As opposed to all the other angels who have been President. Right. :rolleyes:
PS I’m hardly a Nixon fan. But spare us how he was so different from the rest.
[snipped rest of post]
Just wanted to say thanks for that post, Martin. I didn’t know all of that about Stockdale. I knew the media had done a hatchet job on him, but I wasn’t really aware of the extent.
You want someone more clueless than Romney? Take Obama. He was out the other day saying the 80,000 new jobs figure was very good start (many economists think it needs to be at least 125,000 to keep place with population growth). Not to mention a few months ago he was saying the supreme court could not strike down legislation (never heard of Marbury vs Madison), preaching the green jobs fallacy that has so many companies going broke despite taxpayer support (he has silenced himself on the great Spanish economy). He spent years ridiculing the Bush tax cuts and guess what…he wants to extend them…for a second time. Tells the Israeli Prime Minister he needs more life experience (Nehatanhyu was fighting in the Yom Kippur war at the same age when Obama was working as a shuck and jive street agitator to line his pockets). What was the unemployment rate suppose to be now when the pork program passed in2009…something like 5.6%? Officially it is 8.2% but that doesn’t include the millions who dropped out of the workface (which would make it 1%, and the underemployed which makes it to at least 16%). His denunciations of Dubya as a wild spender ring hollow to the debt he is piling on the young (who were dumb enough to support him…you get what you deserve, kiddies). He keeps Gitmo open and the patriot Act in place after years of his loony supporters tell us what a fascist Bush was for having them. That giving guns to mexican drug gangs plan worked out real well for him and his racist coward attorney general.
But Dukakis was still dumber than both Romney and Obam with his tank stunt and defending putting a subhuman like Willie Horton out on the streets so he could rape women.
God bless Hunter S Thompson!
Cool story bro
Good Gad, did I inadvertently steal that from him?
If so, I am proud!
I grew up during Watergate.
LBJ died soon after Nixon began dismantling the Great Society.
Nixon was an Evile Bastard.
I vote Democratic. Are you by any chance a Republican? 
And my step Daughter is going to school in Chile for a while. She doesn’t understand why their immigration people treat her like shit.
…ie no matter how grossly incompetent or poor of a choice that Democrat is. Don’t worry though, people like you are all the rage, on both “sides.”
Nope. Nice try though.
Nixon vs. McGovern?
Oy vey.
I remember watching one of the 1952 conventions on tv. I was 7. All I remember are the signs for each state.
I voted for Humphrey in '68. Would have voted for Goldwater in '64 if 18-year-olds could vote then.
1979 after the Winter of Discontent. 1983 & the Longest Suicide Note in History. 1992 & John Major’s soapbox & Kinnock’s premature triumphalism.
I voted in two pre-Clinton elections but you don’t need to go that far back to find a candidate who mirrors Romney. John Kerry was an inauthentic elitist who run against a fairly popular incumbent. The flip-flopping, the multiple residences, the awkwardness…Romney is exciting reublican voters in much the same way as Kerry excited the democrats. Which is to say, not much.
Until he ran for President. Much like Bob Dole.
You get close enough to taste the Oval Office, and integrity becomes disposable. Unless you’re Bill Clinton, in which case integrity can always be pulled out for special occasions.
Bush the Smarter came to mind for me, too. He definitely had that upper-class clueless thing going for him. And he was really inarticulate–just not with the slightly dazed daffiness of his offspring. (What a waste of an expensive education!) The aftermath of The Great Reagan was enough to sweep Bush into office–for one term.
Both FDR (before my time!) & JFK (who I remember) were upper class, but neither tried to portray himself as Joe Schlub.
I remember elections back to 72 and first voted in Bush-Dukakis.
As for gaffes its hard to top Biden.
For those of you interested in Stockdale, James Woods played him in a movie.
I agree(and was already aware) with your points about what a great hero Stockdale was, but I am wondering where you read about him getting replaced and so forth?
I remember that on the news when it happened. I believe Perot explained in an interview that he hadn’t found a vice presidential candidate, and Stockdale was willing to step in temporarily. Stockdale even said so in a speech.
I wasn’t quite 4 when my dad put me on his shoulders to see JFK at a campaign stop in Michigan in 1960. To this date, he’s the only president I’ve ever seen in person.
Dukakis is probably the most clueless of the lot that I’ve seen. That tank photo was bad enough, the Willie Horton ad was worse, but what really did him in was his unemotional, monotone response to a hypothetical question about his wife getting raped and murdered.
McCain was about as bad. He didn’t seem to much know or care about economic issues, and since he happened to run during the great meltdown of 2008, he didn’t have a prayer. If the terrorist attacks had come 9/11/08, maybe he could have won.
I don’t know how Romney will compare to these dismal campaigns, but he’s off to a good start. Right now he seems to do all he can to suppress his smile when talking about bad economic news.
Although I wasn’t old enough to vote until 1966, I remember elections going back to the 50s – not well, but I remember “I Like Ike” buttons all over the place. And I remember Kennedy running against Nixon. My first presidential vote would have been for Humphrey in 1968. As others have pointed out, they have all had their moments of cluelessness. And sometimes, it wasn’t their own actions but press commentary that made them seem clueless – like the coverage of Ed Muskie crying. Perhaps one of the greatest fiascos was McGovern’s selection of Tom Eagleton as his running mate and then his subsequent decision to encourage him to step aside (to be replaced by Sargent Shriver) when his history of electroshock treatment came out.
When McGovern was running one democrat senator said “The people don’t know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion and legalization of pot. Once middle America – Catholic middle America, in particular – finds this out, he’s dead.” This quote was distilled down into a Republican talking point that McGovern was the acid, amnesty, and abortion candidate. The irony was that the senator was Thomas Eagleton who McGovern picked to be his vice president. So his running mate essentially came up with the line of attack against him.
One of the things you notice as you get older is that every four years the parties always lament that the current crop of candidates is a pale shadow of the kind of statesmen the US used to produce. 2008 was one of the few times that a party has been satisfied with its choice of candidates.
Like staining a dress?