"Fascism has no agenda"--Benito Mussolini
A Greenberg poll, which has devastating news for Democrats, reveals that 55% of Americans believe President Obama is a socialist. A poll commissioned by House Democrats reveals that the national debt is a major concern of Americans but for symbolic and emotional reasons not associated with this fact alone. Americans view China holding such much our debt and China's economic growth as prime indicators of America's decline as a nation. And this has the country deeply concerned.
While I've written about the need for America to make deep structural changes in the economy. it's clear that the idea of such change is terrifying to a great portion of the nation. John Boehner's cynical statement that Obama is trying to sink the country I grew up in feeds into the right's two-year campaign of "I want my country back." Bob Inglis, a conservative Republican who lost his primary to a teabagger, complained to the Associated Press that Republicans have now descended to the lowest form of political demogoguery. Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson proclaims that the failure of Republicans to denounce the extremes in the party has created the seeds for their own destruction.
I disagree. The whole plan for the Right has been to push every button of fear possible about President Obama and the Democrats to distract attention from their own legacy and how they got us here. Today, the national Republican Party is sending out damage control people to quiet teabagger candidates like Susan Angle and Rand Paul from exposing their extreme positions. A new communication strategy is simply to run away from the press or appear on Fox news shows where they aren't challenged. The right has put the old program of God,Guns and Gays on steroids with no concern about any consequences of allowing the theocons, white supremacists or the John Birch Society into office. The whole strategy was to create a wave of reaction through the manipulation of the most off-the-wall accusations--birthers, death panels, sharia law, socialized medicine. It's not that any of this has any remote factual basis but that it creates a wall of emotional content/or discontent that can be used to frame a debate and motivate the base.
Don't think any of these teabaggers will be allowed to do anything once elected. As we have seen by Republican obstructionism during the first 18 months of the Obama Administration, the congressional GOP has an authoritarian discipline, which they will maintain even after the election. Remember when House Republicans said they wanted to hold a dialogue with the American people about policy ideas. That's off. John Boehner has asked lobbyists to develop the GOP agenda. There is very little government that the GOP cares about. They are banking on an inexhaustible supply of corporate and special interest money to buy their way back into power. It's estimated this year they will spend upwards of $300million for the congressional elections. Their sole agenda is to ratify the old Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and corporate America and to go for their final goal of eliminating the social welfare net of social security. As I've explained in other posts, the deficit is only a tool to prevent subsequent Democratic administrations from embarking on any extensive social programs.
Republicans will not pay for their votes against extending unemployment benefits or the jobs bill that bails out the impoverished states. They simply do not care. Besides, failure to pass these measures will cut the benefits of the stimulus program by one-third. So much the better. Remember unemployment reached 10.4% under Reagan and that didn't phase them.
They have two basic constituencies--corporate America and the Pentagon. Other than that, everyone is on their own. That's why the drumbeat about how the unemployed are lazy and drug users. They have escalated the rhetoric once used on the black underclass to embrace a larger population. For over a decade, the American middle class has been eviscerated. It was telling to me that the middle class was never mentioned at the 2008 Republican convention. They don't matter. Just give them some bones like nationalist rhetoric and invocations of God. The politics of symbolism is all important here because the looting of America continues off stage. At the state level, it matters little to them that the public educational system is on the verge of collapse or that services must be severely cut back.
One of the tactics of fascism was to generate the sense in European societies that democratic structures can not work. The appeal was for the symbolic renewal of a mythical national spirit, a revival based on distant past. The old conservative parties believed they could coopt the fascists as in Italy and Nazi Germany and the corporations believed that such parties could control the population so they would economically benefit. What modern students of fascism tend to neglect by their focus on Germany and Italy was the integration of the Christian religion into the fascist project in other European countries.
Sinclair Lewis wrote,"It Can Happen Here" about the prospects of fascism for the United States. What we didn't learn in our history classes was about the Businessman's Coup Plot against FDR. The BBC this past week released tapes from its archives about this plot. Captains of Industry were going to use 500,000 World War veterans to topple the Roosevelt Administration and adopt policies modelled after Mussolini's Italy, which was all the rave among the American industrialists and conservatives, who included William Randolph Heart, the Koch Family and Prescott Bush.
Liberals and progressives have fallen into the type of defeatism the Right was banking on. A wave of Republican victories would simply validate their darkest view of America as a bastion of reactionary thinking and that change really is not possible and that the great hope of Obama was an illusion. You don't need to read conservatives to hear all the complaints about President Obama. Progressives have been more exacting. The stimulus was inadequate; healthcare reform was a sham because it lacked the public option, wall street reform is meaningless unless it contained measures on Too Big Too Fail, the administration has not done enough for gays. The list goes on. So the Democratic base has its own program of demoralizing itself.
I must confess I read horoscopes. We know from psychology why people read horoscopes, tarot cards and are into numerology. It's called the Forer Effect, it is subjective validation. It reinforces what we think we already know. We are in for a period of frustration and then by 2011 there will be the movement to profound change and in 2012 we must make our decisions. Of course, the horoscopes use 2012 because it is the end of the Mayan calender and our fundamentalist Christians believe it is the year for Rapture.
But politically, I think we may be hearing the death cries of the past right now. They may get a dead cat bounce this year but they are brain dead. The Right scream machine is working at high decibels. During times of economic unrest and uncertainty, all of the skeletons from our national basement emerge--the racism of a Rush Limbaugh, the nativism against immigrants in Arizona, the Christian nationalists and the whole raft of conspiracy theories. We have to be scared of Muslims, the Chinese, illegal immigrants, the New Black Panther Party, Saul Alinsky, the Chicago machine, the Gay, high taxes, inflation, the Depression, progressive socialism, legal progressivism, eugenics, FEMA camps, death panels, the demographic winter and fill in the blanks.
Those interested in any progress have to reframe the debate. They can't just respond to every lunatic statement and idea but push the question to the other side. "What are you do going to do?" What positive ideas and solutions are you proposing to today's problems? What is important is not to disinform ourselves. We have become masters of disinformation. During the run-up to the Iraq War, we saw how the media and the political elite not only disinformed the American public but themselves as well.
As of today, it is looking like the political season is starting at a tie. Will the two-year campaign by the Right pay the large benefits? Can corporate America really buy as many seats in Congress as they hope? Or will we have simply a normal mid-term election with the president's party having the usual historical losses?
Unfortunately, I do believe the stakes this year are incredibly high as I did in 2008. Just Vote! Early and often.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Iced Harrar at the Last Manatee Cafe
The hits keep coming. Tan Man Boehner claims his miscues with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review were really part of the strategy to win back the House. I'm sure he didn't figure on fellow Republicans accusing him of being a lazy drunk and recalling his days partying at The Tunnel in Manhattan during the Republican Convention. I think he underestimates the fact that Cantor will pull a coup de grace on him if the GOP regains the House. For some reason, Boehner actually thinks it's a great idea to pick a fight with President Obama like...say, Newt Gingrich stopping the Government during Clinton.
Miichael is the man of Steele. After calling Afghanistan "Obama's War" and saying we shouldn't be there, little Billy Kristol called for his resignation and even Liz Cheney. Having Liz Cheney call for someone's resignation is like Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan making a political statement. President Obama's favorite Republican, Lindsey Graham criticized Steele statement and John McCain openly asked Steele to consider whether he was up to leading. He's staying because Republicans can't afford mayhem four months out from the election.
Sharon Angle, the teajihadist candidate in Nevada, has sent Harry Byrd a "cease and desist" letter demanding he not refer to her past political positions because they are insane.
Meg Whitman has gone over the $100 million mark in the California election and Jerry Brown hasn't spent anything. But Democrats are worrying about Brown, who still leads by 3-4 points, because he is not mobilizing the party yet. They worry that Whitman will continue to up the ante and blow by Brown in the end. Boxer still leads Fiorina. That's generally good news because Boxer always polls lower than her eventual tally.
PPP has a poll out today that shows the Jack Conway-Rand Paul race as dead even. That's great news for Conway because over 40% of the voters don't have a clue as to who he is.
PPP has another poll that shows Elaine Marshall only 6 behind Burr in the Senate race. That's good news for her. Republicans are still wondering what Burr does for a living. Marshall is banging him for filibustering the jobs and unemployment bill. This seems to be working. Wisconsin's Senator Feingold appears to be in a tight race against teajihadist Tim Johnson, a mega-millionaire. He's running ads touting his support from right-wing Republican groups, claiming he is a fiscal conservative.
The Democratic Party seems to have adopted Nate Silver's regressive logarithms in projecting the political races this year. At this stage, they claim they will hold the House by only 6 seats and will only lose 4 in the Senate. Republicans aim to pick up considerably more Governor's seats. Why I don't discount this projection is that Mark Plotkin has reached a very similar conclusion about the House with the Democrats holding it by eight. Charlie Cook still says a Republican hurricane is coming.
No surprise, Gallup has a poll of teabaggers that showed 79% were Republicans and they represented the extremes of the party if anyone else is left.
26% of Americans can't name the country from whom we gained our independence. That's roughly the same percentage as those who have favorable opinions of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin.
Prophetess Janet Porter has been continuing the Religious Right's refrain that the BP oil disaster is the judgment of God on Obama's abandonment of Israel. I guess God is touchy. But no matter, Bibi and President Obama sat down today and said everything is hunky-dory between the United States and Israel. Pundits said that this was vital for the Democrats' chances in the mid-terms because Republicans have been making hay on Obama dissing Israel, our most dependable ally in the Middle East. Bibi has slightly adjusted the Gaza embargo and is prosecuting 3 soldiers for gunning down Palestinians.
Prior to this meeting, AIPAC flooded the town with visiting Israeli military experts, who had meetings with everyone relevant to the issues at hand. One of the themes was to trash Turkey, Israel's longest standing ally in the Middle East.
Dominionist churches are seeking financial damages from BP for loss of revenues. The Assemblies of God, Sarah Palin's church, claims their collection plates are hurting because of the devastation to local Gulf families.
Eric Holder is finally suing the state of Arizona to prevent its immigration law going into effect by the end of this month. The federal government is asking for an injunction to stop it. John McCain fighting for his life in the primary there, said that he thinks all illegals should be deported to where they came from. This from the champion of immigration reform. Jeb Bush, on the other hand, weighed in with an op-ed for immigration reform, pointing out what solid citizens Latinos became. Other bloggers have noted that the United States really has never wanted to do anything about our porous borders because illegal immigrants are the source of cheaper labor for our businesses and agriculture.
Fareed Zakaria gave a devastating critique of our Afghanistan policy. He singled out Leon Panetta's opinion that there are only 50-100 Al Qaeda members left in the country. General Petraeus testified there were maybe double digits with another 300+ in Pakistan. Zakaria mentioned that over $1 billion a year is leaving the country as far as we know from their own customs declarations. So, why are we fighting a major war there?
No problem. There exists a new synergy of terrorist groups ,which have formed a "fusion" that represents a greater threat to the United States than even Al Qaeda during 9-11. I just get the feeling that we are creating an endless feedback of terrorist threats the longer we stay.
Jolting Joe Biden travelled to Iraq to say everything is on track for us to leave in August, even though they are still at a stalemate over forming a new government.
Mitt Romney appeared today to write an op-ed piece in the Washington Post condemning the New Start Treaty. While it was detailed to demonstrate his alleged knowledge, it was wildly wrong on a number of points, particularly about missile defense systems and the treaty's applicability to the situations in Iran and North Korea. Mitt is only visiting the territory of his Heritage Foundation speech where he called for an increase in the Defense Budget, which only equals the defense spending of all the entire earth combined. Mitt argued we were threatened by military buildups in China, Russia and conflict in the Middle East. The reason the Chinese budget was lower was because they don't have to pay their soldiers much. Of course, it really doesn't matter that we are in a Depression and that somehow the Republicans have become deficit hawks to stop Democratic social programs.
A point about Chinese military spending. While the G-20 believe that China can carry the global economy, it's growing clearer that they deeply fear the prospects of instability. Their military and their policies on internet censorship show there is more concern there than meets the eye. Last year, the country experienced several thousand mass rallies protesting all sorts of issues. Currently, we have been learning about labor strikes in plants of overseas companies.
Finally, China Mieville's Kraken is out and is fantastic both literally and metaphorically. London is beseiged by an "epidemic of eschatologies" and the special branch of their police that have to deal with cults must find whether the end-time is really occurring. To flush all the dissident Gods out, they stage a simultaneous apocalypse for two competing sects. Each has their apocalypse on the same date. This spells trouble. They don't want to be upstaged. We are treated to Chaos Nazis, Jesus Buddhists, who are actually a quite violent syncretistic religion, and worshippers of a Giant Squid. One of the investigators is a fundamentalist Christian who has lost his faith because of evolution. The worshippers of the Great Flood play a key role in persuading the Sea to intervene for justice. As always, Mieville creates a fantastic London as he did in City and City.
Miichael is the man of Steele. After calling Afghanistan "Obama's War" and saying we shouldn't be there, little Billy Kristol called for his resignation and even Liz Cheney. Having Liz Cheney call for someone's resignation is like Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan making a political statement. President Obama's favorite Republican, Lindsey Graham criticized Steele statement and John McCain openly asked Steele to consider whether he was up to leading. He's staying because Republicans can't afford mayhem four months out from the election.
Sharon Angle, the teajihadist candidate in Nevada, has sent Harry Byrd a "cease and desist" letter demanding he not refer to her past political positions because they are insane.
Meg Whitman has gone over the $100 million mark in the California election and Jerry Brown hasn't spent anything. But Democrats are worrying about Brown, who still leads by 3-4 points, because he is not mobilizing the party yet. They worry that Whitman will continue to up the ante and blow by Brown in the end. Boxer still leads Fiorina. That's generally good news because Boxer always polls lower than her eventual tally.
PPP has a poll out today that shows the Jack Conway-Rand Paul race as dead even. That's great news for Conway because over 40% of the voters don't have a clue as to who he is.
PPP has another poll that shows Elaine Marshall only 6 behind Burr in the Senate race. That's good news for her. Republicans are still wondering what Burr does for a living. Marshall is banging him for filibustering the jobs and unemployment bill. This seems to be working. Wisconsin's Senator Feingold appears to be in a tight race against teajihadist Tim Johnson, a mega-millionaire. He's running ads touting his support from right-wing Republican groups, claiming he is a fiscal conservative.
The Democratic Party seems to have adopted Nate Silver's regressive logarithms in projecting the political races this year. At this stage, they claim they will hold the House by only 6 seats and will only lose 4 in the Senate. Republicans aim to pick up considerably more Governor's seats. Why I don't discount this projection is that Mark Plotkin has reached a very similar conclusion about the House with the Democrats holding it by eight. Charlie Cook still says a Republican hurricane is coming.
No surprise, Gallup has a poll of teabaggers that showed 79% were Republicans and they represented the extremes of the party if anyone else is left.
26% of Americans can't name the country from whom we gained our independence. That's roughly the same percentage as those who have favorable opinions of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin.
Prophetess Janet Porter has been continuing the Religious Right's refrain that the BP oil disaster is the judgment of God on Obama's abandonment of Israel. I guess God is touchy. But no matter, Bibi and President Obama sat down today and said everything is hunky-dory between the United States and Israel. Pundits said that this was vital for the Democrats' chances in the mid-terms because Republicans have been making hay on Obama dissing Israel, our most dependable ally in the Middle East. Bibi has slightly adjusted the Gaza embargo and is prosecuting 3 soldiers for gunning down Palestinians.
Prior to this meeting, AIPAC flooded the town with visiting Israeli military experts, who had meetings with everyone relevant to the issues at hand. One of the themes was to trash Turkey, Israel's longest standing ally in the Middle East.
Dominionist churches are seeking financial damages from BP for loss of revenues. The Assemblies of God, Sarah Palin's church, claims their collection plates are hurting because of the devastation to local Gulf families.
Eric Holder is finally suing the state of Arizona to prevent its immigration law going into effect by the end of this month. The federal government is asking for an injunction to stop it. John McCain fighting for his life in the primary there, said that he thinks all illegals should be deported to where they came from. This from the champion of immigration reform. Jeb Bush, on the other hand, weighed in with an op-ed for immigration reform, pointing out what solid citizens Latinos became. Other bloggers have noted that the United States really has never wanted to do anything about our porous borders because illegal immigrants are the source of cheaper labor for our businesses and agriculture.
Fareed Zakaria gave a devastating critique of our Afghanistan policy. He singled out Leon Panetta's opinion that there are only 50-100 Al Qaeda members left in the country. General Petraeus testified there were maybe double digits with another 300+ in Pakistan. Zakaria mentioned that over $1 billion a year is leaving the country as far as we know from their own customs declarations. So, why are we fighting a major war there?
No problem. There exists a new synergy of terrorist groups ,which have formed a "fusion" that represents a greater threat to the United States than even Al Qaeda during 9-11. I just get the feeling that we are creating an endless feedback of terrorist threats the longer we stay.
Jolting Joe Biden travelled to Iraq to say everything is on track for us to leave in August, even though they are still at a stalemate over forming a new government.
Mitt Romney appeared today to write an op-ed piece in the Washington Post condemning the New Start Treaty. While it was detailed to demonstrate his alleged knowledge, it was wildly wrong on a number of points, particularly about missile defense systems and the treaty's applicability to the situations in Iran and North Korea. Mitt is only visiting the territory of his Heritage Foundation speech where he called for an increase in the Defense Budget, which only equals the defense spending of all the entire earth combined. Mitt argued we were threatened by military buildups in China, Russia and conflict in the Middle East. The reason the Chinese budget was lower was because they don't have to pay their soldiers much. Of course, it really doesn't matter that we are in a Depression and that somehow the Republicans have become deficit hawks to stop Democratic social programs.
A point about Chinese military spending. While the G-20 believe that China can carry the global economy, it's growing clearer that they deeply fear the prospects of instability. Their military and their policies on internet censorship show there is more concern there than meets the eye. Last year, the country experienced several thousand mass rallies protesting all sorts of issues. Currently, we have been learning about labor strikes in plants of overseas companies.
Finally, China Mieville's Kraken is out and is fantastic both literally and metaphorically. London is beseiged by an "epidemic of eschatologies" and the special branch of their police that have to deal with cults must find whether the end-time is really occurring. To flush all the dissident Gods out, they stage a simultaneous apocalypse for two competing sects. Each has their apocalypse on the same date. This spells trouble. They don't want to be upstaged. We are treated to Chaos Nazis, Jesus Buddhists, who are actually a quite violent syncretistic religion, and worshippers of a Giant Squid. One of the investigators is a fundamentalist Christian who has lost his faith because of evolution. The worshippers of the Great Flood play a key role in persuading the Sea to intervene for justice. As always, Mieville creates a fantastic London as he did in City and City.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Revolutionary Considerations
This morning I received a video by a former general in our military demanding President Obama resign or be impeached and that we restore American exceptionalism. Also this morning I have noticed that the teajehadists at the Focus on the Family and its research arm have embraced the tea parties and are warning about the moral collapse of our society and government tyranny. This they attribute to our fear of God. Next was a Washington Post article on how teabaggers celebrated the July 4th with materials from the 9-12 project. They claim the tenth amendment would protect them from health reform.
Progressives who bitch and moan about the imperfections of the healthcare reform bill and the Wall Street Reform should read about James Madison's trials and tribulations in negotiating the creation of our Constitution. And, yes, Barack Obama and Judge Thurgood Marshall were right. It is an imperfect document as Madison himself would tell you. The tale of Madison's preparation for the constitutional debates and the vote swapping that went on is colorfully describedin Jack Rakove's Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (Houghton Mifflin Holt, 2010). The chapter on Madison is "The Greatest Lawgiver of Modernity".
Of direct application today was the creation of the Commerce Clause in the Constitution. The problem Madison was grappling with was how do you get individual states to support projects that would develop the nation as a whole. I will be curious to see how the Supreme Court deals with the discussions of this clause when the healthcare bill comes before them. I doubt very much that the so-called "originalists"will consult the intent of Madison at the time.
After all in Citizens United, the Roberts court did not consult Thomas Jefferson on his fears of "an aristocracy of corporations". With our government basically enslaved by a military/ terrorist complex, I doubt we will see any conservatives mention that George Washington refused to attend the Cincinnatus Society composed of officers in the revolutionary army because he opposed any insinuation of there being any military elite.
Jack Rakove's new book has some interesting details on the whole issue of the separation of church and state. James Madison, considered to this day Princeton's greatest graduate student, hated the idea of "noxious amendments to the Constitution." However, to get the anti-federalists to come along, he indulged their wishes. The first amendment was dear to his heart. When he had served in the House of Delegates in Virginia, Patrick Henry proposed the first faith-based initiative by suggesting the state subsidize churches "without preference". The proposal seemed to have majority approval of the House until Madison objected that this was the "establishment of religion". He felt so strongly about this that he rounded up 10,000 people to sign a petition denouncing the move. Instead, he introduced Jefferson's draft of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which passed.
Madison was obsessed by preventing a different type of tyranny--the tyranny of the majority. He feared that majorities were popular in nature and would act with passion, not reason and their will would prevail over any mere statement of principles. We have seen this is how Latin American countries have gone through constitutions. Traditionally , bills of rights were thought to operate as a restraint on government by providing the people with a basis for knowing when their rulers were overstepping their power. Madison considered that function no longer fit the political life of a republic.
"Wherever the real power in a government lies,there is danger of oppression,"Madison observed. "In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents."
Progressives who bitch and moan about the imperfections of the healthcare reform bill and the Wall Street Reform should read about James Madison's trials and tribulations in negotiating the creation of our Constitution. And, yes, Barack Obama and Judge Thurgood Marshall were right. It is an imperfect document as Madison himself would tell you. The tale of Madison's preparation for the constitutional debates and the vote swapping that went on is colorfully describedin Jack Rakove's Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (Houghton Mifflin Holt, 2010). The chapter on Madison is "The Greatest Lawgiver of Modernity".
Of direct application today was the creation of the Commerce Clause in the Constitution. The problem Madison was grappling with was how do you get individual states to support projects that would develop the nation as a whole. I will be curious to see how the Supreme Court deals with the discussions of this clause when the healthcare bill comes before them. I doubt very much that the so-called "originalists"will consult the intent of Madison at the time.
After all in Citizens United, the Roberts court did not consult Thomas Jefferson on his fears of "an aristocracy of corporations". With our government basically enslaved by a military/ terrorist complex, I doubt we will see any conservatives mention that George Washington refused to attend the Cincinnatus Society composed of officers in the revolutionary army because he opposed any insinuation of there being any military elite.
Jack Rakove's new book has some interesting details on the whole issue of the separation of church and state. James Madison, considered to this day Princeton's greatest graduate student, hated the idea of "noxious amendments to the Constitution." However, to get the anti-federalists to come along, he indulged their wishes. The first amendment was dear to his heart. When he had served in the House of Delegates in Virginia, Patrick Henry proposed the first faith-based initiative by suggesting the state subsidize churches "without preference". The proposal seemed to have majority approval of the House until Madison objected that this was the "establishment of religion". He felt so strongly about this that he rounded up 10,000 people to sign a petition denouncing the move. Instead, he introduced Jefferson's draft of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which passed.
Madison was obsessed by preventing a different type of tyranny--the tyranny of the majority. He feared that majorities were popular in nature and would act with passion, not reason and their will would prevail over any mere statement of principles. We have seen this is how Latin American countries have gone through constitutions. Traditionally , bills of rights were thought to operate as a restraint on government by providing the people with a basis for knowing when their rulers were overstepping their power. Madison considered that function no longer fit the political life of a republic.
"Wherever the real power in a government lies,there is danger of oppression,"Madison observed. "In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents."
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Happy Birthday Beloved Country
Today we were invented. With all the chatter about American exceptionalism, it's useful to remember that our uniqueness comes from inventing ourselves and our form of government. We aren't exceptional because of our military prowess or economic might. We aren't exceptional because of what Newt Gingrich says that we are the arsenal of democracy or manifest destiny. In fact, the Founding Fathers did not want to standing army and Washington warned us against alliances and wars. We were an underdeveloped country which chose to fight a revolution for independence and create a government based on law and liberty.
What was totally not evident was that "We hold these truths to be self-evident." There is nothing self-evident now about these rights and they weren't then. To achieve these rights has taken a perpetual struggle. All men are created was postponed and led to a Civil War and another century of hard struggle. Only in the twentieth century were all women created equal. I was always taught that America was an on-going experiment in self-government for the purpose of aspiring to a more perfect union. Frequently our representative democracy has been a risk and progress has been thwarted and delayed.
But the words of our Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights have inspired millions of others around the world to demand their political rights and civil liberties beginning with the French Revolution through the Velvet Revolution and onto Iran's Green Revolution. The polite fiction of the words written by Thomas Jefferson inspired the adoption after WWII of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a host of international covenants agreed to by the global community.
But our founding fathers saw other threats to freedom than just a colonial power. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison felt that corporations were obstacles to self-government. While Washington even created a corporation to expand the Potomac, he felt they should be controlled by the state with limited life. Thomas Jefferson denounced corporations for their incessant need for profit and that they did not contribute to the public good. James Madsion wrote flat out that corporations hindered self-government. Yet our current Supreme Court in Citizens United ruled that not only are corporations persons but enjoy all the rights given under our constitution to individuals.
Our founding fathers were highly skeptical about the role religion should play directly in our politics. Washington himself wanted churches prohibited from participating in policy discussions. Ironically, in his Farewell Address, he spoke about how religious values supported our democracy. As Conor Cruise O'Brian has written in his latest biography of Washington, these words were written by Alexander Hamilton and weren't in the first draft of the Farewell Address, which was meant to be delivered after one term of office.
It is commonplace to say that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values. But this phrase only came about in the late 1940s when America was enthralled by the Jewish people creating the state of Israel. It was never used before then. Luckily, the Pilgrims and our Founding Fathers were philo-Semitic but by the late 19th century and early 20th century we had become infected with anti-semitic thinking and behavior. A dark patch in our history was the proliferation of theories on race, which heavily influenced the eugenics policies and the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany, a chapter America instantly forgot with World War II. In a way, the embrace of Israel by our Religious Right serves to innoculate us from that dark disease. But it was not always so.
The embrace of America as the country of immigrants was also fairly recent. This past week, our greying President eloquently outlined a policy of immigration reform,eulogizing the contribution made to this country by immigrants. In my view, the speech represented the type of vision of this society we need to hold dear. But that wasn't always so.
Not until the 1930s would General Petraeus be considered "white". His Greek ancestry was not considered a " desireable" ethnic group like all other Mediterraneans and Central Europeans. His ancestry would be considered a "mongrelization of the race."It was only with the election of FDR that this attitude changed and it did so because of government policy. With the resurgence of the KKK, this time aimed at immigrants, and the very public anti-semiticism of Henry Ford and Lindbergh, the Roosevelt Administration used radio for the first time in a civic education program called "What is an American?". Later this became a hit song by Paul Robeson and , even more ironically, the theme song of a Republican National Convention. By then, all politicians sang praises of immigrants.
The original American Revolutionaries invented America on a wing and a prayer. Periodically, the country is called into question. In the late 1880s, Christians began their revisionist histories of the country, which have been revived today. The racist element in a society, marginalized for the last few decades, has re-emerged through the participation of the white supremacist groups assisting writing anti-immigration laws in Arizona and about a dozen other states. The secessionist question, which even Tony Scalia declared closed permanently, has been re-opened with Governors in various states threatening to action for the first time in my lifetime. A vice presidential candidate of the Party of Abraham Lincoln had a husband who was an active member of a secessionist group, the Alaska Independence Party.
The first generation of Americans were highly skeptical of political parties or factions as they called them. James Fenimore Cooper wrote whole books denouncing the development of political parties in America. For my lifetime, political parties managed to move the country around different parts of the center. But now we have a major party, which has embraced the lunatic fringe,all those elements in our society which we had managed to overcome in our struggle to move toward a more perfect union. While political polemics, even among the Founding Fathers, could get vitriolic and raw, they didn't have internet and mass media outlets, which could propagate lunacy on a 24/7 basis.
The dismantling of the idea of America, this great invention,is in active overdrive today with the rewriting of history textbooks and the elevation of quacks on the radical right. We have a large segment of our population which has given up on the idea of self-government and democracy. The only point of obtaining political office is to dismantle what government structures still exist.
During the confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan, Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma asked her whether we were as free today as in 1980. Presumably, he was referring to the election of Ronald Reagan. He lamented the infringment of government into our daily lives and the perceived threat by his state of the federal government to individual liberties. Well, the answer depends on who you are. For women, the opportunities in the political arena have increased dramatically. If you believe in rule by white authoritarian males probably not. If you were a factory worker with your job shipped overseas maybe not but it's not because of the federal government. It's an old question. The same question Southern Senators used to raise during the Civil Rights period when they lamented the death of their white culture.
I would say I'm less free because national security law trumps the Constitution. I would also say I am less secure today because the United States for the first time overtly embraced the notion of having an empire during the George W. Bush administration. But am I less free in terms of my day-to-day life? No. And neither are the teabaggers for all their rhetoric.
As Benjamin Franklin said, "You have a Republic, if you can keep it." Franklin would have loved President Obama for his embrace of science and technology. He would have thought this man was continuing his great work. Only this past week the Administration announced funding for extending internet to rural America, a move that will rival in importance FDR's Rural Electrification Program.
But the question remains whether we can keep it. Happy Birthday everybody.
What was totally not evident was that "We hold these truths to be self-evident." There is nothing self-evident now about these rights and they weren't then. To achieve these rights has taken a perpetual struggle. All men are created was postponed and led to a Civil War and another century of hard struggle. Only in the twentieth century were all women created equal. I was always taught that America was an on-going experiment in self-government for the purpose of aspiring to a more perfect union. Frequently our representative democracy has been a risk and progress has been thwarted and delayed.
But the words of our Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights have inspired millions of others around the world to demand their political rights and civil liberties beginning with the French Revolution through the Velvet Revolution and onto Iran's Green Revolution. The polite fiction of the words written by Thomas Jefferson inspired the adoption after WWII of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a host of international covenants agreed to by the global community.
But our founding fathers saw other threats to freedom than just a colonial power. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison felt that corporations were obstacles to self-government. While Washington even created a corporation to expand the Potomac, he felt they should be controlled by the state with limited life. Thomas Jefferson denounced corporations for their incessant need for profit and that they did not contribute to the public good. James Madsion wrote flat out that corporations hindered self-government. Yet our current Supreme Court in Citizens United ruled that not only are corporations persons but enjoy all the rights given under our constitution to individuals.
Our founding fathers were highly skeptical about the role religion should play directly in our politics. Washington himself wanted churches prohibited from participating in policy discussions. Ironically, in his Farewell Address, he spoke about how religious values supported our democracy. As Conor Cruise O'Brian has written in his latest biography of Washington, these words were written by Alexander Hamilton and weren't in the first draft of the Farewell Address, which was meant to be delivered after one term of office.
It is commonplace to say that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values. But this phrase only came about in the late 1940s when America was enthralled by the Jewish people creating the state of Israel. It was never used before then. Luckily, the Pilgrims and our Founding Fathers were philo-Semitic but by the late 19th century and early 20th century we had become infected with anti-semitic thinking and behavior. A dark patch in our history was the proliferation of theories on race, which heavily influenced the eugenics policies and the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany, a chapter America instantly forgot with World War II. In a way, the embrace of Israel by our Religious Right serves to innoculate us from that dark disease. But it was not always so.
The embrace of America as the country of immigrants was also fairly recent. This past week, our greying President eloquently outlined a policy of immigration reform,eulogizing the contribution made to this country by immigrants. In my view, the speech represented the type of vision of this society we need to hold dear. But that wasn't always so.
Not until the 1930s would General Petraeus be considered "white". His Greek ancestry was not considered a " desireable" ethnic group like all other Mediterraneans and Central Europeans. His ancestry would be considered a "mongrelization of the race."It was only with the election of FDR that this attitude changed and it did so because of government policy. With the resurgence of the KKK, this time aimed at immigrants, and the very public anti-semiticism of Henry Ford and Lindbergh, the Roosevelt Administration used radio for the first time in a civic education program called "What is an American?". Later this became a hit song by Paul Robeson and , even more ironically, the theme song of a Republican National Convention. By then, all politicians sang praises of immigrants.
The original American Revolutionaries invented America on a wing and a prayer. Periodically, the country is called into question. In the late 1880s, Christians began their revisionist histories of the country, which have been revived today. The racist element in a society, marginalized for the last few decades, has re-emerged through the participation of the white supremacist groups assisting writing anti-immigration laws in Arizona and about a dozen other states. The secessionist question, which even Tony Scalia declared closed permanently, has been re-opened with Governors in various states threatening to action for the first time in my lifetime. A vice presidential candidate of the Party of Abraham Lincoln had a husband who was an active member of a secessionist group, the Alaska Independence Party.
The first generation of Americans were highly skeptical of political parties or factions as they called them. James Fenimore Cooper wrote whole books denouncing the development of political parties in America. For my lifetime, political parties managed to move the country around different parts of the center. But now we have a major party, which has embraced the lunatic fringe,all those elements in our society which we had managed to overcome in our struggle to move toward a more perfect union. While political polemics, even among the Founding Fathers, could get vitriolic and raw, they didn't have internet and mass media outlets, which could propagate lunacy on a 24/7 basis.
The dismantling of the idea of America, this great invention,is in active overdrive today with the rewriting of history textbooks and the elevation of quacks on the radical right. We have a large segment of our population which has given up on the idea of self-government and democracy. The only point of obtaining political office is to dismantle what government structures still exist.
During the confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan, Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma asked her whether we were as free today as in 1980. Presumably, he was referring to the election of Ronald Reagan. He lamented the infringment of government into our daily lives and the perceived threat by his state of the federal government to individual liberties. Well, the answer depends on who you are. For women, the opportunities in the political arena have increased dramatically. If you believe in rule by white authoritarian males probably not. If you were a factory worker with your job shipped overseas maybe not but it's not because of the federal government. It's an old question. The same question Southern Senators used to raise during the Civil Rights period when they lamented the death of their white culture.
I would say I'm less free because national security law trumps the Constitution. I would also say I am less secure today because the United States for the first time overtly embraced the notion of having an empire during the George W. Bush administration. But am I less free in terms of my day-to-day life? No. And neither are the teabaggers for all their rhetoric.
As Benjamin Franklin said, "You have a Republic, if you can keep it." Franklin would have loved President Obama for his embrace of science and technology. He would have thought this man was continuing his great work. Only this past week the Administration announced funding for extending internet to rural America, a move that will rival in importance FDR's Rural Electrification Program.
But the question remains whether we can keep it. Happy Birthday everybody.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Honoring an American Revolutionary on July 4th
As the nation celebrates July 4th with a President directly descended from the Pilgrims, let us honor an American revolutionary who died on this date. He has been airbrushed from our history books by the Texas schoolboard and replaced with John Calvin. A sharpshooter, a wine collector, a bibliophile, architect, agronomist,inventor and a writer, he and his pint-sized neighbor James Madison brought us the concept of the separation of church and state. He died proudest of having written the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. An enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution, he was the lover of Sally Hemmings and an owner of slaves. When the British burned down Washington during the War of 1812, his library formed the replacement for the Library of Congress. Without him,it's doubtful whether the idea of America would have reached the pinnacle it has. His name was Thomas Hussein Jefferson. And let's read his words that have inspired a nation throughout its history.
"When in the Course of human events,it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hod these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.-That to secure these rights,Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,-That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence ,indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.-Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world...
The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united states of America, July 4, 1776.
"When in the Course of human events,it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hod these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.-That to secure these rights,Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,-That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence ,indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.-Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world...
The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united states of America, July 4, 1776.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Demographic Winter-The Rise of the Deathers
If you belong to a religious tradition that has existed for two millenia it's tough to see how you can reduce that religion to a position on homosexuality. But it seems alot of people are certainly trying among Christian fundamentalists.
But it's best if you wrap this into an all-encompassing concept or ideology. For the Religious Right and many political conservatives, the new catch-all concept is "demographic winter" or "birth dearth". It is the ultimate culture war battle, literally the fight over Armaggedon, which is rooted in the rise of feminism, legalized abortion, the acceptance of homosexuality, illegal immigration and the growth of minority populations. For example, the legal arguments of the anti-gay marriage lawyers literally don't make sense unless you buy into the notion that these changes have undermined "natural law" and the "natural family" and therefore Western civilization is at stake.
Declinism has a venerable tradition. In the last century, Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West, originally published in 1918, sparked a wave of hysteria which caught the idea of Nazi theorists. Before his death in 1938, Spengler finally rejected Nazism. Perviously, Gibbons' Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire had inspired the British and later American conservatives to opine about the problems of morality and immigration in precipitating the fall of the Roman Empire. Of course, it helps if you don't consider the Byzantine Empire as the continuation of the empire because then you might conclude that a 1,000 year run with plenty of ethnic diversity might be a fine thing.
Declining birth rates and aging populations will affect the fate of nations in this century but the lessons are far from clear. For conservatives, there is concern that white women are slipping below the 1.3 child range, which demographers believe is necessary for the replacement of the population. But people like Pat Buchanan in his 2002 book Death of the West warns that Muslims are reproducing faster than Christians and Europe will be eclipsed by Islam. So we can meld good old nativism and Islamophobia with concerns about white procreation and heterosexuality.
The "demographic winter" plays into all the themes of the rising hard right in this country. Stephen Baskerville, a political scientist at the evangelical Patrick Henry College and author of Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage and the Family blames the women, calling "women's liberation, the boldest social experiment ever undertaken in the Western democracies" and it is "responsible for a massive restructuring of the social order (and) demographic trends that threaten the very survival of Western civilization..." The Family Research Council, the D.C.-based Christian conservative lobbying group, blames bad ideas and misguided policies for creating this "demographic winter", which will result in the collapse of the world economy because declining birth rates are affecting those countries responsible for 80% of the world's economy. Don Feder, the President of Jews Against Anti-Christian Defemation and the Vice President for the World Congress of Families, a coalition of religious right organizations,says that we are in the "terminal stage in the suicide of the West."
To counter all this is the Ruth Institute, which was created by Maggie Gallagher's National Organization for Marriage, which is one of the most significant organizations leading the charge against same sex marriage. The NOM has started a national bus tour starting in Maine to promote heterosexual marriage this summer. The Ruth Institute wants to avoid a Euoprean-style "demigraphic winter" and advocates policies that would be at home in Margaret Attwood's great dystopian novel A Handmaiden's Tale.
The group wants to promote "an intellectual and social climate favorable to marriage." Part of their strategic plan is to decrease the divorce rate, increase the marriage rate; increase the number of children who grow up with both married parents; reduce the time between sexual initiation and the age of first marriage. And ,of course, with all these groups, you must "cure The Gay". That's why President Obama's Father's Day speech where he acknowledged that some children have two fathers sent the entire religious right into an uproar.
For the European and American economies to survive and flourish and maintain a stable work force they must allow immigration. Once the crowning ideal of America, immigration now is viewed as coming from countries with darker hued people. This was actually a theme among American nativists before. The Irish, the "Mediterranean" peoples of Italy, Greece and Spain, and later the East Europeans were not considered "white" until the late 19th century and early 20th century. Somehow I believe with their Christian roots, ultimately Hispanics may become honorary whites. But certainly not now because their birthrates exceed white Americans.
Gays, lesbians, feminists,illegal immigrants, Hispanics and Muslims wound together in a seamless ideology. Very clever. And very dangerous.
(Background for this post was provided by Bill Berlowitz's "Right-Wing Groups use Decline of White Birthrates to Stoke Fear of Homosexuality, Feminism and Abortion" at www.alternet.org )
But it's best if you wrap this into an all-encompassing concept or ideology. For the Religious Right and many political conservatives, the new catch-all concept is "demographic winter" or "birth dearth". It is the ultimate culture war battle, literally the fight over Armaggedon, which is rooted in the rise of feminism, legalized abortion, the acceptance of homosexuality, illegal immigration and the growth of minority populations. For example, the legal arguments of the anti-gay marriage lawyers literally don't make sense unless you buy into the notion that these changes have undermined "natural law" and the "natural family" and therefore Western civilization is at stake.
Declinism has a venerable tradition. In the last century, Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West, originally published in 1918, sparked a wave of hysteria which caught the idea of Nazi theorists. Before his death in 1938, Spengler finally rejected Nazism. Perviously, Gibbons' Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire had inspired the British and later American conservatives to opine about the problems of morality and immigration in precipitating the fall of the Roman Empire. Of course, it helps if you don't consider the Byzantine Empire as the continuation of the empire because then you might conclude that a 1,000 year run with plenty of ethnic diversity might be a fine thing.
Declining birth rates and aging populations will affect the fate of nations in this century but the lessons are far from clear. For conservatives, there is concern that white women are slipping below the 1.3 child range, which demographers believe is necessary for the replacement of the population. But people like Pat Buchanan in his 2002 book Death of the West warns that Muslims are reproducing faster than Christians and Europe will be eclipsed by Islam. So we can meld good old nativism and Islamophobia with concerns about white procreation and heterosexuality.
The "demographic winter" plays into all the themes of the rising hard right in this country. Stephen Baskerville, a political scientist at the evangelical Patrick Henry College and author of Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage and the Family blames the women, calling "women's liberation, the boldest social experiment ever undertaken in the Western democracies" and it is "responsible for a massive restructuring of the social order (and) demographic trends that threaten the very survival of Western civilization..." The Family Research Council, the D.C.-based Christian conservative lobbying group, blames bad ideas and misguided policies for creating this "demographic winter", which will result in the collapse of the world economy because declining birth rates are affecting those countries responsible for 80% of the world's economy. Don Feder, the President of Jews Against Anti-Christian Defemation and the Vice President for the World Congress of Families, a coalition of religious right organizations,says that we are in the "terminal stage in the suicide of the West."
To counter all this is the Ruth Institute, which was created by Maggie Gallagher's National Organization for Marriage, which is one of the most significant organizations leading the charge against same sex marriage. The NOM has started a national bus tour starting in Maine to promote heterosexual marriage this summer. The Ruth Institute wants to avoid a Euoprean-style "demigraphic winter" and advocates policies that would be at home in Margaret Attwood's great dystopian novel A Handmaiden's Tale.
The group wants to promote "an intellectual and social climate favorable to marriage." Part of their strategic plan is to decrease the divorce rate, increase the marriage rate; increase the number of children who grow up with both married parents; reduce the time between sexual initiation and the age of first marriage. And ,of course, with all these groups, you must "cure The Gay". That's why President Obama's Father's Day speech where he acknowledged that some children have two fathers sent the entire religious right into an uproar.
For the European and American economies to survive and flourish and maintain a stable work force they must allow immigration. Once the crowning ideal of America, immigration now is viewed as coming from countries with darker hued people. This was actually a theme among American nativists before. The Irish, the "Mediterranean" peoples of Italy, Greece and Spain, and later the East Europeans were not considered "white" until the late 19th century and early 20th century. Somehow I believe with their Christian roots, ultimately Hispanics may become honorary whites. But certainly not now because their birthrates exceed white Americans.
Gays, lesbians, feminists,illegal immigrants, Hispanics and Muslims wound together in a seamless ideology. Very clever. And very dangerous.
(Background for this post was provided by Bill Berlowitz's "Right-Wing Groups use Decline of White Birthrates to Stoke Fear of Homosexuality, Feminism and Abortion" at www.alternet.org )
W Tops Harding as Worst President in Modern Era
The Siena College Research Institute (SRI) Survey of U.S. Presidents has completed their fifth presidential rankings since 1982. They survey 238 presidential scholars, historians and political scientists , asking them to rank from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) each President on some twenty attributes, abilities and accomplishments. The top five are Franklin Roosevelt, who has won each of the five surveys,Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. In the previous four surveys, number 6 had been Woodrow Wilson but this year it's James Madison.
President Obama enters into the survey at 15th, scoring high on imagination, communications and intelligence. He is ranked in the top ten in all three of these categories.
The bottom five are Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, Franklin Pierce and of course George W. Bush. George W. entered the survey during his first term in office at 23rd but one year after leaving is ranked 39th with the possibility of dropping even further. He rated especially low in handling the economy, communication, ability to compromise, foreign policy accomplishments and intelligence.
In the last two surveys Andrew Johnson edged out James Buchanan as the worst in terms of abilities and accomplishments. Warren Harding has led the pack for the first three surveys as the all-time worst and still edges everyone out in terms of worst in personal attributes, even Richard Nixon in matters of integrity. Tom Kelly, Professor of History and American Studies at Siena claims that with regards to Harding "No one appreciates corruption and ineptitude as an excuse." Warren Harding also had the distinction of weeping in front of random visitors about how overwhelming the job was.
But there are dissenters. My grandmother McColm loved Warren Harding. She was a friend of his mistress who was "a lovely woman" and Warren was so dapper. "He dressed so well and was alot of fun."
George W. Bush ranks next to last in intelligence, foreign policy accomplishments,ability to compromise, the ability to communicate, and the handling of the economy. The last on the economy was Herbert Hoover, who also rated the last in terms of luck and next to last in willing to take risks. And the last in foreign policy was LBJ.
But there is some room for movement for George W. I think he excels Franklin Pierce in awfulness. Franklin Pierce at least had the distinction of having a campaign biography written for him by his best friend Nathaniel Hawthorne. He was just a great mediocrity. And W might take down Buchanan, who always was ranked the worst of all time because he did nothing to prevent the civil war. But as our political debate worsens and some people think the civil war was a good thing, we may forgive James Buchanan, especially given the rise in gay history, where he may earn some distinction as the first gay president. The same applies to Andrew Johnson, who clearly was awful but his impeachment was simply the result of raw politics. So George may be trolling soon with Warren, bobbing along the bottom of all time.
President Obama enters into the survey at 15th, scoring high on imagination, communications and intelligence. He is ranked in the top ten in all three of these categories.
The bottom five are Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, Franklin Pierce and of course George W. Bush. George W. entered the survey during his first term in office at 23rd but one year after leaving is ranked 39th with the possibility of dropping even further. He rated especially low in handling the economy, communication, ability to compromise, foreign policy accomplishments and intelligence.
In the last two surveys Andrew Johnson edged out James Buchanan as the worst in terms of abilities and accomplishments. Warren Harding has led the pack for the first three surveys as the all-time worst and still edges everyone out in terms of worst in personal attributes, even Richard Nixon in matters of integrity. Tom Kelly, Professor of History and American Studies at Siena claims that with regards to Harding "No one appreciates corruption and ineptitude as an excuse." Warren Harding also had the distinction of weeping in front of random visitors about how overwhelming the job was.
But there are dissenters. My grandmother McColm loved Warren Harding. She was a friend of his mistress who was "a lovely woman" and Warren was so dapper. "He dressed so well and was alot of fun."
George W. Bush ranks next to last in intelligence, foreign policy accomplishments,ability to compromise, the ability to communicate, and the handling of the economy. The last on the economy was Herbert Hoover, who also rated the last in terms of luck and next to last in willing to take risks. And the last in foreign policy was LBJ.
But there is some room for movement for George W. I think he excels Franklin Pierce in awfulness. Franklin Pierce at least had the distinction of having a campaign biography written for him by his best friend Nathaniel Hawthorne. He was just a great mediocrity. And W might take down Buchanan, who always was ranked the worst of all time because he did nothing to prevent the civil war. But as our political debate worsens and some people think the civil war was a good thing, we may forgive James Buchanan, especially given the rise in gay history, where he may earn some distinction as the first gay president. The same applies to Andrew Johnson, who clearly was awful but his impeachment was simply the result of raw politics. So George may be trolling soon with Warren, bobbing along the bottom of all time.
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