After Hours

Ask something
Discussion Locked

On this President's Day - Which one(s) are among your favorite.....

0 helpful
17 replies

by maxwell edison 1 view

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

...... and why?

I'll start with Harry S Truman, one of my absolute favorite.

Why?

[i]The buck stops here[/i]: It was more than a sign on President Truman's desk. The buck really did stop with him. He made no excuses; he made no apologies; he placed no blame.

[i]Give 'em Hell, Harry![/i]: Harry Truman said, "I dont give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think its hell.

A Democrat who didn't kiss the butts of the unions. (Compare the threatened railroad strikes of 1948-1950 to what's going on in Wisconsin today.)

The last U.S. President who did not have a college degree. One of the most common, down-home, plain-speaking presidents we've ever had. One who proved that you don't have to be an ivy-league elite to make tough decisions.

I like Harry!

17 replies

by tigger_two

Harry was one of my Dad's favorites as well. You capture the reason perfectly. Truman was pretty no-nonsense in his approach to virtually everything while maintaining his humility. The haberdasher from Missouri didn't seem to feel a need to put on airs.

It was Truman who made the final decision to use the bomb in Japan. Can't have been an easy call.

by john.a.wills

He smashed the Kremlin Empire. I don't like that he dropped the IBM case, and I wish he had had a clearer vision of world governance, but saying truth to the evil empire was the right thing to do (although it made me a little queasy at the time): it really was an evil empire. Now,can we have a president who speaks truth to Planned Parenthood, the WZO/AIPAC set-up and perhaps a few others?

by ansugisalas

on account of Iran-contra and sending Osama to Afghanistan... One small step for Nuke/Nurse Ronnie, one giant leap for islamist expansionism!

by delbertpgh

Reagan's arms buildup played to both nations' strengths. The Soviet system was best at running a national emergency state, where inefficiencies, corruption, and failure could all be ignored in favor of the current peril. Reagan had a dread of nuclear weapons, and proposed to Gorbachev enormous disarmament measures and sharing of the "star wars" anti-missile technology that the U.S. was then threatening to develop. It was as if a Miss America contestant with a naive dream about world peace were speaking through the mouth of the President of the United States. Reagan really meant it, and managed to convince the Soviet leadership that he meant it. When the sense of national peril eased of, and as Gorbachev loosened the reins on his command-driven country, instead of healing itself it simply fell apart.

I otherwise consider Reagan a trickster, a buffoon, and a tool of the wealthy financial classes, who turned the country backward from prosperity and social democracy. However, I do credit him with saving the world from the most inhuman ideology since the invention of the nation-state, and the U.S. from what seemed like an inevitable war of nuclear annihilation against Russia.

by jamesrl

I see what Reagan did as similar to a big chip bully.

Reagan knew that the USSR economy was in crisis. He knew that the Afghan war wasn't popular with many in Russia. He knew that they didn't have enough gas for their fighter pilots to get enough time in to maintain readiness. He knew, if he gave it a nudge, it might all fall down.

So Star Wars defence systems were a huge overbet. In order to call it, the Soviets had to see if they could afford it, and clearly they could not. Gorbachov was clearly a realist and he had I think the harder task, to convince the rest of the party that it was better to fold than to try and match US spending on the next big initiative. They also looked at what had been happening in Poland, and saw that it might spread.

In the end, the Soviets folded. Like the British empire, they saw it was cheaper to have their former states as trading partners than economic dependents.

by puppybreath

How much damage can you cause when you're only in office 32 days and you're sick the entire time? :-)

by puppybreath

Gore hadn't invented the Internet back then so Quayle would have taken the entire time trying to figure out how to spell "potato".

by tigger_two

In that poor man's defense, the cue card that he was reading from ALSO had the word mis-spelled.

Edit- tag

by puppybreath

that excuse is already reserved for Obama and his teleprompter. Quayle will just have to live with his mistake. :-)

by nicknielsen

When the Saudis started giving us a hard time immediately after the first Gulf War, we should have moved everything the Kuwaitis, Qataris, and Bahrainis would accept to those countries, then taken our ball from Saudi Arabia and gone home.

Since bin Laden's initial focus with al Qaida was on the infidels being allowed on in the same country as Mecca and Medina, it might have taken the wind out of the al Qaida sails for a good long time. But, they have some great propogandists working for them, so it may have only been a year or two.

by delbertpgh

He took the nation from the worst of situations, built up a mandate among the people for the exertion of reunification and all the expense and sacrifice it entailed, learned warfare as war itself evolved and became the model of a leader in time of war, and redeemed the nation by relieving it of the shame of human bondage. He enlarged human rights at the expense of property rights, preserved democracy, preserved the union, and sent it into an expansive future. He had many alternatives, and he took the path that has made us more noble and free. (Southern slaveholders would disagree, asserting he made them less noble and free, and disowned them of their most valuable property without compensation. I see no reason for sympathy, despite the truth of their claims.)

He also left behind some of the greatest political writing in all of human history, and he used it to effect.

Lincoln picked his way down such a difficult course, and made the most improbable gains from hopeless situations, that I would have to call him one of the few cases of a man who made history, rather than the other way around. He was an indispensable agent of change and progress.

This discussion is closed to new replies.