This is just plain weird. Never really saw anything like it. Is it amateur night in Washington now?
I don't know much about, well, anything but for fooksakes, what's Obama doing? Giving Limelight Slut Clinton a mic is a little like a head coach in any sport letting the previous coach talk to the press about the present situation of the team.
Does this guy wear any pants? Shit, Old Navy is always having a sale. Go buy a pair.
How does a President that was (stupidly) considered the "best" President in the last 50 years to one being seen as weak and run down by the hard left within his party?
Meh.
Why do I even care? I've always been with my pal de Tocqueville about the best talent not going into politics anyway.
Clinton was undeniably the best president of the past 50 years if you count from right now. If you count from the end of the 20th century, he'd lose to Eisenhower.
ReplyDeleteWho was better than Clinton? The only one to even approach comparison is Carter, but one-term presidents are generally looked down upon.
Here's a quick cheat-sheet list so you don't have to bother looking:
JFK (meh)
LBJ (racist meh)
Nixon (a resigned meh)
Gerald Ford (unelected meh)
Jimmy Carter (good guy, bad president)
Reagan (can't afford a meh)
Bush I (read my meh)
Clinton (suck my meh)
Bush II (meh them other there so we don't have to meh them over here)
Obama (Obameh)
Let's face it: when the pool is this meh, Clinton is just the one who is the least embarrassing.
It's hard to disagree when put that way. Clinton has a rival in Reagan. JFK's rep was made when he got a bullet in the head. He had promise...but...too many what ifs.
ReplyDeleteFunny how LBJ/Nixon are associated with Vietnam while JFK gets off the hook.
For what it's worth, Presidential historians rank Reagan higher than Clinton.
Carter doesn't get a meh?
Kennedy was the best of the last 50 years, no question. The idea that it was only the assassination that made his reputation is the real myth. Maybe in the popular imagination that's true, but there is a real substance behind the so-called Camelot mythology.
ReplyDeleteHe was moving away from war and toward peace (listen to his June 1963 address at American University), strongly disliked if not outright hated the C.I.A., and disregarded the advice to attack Cuba during the missile crisis of October 1962.
He had Presidential greatness written all over him, but he's an easy target to tear down, especially among those who can't see past the surface of JFK (his good looks, articulateness, and charm).
ReplyDeleteCarter doesn't get a meh?
Carter was a much better president than Reagan. It was Paul Volker (once his interest rate hikes cured inflation) that saved Reagan's ass, not anything that Reagan did. Unfortunately for Carter, the cure came too late to help him.
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ReplyDeleteFunny how LBJ/Nixon are associated with Vietnam while JFK gets off the hook.
ReplyDeleteMaybe because the actual escalation to tens and then hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in Vietnam started under Johnson, not Kennedy.
Nikk, he escalated it but JFK invaded.
ReplyDeleteI agree Reagan was more of a "feel good" President. The 80s was about reestablishing American pride.
JFK most certainly had promising ideas and policies. It was unfortunate the USA never got to see what he and Bobby could have achieved.
I am inclined to agree with Nikk that JFK was less responsible for escalation and ultimate failure in Vietnam. JFK feel victim to the common wisdom of the day that communism would spread by way of the "domino" theory.
ReplyDeleteI have mountains of respect for Eisenhower, but even he made this mistake. The Korean war was a result of his caving to pressure on this ideology, and his farewell address clearly shows he understood this policy to be nothing but a scheme pushed by war profiteers. Eisenhower had the wisdom to end the conflict rather early, and I suspect JFK may have as well, given enough time.
Jimmy Carter should have gotten a "(good guy, meh president)."
You have to explain to me sometime why you would anything but loathe Reagan. He's arguably one of the worst presidents of the 20th century. To my knowledge, the only time Reagan ranked higher than Reagan was shortly before and during the presidency of W, when there was a heavy PR campaign to deify him as his health waned. Time will likely not be kind to the debt monger Reagan, and there's no way of denying that Clinton balanced the budget by the last year of his presidency, something Reagan, for all his "fiscal responsibility" talk, never did.
Reagan did invent the mnodern American epidemic of homelessness, though. Better than no legacy...
They even wanted to give him a spot on Rushmore. Not the movie...the mountain.
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