There has never been a Pub POTUS since Eisenhower who was worth anything. Every one since was worse than the one before.
"Have you heard about the Eisenhower doll? You wind it up, and it does nothing for eight years!" But, in fact, Eisenhower was very busy behind the scenes. He cultivated a public image of idleness -- that was just his way of shoring up morale and calming Cold War anxieties. "You see? Everything's great! The President doesn't need to do anything but golf!" It is notable that Eisenhower had no ideological politics to speak of and could as easily have been a Democrat -- both parties approached him to be their candidate. He accepted the New Deal as a fait accompli, and sensibly dismissed as stupid and irrelevant the reactionaries who would roll it back. The worst you can say against him is that he planted the seeds of the Vietnam War.
Then there was Nixon -- a man it was really easy for Boomer hippies and activists to see as the motherfucking Antichrist, and it's hard now to say they were wrong. Now, to be fair, Nixon was very highly intelligent, and sincerely committed to public service as he understood it. But his conception of civic virtue never included honesty, not even in principle -- his attitude was, those in the know will make the decisions, and the public will be told what it needs to be told. Privately he was the most vulgar sort of racist, as transcripts of Oval Office recordings make clear, but he was not really emotionally invested in either side of the civil rights movement -- politically, racism was only something to exploit for advantage, hence the Southern Strategy. Nixon was personally responsible for prolonging the Vietnam War, which would have ended in 1968, but Nixon used his connections to sabotage the Paris Peace Talks -- just so the war would still be there as an issue for him to run against in November, claiming he had a "secret plan" to end it. (This is very well documented.) OTOH, we can thank Nixon for the EPA, and normalizing relations with "Red China," among other things. He was a flaming Commie by the standards of today's GOP.
So was Reagan, even though he fulfilled the dreams of the Movement Conservatism that began in 1964. Reagan did not repair the economy or win the Cold War, those were just things that happened on his watch. He left an entirely pernicious legacy in American politics -- see Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future. The worst thing about Reagan was that he was stupid even before he went senile -- but, unlike Trump, he did have a knack for surrounding himself with people who knew what they were doing. He was as hands-off as Eisenhower pretended to be, let his subordinates do the governing, which was probably the best choice in his case. But on the whole, the Reagan years were an embarrassment -- remember James Watt, the pro-corporate Interior Secretary who thought the Beach Boys would drive people to destructive craziness?
Bush I was only Reagan Lite. He was a man of his old-money class -- he never changed the evil and destructive supply-side approach that he himself mocked as "voodoo economics" during the 1980 primaries. And that led him to wreck the economy. Otherwise, forgettable apart from the Gulf War.
Bush II was far and away the worst president since Buchanan, until Trump edged him out of that ranking. He was as stupid as Reagan and not one whit more honest. He led us into a pointless and expensive quagmire of a war based on lies -- it was as if FDR had responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor by invading Brazil. He wrecked the economy utterly. No good at all ever came of his "compassionate conservatism" and "faith-based initiatives."
And now there's Trump. A president with the intellect and ethics of a real-estate developer, and not a successful one. A man who both embodies and and encourages/validates all that is evil and contemptible in the American national character -- willful ignorance, anti-intellectualism, greed, dishonesty, arrogance, racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, American exceptionalism, religious bigotry, producerism, etc., etc. A kakistocrat who surrounds himself with the most incompetent, dishonest and malignant officials to be found. How did the Party of Lincoln sink this low?!
"Have you heard about the Eisenhower doll? You wind it up, and it does nothing for eight years!" But, in fact, Eisenhower was very busy behind the scenes. He cultivated a public image of idleness -- that was just his way of shoring up morale and calming Cold War anxieties. "You see? Everything's great! The President doesn't need to do anything but golf!" It is notable that Eisenhower had no ideological politics to speak of and could as easily have been a Democrat -- both parties approached him to be their candidate. He accepted the New Deal as a fait accompli, and sensibly dismissed as stupid and irrelevant the reactionaries who would roll it back. The worst you can say against him is that he planted the seeds of the Vietnam War.
Then there was Nixon -- a man it was really easy for Boomer hippies and activists to see as the motherfucking Antichrist, and it's hard now to say they were wrong. Now, to be fair, Nixon was very highly intelligent, and sincerely committed to public service as he understood it. But his conception of civic virtue never included honesty, not even in principle -- his attitude was, those in the know will make the decisions, and the public will be told what it needs to be told. Privately he was the most vulgar sort of racist, as transcripts of Oval Office recordings make clear, but he was not really emotionally invested in either side of the civil rights movement -- politically, racism was only something to exploit for advantage, hence the Southern Strategy. Nixon was personally responsible for prolonging the Vietnam War, which would have ended in 1968, but Nixon used his connections to sabotage the Paris Peace Talks -- just so the war would still be there as an issue for him to run against in November, claiming he had a "secret plan" to end it. (This is very well documented.) OTOH, we can thank Nixon for the EPA, and normalizing relations with "Red China," among other things. He was a flaming Commie by the standards of today's GOP.
So was Reagan, even though he fulfilled the dreams of the Movement Conservatism that began in 1964. Reagan did not repair the economy or win the Cold War, those were just things that happened on his watch. He left an entirely pernicious legacy in American politics -- see Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future. The worst thing about Reagan was that he was stupid even before he went senile -- but, unlike Trump, he did have a knack for surrounding himself with people who knew what they were doing. He was as hands-off as Eisenhower pretended to be, let his subordinates do the governing, which was probably the best choice in his case. But on the whole, the Reagan years were an embarrassment -- remember James Watt, the pro-corporate Interior Secretary who thought the Beach Boys would drive people to destructive craziness?
Bush I was only Reagan Lite. He was a man of his old-money class -- he never changed the evil and destructive supply-side approach that he himself mocked as "voodoo economics" during the 1980 primaries. And that led him to wreck the economy. Otherwise, forgettable apart from the Gulf War.
Bush II was far and away the worst president since Buchanan, until Trump edged him out of that ranking. He was as stupid as Reagan and not one whit more honest. He led us into a pointless and expensive quagmire of a war based on lies -- it was as if FDR had responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor by invading Brazil. He wrecked the economy utterly. No good at all ever came of his "compassionate conservatism" and "faith-based initiatives."
And now there's Trump. A president with the intellect and ethics of a real-estate developer, and not a successful one. A man who both embodies and and encourages/validates all that is evil and contemptible in the American national character -- willful ignorance, anti-intellectualism, greed, dishonesty, arrogance, racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, American exceptionalism, religious bigotry, producerism, etc., etc. A kakistocrat who surrounds himself with the most incompetent, dishonest and malignant officials to be found. How did the Party of Lincoln sink this low?!
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