JCC Political Compass Redux . . . sort of

I tried doing something like this over in Lit a while back but it didn't go too far. The basic idea is that instead of the usual thing that we do every now and then where we all take the political compass or political spectrum quiz and post our results, I thought it would interesting to use the quiz to chart our view of where various notable political figures are. What got me thinking of doing this was the all of the nonsense that keeps coming up about how President Obama is supposedly some kind of marxist or socialist. Normally one would probably consider these kind of views to simply be fringe or extreme, but . . . it's actually pretty common to see people who think that he's at least far left politically and economically.

Although I realize that the questions on these quizzes can be frustrating and too vague in some ways, or too black and white in others, and yes it probably doesn't make too much sense to do this, but it's just for fun. I'd like to try this out because I'm sure everyone realizes that each individual often has a very different view of what "far left" or "far right" can mean. I'm basically a centrist for instance, and where I'm from, that pretty much makes you a radical left-wing liberal (in the American sense).

I guess I'll try to get us started. I've got a cold right now, so in case I'm not making any sense, I'm just taking the quiz as if I'm applying what I see to be the President's political and economic views.



(- 0.5, 1.38)

 

Wait. . . is that satire or do you really see the President as that far to the left?

 

Doesn't the site plot him (accurately) in the "authoritarian right" quadrant?

Then again, it puts me way down in the bottom-left like I'm sort of radical anarchist because I think abortions should be legal and corporations are bad.

 

Darth Guy, you can't get as far to the left as your results usually show unless you select at least one of the anti-land ownership or pro-communist slogan answers, so you're at least a little extreme compared to most.

anakinfansince1983, it's cool. I understand.

 

Oh look, it's that libertarian poll nakedly designed to convince everyone they should vote for libertarians.

 

Libertarians in the sense of the compass axis, or Libertarians in the holed-up in a bunker with guns, gold, and god vote for ron paul American sense?

 

If the picture below is true, it's interesting how little difference there is between Obama and Romney. One might wonder if it even makes a difference which one of them is in power.

 

I can kind of see that view of the President in many ways, although I don't think he's that far to the right. Then again, right-wing on the political compass (at least the first one) often seems to strictly mean pro-corporate, so maybe it does fit better than my results.

 

The above was from the "compare yourself to the 2012 candidates"-link. I didn't plot those in myself. I removed my own result from the comparison because the focus of my post was Obama/Romney, but my result was smack in the middle of the green quadrant.

 

What a surprise.

 

Libertarians in the awful, revolting sense of the word. The Paul unnaturally ropes huge numbers of normal people into that quadrant of people to normalize the political label.

 

Lord Vivec, I wouldn't have thought that you'd put the President that far to the left either.

 

Oh, I just got home from a long grueling day at work, saw the OP, didn't bother reading the whole thing and just took the quiz as if it was me

 

But yeah, as Darth Guy said, Obama being right wing on that website is pretty accurate.

 

I'm honestly starting to think that my results may be more centrists because I'm placing more emphasis on what the President has said, as opposed to what he's actually done or let happen.

 

I think that's about right.

 

Well, that's the fundamentally idiotic part about these polls. They judge politicians on what they actually "do" but ask people online to rate what their abstract preferences are. Unless one is a Tea Party member, these are very different things. It doesn't even make sense to act like the opening bid and the final settlement are comparable on any given issue, let alone what someone's private ideal is. Does it honestly make sense to penalize Obama for "allowing" a healthcare reform to pass without a public option, when he quite clearly wanted one? I don't see how, unless everyone who ticks that box on their survey is saying they would have jettisoned the whole package rather than let it pass in the current, sans public option form.

 

I think that is a fair criticism. At least the political spectrum quiz allows for a little more flexibility with this kind of thing. Here's the politicalcompass.org chart for the 2008 election:



It seems they see the President as having gone a good deal more authoritarian-right than he already was.