Overall, morons like Tweety who purport to be be pros with his fluffer Howard Fineman miss the fundamental dynamic with this pseudo intellectual exercise. Tweety suddenly blurts he’s mystified how ‘liberals’ made this ranking. Fineman gushes his number one president would be JFK. Allowing these people more air time is crime against the future.If, as Antonio avers, what's past is prologue, then I'm tempted to propose that the present is invariably a crime against the future. Of the list of Big Men reproduced at the other end of the above-linked Strauss piece, I don't just this to say. In my un-humble opinion, Washington was the only good President; ever thus a decline. Kennedy and Wilson were two of the greatest tragic blunderers in American history, the latter a vicious racist who got us involved in a European war, the former a horn-dog ratfucker with a third-rate intellect. Ho Chi Minh reportedly said that he couldn't conceive that America could be so stupid upon the news of Ngo Dinh Diem's death. I suspect that if he uttered it, he did so with inscrutable irony.
-The Stiftung Leo Strauss
Reagan? Truman? America's self-infatuated mythos isn't really so unique among nations, but our genuine attachment to mediocrity is. I recall when Reagan's journals were put out and almost the whole of our official culture stood back and proclaimed that the myth of the unthinking actor could now be put firmly to rest. Here was a man with opinions, not pausing to note just how shallow and inconsequential these opinions actually were. The mere fact of their topicality was taken to indicate intellectual rigor of some sort or other. Truman was a party hack who inherited an already-won war. Of TR, Gore Vidal memorably opined, "Give a sissy a gun and he will kill everything in sight." If the Menckenian logic is to be believed, it was Calvin Coolidge who provided the model of a president. By doing almost nothing, he did almost nothing wrong.
25 comments:
In my un-humble opinion, Washington was the only good President
Awwwww, IOZ loves him some founding-father. How sweet.
I like big strong men who leave without being told. Whatevs.
In my un-humble opinion, Washington was the only good President
Awwwww, IOZ loves him some founding-father. How sweet.
is that a crack in the cynicism?!
...rosebud
I like big strong men who leave without being told.
Then why the hatin' on Truman?
Volunteered to serve in WWI at 33, led an artillery unit (and by most accounts kept them from losing their shit when the shells started landing around them), and left office after one elected term because he felt like serving most of FDR's fourth was, for all intents and purposes, a first term.
Truman was, indeed, a party hack, and a careless political negotiator to boot. His ambush of Molotov is interesting. I'd say that's why, at least for me. There's more, of course, on this yes-man from a Kansas political machine, who was entirely chosen because he was supposed to be inoffensive. Maybe not his fault, but still telling.
I like Jefferson, but as a president he was almost entirely hypocritical (and I guess you might say as a man too). Still worlds better than Adams. And Washington was okay, but his underlings were shit.
The fact that Reagan isn't buried at the bottom of this list pretty much negates any legitimacy it might have otherwise had.
Robert Benchley: "Coolidge is dead"
Dorothy Parker: "How could they tell?
{Velociraptor bursts into room & eats entire Algonquin Round Table.}
-End Scene-
Truman was a party hack but you like Jefferson, America's prototypical party hack?
Say what you want about the Pendergast organization, but the KC (Mo.) they ran had full employment, the best road system in the country, booze, music, and gambling with a remarkably low record of violent crime. They controlled the seats that created the road contracts, and owned the cement company, but they did actually build the roads, and did it well.
If that caliber of party machinery had been at work in Iraq, they'd at least have an infrastucture by now instead of a pile of empty pallets where the money used to be and a handful of bases the showers are an electrical hazard.
But he was tactless with Molotov a few days into his presidency. I'll give ya that.
I like big strong men who leave without being told.
"At least he wasn't a dictator!" is a pretty low bar. Now me, I figure a decent starting requirement to be a good president is "did not own and collect other people."
I think the "big strong men" comment was meant to be at least partially about butt sex and the gays who engage in it. Could be, like, totally mistaken though.
I didn't bash the Kansas machine. I bashed the political naif who came out of it.
And Jefferson, a party hack? I'll take a party founder over a party product.
I'm down with you about Washington though I allow room for Jefferson in the "only."
"Give a sissy a gun and he will kill everything in sight."
Now... a president who takes a round in the chest on his way to make a speech and insists on going ahead and making the speech before seeking medical aide? That might be a number of things but it ain't sissy.
Zarathustra, Zarathustra, wherefore art thou Zarathustra?
I, too, do not understand the fascination with the haberdasher from Missouri. (Full disclosure: when I was about 15 months old, I had my picture taken on the steps of his house in Independence, MO.)
Yeah, I know, buck stops here, give 'em hell, Harry, yadda, yadda, yadda.
As far as I am concerned, he is one of the great unprosecuted war criminals of all time. Targeting (and killing) civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is pretty much the basic definition of a war crime in my book.
You straight people are hilarious.
another crack in the cynicism?
Wavydavy---
Is your book by any chance entitled "As Far I Am Concerned"?
I especially enjoyed the sections on Savonarola and the health benefits of oat bran.
Fuck Washington. He was decisive in replacing the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution and personally led troops against Americans who wouldn't pay taxes.
Here was a man with opinions, not pausing to note just how shallow and inconsequential these opinions actually were
As opposed to yours, Ioz, which only ten people on earth can decipher and nine of those are on drugs.
I vote for Nixon--he ended the draft. Has any President done anything more important---er, other than Ioz's hero, George Washington, whose claim to fame was that caught with an axe in his hand standing beside a cherry tree laying flat on the ground said, Father, I cannot tell a lie.
What. Courage.
the only good president is a dead president.
As opposed to yours, Ioz, which only ten people on earth can decipher and nine of those are on drugs.
Who's the odd one out? I know it's not me...
Anonymous 6:00 a.m.---
To the extent you are in earnest, it's important to clarify here that the famous cherry tree anecdote was created out of whole cloth by Washington's bestselling hagiograher, Parson Weems.
"Fuck Washington. He was decisive in replacing the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution and personally led troops against Americans who wouldn't pay taxes."
TGGP is hard core, but this is interesting :) I have come to believe fervently in the "Lincoln was WRONG WRONG WRONG concept but to extend that to Washington is intriguing and appealing!
Eh, anyone who's led troops against Americans can't be all bad.
"At least he wasn't a dictator!" is a pretty low bar.
Generalissimos who overthrow governments by force very rarely turn out to be genuine democrats.
On the other hand, I disapprove of his "killed his sensei in a duel and he never said why" policy. I disapprove quietly because I don't want to have my hand dipped in a jar of acid.
Where is the anti-war movement?
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