The Kids Love Lincoln
Here’s some Gallup findings that are fun to think about:
Young people, like people who know what they’re talking about, rate Lincoln as Top President. Middle-aged people, meanwhile, are hard-core rightwingers—they put Reagan at the top and have an unusual aversion to FDR. Old people, by contrast, love FDR. The really weird thing here, that you also see in a lot of other polls, is a truly bizarre level of Kennedy-love. If conservatives want to say that Ronald Reagan was a better president than Lincoln or Roosevelt or the oddly underrated George Washington, then we’ll just need to agree to disagree. But I can’t imagine a coherent ideological viewpoint that would justify the high ratings Americans over-35 give to Kennedy.
Now of course if you could take the Kennedy-Johnson years as a whole, then divide them up into one presidency that was dominated by Vietnam and another one that’s responsible for Civil Rights and the Great Society, then you’d have one shitty president and one great president. A lot of people seem to have basically decided to divide things up this way and call the shitty president “Johnson” while the good president is called “Kennedy.” That, however, doesn’t have a great deal to do with reality.
67 Responses to “The Kids Love Lincoln”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
March 6th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
What? No love for Coolidge?
March 6th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
I think people mostly like Kennedy because he was young and handsome and glamorous and he got murdered. Anyone who seriously thinks about the embargo and the “missile gap” and the Bay of Pigs is going to come away disgusted.
March 6th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Kennedy and Johnson were both “shitty” presidents…Although Johnson was far, far, more destructive (both in human life and policy making).
My favorite Great Society program has to be Medicaid and Medicare where up until the Reagan administration they were reimbursing at 100% the cost of a treatment. Another example of not understanding how government policies just play into corporate greed.
Lincoln however had some serious problems. I’m all for saving the Union (and beginning the process of destroying slavery) but suspending habaeus corpus and holding the Maryland (hate that state) legislature at gunpoint makes GWB look like a civil libertarian. Schools really should examine the consequences of that in greater detail…Because it’s things like that that made possible FDRs detaining Japanese Americans, decades of wiretaps by J. Edgar Hoover…and of course, our previous administration’s efforts to “protect” the country.
March 6th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
The differences are small enough that I don’t think it means much of anything, unless there was a really large number of people surveyed, like 10,000 or more. I mean, assuming about 1,000 people under 35 were surveyed, the percent who answered Washington, FDR, JFK and Reagan are all within the margins of error of each other, and maybe Lincoln as well.
And Re: Kennedy, looking for a “coherent ideological viewpoint” seems baffling. Why bother? The other presidents were too human and flawed (except for Washington, I don’t have any glib story to explain his low rating), but dying like Kennedy did lets people remember him however they want.
March 6th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Our comment on this.
March 6th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Kennedy does get a weird benefit of the doubt as a result of his assassination. Many people seem to assume that he would have followed through on all the civil rights legislation that Johnson passed, and would have avoided the Vietnam War. I think there’s almost no reason to think this is true. Kennedy would have had a tougher time with civil rights than Johnson as he was a northerner who did not have Johnson’s legsislative gifts and also would not have benefited from the “mandate” that Johnson claimed up for civil rights upon Kennedy’s death. On the Vietnam front Kennedy escalated U.S. involvement there before his death, and while he expressed his desire to leave Vietnam, he also made it clear he would not tolerate a communist government in North Vietnam.
March 6th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
I think you’re drawing entirely too many conclusions from this poll, Matt.
So Lincoln beats both Kennedy and FDR by 3 percentage points and someone he runs away with it? He only got 22% of the vote!?!
Also, America LOVES the Kennedy’s. There is really nothing under the covers for the reason of that. He was young, ambitious and assassinated. He could have been a communist himself and in 2009 people would still love him.
March 6th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Kennedy was the first president who had to deal with the fact that the US could be destroyed by nuclear weapons. He certainly didn’t do as well as he could have, but, there was no nuclear war. When you look at the small number of presidents who have had to deal with difficult circumstances and who have not screwed up miserably, you have a very small list with Kennedy on it.
Personally, I don’t know how anyone could choose other than Lincoln, Roosevelt or Washington.
March 6th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
I suppose you could make an argument for Taft. He was certainly a great man in one way.
March 6th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
I’m sure I’ll catch hell for it, but let me put in a good word for Johnson. Everything Kennedy wanted to do was actually done by Johnson. And Johnson had the, umm methods shall we say, to get it done. If it were up to Kennedy to get the Civil Rights Act passed, it would never have been passed. It took Johnson threatening to close military bases to get that through Congress. Johnson certainly made a big mistake in Vietnam, but it was Kennedy who put him up to it. He should have fired Kennedy’s advisers the day he took office. Robert McNamara should never have been giving Johnson advice. Granted, Johnson was too weak to fire McNamara. He never really understood foreign policy to be confident in it. So he was McNamara’d into submission. And millions died. Oops. But Johnson was awesome when it came to domestic policy. He was FDR with a swagger. Johnson deserves credit for that. And I’d like to see Obama bring back the “Johnson Treatment.”
March 6th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
So Lincoln beats both Kennedy and FDR by 3 percentage points and someone he runs away with it? He only got 22% of the vote!?!
March 6th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
The only correct answer to this question is George Washington. Lincoln is a distant, but clear, second place. I have no idea who would be third… perhaps Eisenhower or Polk. Maybe Teddy Roosevelt.
Kennedy was the first president who had to deal with the fact that the US could be destroyed by nuclear weapons.
This is not really true. Eisenhower dealt with a Soviet Union with significant nuclear capabilities and somehow managed not to goad them towards the brink of mutual annihilation.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Young people, like people who know what they’re talking about, rate Lincoln as Top President.
Ha. You give people way more respect than they deserve. Young people like Lincoln and Washington because that’s who they know. Middle aged people like Reagan because they were exposed to his sense of humour and charisma. And old people like FDR because he had the largest effect on their lives.
Unfortunately, the historians and educated progressives who understand how important LBJ was in advancing their interests are greatly outnumbered by those who say LBJ=war or “LBJ, LB who?”
And I doubt once these young people live through some charismatic or influential presidency (Obama?) they will like Lincoln any more than the rest.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
“He was certainly a great man in one way.”
In terms of physical mass, Taft was certainly a great president. If nothing else, he gave us the Seventh Inning Stretch. Where would Harry Caray have been without him? Okay, drunk and announcing baseball, but still….
March 6th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Reagan beats Lincoln in my cohort? I swim in a sea of stupid.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
fostert, don’t apologize for defending Johnson! For more Johnson love (yes, I know — ick) check out Al Franken’s quickie profile of him in, I think, Lies and the Lying Liars. Johnson was the great unappreciated Prez of the 20th century. Yes, I know in some quarters he gets some play, but even there he’s underrated.
And I know I’m not the first to say it, but it bears repeating: no elected official other than Lincoln did more to set the stage for the possibility of an African-American prez. And he’s the greatest Texan ever not named Willie Nelson.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
“And he’s the greatest Texan ever not named Willie Nelson.”
I’ll drink to that. Cheers! But you know, Bob Wills was a great Texan, even if he was born in Oklahoma. Take me back to Tulsa, baby!
March 6th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
I am not sure my history on Washington is very clear, but I think he was actually just an OK president. Yes he had no precedent to work with so you have to give him credit there, but Washington’s really great moment was when he turned over the Army to congress after we won the revolution. Had he been so inclined he might have been able to make himself king and even if he had failed in such an effort he could have done a lot of damage. Maybe somebody could explain what it is about Washington’s presidency that was so awesome.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
It boggles the mind that Reagan was even included in this poll. What did he accomplish, except doubling the national debt (just like his spiritual heir, W Bush) and waging war against the middle class? The right-wing propaganda about the imaginary greatness of Reagan has been all too successful.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
I find it interesting that those old enough to have been alive during FDR’s administration rate him as best versus (basically) their kids who put Reagan first.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
“You give people way more respect than they deserve. Young people like Lincoln and Washington because that’s who they know.”
Could be, but there’s a real good reason that those are the two that they know. Washington was a general who won when it counted, let a bunch of brainy freedom nerds write the constitution, and then spent the rest of his life refusing the crown that was his for the taking.
Great presidents are the ones who, at moments when the survival of the Republic is in question, choose the right path. Washington, undeniably, is first and foremost among these.
Lincoln makes the list for invading and conquering the secessionist South. That can’t have been an easy call. The costs were appalling, and simply letting the confederates go would have been far easier.
FDR destroyed fascism just as surely as if he’d killed it with his bare hands. On top of that, he did in a way that left us well-positioned to defeat Communism in the Cold War. Billiards players call that a “nice leave.”
JFK…so badly mishandled superpower relations that he nearly destroyed human civilization. Measured against that, his calamitous invasion of Vietnam seems almost trivial.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
“Take me back to Tulsa, baby!”
And smoke a doobie with Willie. I’ve never met Willie, but we’re already friends. As Willie says: “strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet.” And he’ll certainly smoke a doobie with me. He doesn’t do anything without smoking a doobie first. The good thing is that he has a place up here in Colorado. He’s planning ahead. When Texans die, they don’t go to Heaven, they just move to Colorado. But Willie’s already here. Maybe I’ll meet him.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I was probably too young to appreciate Reagan, but I never got his “charisma.” Even the beloved Noonanisms (”slipped the surly bonds of earth,” etc.) came across to me as, “I am listening to something that I am supposed to think is profound” rather than anything I was bowled over by.
My parents, who were early-boomers, talked about LBJ in tones that many senior-citizens reserved for FDR. Then again, everyone in my family managed to avoid getting drafted for Vietnam.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Looked at another way Lincoln oversaw the wholesale murder of over half a million of his fellows (that is 5 millions in today’s population) while setting the stage for over a century of Jim Crow North and South.
Which is not to argue that Jeff Davis was not batshit crazy.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Bob Wills was most assuredly born in Texas. 104 years ago today, in fact.
March 6th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Maybe somebody could explain what it is about Washington’s presidency that was so awesome.
When he took over the country was in bad shape. The government had no reliable tax collection, was in debt and had no access to credit. There had been popular uprisings in many places. There was a real threat of foreign invasion.
By the time he left, these problems had been basically solved.
Turning over the Adams was important, but as that was his prefered successor, I always thought Adams handing things over the Jefferson in a peaceful manner was much more important.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
“Bob Wills was most assuredly born in Texas.”
Wow, I stand corrected. He spent a long time in Oklahoma, so I thought he was born there. Apparently, he’s even more pure Texan than I thought. Happy birthday, Bob. We miss you, but we still listen to you.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Am I the only one disturbed by the fact that a plurality (28%) of the 35-64 year olds think Reagan was our greatest President?
WTF?
March 6th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Yeah, Wills ended up in Tulsa after being run out of Ft. Worth by W. Lee O’Daniel, who oddly enough was the only man ever to beat LBJ in an election.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Looked at another way Lincoln oversaw the wholesale murder of over half a million of his fellows (that is 5 millions in today’s population) while setting the stage for over a century of Jim Crow North and South.
That is another way to look at it, but of course it’s a horrendously distorted and incorrect way to look at it.
“Wholesale murder”? Since when is a war murder?
“Setting the stage for Jim Crow”?? Jim Crow was terrible, but it was much better than slavery. And what “set the stage” was not the Civil War but Reconstruction which, you might be aware, Lincoln was not around for.
There are legitimate, serious cases that can be made against Lincoln (see comment #3) but these are simply not among them..
March 6th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Even Reagan hyped JFK. He was the only other modern tax-cutter. Conservatives may be misguided, but there is a consistency of sorts.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
“W. Lee O’Daniel, who oddly enough was the only man ever to beat LBJ in an election”
I’m sure Mr O’Daniel was a bastard of extremely ill repute. Most Texas politicians are. But I’ll remove my Stetson and bow to his glory. Anyone who can beat Johnson deserves my respect. Ho Chi Minh was the only other person who could stand up to Johnson.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
You can really see the pendulum swaying back and forth between generations — left, right, left … thankfully the young ones are shifting left.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
You can’t generalize by age. I despise Reagan and so did my parents. No one in my family voted for him.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
“Ho Chi Minh was the only other person who could stand up to Johnson.”
That brings up an interesting point. We’ve had some great leaders, but we really don’t have anyone who rises to the level of Ho Chi Minh. He had some bad policies and some unpalatable methods, but he really did secure independence for Vietnam, and he did a lot of things to move Vietnam forward. There’s a really good reason why Vietnamese think he’s George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson all rolled up into one. He was a great man, and I’ve heard that said by former South Vietnamese soldiers. But if we really want to talk about a great leader, there’s one that stands out: Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. What he did was impossible, yet it happened anyway.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Kennedy’s actual accomplishments were not great, and his Vietnam blunder was. But Kennedy helped usher in a much more modern America, one with more civil rights, more science, less corruption, more cultural energy and more public service.
Kennedy might have become a great president, the Teddy Roosevelt of the Democratic party. In his short time, he certainly helped turn the tide in an America whose culture was stale, whose politics were cynical, whose science was falling behind the USSR, whose international relations focused on status quo rather than international progress. He was a pivotal progressive figure.
Still, I would put Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR far ahead. These were the greatest.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Tyro,
I wasn’t born in the Reagan era either but just read one of his biographies (or autobiography) or watch this and you can understand why so many ordinary right-leaning people liked him. I admit many also probably saw this as facetious but that just means he was polarizing not unpopular.
Also, try and put this into perspective. The 1970s were a period of economic and political malaise and politicians were seen as either corrupt or out of touch. Why is it then so hard to imagine that an optimistic, friendly president, ruling over a relatively strong economic and political period, would be well liked?
March 6th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Kennedy understandably gets high marks, as he did while he was living — except from The Herald Tribune. The resolution of the Cuban missle crisis saved civilization. His administration was a hive of innovators who collectively gave liberalism a needed postwar reboot. As Evans & Novak wrote in 1966 [before they morphed from reporters to propagandists], sufficient votes were lined up for the passage of the Civil Rights bill by 11/63.
Bay of Pigs was a fiasco, but JFK loses points principally because this plot, on which he got bad advice, failed. Most importantly, he learned from it.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
On the Vietnam front Kennedy escalated U.S. involvement there before his death, and while he expressed his desire to leave Vietnam, he also made it clear he would not tolerate a communist government in North Vietnam.
I’m pretty sure that’s wrong…
March 6th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
“We’ve had some great leaders, but we really don’t have anyone who rises to the level of Ho Chi Minh.”
Maybe Truman should have paid attention to him.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
fostert, we are very simpatico today. I didn’t know that anyone else on the planet admired both Bob Wills and Ataturk. Yet here you are.
And in my personal ranking of greatest Texans — and I do have one — Bob Wills comes in a close 4th to Sam Houston’s 3rd.
Not that anyone cares, but here’s the top 10:
1. Willie (always remember to ask yourself . . . What Would Willie Do?)
2. LBJ
3. Sam Houston
4. Bob Wills
5. Audie Murphy
6. Kris Kristofferson
7. Molly Ivins
8. Terry Southern/Larry McMurtry (tie -literary division)
9. Jim Hightower/Henry B. Gonzalez (tie – elected official division)
10. Carol Burnett
And a bonus category for the entire Maverick family, from Sam down to Maury, Jr.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
I have a series looking at the Presidents on my blog (still in the late 19th Century at this point).
I wonder about all this wuzrobbed talk about Washington. Washington was a great leader, but he was not a particularly accomplished General nor did his Presidency have many big lasting elements. It is probably easy to underestimate him since he was establishing how everything runs, important but not glamorous, but I don’t see anything there to compare to Lincoln or Jefferson (where is he in this poll?).
March 6th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
CS,
What about Anne Richards?
March 6th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Micheline, Ann was indeed a great Texan, but I’ve had her lingering at 11 with Lyle Lovett. I should probably move her up. Consider her switched with Hightower.
March 6th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
It’s probably got a lot to do with the fact that I tend to think of Ivins and Richards as the same person. Which, in a lot of ways, they were.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
The poll makes perfect sense. The codgers only remember how their parents were grateful to FDR for saving their world. The young are cynical and, tho susceptible to the right flavor of hype & spin, are aware that that hype and spin are creating fake realities everywhere. JFK and Reagan fall into this category for them. Both have been elevated by hype and fake mythology and the young aren’t buying it. (The Peace Speech gives those of us in the middle the sense that JFK might have tried to step up onto the podium if not killed, but otherwise his showing was a bit of a mess.) Lincoln is one of the few who has (rightfully) always been high in the baloney American history we’re fed, so he holds up with the youth.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Shorter Matt: most people don’t know much about history.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
As a political historian, I love these debates. Some notes:
1. Washington is underrated because he was not a great President. A great general, albeit one who had to learn on the job and made a lot of mistakes along the way; a critical founding father whose influence in crafting independence and the constitution should not be underestimated. But his presidency was not great. He couldn’t control the infighting in his own cabinet, he failed to pass any of his presidential initiatives, and his foreign policy was ok.
2. Lincoln: his military seizure of the Maryland legislature I view as totally legitimate, given that the legislature was on the verge of committing treason by seceding.
3. Why always the usual suspects: I think it’s a product of two things. First, they tend to be earlier presidents, back when we were lest critical and/or cynical about our presidents; Washington, Lincoln, and FDR did a lot of things we’d generally classify as bad, but we tend to focus on their positive attributes in a way we don’t do for more modern presidents like LBJ. Second, they tended to serve in the middle of great crises that expanded the field for presidential endeavor – Lincoln was a great president because he had a Civil War to fight; if he had been president in the 1840s or the 1880s I doubt we’d remember him as well.
4. Underrated Presidents and Resurrected Presidents: a lot of presidents sometimes get unfairly overlooked because of prior generations of historians; Grant, for example, should get a lot of credit for enforcing civil rights law and destroying the KKK for a generation; Eisenhower looks pretty damn good when you’re not operating from a perspective that takes FDR as the norm of what presidents should be like. However, some presidents I feel have been unduly resurrected and should be re interred in the graveyard of bad presidents – Nixon’s one of them, but I preemptively would include Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover in the face of recent attempts to rehabilitate them from the right.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
nor did his Presidency have many big lasting elements
Except for the United States of America.
Without him (and his unequaled team) what happened in 1860 happens by 1796.
And we wind up roughly as fragmented in North America as they are in South America. Possibly (probably) not the worst thing, but definitely something radically different.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
To add to Mr Atwell fourth point, Polk is getting a much deserved surge in reputation.
Grant however, deserves the blame for just what you giving him credit for. His obscene levels of corruption led the way for a Democratic resurgence. But since Tilden wasn’t able to seal the deal (but also was robbed worse than Gore) the bargain to ‘move on’ with the Democrats led to the end of reconstruction and a hundred years of solitude.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
90% of the comments here show you’re fucking idiots, who know knothing about history. Get a fucking education.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Please, James G., don’t be coy . . . tell us who the lucky 10% is!
Also apropos of James G.’s comment: while a traditional liberal-arts education is fun and you learn a lot about history if you really apply yourself, there’s nothing quite like the joy that can be had from a fucking education. For one thing, you look forward to study hall quite a bit more. For another, it’s far more practical as the lessons last a lifetime. So I second James G’s adminition, and charge all of you to get a fucking education. The world will be a better place.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
I find it hard to condemn Lincoln’s suspension of habaes corpus, given that 1.9.2 says “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” I mean, there was a rebellion going on, and it did threaten public safety, so it seems to me that Lincoln was hardly stretching the constitution by suspending it.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Amen to #55 and #50, comment #3 is actually teh unserious.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
JFK deserves to be in the top five of presidents due to his actions in the Cuban Missile Crisis. If Richard Nixon or Johnson were president there would have been a nuclear war.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
John Henninger Says:
March 6th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
JFK deserves to be in the top five of presidents due to his actions in the Cuban Missile Crisis. If Richard Nixon or Johnson were president there would have been a nuclear war.
===========================================================
What most (including you) forget is that there wouldn’t have been a Cuban Missile Crisis if it hadn’t been for JFK’s feckless handling of the Bay of Pigs and the erection of the Berlin Wall. Also his FTF meeting with Krushchev in Vienna was a self-admitted disaster where the Russian brow-beat him and verbally pushed him around.
Krushchev was convinced JFK was weak and he could push him around, which led to the missile deployment in Cuba. Our Joint Chiefs of Staff had seen it all too, which was why they were so insistent on pushing him to respond.
JFK got the missiles out of Cuba, but we gave away our missiles in Turkey and we were bound never to invade Cuba. He was no brilliant hero.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
It’s funny because I always thought the great men were the ones that prevented war and the resulting death of thousands of people.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Kennedy and Reagan are rated highly not because of what they achieved but how they made people feel.
I would rank John Kennedy fourth in the list of greatest children of Joe and Rose.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
I knew the boomers were dolts. More evidence.
Everyone with any sense knows the list is: 1) Washington, 2) Lincoln, 3) FDR.
March 7th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Johnson seems to be rated too low and Kennedy too high in the Presidential greatness surveys where W has been placed fifth from the bottom. Without Johnson, would you have had Obama?
March 7th, 2009 at 9:43 am
I knew the boomers were dolts. More evidence.
Everyone with any sense knows the list is: 1) Washington, 2) Lincoln, 3) FDR.
I’m a boomer and that’s how I would rank ‘em. After that, it get’s tough. Jefferson, Teddy, LBJ — all did enormous things and had enormous dead spots in their characters.
March 7th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Linus–you exhibit a common misunderstanding of the chain of events that caused the Civil War. Secession began in December 1860 as a result of Lincoln’s electoral victory; by the time Lincoln was sworn in in March 1861, Buchanon (the worst president) had already (unconstitutionally) recognized secession and allowed the seizure of federal money and munitions in the seceding states.
Lincoln, who didn’t recognize secession, tried to retrieve the federal property; the secessionists responded with full-out armed conflict. In a lot of ways, the war was so bloody because Lincoln treated it as a revolt until 1863 or so. An immediate response with Sherman’s march (which was not all that bloody) may well have broken the rising secessionist ethic.
So, in that regard, Lincoln messed up; however, the electoral claim that he would abolish slavery was as irrational and meaningless as the GOP’s claim that Obama will lead a Leninist revolution. (Of course, once the slave-holding states en masse refuse to vote to overturn the Emancipation Proclamation, abolition becomes very simple).
Also, Washington only deserves credit for allowing the smarter Founders to establish the recognizable USA. I don’t feel like he brings much to the table himself. OTOH, I’m reading John Adams right now.
March 8th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Re: What did he accomplish, except doubling the national debt (just like his spiritual heir, W Bush) and waging war against the middle class?
Oh, I dunno….collaborating in the butchery of tens of thousands of Central American peasants seems to be pretty impressive to me.
John Henninger,
Kennedy _precipitated_ the Cuban Missile Crisis by launching an illegal and immoral invasion of Cuba. If he hadn’t threatened Cuba and attempted an invasion, they would not have requested those missiles in the first place.
March 16th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
sry i just know how to write my name in arabic
) i dnot think that i understand .. i hate english itis very difcult . thanks
March 25th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
It seems like something is missing, no?