Presidents Of The USA

All politicians lean to the sleazy side. I think it just attracts that type of personality, or maybe that type of personality tends to rise to the top like scum on a stagnant pond. My favorite is Larry "wide stance" Craig, the anti-gay crusading Senator who got arrested trying to hook up with a man in an airport bathroom. There are rumors that Obama does a little extra putting on his golf trips, but in that he's no different than any of them.

 

I see where Kenneth Starr, who went after both Clintons, was until recently the President of Baylor University, the largest Baptist university in the world, has lost another of his positions. Baylor was implicated in the scandal cover up of female students allegedly being raped by football players and the University doing a cover up. Starr was demoted as President and given the title Chancellor of the University and kept his tenured position as Full Professor in the Law School. The title of President and Chancellor varies quite a bit from school to school and country to country. sometimes one is the more powerful sometimes the other is but Baylor's seems to be a lessor roll. A prestigious title with little power but big salary. So now he is only a tenured full Professor for life unless he commits an act of moral turpitude which appears to be impossible at Baylor. Oh, much worst, they fired the football coach, now that is serious !

I write this ramble as a commentary on politics and hypocrisy as it fits both. I am no admirer of the Clintons but lawyer Ken Starr was rather self righteous in his zeal to pursue them and ironically he ends up running a renown Baptist University that has admitted complicity and wrong doing of a terrible type.

I know there are some good politicians, there must be a few somewhere and surely there are a few lawyers of conscious but I lean strongly toward Keith's view that they both lean to the sleazy side. How did we end up with two Presidential candidates that both have strong negative ratings ?
I think they are both fundamentally crooked.

On that happy note, cheers,

Gaines

 

Personally I wouldn't want to be a President, Prime Minister, King, Movie Star, etc. What a pain in the ass that would be. Best to be me and live my life in peace.

KTK

 

#43...Yeah, if you had to wake up next to Fang every morning...golf would be a release of some sort.

 

METRIC is a good measurement.
Gold Guns Girls
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYLjHhSOE7s

 

Politicians can sleep with whoever they want as long as they do not spout off about 'family values' and 'religious righteousness' in their manifesto, nor use public funding to indulge their wants. I cannot stand the 'nanny state' mentality wherein politicians think they have the right to dictate how to rear a family - especially when they are hypocrites. Perhaps we should be more like the French who used to shrug their shoulders at the mention of statesmen having affairs though I do not know if that is the case now.

 

Still fascinated by Hiroshima... I found myself watching this (by chance/never heard of it) on YouTube;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEPH162n3r8
Truman (1995) (HBO)

 

Besides The Republicans, and a couple of Disgruntled Democrats.....The Whole World was confused at why anybody gave a shit about Bill and Monica.
You mean a man lied about having sex with a woman...??
Of course, they usually lie about HAVING sex with a woman...

 

Like i said.....

 

The death of Richard Nixon announced on the news circa 1994.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI2kShWMaUA
As I type this, it's 11min 16sec in, but a recap in this special news bulletin/program, they had a recap on his life that; as a Brit, I've heard of this stuff, but honestly didn't know how literal it was, and that these things were real;
The program called him the most controversial political figure in post war politics, so that's the angle they took;

It went something like
'He accused his opponent of being soft on Communists'
'He won'
'Four year later he ran another election, accused his opponent again of being soft on Communists, she in turn accused him of Nazi tactics'
'But he won'
'It was soon discovered that he was funded by wealthy Californians, his value on the ticket of Vice President questioned, he took his appeal directly to the people.. Announced he did in fact get a gift, 'a beautiful little brown puppy that the kids named Checkers, and despite what you think of him, I'm keeping him.'
'Richard Nixon received masses of telegrams in support of him that night.
..
And then it just went over the stuff I knew; Re-opening diplomatic relations with China; Watergate, losing the televised debate to John F. Kennedy...

I have a newfound respect for him now, though; for his tactics and methods he so shamelessly used.

 

I have always had an enormous amount of respect for a politician who says " it's none of your business". When it comes to their personal lives I think that they all should say it much more often.

KTK

 

I can't say that I'm much of a fan of any of the presidents in office during my lifetime, except the first--who was only in office for two months after I was born. Assessments of five of the others follow in order of time in office, not in order of good/bad.

1. John Kennedy
Very overrated, probably the most overrated president in the postwar era. Positives: An intelligent man, got people excited, talked a great game, opposed the USSR vigorously. Negatives: short on real achievement, overspent on glamorous things like the space race, authorized the Bay of Pigs, did not see the Vietnam quicksand, a shabby personal life--and I think personal lives are not entirely irrelevant to conduct in public life. He probably could have been a first rate president, but he was too lazy to do the work or take the risks.

2. Lyndon Johnson
Positives: The Civil Rights Act of 1964, a long overdue measure which involved great political risk and for which Johnson has never quite received the credit he deserved. Also showed some decency by bowing out in 1968.
Negatives: Highly ambitious and unscrupulous, less than honest about Vietnam and other things, often mean and vindictive, couldn't maintain party unity, an absolutely awful war president whose micro-management contributed heavily to the Vietnam defeat, spent big on war and domestic programs at the same time, thus fueling inflation and effectively ending the great postwar prosperity.

3. Richard Nixon
Positives: Despite his rhetoric, really a Republican centrist by the time he became president; this was the man who said 'we are all Keynesians now' and the man who went to China when Kennedy and Johnson didn't. Also intelligent, a hard worker, and technically competent.
Negatives: Lots and lots. Unscrupulous to and beyond the point of illegality (Watergate etc), even more vindictive than Lyndon Johnson, far too thin-skinned to take the roughness of political life in stride, had no real answer to inflation, allowed the US armed forces to deteriorate shockingly, allowed American cities and the American industrial base to deteriorate shockingly, with help from Henry the Genius brokered a lousy "peace" with North Vietnam and a useless "detente" with the USSR, nearly ruined his party by building up a personal faction within it, spread ill feeling everywhere...need I go on?

4. Gerald Ford
Positives: A centrist and a genuinely nice, decent guy who was a real breath of fresh air after the mean spirited Tricky Dicky, he was never vindictive--later he became good friends with Jimmy Carter. He was genuinely modest, and had reason to be.
Negatives: He wasn't the clown Chevy Chase made him out to be, but boy, was he mediocre; two years essentially wasted at a time when the country's economic and foreign affairs problems were getting worse and worse. Also pardoned Nixon, which was a mistake, and finally lost the Vietnam war as well.

5. Jimmy Carter
Positives: A decent, nice man and a good Christian. That's about it, unless you want to count the Camp David agreement; I don't much myself, because Sadat and Begin did the real work.
Negatives: Oh, lots and lots; Carter was the Democratic Nixon in that way. Far too ingenuous, really seems to have thought that you could apply Christian principles in diplomacy and international politics; had no more answer to inflation than the men before him and was preachy and pompous about it, calling for "the moral equivalent of war;" poorly prepared and informed, often surprised by things other people could see coming from a long way off; absolutely paralyzed by the Iran crisis, dithering in embarrassing fashion for months before finally ordering a rescue mission; despite the fact that he was a graduate of the USNA, laid down such impossible restrictions on the mission that failure was practically guaranteed.

I'm sorry if all that sounds harsh and clinical, but that's how I see five of these men; as I also see it, neither party has a monopoly on presidential mediocrity. I'll cover the others next time.

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."---H.L. Mencken

 

I think America has had some mighty fine Presidents, people to be proud of...and you've had some real duds...Just like ANY leader its just as important what "others" think of him, not just the team he represents. We all need more statesmen and less politicians...politicians should be the rank and file getting things done whilst the President should be the leader to all, inspiring, inclusive and have a vision...A different beast from a politician. IMO

 

What the first president my generation remembers looks like today..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqLZ3uwlPkM
I was born when Ronald Reagan was President, was too young to acknowledge him or his predecessor successor, President G. H. W. Bush..
I remember President Bill Clinton onwards; born on another side of the world in 1986.

 

Why was Eisenhower called 'Ike'? His name was Dwight David Eisenhower; When/where did Ike come about?