February 19, 2001

 

DONKEY SKELETONS PARADE
OUT OF THE CLOSET

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Given the astonishing number of anti-Clinton remarks coming from former ardent supporters, you can't help but feel the angst in Democrat Land. My take on this, though, is that it goes deeper than the man from Hope. It's time for a full catharsis.

Before Clinton, there were...

Jimmy Carter--

Carter started out as a garden variety Southern segregationist state senator, but was re-born as an anti-Washington populist. Aided by lots of negative vibes toward incumbents, and a weak opponent, this Georgia governor won the 1976 election.

He'll be remembered for the Iran hostages and 20 percent interest rates.

LBJ--

Super-Dem!! Humongous Government programs and a bloody war, to boot. Johnson held to Dem traditions by campaigning on NOT getting us into a war, and then doing just the opposite.

JFK--

Think of FDR with more charisma, and a better looking wife. (At least FDR had a good reason to philander.) Although Dulles got us involved in Vietnam, it was JFK who started the escalation. By any measure, his was a failed presidency, propped up solely by his death.

Harry Truman--

Accidental president, and a product of the Pendergast machine, he was sold as the "common man" but was really a big-time pol. Truman had to step up quickly in 1945, since FDR kept him way out of the loop.

He made the fateful decision to drop the two bombs on Japan, which, in narrow context, was the right thing to do. Of course, that position begs the question of our hostilities with Japan in the first place. Truman presided over the Communist Chinese takeover, and got his own miserable war in Korea. It was pretty much straight downhill for him after that.

He experienced somewhat of a revival before his death in 1972, but lost popularity in the 1980's when it was revealed that he regularly used racial and ethnic slurs.

FDR--

The perfect Dem. He campaigned on keeping us out of the war, but then pushed us into the worst one of all time. He created a socialist federal bureaucracy, supposedly to lead us out of the Great Depression. However, it was his war that did the trick.

Ironically, one of the few Depression era programs that really worked, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, was started by the much reviled Hoover.

A genius at promoting class envy to maintain his political position, FDR gave up over 2000 guys at Pearl, and half of Europe to the Commies. Given his impact on the US and the World, he was far and away our worst president. But he couldn't have done it without the help of his predecessors.

Woodrow Wilson--

In 1912, the Electoral College worked in his favor to give him a landslide victory over the Bull Moose/Republican split. His first term was notable for the introduction of the Income Tax. Campaigning as the peace candidate in 1916, he got us into WWI upon his re- election.

Wilson will be remembered as the man who made Adolf Hitler, when his protracted but very weak Paris negotiations produced the ridiculously punitive Treaty of Versailles.

Let's fast forward to the mid-19th century, and shine the spotlight on the crypto-Dem, who masqueraded as our first Republican president. You know him as the Railsplitter, or Honest Abe.

By today's standards, Lincoln was very much a Dem. After all, he created the notion of the all-powerful Federal government, and talked peace, but brought us our bloodiest war ever. He came across like a populist, but was actually an expert panderer and coalition builder. In fact, it was never clear what, if anything, he truly cared about, besides getting elected. Sound familiar?

He raised the bar for oval office mendacity with his Emancipation Proclamation that freed no one, and his Gettysburg Address that invoked the Revolutionary spirit, but on behalf of the very army that was putting down a rebellion.

After the war, all indications were that he was heading close to the Radical Republican position of extremely harsh treatment for the South, including full military occupation. Perhaps, this is why he was assassinated. Never particularly popular (sending Americans to kill their fellow Americans earned the enmity of many), his cult grew with his passing, even as the divisions he exploited still fester.

Can we now, at long last, rise above internecine political warfare? Beware of those leaders, who build their careers on your back, or even your very life. In times past, public ignorance was encouraged by poor communications, biased media, and ineffective education.

Are we any smarter today?

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