None of which negates the pertinency of my point. My comment was made in direct rebuttal to a claim by another poster that her citation indicated the Kennedy administration was populated by academic elites and was a thing to be admired. The article linked clearly stated no such thing; it’s evaluation of the Kennedy administration can only be interpreted as equivocal - at best.
No, I was not saying Kennedy’s choices were ‘a thing to be admired’. I was answering your point about the ‘norm’ being the last 8 years. I was pointing out that the writer says the Obama picks are not the norm for the government and then goes on to state that Clinton and Kennedy’s pick were supposedly Ivy elite.
So the article implies that dumb fucks are “the norm” when really it’s just been the last eight years. And the last eight years have been anything but normal.
Gotcha. I misunderstood.
However, I think you’re missing a few years in your evaluation. We’ve had considerably more than 4 administrations since the days of FDR.
It’s the Lynne Truss memorial apostrophe.
True, but we aren’t sure whether JFK would have escalated the war or quit. LBJ was a consummate politician - much better at that than JFK, but did he feel intellectually equal to JFK’s cabinet? (Which did a damn good job during the Cuban Missile crisis, by the way.) Obama clearly is comfortable with a cabinet containing a lot of smart people with a lot of strong opinions.
In my experience - in tech - really smart managers are happy to hire people smarter than they are, while not so smart managers feel diminished by this, and tend to attract not so good people.
To be fair they were considering bringing in George Will, but somehow could only manage George ill.
So?
Vandalism, on the other hand, is not routine.
Okay, so a few thousand in repairs for malicious vandalism is a minor annoyance, and not to be considered.
I don’t think there is much doubt that you would sprain yourself howling if Bush staffers did anything even remotely similar as a joke.
Sauce for the goose never seems to be sauce for the gander on the SDMB. If a Republican picks graduates of elite Eastern schools for his cabinet, it is because he is out of touch with the problems of real Americans. If Obama does it, it is because he wants the best and brightest. If Bush pushes a ruinously expensive stimulus package, it is because he is trying to ruin the country on the way out due to malice. If Obama pushes a ruinously expensive stimulus package, it is because he has a cunning plan to end the recession. Bush wants to cut taxes and raise spending, he is a Nazi. Obama promises to cut taxes and increase spending, it is because he is a genius.
I’m almost hoping Obama invades Iran or something, just to watch you clowns soil yourselves coming up with rationalizations.
Regards,
Shodan
George III? I thought you guys had a stick up your ass about him like 232 years ago, or something.
Would you please provide an example of a doper deriding a Republican appointee because said appointee is a graduate of an elite Eastern school, rather than for said appointee’s policies and actions?
Well, after what they’ve done to the country, trashing the White House just seems superfluous.
Certainly compared with the normal costs of a presidential transition, yes.
Actually, there is a great deal of doubt on this point. You don’t know me from squat. You, on the other hand, have a clear and consistent knee-jerk reaction to everyone and everything on this board. If some of Bush II’s staff did something that was mildly humourous such as removing the “W” keys, I would go “meh”.
Your main problem seems to be that you ascribe devious and malicious motives to everyone here… Project much?
I thought I remembered a Snopes article that debunked the vandalism story (but confirmed the removal of the W keys), but I just searched and can’t find it. Can anyone else out there give it a shot?
The report of the GAO office From the New York Times
It looks like there were some horrifying things done by the outgoing Clinton Staffers*:
It looks like a vast amount of money was spent*:
*now, with bonus sarcasm!
Interestingly, I did not “sprain myself howling” when:
Well, we won’t know that until 1/21/09.
Of course, W is already doing plenty of spiteful trashing on his way out.
“No one could have predicted that rigging a few harmless fireworks in the Oval Office light fixtures would result in the West Wing burning down.”
“No one could have predicted that leaving a burning cross on the white house lawn would have gotten everyone in such a snit. Man those terrorist loving socialists are sure sensitive!”
I wasn’t making a point in the discussion. I was making a minor historical correction. Yes, Kennedy’s crew pretty much drove the US off the cliff with respect to the conduct of the Vietnam war. However, Kennedy and his crew were not responsible for our presence there. Eisenhower and his administration were.
[As an aside, a college history professor of mine said that the reason Eisenhower sent people to Vietnam was because that was France’s price for joining NATO. Can anyone provide information on that?]
I’d actually like to thank Shodan for reminding us that while this discussion may be about whether or not Obama is bringing people into his cabinet that are “too smart”, 8 years ago, Bush’s team were whining like little titty babies about missing keys and writing on washroom walls.
It gives me great hope for the future.
+1
I have a bad memory. What was it that Nixon did, other than go to China?