Another Presidential era has come and gone. So, it’s time to update my running list of post-WWII Presidents. Unfortunately, we have a new loser at the bottom of the heap. Hopefully, #44 will be better. Here’s the list:
The Relatively Good Presidents
Ronald Reagan
Good: Cut marginal tax rates by 30%. Helped defeat communism (along with Thatcher, Kohl, and the Pope). Reinvigorated our national spirit after Vietnam and Jimmy Carter. Rebuilt the military after its neglect during the Carter years.
Bad: Failed to do anything about growing government spending and debt.
Harry Truman
Good: Eliminated the war time economy to move us back to a free market, in spite of the advice of his Keynesian advisors to build tanks and bury them in the desert to keep the economy going. (Unfortunately, the Keynesian idiots are feeling their oats again today.) He also desegregated the armed forces and implemented the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe.
Mixed: Dropping of the atomic bomb to win WWII. This was seen as a successes but it is questionable at the same time.
Bad: Korean war
The Mixed Presidents
Bill Clinton
Good: Worked with the Republican Congress to balance the budget for the first time in a long time. Removed welfare from being an entitlement.
Bad: Invaded the Balkins. Failed to cement Russia in the West. Periodically sent cruise missiles to bomb Osama bin Laden, without any real plan on how to eliminate or contain him, which helped lead to 9/11.
John Kennedy
Good: Cut marginal tax rates by 30%. Compromised on missiles in Turkey for missiles in Cuba to avoid war.
Bad: Seeded the Vietnam War. Backed a coup d'etat, which installed the Baath Party (Saddam Hussein’s party) into power in Iraq.
Dwight Eisenhower
Good: Created the interstate highway system. Ended the Korean war.
Bad: Backed a coup d'etat, installing the Shah of Iran. Expanded Social Security and other New Deal programs.
The Irrelevant Presidents
Gerald Ford
Good: Vetoed more bills than most of his predecessors and successors.
Bad: The lame WIN (whip inflation now) campaign.
George Herbert Walker Bush
Bad: First Iraq war (but got out quickly). Generally clueless about the economy.
Good: Only served one term!
The Dreadful Presidents
Lyndon Johnson
Bad: Started the Vietnam War and created the Great Society entitlement programs which set the stage for the inflation of the 1970s and the entitlement mentality and deficits we are living with today.
Good: The Voting Rights Act.
Jimmy Carter
Bad: Couldn’t make a decision in a crisis (according to his own National Security Advisor) leading to American hostages in Iran and a generally failed stint as leader of the free world. Nearly destroyed the military through neglect.
Good: “Deregulated” the airlines and trucking. Appointed Paul Volcker to the Federal Reserve, who helped break the inflationary spiral of the 1970s.
Richard Nixon
Bad: Expanded Johnson’s Vietnam War and Great Society programs. Took the U.S. off of the gold standard. Imposed wage and price controls, creating shortages of everything from gasoline to toilet paper. Few remember this, but people were eating horse meat under Nixon because his price controls caused a beef shortage.
Good: Helped China enter the world community.
George Herbert Hoover Bush
Bad: Lied about Iraq’s involvement with 9/11. Iraq war. Corrupted the Constitution to spy on Americans with the Patriot Act and other legislation. Created the first new entitlement program since the Great Society. Created massive deficits and more than doubled the national debt on his watch. Quasi-nationalization of the financial sector. Largest federal intrusion into the classroom in history. Torture in Guantanamo.
Good: Letterman's Great Moments In Presidential Speeches...
Showing posts with label Clinton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clinton. Show all posts
Monday, January 19, 2009
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Obama and the End of Two Eras
The election of Barack Obama, as President of the United States, signals the end of two long running eras.
First, his election concludes the post-civil rights era, in which race baiting politicians corrupted Martin Luther King’s message to obtain power and status for themselves. Think of Al Sharpton with his Tawana Brawley rape scam, Louis Farrakhan’s various vulgar tirades, and ex-Detroit Mayor Colman Young, who managed to stay in office for 18 years by doing nothing more than sticking his finger in whitey’s eye, in spite of the vast corruption in his administration and the tragic decline of Detroit under his watch. It is simply not credible any longer to decry the U.S. as a “racist” country now that we’ve elected an African-American to the Presidency. Those days are finally over.
Second, it buries the post-WWII conservative era. The modern conservative movement was comprised of a loose collection of economic libertarians, religious fundamentalists, big business interests, and socially conservative blue collar workers, who had greatly differing views on many key issues. They came together as a coalition under the banner of fighting communism. After the Cold War ended, some parts of this coalition started questioning the need to maintain America’s Cold War foreign policy. This potential crack in the coalition alarmed the GOP leadership, so they went looking for a new villain. During the 1990s, many on the right desperately tried to vilify “Red” China, which in many ways is more capitalistic than the U.S. 9/11 finally handed the GOP a new focus of evil in the world and for a few years it worked to keep their coalition intact. Unfortunately for them, George Bush overreached by invading Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. The GOP lost control of the Congress and now the Presidency. 20 years after the Cold War ended, the GOP’s anti-communist coalition is finally dead. It is not very likely that the GOP can revive it. Those days are also gone.
With the passing of these two eras, the election of Barack Obama positions the country to make the most radical departure with recent history we’ve seen since the Roosevelt era.
The big question is: what Obama will do with the opportunity? Will he overreach to placate the far-left’s crackpot “economic justice” agenda? Will he try to emulate the pro-business and fiscally responsible Clinton Administration? Will he parrot the crusading neo-conservatives, only this time with a focus on "democratizing" Africa, rather than the Middle East?
The other key question is what will the GOP do now? Will they return to their flaccid pre-Reagan “me too” liberalism? Will they repudiate their power hungry, big government ways of the last 8 years? Will they boot the neo-conservatives and return to their pre-WWII, non-interventionist past? Will they just drift along in chaos not knowing what to do, leaving the Democrats to control the national conversation and agenda?
In don’t think any of us know the answers to either of these questions. So, the next two years are going to be very interesting indeed.
First, his election concludes the post-civil rights era, in which race baiting politicians corrupted Martin Luther King’s message to obtain power and status for themselves. Think of Al Sharpton with his Tawana Brawley rape scam, Louis Farrakhan’s various vulgar tirades, and ex-Detroit Mayor Colman Young, who managed to stay in office for 18 years by doing nothing more than sticking his finger in whitey’s eye, in spite of the vast corruption in his administration and the tragic decline of Detroit under his watch. It is simply not credible any longer to decry the U.S. as a “racist” country now that we’ve elected an African-American to the Presidency. Those days are finally over.
Second, it buries the post-WWII conservative era. The modern conservative movement was comprised of a loose collection of economic libertarians, religious fundamentalists, big business interests, and socially conservative blue collar workers, who had greatly differing views on many key issues. They came together as a coalition under the banner of fighting communism. After the Cold War ended, some parts of this coalition started questioning the need to maintain America’s Cold War foreign policy. This potential crack in the coalition alarmed the GOP leadership, so they went looking for a new villain. During the 1990s, many on the right desperately tried to vilify “Red” China, which in many ways is more capitalistic than the U.S. 9/11 finally handed the GOP a new focus of evil in the world and for a few years it worked to keep their coalition intact. Unfortunately for them, George Bush overreached by invading Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. The GOP lost control of the Congress and now the Presidency. 20 years after the Cold War ended, the GOP’s anti-communist coalition is finally dead. It is not very likely that the GOP can revive it. Those days are also gone.
With the passing of these two eras, the election of Barack Obama positions the country to make the most radical departure with recent history we’ve seen since the Roosevelt era.
The big question is: what Obama will do with the opportunity? Will he overreach to placate the far-left’s crackpot “economic justice” agenda? Will he try to emulate the pro-business and fiscally responsible Clinton Administration? Will he parrot the crusading neo-conservatives, only this time with a focus on "democratizing" Africa, rather than the Middle East?
The other key question is what will the GOP do now? Will they return to their flaccid pre-Reagan “me too” liberalism? Will they repudiate their power hungry, big government ways of the last 8 years? Will they boot the neo-conservatives and return to their pre-WWII, non-interventionist past? Will they just drift along in chaos not knowing what to do, leaving the Democrats to control the national conversation and agenda?
In don’t think any of us know the answers to either of these questions. So, the next two years are going to be very interesting indeed.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Will Big Brother finally arrive in 2008?
Christmas has come and gone, so it looks like we're going to survive another year. At least we kind of did.
The housing market is in the tank. The dollar is on the verge of collapse. The situation in Afghanistan has gotten significantly worse. The current indept administration has destroyed our important relationship with Turkey. The bumbling of last two administrations have finally convinced the Russians that they really do need to be wary of our intentions. The leading Democratic presidential contender is an ex-first lady who is probably the coldest, most calculating and power hungry politician since Nixon. The leading GOP contender is an ex-mayor who believes that "freedom" is about submitting yourself to government authority (Yes, that is was he said: go Google it). Sure, there seems to be some good news in Iraq, but only because we've further entrenched ourselves there with more troops, with no apparent plan on how to get out without the country erupting into civil war. Oh yes, Osama Bin Laden is still at large.
Worse of all, our civil liberties are under attack like never before.
The government has already blessed us with the "Patriot Act", which among other things expanded the government's ability to spy on our electronic communications, as well as on our medical and financial records.
We are now faced with the even more troublesome "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" (HR 1955), whose vague language could be used by the government to classify American activities like civil disobedience as "terrorism".
Together, these acts present the greatest danger to liberty in our history.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure George Bush and Dick Cheney are honorable men who are only trying to protect us from the terrorists, drug dealers, and whatever bogie man comes up next, right? Even if you believe that, these guys are only going to be in office another year and those laws will still be on the books when they leave. What happens when President Clinton declares that we need her protection from the "vast right-wing conspiracy"???
Remember, that Hitler came to power through legal means and then used "terrorism" as an excuse to pass the enabling act, which allowed him to assume complete power.
I know, this is the land of the free and the home of the brave so it can't happen here, right? Well, during the presidency of John Adams, the "Alien and Sedition Act" was passed, which made it a criminal offense, punishable by two years in jail, to criticize the government. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus so that he could jail his critics. Woodrow Wilson feared widespread dissent against his plans to get America involved in the Great War, so he passed the "Espionage Act" and the "Sedition Act" and used them to silence and even jail his critics. During WWII, Franklin Roosevelt locked up natural born American citizens of Japanese and Italian ancestry.
Here's what is really disturbing this time: Information technology has become a means for government to target average citizens who dissent, rather than just people who are in visible, public opposition.
We all know that the National Security Agency has been snooping on electronic communications coming in and out of the country for years. Now, they are working with all of the major telcos to snoop on communications within the country, without court orders. The administration is currently pushing legislation to protect companies from lawsuits who help the NSA spy on you.
The "Real ID Act" morphs state drivers licenses into a national id card. Starting in January 2010, employers won't be able to hire you, financial institutions won't be allowed to do business with you, and you won't be able to do anything involving the federal government, including boarding an airplane, unless you have a compliant id.
A few years ago, the administration proposed their "Total Information Awareness" program, which among other things used data mining and social network analysis to discover, extract and link sparse information across databases to analyze your behavior. After a huge outcry the original program was defunded by Congress, but many of its original projects have quietly continued under other funding.
The "Patriot Act" and the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007", enabled by information technology could make 2008 the year Big Brother becomes a reality.
Despite these and other misuses of information technology to violate our civil liberties, I am absolutely certain that such technology will turn out to be the great enabler of positive change for our world. After all, who would have guessed even six months ago that a group of political neophytes could have harnessed the power of the Internet to propel the presidential candidacy of a mild mannered Texas OBGYN to national prominence? Hopefully, the government is not testing their data mining and social network analysis on Ron Paul’s 50,000 Facebook friends!
There is little doubt that 2008 will be a critical juncture in our history. Thomas Jefferson told us that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We must decide whether we will allow the government to use technology to restrain us or whether we will use technology to restrain the government.
The housing market is in the tank. The dollar is on the verge of collapse. The situation in Afghanistan has gotten significantly worse. The current indept administration has destroyed our important relationship with Turkey. The bumbling of last two administrations have finally convinced the Russians that they really do need to be wary of our intentions. The leading Democratic presidential contender is an ex-first lady who is probably the coldest, most calculating and power hungry politician since Nixon. The leading GOP contender is an ex-mayor who believes that "freedom" is about submitting yourself to government authority (Yes, that is was he said: go Google it). Sure, there seems to be some good news in Iraq, but only because we've further entrenched ourselves there with more troops, with no apparent plan on how to get out without the country erupting into civil war. Oh yes, Osama Bin Laden is still at large.
Worse of all, our civil liberties are under attack like never before.
The government has already blessed us with the "Patriot Act", which among other things expanded the government's ability to spy on our electronic communications, as well as on our medical and financial records.
We are now faced with the even more troublesome "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" (HR 1955), whose vague language could be used by the government to classify American activities like civil disobedience as "terrorism".
Together, these acts present the greatest danger to liberty in our history.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure George Bush and Dick Cheney are honorable men who are only trying to protect us from the terrorists, drug dealers, and whatever bogie man comes up next, right? Even if you believe that, these guys are only going to be in office another year and those laws will still be on the books when they leave. What happens when President Clinton declares that we need her protection from the "vast right-wing conspiracy"???
Remember, that Hitler came to power through legal means and then used "terrorism" as an excuse to pass the enabling act, which allowed him to assume complete power.
I know, this is the land of the free and the home of the brave so it can't happen here, right? Well, during the presidency of John Adams, the "Alien and Sedition Act" was passed, which made it a criminal offense, punishable by two years in jail, to criticize the government. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus so that he could jail his critics. Woodrow Wilson feared widespread dissent against his plans to get America involved in the Great War, so he passed the "Espionage Act" and the "Sedition Act" and used them to silence and even jail his critics. During WWII, Franklin Roosevelt locked up natural born American citizens of Japanese and Italian ancestry.
Here's what is really disturbing this time: Information technology has become a means for government to target average citizens who dissent, rather than just people who are in visible, public opposition.
We all know that the National Security Agency has been snooping on electronic communications coming in and out of the country for years. Now, they are working with all of the major telcos to snoop on communications within the country, without court orders. The administration is currently pushing legislation to protect companies from lawsuits who help the NSA spy on you.
The "Real ID Act" morphs state drivers licenses into a national id card. Starting in January 2010, employers won't be able to hire you, financial institutions won't be allowed to do business with you, and you won't be able to do anything involving the federal government, including boarding an airplane, unless you have a compliant id.
A few years ago, the administration proposed their "Total Information Awareness" program, which among other things used data mining and social network analysis to discover, extract and link sparse information across databases to analyze your behavior. After a huge outcry the original program was defunded by Congress, but many of its original projects have quietly continued under other funding.
The "Patriot Act" and the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007", enabled by information technology could make 2008 the year Big Brother becomes a reality.
Despite these and other misuses of information technology to violate our civil liberties, I am absolutely certain that such technology will turn out to be the great enabler of positive change for our world. After all, who would have guessed even six months ago that a group of political neophytes could have harnessed the power of the Internet to propel the presidential candidacy of a mild mannered Texas OBGYN to national prominence? Hopefully, the government is not testing their data mining and social network analysis on Ron Paul’s 50,000 Facebook friends!
There is little doubt that 2008 will be a critical juncture in our history. Thomas Jefferson told us that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We must decide whether we will allow the government to use technology to restrain us or whether we will use technology to restrain the government.
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