What is a “warmongerer”? I know what is “fishmonger” is so I suppose I would know what a “warmonger” might be. They both “mong” their stuff? But what is a warmongerer? What does it mean to “monger”?
But “Iran Contra, employed astrologer, James Watt” is 6.
Sigh…yes they were flawed men that made serious mistakes but that did not necessarily make them wholly ineffective Presidents.
For the US to progress there are a lot of gambles to be taken and thorny problems to be addressed. Maybe their major policy initiatives had serious mistakes in the 20/20 lens of historical hindsight, but they were serious and concrete attempts to address serious problems. They were not buffoons or “losers”.
Re Nixon and Johnson -
1: Got us (messily) out of Vietnam and it would have been difficult in real world terms to do it any other way than “messy”.
2: “Also during his Presidency, Nixon sought to bring the cold war to an end and improve foreign relations. Meeting with several different communist countries, he became the first US President to visit China since it’s morph to Communist rule. Nixon also visited to the Soviet Union where he also became the first US President to enter the Kremlin. Here, Nixon encouraged the USSR to reduce the production of nuclear arms, and a treaty was signed.”
[Some even go further
While it is common today to give Thomas Jefferson credit above and beyond his actual contributions to creation and governance of the fledgling republic, please bear in mind that he did not, in fact, write either the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, largely due to his presence some thousands of miles away in France during the period in question. That he corresponded with James Madison, typically referred to as the foremost of the framers of the Constitution, should not result in a superposition in this regard.
It’s a waste of ink. If you don’t like 'em, don’t vote for 'em. Or for anybody, for that matter. The notion that everyone MUST vote in every election is a weird one, especially given the reasons why some people pick a candidate (like hairstyle or TV presence).
It reminds me of what P.J. O’Rourke wrote in Parliament of Whores about the 1988 election: “America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth, with more than a quarter billion native citizens and any number of household pets from which to pick our head of state…and yet…we found ourselves forced to choose among…Babbit, Biden, Bush, Dole, Dukakis, DuPont, Gephardt, Gore, Haig, Hart, Jackson, Kemp, Robertson, Simon and Lyndon LaRouche.”
The scariest thing to me, personally, is that, lame as that list was, you could probably take the leading candidates from any of the last six or so elections and get an equally lame grouping. I think it’s pretty sad that you could come up with a better list of politicians (Daschle, Powell and McCain come immediately to mind) that have no desire to run or no chance in hell of being elected, than will actually run in 2004 or 2008.
**Sailor ** Just for you:
[quote]
Main Entry: 1mon·ger
Pronunciation: 'm&[ng]-g&r, 'mä[ng]-
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English mongere, from Old English mangere, from Latin mangon-, mango, of Greek origin; akin to Greek manganon charm, philter
Date: before 12th century
**1 : BROKER, DEALER – usually used in combination <alemonger>
2 : a person who attempts to stir up or spread something that is usually petty or discreditable – usually used in combination <warmonger> **
Main Entry: 2monger
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): mon·gered; mon·ger·ing /-g(&-)ri[ng]/
Date: circa 1864
:** PEDDLE **
Great question!
Back to the OP:
I cannot imagine my grandparents smiting the retards in office nearly as much, or at all, compared to the daily brick throwing I want to do at the tv screen.
Maybe instant information isn’t all it is cracked up to be.
I have long been an advocate for doing away with the direct election of Senators, it would force politics to become more local, and undermine the power of the two main parties…but then, no one asks me…
Huh? Election of senators by the state legislators would mean that the power of the parties would be vastly increased! You vote for your candidates for the state races, and then the party hacks tell them who to vote for in the national race. Directly elected Senators at least have to appeal to, you know, the people.
I’m a people. And they don’t appeal to me! 
Well, I disagree. I think that the more attention that is focused on local elections the better. Returning the power to elect senators to the states would put a renewed focus on the importance of state representatives, and decrease the power of the national parties who currently raise so much of the money for senators running in stae wide elections. Much harder for the party to controll 100 state reps than to control a single senator. Just my $.02. If anyone wants to discuss this further, perhaps we could open a GD thread on it.
What a brilliant thread title! For one second I thought it was a typo, then I got it!