I do not mean that in a negative way. The best presidents have actually been pretty good for the country, despite their flaws. LBJ gave us the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and Medicare. However, he was only invited to the show, because he gave his big corporate donor, Kellog Brown & Root, the quagmire in Vietnam. The U.S. ended up spending several billion (1960s) dollars to build infrastructure in that country during the Johnson administration, and KBR was the big recipient of that corporate welfare
http://www.counterpunch.org/carter12112003.html
Bill Clinton turned the economy around and brought (short term) prosperity for some of the nation’s most oppressed citizens. However, he never held Janet Reno accountable for the massacre of civilians in Waco----an error that would end up costing him dearly when she allowed the Starr Conspiracy to move ahead.
FDR, that most laudable of presidents, who was beholden to no special interests because he was as rich as sin---people do not like to remember what he did to Japanese-Americans during World War II or how he deliberately ignored the plight of Jewish people in Europe, because fighting for non Christians was not politically expedient.
JFK entered office with the hopes of America, sick and tired of red baiting and the Cold War, riding on his head. His administration was dubbed Camelot. And yet, maybe it should have been called Denmark, as in the state in which something was rotten. How else do you explain the Bay of Pigs or the way he and his brother wiretapped Dr. King?
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There never has been and there never will be a “perfect” United States president. The whole notion of perfection in an elected leader is anti-democratic, smacking of divine right---you know, that concept which Founder Tom Paine shot down so eloquently in Common Sense .
- But where says some is the King of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.
http://www.ushistory.org/paine/commonsense/sense4.htm
Got that? America is only as good as her laws . The president is elected to enforce those laws. We should judge his worth by how well he does that job.
The mark of a truly bad president is not failure to right injustice with a stroke of a pen. A wretched president is one who believes that he is above the law, like Richard Nixon with his illegal invasions of Cambodia and Laos and George W. Bush with his practice of legislation by administrative decree. A bad president tells his DOJ to ignore the Voting Rights Act and his EPA to ignore the Clean Air Act. W.’s ultimate crime, the one that history will hold him accountable for, is the way he broke the law, time after time, whenever it stood in the way of his ambitions.
What are Obama’s sin? He has failed to light a fire under Congress to force them to enact meaningful health care reform. He has failed to prosecute 1) banksters 2) Bush administration officials 3) insert your favorite villain here. He has not vetoed DOMA retroactively----now there is a notion. If voters really want one man to have the power to write and unwrite the law, maybe they should pass a Constitutional amendment giving him that power. It would make things so much simpler. We would not need elections anymore. We could give all the power to Il Duce ---pardon me, the president . Then our chief executive would have no excuse for not doing all the things he said he would do. Show of hands among the self styled “progressives” how many want to see this added to the Constitution?
We all have a constitutionally guaranteed right to bitch and moan about what our elected political leaders are doing. Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to exercise that right against one of their own. It is the very nature of the Party, which tries to include many different types of people with many different points of view. Our motto is “Strength through Diversity.” We expect our leaders to do their best to find common ground that will benefit all, on the theory that when all members of a democracy prosper, the whole democracy is stronger.
Maybe I am just paranoid by nature, but when I see the corporate media paying so much attention to the supposed rift between Obama and the base, I do not see a rift between Obama and the base. I see a corporate media which wants us to believe that there is a rift. Why? Why did the mainstream media conspire to label Al Gore a liar, when W. told so many lies? Why did CBS fire Dan Rather after the Bush AWOL story? Why did reporters give serious coverage to folks that said that Kerry, not Nixon, was responsible for the incursion into Cambodia?
For the two or three readers who do not know what was at stake in the 2000 and 2004 elections, I will remind you. Karl Rove promised the corporate media unlimited mergers and acquisitions. “Give this election to W.” he said “And you can form one big news monopoly with the GOP’s blessing.” Never mind that such a behemoth news company would violate United States law. W. was the hero of the corporate fascists because he was willing the break the law.
The mark of a good Democratic president should be his eagerness to uphold the law.
Now, I understand that even Democrats get corrupted by the more or less universally held notion that “Gee! Wouldn’t it be great if we had a man in Washington who could fix it all?” Read how Noam Chomsky predicted that the executive powers which Nixon grabbed for himself would not be trimmed even in the wake of the Watergate trials.
- The Watergate affair and the sordid story that has unfolded since are not without significance. They indicate, once again, how frail are the barriers to some form of fascism in a state capitalist system in crisis. There is little prospect for a meaningful reaction to the Watergate disclosures, given the narrow conservatism of American political ideology and the absence of any mass political parties or organized social forces that offer an alternative to the centralization of economic and political power in the major corporations, the law firms that cater to their interests, and the technical intelligentsia who do their bidding, both in the private sector and in state institutions. With no real alternative in view, opposition is immobilized and there is a natural fear, even among the liberal opposition, that the power of the Presidency will be eroded and the ship of state will drift aimlessly. The likely result will therefore be a continuation of the process of centralization of power in the executive, which will continue to be staffed by representatives of those who rule the economy and which will be responsive to their conception of domestic and global order.
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19730920.htm
I am not afraid of Obama. I am afraid of the American desire for a messianic leader. When did we stop listening to the Founder’s injunction
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
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