Prompted by a post in another forum, but ever since I could vote, the tally of Presidents has been as dismal and awful a lot as… as… as the Roman Emperors, I suppose.
Johnson – warmongerer
Nixon – crook and scumbag
Ford – unable to walk and chew gum at the same time
Carter – nice guy but ineffectual
Reagan – completely incompetent and dumb as a post, but a fine actor
Bush Sr – nice guy but ineffectual
Clinton – the morals and scruples of a dog in heat
Bush Jr – unable to walk and chew gum at the same time, and dumb as a post, and not even a good actor , and probably a warmongerer (time will tell)
Democrats, Republicans, doesn’t matter. We’ve had a series going back 40 years that seems to alternate between buffoons and scumbags. What the hell? Where are the Roosevelts, the Lincolns, the Jeffersons, the Wilsons? What hath got wrought?
I have often wondered about all presidential candidates - is this really the best we can do?
It seems to me that anybody who was really a straightforward, businesslike, competent person would be turned off by all the party politics, campaign bs, etc.
It’s the skeletons, man, the skeletons. Anyone wise enought to govern well in this country is one who has “seen the elephant and heard the hoot owl”. Meaning, they have baggage, which is unsightly in the political eye ~ it keeps them from being elected.
We are reduced to electing folks with the brain power of a sponge.
Add to that the fact that any and all potentially controversial behaviors/ideas are dredged up by opponents and the media and used to blast all the candidates with actual personality back into the stone age.
Ahhh, politics. And people wonder why there is voter apathy in America.
I have never been attracted to any President, I really don’t go for older man. To me, none are particularly handsome, though I’d not go so far as to say “ugly.”
But my question is, what is this object upon which the ugly President will be set? The mantel? Would you want the decaying corpse of R. M. Nixon setting upon your mantel? The roof? L. B. Johnson’s rotting body up on the roof? The dining room table? J.F. Kennedy’s mangled body bleeding on the fine linen?
Just to further inflame Dev, In 1800, the electorate (such as it was) had to choose between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. 200 years later, we were asked to choose between Shrub and the Human Robot. What the hell happened? :rolleyes:
Well, dammit, we could’ve had a choice of Bill Bradley or John McCain. I think I could’ve lived with either one a lot happier than either of the actual candidates.
Maybe we need to disrupt the means by which the major parties choose their candidates?
What bothers me is, I keep hearing that if I want things to get better, I have to vote. I keep voting, but things keep getting worse. I sincerely question the point of going back to the voting booth, although I keep going back none the less.
Miller is right, in that you have to vote. The problem is that the choices are dismal. Essentially you make a check mark for bs artist A or spin doctor B. At least W has daughters that are party girls.
You are so right Belladonna! I find myself not really voting for anyone, rather against the candidate that disgusts/scares me the most.
Freyer, I’m going to set MY ugly president out in the garden, next to my concrete bunny statue.
Have you read what people said about Adams and Jefferson at the time? Adams was called a monarchist, a dictator (if you had been prosecuted under the Sedition Act of 1798, you might have been inclined to agree), and it was said that he was senile and his hands “trembled with palsy”. Jefferson was called an atheist, a miscegenyst, and a Jacobin. And let us not forget that Jefferson’s running mate, Aaron Burr, is the only vice president of the United States ever to be indicted for both murder and treason.
They’re politicians, people. What do you expect? Bind them down with the chains of the Constitution, and give them as little money and power as possible.
Seems like dirty politics and mud slinging has been going on a long time. Who’s to say Washington, Jefferson or Lincoln were any better than the motley later ones. If you weren’t around at the time really kinda hard to say. jklann has a point.
**jklann
** is right, all presidents were treated like crap by the press and public, but now a few are looked at as golden boys and their mistakes are glossed over. Kinda makes you wonder who on that list in the OP will show up on the nickel 100 years from now.
Well if you look at the 1800’s, particularly the later half, there was an impressive run of buffoons and nonentities. I think we must have stumbled upon Lincoln by sheer dumb luck.
What I’m saying is, truely capable men in the White House have been the exception rather than the rule for most of our history.
Well, not that that would’ve helped much, necessarily, as far as the OP’s point goes… Even John McCain has his skeletons (i.e. possibly being bought by the S&Ls as part of the Keating Five). Which just feeds back to the original question of where the “good” men have gone.
I’m thinking that apart from a few rare exceptions, I don’t think they ever existed… Politics is too old an institution to have them, IMO…
I agree. Starting now, we must kill all stupid people. This killing will continue until no stupid people are left alive. At that point, the total U.S. population will be reduced to a single person, and this person will be PERFECT for President… NONE of his proposals will be argued against.
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