Come November, I’m ready to party like it’s 1932. We’re in big trouble, my friends, and we’re going to need Barack Obama to be a regular FDR. Personally, I don’t think we’ve had a decent president since Eisenhower, although Kennedy might have turned it around if given a chance. Obama is, without question in my mind, the best potential president we’ve had since Kennedy. If we screw this election up, turn out the lights.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Boo-yah
Chrys and I had a serious conversation last night about joining her cousin in Canada if this election turns the wrong way. Health care and a properly regulated financial market are the attractions.
Attraction for me would be avoidance of a draft for my two sons.
Based on 200 years of Democratic history, I would assume a major war and the draft are coming. Get ready.
I’ll see you up there. They can’t keep me out either. Family.
Boy, will my son’s maternal grandparents be surprised to see me move in next door.
only a couple flies in that ointment:
all that border security, north and south, isn’t only to keep bad guys out…it’s just as effective, if not more so, at keeping people in.
and all that fed scrutiny of out of country financial transactions……food for thought.
Obama will need his communication skills, lots of fireside chats in store.
Eisenhower planned the Bay of Pigs, the Lumumba assassination, the Castro plots, and got us embroiled in Laos when we had no business being there.
Kennedy spent half his first term trying to stop the Castro plots and to come up with a graceful way to end the conflict in Laos, which he ultimately achieved.
You’re great at political analysis. But your analysis of history is not on the same level.
Kennedy authorized the Bay of Pigs.
The CIA handed a poison pen to a would-be Castro assassin the same day that JFK was gunned down.
Kennedy inspired people to public service. Aside from that, you’ll be stretching to find anything he did that he didn’t fail at. I give him credit for not listening to the crazies like Curtis LeMay during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I don’t give him credit for much else.
His election involved Bushian levels of fraud. He is the only president to have an Attorney General less independent than Alberto Gonzales, and RFK’s actions in office amounted to an abuse of power every bit as disgraceful as anything Mitchell did.
Sorry, but I am a believer in Camelot. They failed us. At least LBJ had the courage to give us Civil and Voting Rights while he was blowing it on foreign policy.
The Bay of Pigs plan was authorized under Eisenhower. Kennedy inherited it as a going concern, and was assured that U.S. involvement would be minimal – that we were supporting a native uprising in motion in Cuba – all lies, of course. There was no uprising other than the one the CIA’s Cubans were promulgating.
That poison pen story, oft repeated, is a crock of shit. That exchange didn’t happen that day, per David Atlee Phillips, who had every reason to lie like everyone else but who told the truth in a footnote in his own book.
The CIA’s own IG report admits that the CIA could NOT claim executive authority, i.e., presidential sanction, for the Castro assassination plots. They told the Kennedys about the plots only in the past tense. They never told or got approval for any continuation of the plots. Robert Kennedy told friends he was busy shutting down the plots, and JFK did the same with George Smathers, Ted Szulc and others.
The Kennedy/Nixon election in 1960 had fraud on BOTH sides, a fact often lost, as that was the modus operandi of the day, and in such matters the Kennedys did not believe in unilateral disarmament. That’s why Nixon never challenged it – his team was stealing wherever they could as well.
As for RFK’s actions in office, sheesh, what have you been reading? He was one of the best AG’s this country ever had.
This isn’t about Camelot. And if you’d read some dang REAL history, you’d know that that was the last decent presidency in modern times.
The only reason LBJ gave us the Civil Rights Act was he couldn’t oppose it without causing civil war, and he knew it.
Martin Luther King agreed to let RFK wiretap him so they could both prove to Hoover that King was no communist. But the FBI’s taps went way beyond what RFK had approved.
PLEASE read some real history. Get the really solid, well-documented book by Jim Douglass called JFK and the Unspeakable. It’s in its second hardback printing. The third printing will be a paperback. Don’t wait for that one. Get a real book on the Kennedy administration. You don’t understand that the same people who killed Kennedy have tried to posthumously kill what he stood for in the history books. Because if people understood who Kennedy really was and tried to do, they’d know right away who killed him and why.
not to mention Operation Wetback on the domestic front…
And not to mention using the power of government and Cold War fearmongering to make cars, planes, and the petroleum economy the sole transportation option in the United States. That corrupt, dishonest act may have done more damage to the US and the world than any other presidential mistake in history.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself especially as marketed by those goddamn Republicans.
Yeah but can he see Russia from his house?
One day at a time. I hope he wins, but it’s a long ways to go.
Arghh. Here we go with the IkeLove again. But I know from experience that there’s no talking you out of it. I’d put LBJ well above Eisenhower despite the evil of Vietnam.
Other than the massive Ikeophilia, I totally agree. We say the election is critical every time, but this one really does look like the last chance. Backing Obama, oddly enough, is really a conservative move. If McCain somehow gets to the White House American history will become just the stuff of textbooks with no further connection to present reality. Its traditions and institutions will no longer be recognizable. So in that sense, the GOP this time really will bring change — of the most radical and destructive kind imaginable.
As president, Obama will have to grow to the level of FDR just to find a path from here to a viable national future. Fortunately, he seems to have that potential.
Wasn’t it Eisenhower whose CIA made the coup against Iran’s democratically elected President Mosadegh in order to put the brutal and corrupt Shah in place?
American foreign policy hasn’t changed much, nor will it change noticeably under an Obama presidency. The lust for empire will continue no matter what.
Obama is no FDR. He is not nearly as bad as McCain, but he is no FDR. Have expectations like that, and you are bound to be bitterly disappointed.
Well, FDR was no FDR either before he got elected. I don’t think anybody EXPECTS Obama to end up an FDR-level figure, but some, myself included, sense more potential in that direction than was apparent with any other post WWII president with the possible exception of JFK. It’s just an instinct, a hunch, whatever, and so there’s no argument or evidence for it. Fortunately there’s no need for either: time will tell.
Obama has a number of qualities that make him impressive. To me he certainly is “presidential” in his appearance and demeanor, unlike John McCain, and most certainly unlike Sarah Palin, who is anything but. He is clearly intelligent, well educated, thoughtful, and extremely well spoken – one might even say eloquent at times. I have heard that some people find him cold and aloof, but I just don’t see it at all. And I really appreciate his calm demeanor. It gives one a sense of stability. However, none of that guarantees a good president.
As for JFK, for all his glamour and charisma, he was not a particularly great president if you look at his record. After he was assassinated, of course, he became became a legend. Sadly, being murdered did wonders for his legacy.
Booman,
The thieves are trying to make it impossible for Obama to do a thing after he takes office.
What is the term when the Mafia takes over and then destroys a business?
This is what the Bush cabal has done.