Sounds about right to me, although, I think Reagan was dumber, or at least, more incompetant than Bush II, and I don’t know if that makes him less evil or not.
Didn’t he once say when someone asked him what that CIA terrorism manual meant by “eliminating” someone from office, he said, “You just go up to the guy in charge and say, ‘You’re not in this office anymore.’” (Reagan, that is-can anyone be that fucking dense?)
And yes, this administration tries to justify everything by “war on terrorism”. However, Reagan’s people did the same thing-only they said, “war on communism.” Because, gosh darnit, dem sandinistas is only a day’s drive away from Texas!
Um, actually, they collapsed during Bush I’s tenure, not Reagan’s. The Berlin wall didn’t even fall until late in 1988, if I"m not mistaken. That was before the election, but then the USSR didn’t collapse until 1991. Hell, I remember it was probably the biggest thing we talked about in school-no one could BELIEVE that the Soviets were no more, and that Russia would be free-and this was only when I was in seventh grade, mind you.
What? Lyndon Johnson isn’t even a contender? How many thousands of dead Americans can be laid at his feet from his escalation of that little fracas in Vietnam? How many thousands and thousands more Vietnamese?
How many people remain mired in poverty as a result of The Great Society?
Except that Eisenhower propped up Diem in the south, when he decided an election to unify Vietnam could mean he could lose.
So, President Eisenhower poured in economical aid and modern weapons and sent military advisors, by the time Eisenhower ended his term, more than 600 advisors were in Vietnam.
Eisenhower may not be as responsible as Kennedy or LBJ, but he set up the board, Democrats have always shown the will to continue the military path setup by Republicans.
I know full well that contradicting a Mod, even one who has taken off his badge and gun belt, is a risky enterprise, but having been a sensate adult during the Johnson Administration and the Nixon Administration, I have trouble seeing much of a comparison between the blustering Johnson intent on completing the New Deal and committed to the Cold War against Monolithic Communism and the malignantly malicious Nixon who was willing to threaten the agreed Constitutional order so as to establish an imperial presidency and assure his personal continuation in power.
For the life of me I do not understand the assertion that Johnson’s Great Society, stillborn as it was, some how perpetuated or created wide spread poverty in the United States.
As far as R.M. Nixon, attained President of these United States, is concerned: some say that the poor man was his own worst enemy. Not as long as I’m alive he’s not.
Johnson may well have seized on the Gulf of Token incident as a pretext to pull the US into the dirty civil war in Vietnam, Bush may well have lied (I prefer negligently misrepresented) about the nature of the present or future threat presented by Iraq, Reagan may well have deliberately kept himself ignorant about LTC North’s private foreign policy factory and the machinations with the Iranian mullahs, but none of them ever chose to defy the Congress and the Courts the way Nixon did. In a way it is a shame. Nixon was a pragmatist and a realist with a complete understanding of how governments work and nations function. He chose to adopt a course of action that was self destructive to assure an election that was all but won anyway. Like our present adventure in the Middle East, it was worse than stupid, it was unnecessary.
Right. And Eisenhower was just following the path set up during the Truman Administration when he gave his consent to DeGaulle for the French continuing their colonialism after World War II, and the Red Scare that happened after the war, which resulted in the Truman Administration’s formulation of the policy of containment.
On a long enough timeline, the Democrats are just as culpable as the Republicans. In fact, if you look deep enough, you can’t even tell the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, except for who’s doing the shouting and what letter he has beside his name.
Mebbe true, Airman, but is it really legitimate to consider a long enough timeline, given that the membership and nature of the two parties ALSO changes significantly over a long enough timeline? Doesn’t it then become a matter of comparing apples and oranges?
The modern Democratic Party is less than half a century old, I think it’s safe to say, and the modern Republican party even younger than that, perhaps.
Well, we started with George W. and went as far back as Eisenhower with all the stops in between, so it’s somehow relevant, if only to show the futility of trying to excuse one’s actions at the expense of one’s predecessor. Ultimately it was up to someone to break the chain of events, nobody did, and that’s that.
Bob Dole, when commenting on the public appearance of 3 ex-Presidents --Carter, Ford and Nixon-- referred to them as “See No Evil, Hear No Evil… and Evil”.
