Interview with Helen Thomas regarding her comments on Bush being “the worst President”.
I have always admired Helen, but now I give her credit for having the balls to say what a lot of people, myself included, think about our current President.
Link doesn’t seem to work. Try this:
http://www.ameratsu.com/media/vid/c...21c_240x180.wmv
Now I am officially the worst link writer on the board.
You need to be registered to access it. Man, now you’ve gone and got me all up in suspense.
You’re batting 1000 tonight! 
So I’ve got to download a movie file to figure out what you’re talking about? Why would I do that if it’s obviously not worth summarizing on your part?
I thought we couldn’t link to other boards.
Damn-I want to know what she said.
What she said originally was publishe by Daily Breeze 3 years ago:
*She seemed to have sympathy and affection for everyone but George W. Bush, a man who she said is rising on a wave of 9-11 fear - fear of looking unpatriotic, fear of asking questions, just fear. “We have,” she said, “lost our way.”
Thomas believes we have chosen to promote democracy with bombs instead of largess while Congress ‘defaults,’ Democrats cower and a president controls all three branches of government in the name of corporations and the religious right.
As she signed my program, I joked, “You sound worried.”
“This is the worst president ever,” she said. “He is the worst president in all of American history.”
The woman who has known eight of them wasn’t joking. *
Please, James Buchanan oversaw the dismantling of America, and it took a 4 year bloody civil war to put it back together. Bush still has a long way to go.
All things being equal, of course. But America in 1819 was very different from America today. James Buchanan did not have anywhere near the tools of convenience that Bush currently has at his disposal to do a “good job”, not to mention a much lower rate of literacy and education among his constituents.
I would tend to think Helen’s claim stands your rather cardboard critique.
sorry that is, 1857-1861, not 1819.
Also, dozens of other critical factors make the comparison of Buchanan to Bush unreasonable, I merely mentioned two possible factors which may or may not be relevant without more particular study of exactly what led to the civil war.
As long as the link is for information and not in the sense of “Hey, look at these idiots over here!”
Ah. So we can delve for info, but not look for mis-information. Sounds sensible.
I’d back Helen Thomas over Bush any day. Just MO.
That’s a gross simplification of the issue. In a sense, Buchanan’s stance led to the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency and a head-on confrontation of the issue of slavery. While this may have not been Buchanan’s immediate intent, he was coping with a choice between expanding federal control of the US to the then-poorly governed territories (which strongly supported slavery despite nearly comprehensive disapproval of Europe) or letting the continent be split and balkanized. We may argue the wisdom of that action in hindsight and certainly the civil war that it engendered, but Buchanan did, if not the best he could have done, probably the best anyone could have foreseen in his position.
As for G.W. Bush, I keep protesting that he’s not quite the worst–surely, there is a worse president (Jackson, Harding, Truman, Nixon) in evidence–but every time I do so Bush comes out with some statement about how the Constitution doesn’t apply to him, torture is okay as long as we do it to dark-skinned people with tablecloths on their head, fiscal prudence isn’t important, we’ve no right to question a sitting president in time of standing “war”, et cetera, and I find even my hesitant and limited defense to be on a sandy foundation. If I didn’t know better I’d say that his deliberate intent is to be knowning in the history books as “Least Successful Presidency Ever.” His economic, social, educational, environmental, and foreign policies have all been nothing but unqualified disasters, and I’m hard pressed to disagree with those who claim that his lasting legacy will be one of worldwide resentment toward the US and a Supreme Court burdened with justices who’ll interpret the Constitution in the most restrictive and pro-Federal interpretation possible.
If he’s not actually the worst, he’s easily in the bottom tier of men to have held that office. And I don’t hold out much hope for his potential successors of either party; his legacy is one of increasing bombast and showmanship; he makes the shallow, corrupted, and oft-disjointed Clinton Administration look like a paragon of social liberalism and fiscal responsibility. He is, in short, the perfect Manchurian Candiate: “I keep telling you not to think! You’re very, very good at a great many things, but thinking, hon’, just simply isn’t one of them.”
Stranger
This is something I simply don’t understand. I certainly can see how you could come to the conclusion that foreign policy has been terrible, but the economy is doing pretty good and I can’t see that he’s had much affect at all on social or educational issues. As for the Supreme Court, I’m not sure what you mean by “pro-Federal”. If you mean pro-federalism, as in more state authority, then I agree, although I see that as a plus, not a minus. But pro-Federal in terms of fed power over the states… how do you figure that?
This is one of my biggest pet peeves. This is just a disengenuous and offensive joke. It’s not funny in the least, and has no place in a serious discussion. People make jokes like this all the time, and it’s ridiculous and completely unneccesary.
Bolding mine.
:eek:
It’s probably more suitable to GD, but I would never list Truman side by side with Jackson, Harding, and Nixon. IMO he’s definitely a cut above those jokers.
The Doctor
I was an adult during the Nixon years, heavily interested in current affairs etc.
IMHO, Bush has outdone TD>
Really? As to the economy, it seems like experts are torn – when taking into account the deficit. (I’m reminded of a Bloom County dealing with Binkley’s anxiety closet – two economists in a room do nothing but disagree; I always loved the word “renoberation” there.) I don’t know enough to make a claim one way or the other.
But surely he has been a large factor in the upsurge of the evangelical voice in politics, hasn’t he? And surely the almost weekly (slight exaggeration) news stories regarding manipulation of science are examples of his affecting both social and educational issues, right? And then there’s the NCLB, which seems to be universally despised by teachers. Perhaps these things cannot be laid directly at his feet, but clearly they’re his administration’s policies, and thus, at root, his, no? Would you say that none of these have had a substantial affect?
I’m no fan of defecit spending, and Bush bears most of the responsibility for that. But, by most measrures, the economy is healthy. I’ve never subscribed to the belief that presidents should get credit or blame for economic performance because most of what happens is out of his control. Still, it’s probably easiler to do harm to an economy than to do good. And tying a particular presidential action to specific economic indicators is not an easy thing to do.
I don’t think the federal government plays a significant role in education, period. Spending at the federal level is just a fraction of overall educational spending, which is mostly a state and local affair. Blaming Bush for problems with education is just another throw-away snipe.
Sure, there’s been an upswing in evenagelical’s voice in politics, but there’s an upswing in evangelicals. Still, what federal policy is really all that different? I can’t think of one thing in my life that’s affected (from the federal level) by evangelical politics. The most obvious “evangelical initiatlve” was anti-SSM legislation, and all that got us was DOMA (a Clinton era law) and a fizzled attempt to amend the constitution (never even got to vote in Congress).