lot of people who worked for Obama at the grassroots level. One of them said to me, 'Never again. I will never be fooled again by a politican,'" Damon told the publication. "You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better."
The "We Bought a Zoo" star also weighed in on the Occupy Wall Street protests, arguing Obama's lack of leadership has contributed to Americans' overall discontent with the government.
Wait a second! It wasn't that long ago that Obama's supporters were absolutely crowing about all the ginormously historical stuff he'd accomplished. You know, health-care reform, bailouts, the stimulus, the repeal (however grudging) of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the Race to the Top initiative, the Lily Ledbetter act, you name it.
And that's not even getting into the stuff, like indefinite detention and assassination of U.S. citizens and historic levels of deporting latinos and raiding medical marijuana dispensaries and starting new wars, where he out-Bushed Bush.
But now Matt Damon won't get fooled again:
"If the Democrats think that they didn't have a mandate — people are literally without any focus or leadership, just wandering out into the streets to yell right now because they're pissed off," said Damon, 41. "Just imagine if they had a leader."
As someone who has never voted for a winning candidate at any level of government (including student council), I sympathize with folks such as Damon, who thought their guy had finally made it to the top and was going to remake the world in their beautiful image. But maybe, just maybe the reason why Obama and the Dems are so unpopular is precisely the things they did do (see partial list above). Maybe just maybe.
Which isn't to say that Obama and the Dems haven't gone limp in the clinches on all sorts of things. First and foremost, they failed to pass a budget when they controlled Congress and the White House, a historic first. Indeed, the Democratically controlled Senate has effectively given up on the task of ever even producing such a tiresome document.
None of the above should be taken as an endorsement of the GOP over the past decade-plus. But Obama supporters can't really have it both ways: Either the president is a disappointment because he did what he did or or he's a disappointment because he didn't do enough. Given the long list of actions that usually gets attached to his name, I'm betting on the former.
The last time Matt Damon was super-angry in public? That would have been when he talked to Reason.tv at the Save Our Schools rally in DC (though to be fair, it might have the white-guy rap that starts the vid):
