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12 comments:
Too bad he got there because his competition was "Internet Al" Gore and that fake patrician from Taxachusetts. I voted for Kerry before America voted against him.
By the way, worse than Carter? Somebody please get that guy a history book, or better yet, tell him to take care of his property better. That green awning wasnt even in style during the anything's cool 70's, and pick that fire hydrant up, somebody might get hurt.
Since I was just a little kid at the time who didn't grasp the concept of voting and thought that politicians wrestled, played handball, or raced to decide the winner, was Carter as poor a speaker as W?
I know that there are at least two CSPAN channels. Maybe it's time for CSPAN Classic or does it already exist?
dude, Carter had some major global challenges, which i think were beyond his control. I think it is unfair to use him as a bench mark for worst president. I can think of Andrew Jackson and Reagan as front runners in that category all behind Bush.
p.s. I forgot to mention Nixon
btw, here is an interesting article on this subject from Rolling Stone Magazine
I guess who you think the worst is depends a lot on your objective criteria...like...do you actually blame a president for stuff that "happens on their watch"..or give them a pass for events out of their control...maybe Carter was judged too harshly and was just there when the economic and foreign policy chickens came home to roost. I guess Wilson (WWI) would be a failure in this light too, but he also was a guy who spoke and wrestled with many of the same issues that America is facing today....unmitigated disasters would probably be those who faced crisis and responded weakly as to even make the problems worse.....historians consistently rate andrew JOHNSON, herbert hoover, and richard nixon as some pretty bad ones (that were major figures) absolutely no one places reagan in the bottom half......i wasnt a fan of his, but he did have something to do with the demise of the soviet union.......but maybe that's why some of you guys think he stinks. COMMIES!!!
Interesting criteria, Shotblock. Why then do you have such a hard time applying it to this administration? Everytime the faults and shortcomings of this administration are laid bare all you do is start talking about Kerry ... As for Reagan, yeah, he brought down the commies, funny I thought it was the internal faults of an inferior and regressive ideology that brought them down.
haha you crack me up shotblock.
yeah I meant Johnson not jackson. yeah this discussion is very subjective...funny how my co-workers are currently discussing this issue.
yeah reagan ended the cold war with that direct order, "Mr. Gorbachev (sp) tear down this wall!" don't put any stock into the 30 years of unprecendent military spending that burned all of the soviet's money. I mean nothing like a hollywood cowboy to conquer the big bad enemy.
ok seriously though, unless you claim that reagan should not be held accountable for Iran-weapons-drugs-contra hostages affair due to alzheimers (sp), Reagan has to be up there with the list of terrible presidents.
and so should bush. i still recall that Bush jr was pushing for Star Wars in 2000-2001, eventhough the CIA and FBI listed terroist attacks as the main threat to this country. not good enough for Bush...he wanted to have a missile defense system ready for rogue nations who use nuclear weapons on us. i guess 9/11 corrected his thinking.
anyway, i care less about the past than the present.
i am having this conversation with my co-workers too.
Nah,,,big d.....communism is full of internal faults....ALL systems (including capitalism) are....but that doesnt mean it will fall...that's nonsense.....freedom and democracy take careful cultivation....barbarism, savagry, and repression.....well, that just seems to be mankind's default status...... dostoyevsky said mankind will get used to anything.....the ussr fell because its own people didnt believe it AND because there was a better system staring them in the face and resisting them at every turn
yeah reagan didnt do it by himself...there were a ton of democrats like lbj, kennedy, truman and fdr......the kind of guys my party doesnt ELECT anymore.....we do elect john kerry and al gore.....nobody's perfect, i know that, but there might actually be a REASON why our guys cant get any traction, but New Yorkers go for these guys by like 70-30 percent....if you dont want to give the old cowboy any props well that's fine....great, okay, you got me guys---Reagan was a bum, the worst President since this guy or whomever the last republican was-------but--------how come those idiots we call fellow citizen never really agree? did God tell all of them to vote for Bush? are they all toothless? why did they elect dems 40 years ago? Were people more enlightened then????.....i think a lot of historians , even democratic ones would not put reagan in the bottom half of us presidents....and it is more liberal folk who never challenged the ussr and who sought accomodation who glibly say that it was bound to fall..like "oh it didnt matter that i never supported opposing the ussr in anyway, the ussr was going to fall anyway.......
bush will; be judged by the same criterion......but history will tell the story......we cant judge it today for all time.....we will need perspective.....
As far as I can tell, only Repubs put Carter in the bottom half, willing to reject his devout Christianity, military service, and selfness nature - trademarks of Red America - b/c he had too much compassion - good Christians that they are they even mock his charity work. But I guess history will tell ....
BTW, did you ever answer why references to Bush make you squeal "Kerry" uncontrollably? Oh right, you continue to avoid that.
As for communism, yeah many things brought it down but if you want to give majority credit to 3 1/2 years of Reagan's administration rather than the 35 years that preceeded it, go right ahead. Reagan's greatness is so patently obvious that when a made for tv movie didn't sing the proper hymns, the right had it quashed (b/c they care so deeply about freedom of speech or something.) Are they worried that some limp wristed Dems might confuse people about him? The same Dems who apparently can't stop tripping over their own left feet? Boy, for an unquestiontable icon his followers sure have to work hard to convince the rest of us ...
As for our fellow citizens, do you mean the majority who voted for Gore in 2000? Or the bare majority that voted for Bush despite as he told us, Al Qaida wanted Kerry to win. Or perhaps the millions who put Clinton in the White House for two terms? Many things have shaped the current lineup. Cycles in which party controls the white house are part of our process, Dems for a while, Repubs for a while. Things will balance out. The next prez will be coming in at a huge disadvantage, a treasury spent on fighting bad wars and deficits at home, gas prices probably leading to inflation but you know, I'm waiting to find out how it's all really Clinton's fault - I'm looking forward to Kristol's feature article - my sources tell me it will be coming out soon.
Shotblock--are you really saying Reagan was a good president? his policies fucked up all of Central America. He supported El Salvador which had right wing death squads to deal with leftists. The World Court determined that during Reagan's office, the US illegally mined Nicaragua's harbors and supported armed revolt against the Sandinista gov't. Does Iran-Contra ring a bell? aight man, you are entitled to your opinion, i just thought it would have some basis more than the claim that he brought down communism--which is just not true. 30 years of unabridged military spending to keep up with the U.S. was more than they could take.
i don't know homie.... :-)
anyway, we can leave intellectual debates about which president is worse to the side...right now we have a President who has fucked shit up. Regardless of how he fares against others or how history views him in the future, we can't ignore the fact that he has put the US in a bad place. I hope this fact is not lost. stay up and stay positive. peace.
Shotblock,
I'm a lefty and I was scared to death when I registered for the draft in 1985 that Reagan was going to send me off to war (though actually I think Carter reinitiated the draft registration). I do think you're right on this one, however, as I doubt that many historians - despite Iran-Contra and 29 of his cabinet members being indicted (according to the Rolling Stone article Rob cited) - would make him the worst or put him near the bottom in a presidential ranking.
Funny how the supply-side economics (trickle down theory) that Reagan believed in are being employed again by GWB. They've met with similar disasterous results. It caught up to Reagan in his second term (which is when all of the shit hit the fan for him) and for Bush it never got off the ground.
It's understood that the internet bust and 9/11 did much to f-up the economy but the tax cuts and military overspending have had as much or more to do with running up the biggest deficit in history than anything else. Going from a surplus to biggest deficit ever with no end in sight - that's pretty damning. Iraq, outing an agent, not finding Osama, Katrina's devastation - not good - and GBW doesn't really have any successes to balance this picture out. He's got two years to turn it around. We'll see what happens.
Carter at least had the Camp David accords to list as a great accomplishment. The hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the economy going down the tubes sank Carter. Reagan can point to bringing the hostages home (OK so he had to trade arms to do it), confronting the Soviet Union (and scaring half the world to death with his proposed STAR WARS defense and the idea of winning a nuclear war) and reviving the economy (if only temporarily). He was "the Great Communicator" who made America feel good about itself again.
Not that I buy into all of this, I thought Reagan was a completely phony dipshit whose "voodoo economics" did much damage to the country and whose shenanigans here and abroad lost us respect around the world. But one thing you can say about Reagan (for better or worse) is that he galvanized the Republican party and basically started the change in the political climate in this country that lead to where we are now. I don't beleive the hype about him, but I think most historians would probably rate him above Carter and definitely above GWB.
Regarding the hostages, kept for 444 days and released the day after Reagan took office. There are several accounts of how - during the period after the election but before Reagan took office - Reagan persuaded the Palestinians to delay the release until he was in office. Myth-making in real time. Read more here. If anything I'd say this proved to Repubs how effective cheating and lying were - remember, many of the people in the current administration were rising stars during the Reagan administration. They learned well.
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