What heppened to the Franklin D Roosevelts, Dwight D Eisenhowers, and John F Kennedys?

Politics & Elections
21

What heppened to the Franklin D Roosevelts, Dwight D Eisenhowers, and John F Kennedys?

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are both Presidents who could take their place proudly besides the past giants you mention. If it doesn’t seem that way, blame the propaganda machines. Yes, Clinton had his bimbos — but have you read a biography of JFK? And the corruption in the Kennedy family dwarfs even the worst accusations against the Clintons.

Romney, Gore, Dole, Bush-41, Bill Clinton’s wife — these people may not be in the same league as a Roosevelt or an Obama, but any of them could make a fine President. Our problem isn’t the politicians, it’s the system; it’s the hyped 15-second soundbites and the echo chambers of Internet lies.

But, yes, America’s finest are no longer competing for political office. The top people who in earlier days would have proudly run for the Senate are now working for media or on Wall Street. Who can blame them, given the asininity the political rat-race has become? Just look at the GOP stage this cycle — not a single candidate fit to polish Romney’s shoes (and even Romney barely rates). With the near-success of The Donald and Internet echo chambers just getting shriller and shriller, expect this to just keep getting worse.

22

IIRC, the factoid that gets thrown around a lot is that Hillary Clinton has the highest “strongly unfavorable” numbers ever recorded for a presidential candidate – except, that is, for Donald Trump. And so I guess you could say they’re in dead last, behind all the other matchups, right?

And so I looked up the figures, to see which matchup of Dem-and-GOP candidates was, by that metric, the least bad. Bill Clinton vs Bob Dole? Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney? No, it was – Al Gore vs George W. Bush!

(Bush’s disapproval had gotten a lot higher when he ran against Kerry – it’s Trump, then Clinton, then Bush in '04 – but Bush in '00? Folks were cool with Bush in '00!)

23

For more silly Presidential name tomfoolery: I’d be cautious if Trump were to be elected. If we tried the FDR, JFK and LBJ thing with him, we’d get DJT.

Sounds pretty hip-hop to me. :cool:

And the “none of the above” option is Gary Johnson. I’m not a committed water-carrier for the Libertarian Party, and it may not be a lot, but it’s the best choice for those who look at both and say, “No. Just…no.”

24

As did Reagan: http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/rmgzeqkfc02dn1bv3mnkmw.gif

25

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve hoped for a President named, say, Sean Owen Bell.

26

With respect, your dad was mistaken: http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2015/02/FT_16.01.06_presApproval_hi_lo.png

27

I’m not going to repost RivkahChaya’s post above, but I concur with it. Nicely summarized.

As Rivkah mentions, this is important. Do you think FDR’s polio wouldn’t be a major “talking heads” point (what Fox News would do with it beggars imagination) or that JFK could keep his sexual stuff out of the clamor for headlines (“give us dirty laundry”). For that matter, even Eisenhower was accused of dallying with his (female) driver in England to the point Mamie threatened to divorce him.

The constant 24-hour bombardment (not even counting Facebook/Twitter) of ‘news’ is something that is still fairly new on the US political scene, and Trump, to some extent, is the child of that process, garnering recognition and fame simply because he is Trump and is ‘good copy’.

The next 20-30 years will be…interesting. I’m planning to stick around for most of it (I’m 63), so we’ll see what comes of it.

28

Well, let’s be careful about our data samples and cherry picking. As the OP’s link shows, Truman hit approval lows unmatched by anyone until Bush 2.0, LBJ’s popularity sank throughout his Presidency and was as high as it was largely because of carryover from JFK, and it’s not a huge sample to draw from.

29

Throw in Philip J. Fry and Bartholomew J. “Bart” Simpson while you’re at it. Er, you are aware that the Simpsons and Fry get their middle initials from Rocky & Bullwinkle - who, in turn, get it from their creator, Jay Ward - right?

As for where is the next Dwight Eisenhower, the closest I’ve seen is Colin Powell, and he probably has the same excuse that everybody else has - he doesn’t want the job.

30

Mostly polarization and rah-rah mindless sports-team loyalty to one’s party. A frighteningly large percent of voters in both parties would vote for absolutely anyone who was their party’s nominee. Pol Pot? Adi Amin? Elizabeth Bathory? Yeah, but THEIR side is running Satan Hitler Cthulhu, we have to vote for our party’s standard-bearer!

31

FDR was considered a real lightweight before he ran, lots of people thought that JFK’s dad bought him his political career, so there is that.

32

Don’t forget Fry’s great-great-great-great, etc. nephew, Prof. Hubert J. Farnsworth.

33

That had been one of my prime suspects when I started this thread.

And I’m afraid we’re mutating into an Idiocracy.

I did say almost across the board. Polling numbers in the 50’s are still embarrassing even when compared to someone polling in the 40s.

And as to Hillary being the target of a decades long character assassination plot. Just… Wow.

All that said, I don’t plan to respond to any other candidate cheerleader posts for either side unless they make a point valid to the question.

Excellent post. I just wanted to agree with this point even though I"m nominally a Republican.

I hadn’t considered this and it does make sense. The first problem is that with the increased polarization of the parties I’d have to question the quality of a candidate coming out of a ‘smoke-filled room’. Would they be more moderate or someone from the far left or right?

Leave Halley out of this. I’ve already called dibs. :smiley:

Another viewpoint reinforcing my fear that we are descending into an Idiocracy.

Agreed on RivkahChaya.

My fears of pending Idiocracy aside, my hope is that this is the beginning of the end of our current two party system. That the left and right are moving so far apart that they’re taking their adherents to extremes they’re very uncomfortable with. That those voters will splinter off and form a more reasonably moderate party. I don’t really know enough about the Green or Libertarian parties to know if they would be the model I’m looking for, but maybe one of those or an amalgam of both.

This article graphs the increasing divide in the cooperation of the parties, with the big break being around 93. There was a better graph that I was looking for but this illustrates my point until I can find the other one.

34

That’s pretty much straightforward hard fact. One can of course debate how effective the plot was, and how justified, but does the name Vince Foster ring any bells?

Back to the OP, the other thing that happened is that politics has become more of an exact science, and so we’re able to more closely approximate the sort of candidate that our system favors. When you don’t know exactly how strong the other side’s candidate is compared to yours, you nominate the candidate with the broadest across-the-board appeal, even if they’re not the most appealing to members of your own party, because you don’t want to risk your opponent being stronger. The result is that, when the opponent is weaker than you thought, you end up with a landslide win. Nowadays, though, with the plethora of data we have, neither party has the incentive to run someone who’s across-the-board popular, and can afford to insist on more ideological purity. So you get polarization.

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Bernie Sanders was pretty much a reincarnation of FDR as far as his proposals. But a Socialist Jew? Really, that would never do. Eisenhower was genuinely and deservedly popular, but he was certainly not perfect. His civil rights record is spotty, he sent advisors to Viet Nam that led eventually to that debacle, and his handling of Castro was a disaster. At least if you believe I.F. Stone (and I do), Castro came to negotiate and Eisenhower sent him off with a flea in his ear, and sent him off to deal with the Soviets. Finally JFK. I just mention two things: Bay of Pigs, Viet Nam. I was not particularly impressed at the time and am still not.

Hillary has been the target of sustained criticism from the GOP for 20+ years, ever since her health plan proposals. Aside from that there is the old patriarchy which just cannot see a female president. I think much of the distrust stems from that. If FDR came along now, he wouldn’t have a chance.

36

Hamilton was truly and deeply pissed at Adams, but I don’t think he ever planned a coup.

Adams’ pardon of John Fries, his abrupt halt to the “Additional Army,” and most of all his rejection of Hamilton as commanding general all left Hamilton enraged. But Hamilton’s weapon was a pen, not a coup.

For the election of 1800, Hamilton tried to finesse equal support for Adams and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to ensure that Jefferson did not win the Presidency, but ended the effort by writing “Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq. President of the United States.” This letter torpedoed Adams and the Federalists, handing the election to Jefferson, with Burr as the runner-up and new Vice-President. This was the last time the VP was chosen thusly, by the way – the 12th Amendment was in effect by the next election and the President and VP were jointly presented on a party ticket from then on.

37

Yeah what’s the deal? It’s like we don’t have presidential candidates who would cause, participate in, or engage in policy which leads to massive death and destruction. Oh wait…

38

FDR was so loathed by the right wing, they even plotted to overthrow the government. See Business Plot.

Eisenhower was a do-nothing whose greatest claim to fame in the political world was inflicting Richard Nixon on us.

39

Eisenhower was a moderate president in one of the biggest boom times in US history, so didn’t have much for people to get ticked about. JFK got assassinated so gets remembered as almost a living deity by history, he was far from universally liked while he was alive and didn’t actually do all that much as president. If the assassination failed, he would probably would be remembered much more harshly. And FDR was HATED by a huge chunk of people, some for his ‘extreme’ socialism, some for his interventionism, others for not being socialist enough. The fact that people look back on FDR now and think he was great really doesn’t mean that people at the time were OK with him.

The actual FDR was roundly denounced as a socialist war-mongering monster in history, so it really isn’t surprising that something similar would happen today.

40

RivkahChaya’s post at 18 was very good, but I want to add some things to it.

Mostly that the answer to the Opening Question is even more complicated than that.

Things to include for consideration:

  • what most people THINK they know about how good past Presidents were, isn’t based on purely factual history.

A LOT of effort has been put in to promoting various political agendas, through what people are taught about American History. Especially after WW2, it has been very popular to tell our children that this country is not only Great now, but that it was ALWAYS great, and usually magically so. In short, LOTS of Presidents who are given a positive paragraph in the History books now, went through far more tumultuous experiences during their actual administrations.

  • particularly in the period we only left behind in the 1980’s there was once vastly more intense censorship, ruling the print and electronic media of this country. Although plenty of scandalous behavior was taking place before 1980, a LOT less of it was reported, because of that censorship.

And the censorship had a close relative, in the form of a sort of “gentleman’s agreement” between politicians of both parties, as well as the politicians and the press, for them NOT to say all they knew about each other. That’s why Kennedy got away without being “outed” for the scoundrel he was.

  • The Republican Party in particular, actively decided back around the end of the 1970’s that since they were (and still are) convinced that they are forever doomed to be the MINORITY party, that they would do anything and everything to get elected, no matter how scurrilous, no matter how base, no matter how rude, and no matter how careless it was. And of course, once one side decided to play the game that way, the other had to join in, or forfeit.

This fit in well with a change that occurred in the Mass Media, as the censorship limitations were gradually lifted. In addition to being able to titillate audiences with Jerry Springer type entertainment antics, the news people could and did start reporting all the most lurid stories that they would never have dared mention on the past.

That also meant that we could all start hearing about all the horrifying crimes which had ALSO been occurring before, but which censorship prevented the news from reporting.

  • finally, I strongly disagree with whoever said above that the end of the “smoke-filled rooms” candidate selection method is in any way to blame for the mess we are in. To the contrary: in the " smoke filled room" days, we would be handed candidates who were guilty of far more corruption that we have even come CLOSE to seeing in modern times.

What HAS gone wrong, is that both political parties have screwed up their own selection methods, as they were trying to gradually come up with a system to replace the “smoke filled rooms.” Every time they made rules to try to ensure that the people who the top leadership preferred would win, someone else would use the rules and the loop holes in the rules, to insert a candidate into the mix who should never have seen the national stage.

Example: the GOP has promoted “anti-ism” for the last three decades. "Anti-ism, "being the political strategy of urging voters only to vote AGAINST the other guys, and not FOR the Republicans. This was a result of their conviction that they are a true minority, and therefore have to keep their goals quiet, and try to get into power by scaring everyone into giving them a blank check to do as they wished. That was SUPPOSED to allow them to put programs into place which they were convinced was good for the entire nation, but which they were sure the ignorant masses would oppose in advance.

Trump capitalized on that thoroughly laid foundation of Anti-ism in a big way, campaigning vigorously to excite hatred, panic, fear, loathing, and so on, in all the people who the Republican mainstream had been hyping up for decades, but never following through for.

Clinton followed more of the Old School procedures. She is similar in a party mechanistic sense, to why the GOP gave us Bob Dole, back when he ran. Essentially, Hillary built up behind the scenes structural alliances in the Democratic Party internal workings, which allowed her to move forward with her candidacy with plenty of preset favorable situations already in place. Both Republicans and Democrats had set things up so that only part of the representatives who were sent to represent each state at the nominating conventions were chosen by voting. This was done for exactly the reason why someone above, yearned for the days of smoke filled rooms: they wanted to avoid another debacle like McGovern demonstrated, where relatively small but energetic groups in a few key states, were able to see to it that a relatively UNPOPULAR person, won the nomination in a fake landslide, only to lose in the general election in a real landslide.

Because Hillary had arranged support in advance, she got almost ALL of the non-elected representatives, no matter who won in each states primaries.