Celebrate Presidents' Day! Go Buy a Mattress!
Wait, Why Do We Have a Holiday for These Guys?
I voted for Joe Biden. He wasn’t my first choice, however. I was hoping that Amy Klobuchar or Kamala Harris or Cory Booker or somebody would step up and seize the nomination. I thought Joe Biden was too old. Guess that makes me an ageist. I am not proud of that, but I’m not as old as Joe Biden and I am not physically or mentally capable of being President of the United States. (Actually, there are a myriad of reasons why I am not capable of being President of the United States.) I was intrigued by much of what Elizabeth Warren was talking about, but she was 70+, too. I wanted someone young and vigorous in the White House.
Anyway, as we all know, Joe turned out to be the candidate, so then the only thing that mattered was winning, thereby ending the four-year chaotic nightmare that was . . . I can’t even type his awful, stupid name. You know who I mean. The worst president in American history.
Joe Biden assumed command under difficult circumstances. Of course, every new president faces challenges, it’s a tough job (how’s that for insight?). I got to thinking about the men who have been president in my lifetime (and, unfortunately, they’ve all been men, so far). I remember the assassination of President Kennedy, but the first president I remember for doing stuff, good or bad, was Lyndon Johnson. LBJ had some wonderful accomplishments during his tenure. He wrangled the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act through a reluctant Congress, even though he knew it would cost his party in voting booths across the South and Midwest for generations to come. Johnson’s legacy is tarnished, as it should be, by his failures in Vietnam. I was too young to protest in the streets against the war, but I was old enough to choose a side.
Richard Nixon (Watergate) followed LBJ as president and his time in the Oval Office (Watergate) has been well chronicled (Watergate). He must be the most written about president ever (Watergate). I think of him as a perfect example of a smart person who did stupid things (Watergate). Tricky Dick was done in by his own insecurities and foibles (Watergate), and, looking back, it seems as though his downfall was inevitable (Watergate).
I could not stand Gerald Ford. He may have been a decent guy, and I liked his wife, Betty, but he pardoned Nixon and I could never get past that. I did not care if Nixon went to prison or not, what I wanted was to have him under oath in a court of law to answer for what he had done. Ford took that away with the pardon. Many of us wondered if Nixon and Ford had a deal – a resignation for a pardon.
The pardon was a big factor in Ford’s 1976 loss to a relatively unknown Georgia governor and peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter. In my opinion, Carter was in over his head. He never figured out how to navigate the morass that was, and still is, Washington DC. He has been a much better ex-president.
In 1980, I registered to vote for the first time. Even though my views were decidedly liberal, and I agreed with the Democrats more often than not, I registered as an Independent. In the presidential election that year, I voted for a Republican. However, it was not Ronald Reagan. It was third party candidate, Rep. John Anderson, a Republican from Illinois. I did not think Jimmy Carter deserved my vote and, frankly, I thought Reagan was full of shit. John Anderson made a lot of sense to me. I guess he is now a footnote to history. I am proud to have voted for him, though. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I thought Reagan was an empty suit, an actor playing a role. I was never sure whether he was lacking intelligence or succumbing to the ravages of age. Perhaps it was both.
During the primary season of 1980, George HW Bush called Reagan’s economic plan “voodoo economics”. The theory was, enact a huge tax cut for the wealthy, which would create jobs and fire up the economy, more than making up for the lost tax revenue, and the resulting windfall of wealth would “trickle-down” to the lower classes, and pay for a gigantic increase for the Department of Defense. Not surprisingly, the trickle-down theory was bullshit. Bush was right. The numbers never did add up. After Reagan sewed up the nomination, he asked none other than George HW Bush to be his running mate. And Bush said yes! He spent the next 8 years as Veep defending what he had dubbed “voodoo economics”. He then won a term as Reagan’s successor, in part by uttering the famous phrase, “Read my lips. No new taxes!” Which blew up in his face when he signed a tax increase into law. It certainly a contributing factor in his loss to Bill Clinton. I understand the concept of political rhetoric, but I felt he could not be trusted. That is why I did not like George HW Bush.
I voted for Bill Clinton twice and he was another example of a smart person who did stupid things. I believe he would be on the list of good presidents if he just could have kept his dick in his pants. No doubt, Slick Willie was slick politically, but there was substance behind the slimy veneer, as well. He was the last president to have a balanced budget, and he confounded Republicans by taking their ideas and skillfully making them his own. He was more of a centrist than I would have liked, but I wonder if maybe the only way a Democrat can be elected and govern in this country, is from the center. His time in office is stained (pun intended) by his wildly inappropriate relationship with a young intern. His subsequent impeachment by House Republicans for lying under oath about the affair taught me that the impeachment of a president without the votes in the Senate to convict, is nothing but partisan political theater, and cheapens the whole process. This would play out again, on down the road . . .
George W Bush was just terrible. He was an accidental president, losing the popular vote by more than 500,000 to Al Gore. Somehow, he garnered more Electoral College votes, allowing him to ascend to the White House. I get depressed when I look at his record. He was in charge when September 11 happened. Through either lies or stupidity, he led us into an unnecessary war against Iraq. Near the end of his second term, he steered the economy into the worst recession since the Great Depression. After he left office, I thought we could never have a worse president than George W Bush. But, I was wrong. Oh, so wrong.
I liked Barack Obama a lot. Intelligent, witty, urbane, vigorous, liberal, he was just the kind of person I wanted in the White House, though I was a bit concerned about his lack of experience on the global stage. However, after what we went through with W, I was eager to have a smart person running the country. Truth is, I feel a bit conflicted about the Obama years. My assessment is that he was a good, not great, president. His biggest mistake was to believe that he could convince at least some Republicans in Congress to vote for his agenda, for the good of the country. He failed at that. And he failed at convincing Americans to vote for Congressional candidates more likely to help him. Consequently, much of his time was spent dealing with a gridlocked, obstructionist Congress, stalling his grand vision for America. It was a shame. So much more good could have been accomplished.
Then in 2016, he who shall not be named astonishingly became president. I referred to him as POTUS – Piece Of Totally Untruthful Shit. The horror and sheer volume of wrongdoing during his four years as leader of the free world (that’s gross to think about) precludes me from going into detail here. I live for the joy of seeing him doing a perp walk on his way to the slammer. How awful a candidate was Hillary Clinton, to lose to that guy? Although, to be fair, she was another Democrat who got the most votes, then got bit in the ass by the Electoral College.
Which brings us back to Ol’ Joe Biden. Good luck, Joe. You’re going to need it.
