AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

What can you expect; he was eating jelly belly candy or napping; both are pretty addictive at "that" age. LOL

It's evident that you don't have to expect much at all when you vote Republican, CI.

You got that right Okie--Note the following-

Stimulus: Spending All That MoneyArticle
Video
Commentsmore in Politics »Email Printer Friendly Share:
Yahoo Buzz facebook MySpace LinkedIn Digg del.icio.us NewsVine StumbleUpon Mixx Text Size
By STEPHEN POWER and NEIL KING JR.
(See Correction & Amplification below.)

Minnesota's Sage Electrochromics Inc. has been ready for months to move on just the sort of project the Obama administration hopes will bolster the U.S. economy: a $65 million factory that would make energy-saving windows and generate 250 new jobs.

So what's holding it up? The Energy Department, whose fledgling loan-guarantee office has yet to approve a single project, including the proposed Sage glass factory, since the loan program launched in early 2007.

President Barack Obama plans to rely heavily on agencies like the Energy Department to approve contracts and issue loan guarantees and grants at a record clip in the $789 billion stimulus plan.

But there are signs that parts of the federal bureaucracy will need an overhaul to handle the huge workload heading their way. Such worries are apparent at the Energy Department, which will play a key role in Mr. Obama's bid to revive the economy and wean the country off oil.

View Full Image

Associated Press
Energy Secretary Steven Chu, with President Barack Obama, says he plans to speed up spending at the DOE.
The stimulus bill nearing a final vote in Congress could pump as much as $170 billion into projects such as highways, Internet broadband and public-housing repairs. Of that, about a quarter -- or some $40 billion -- could go to the Energy Department. The agency would be under the gun to swiftly hand out money to projects that would modernize the electric grid, build electric cars and make homes and buildings more energy efficient.

The new energy secretary, Steven Chu, has barely moved into his office overlooking the Smithsonian Castle. He says he'll have to transform how parts of his agency work if the president's stimulus plan is to succeed.

"We've got to do it," Mr. Chu said in an interview. "Otherwise it's just going to be a bust."

Other agencies face steep challenges, too. An obscure Commerce Department office with a $19 million budget and fewer than 20 grant officers could end up in charge of $7 billion in grants to expand Internet access in rural areas. A Congressional Budget Office report said it could take eight years for those grants to be issued because the amount of money would "far exceed" the agency's traditional budget and require the deployment of technology that is "not widely available today."

The spending demands could prove particularly taxing at the DOE. The Energy Department has had limited experience pulling off big, transformative energy projects. Most of the department's $25 billion budget goes toward maintaining the nation's nuclear stockpile, cleaning up former weapons plants, and doing basic scientific research.

"DOE is going to have to dramatically change how it does business if it hopes to push all this money out the door," says Karen Harbert, a former senior Energy Department official who now directs the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's lobbying efforts on energy issues. "They are going to need more people, more oversight and more freedom to waive regulations."

History of Delays
The department has a history of delays and of letting costs spiral. It has missed so many deadlines for setting energy-efficiency standards for appliances, for example, that Mr. Obama last week ordered the agency to get it done by August this year. The approval process for guaranteeing loans to energy projects, meanwhile, has dragged on for roughly two years and counting. And last month, the Government Accountability Office cited the agency's "inadequate management and oversight of its contractors" when it put the department on its list of agencies at "high risk" for waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement.

Where the Money Goes
Selected programs from the $789.2 billion billHow the Stimulus Plans Differed
Compare the House and Senate versions of the stimulus legislation.Related Reading
House Passes Stimulus BillCongress Moves Ahead on StimulusEmanuel Says Obama Team Lost Message Funds for Projects Will Flow to Tech FirmsBuyout Firms Could Reap WindfallMajor Funding for Unemployed, PoorFinal Bill Boosts Rail SpendingEducation, Transportation Jobs Would Get BoostBill Provides $40 Billion for Energy ProjectsExecutive Compensation Limits Included in PlanTrade Adjusted Assistance Extended to Service SectorRail Advocates Win in Stimulus BillFinal Text of the Agreement
Text of the Conference Report -- Division AText of the Conference Report -- Division BJoint Explanatory Statement -- Division AJoint Explanatory Statement -- Division BOther Documents
Budget Impact of LegislationFact sheet from Speaker Pelosi's officeDraft text of the Senate's stimulus billTax, health, state fiscal relief and other provisionsDiscuss
Do you think the stimulus legislation will work?How would you grade Obama's handling of the economy?Video
Video: Stimulus Bill on Track for SigningVideo: The Prospects for a U.S. RecoveryVideo: Skepticism Surrounds Stimulus PlanGregory Friedman, the DOE's inspector general, whose office acts as the agency's in-house watchdog, knows the department's weak spots well after holding the position for more than a decade. The House version of the stimulus bill before Congress gives Mr. Friedman's office $15 million to track how all the new money coming into the DOE will be spent.

"Forty billion dollars is a huge amount of money," says Mr. Friedman of the DOE's potential windfall. "Absorbing the money, making sure it's spent appropriately and gets into the hands of the right recipients...are going to be significant challenges."

A Four-Week Window
Mr. Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose last job was running the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, says one of his first priorities at the DOE is getting projects that are already in the pipeline, like the Sage glass factory, up and running. To agency employees who say such projects need months of additional consideration, "we're saying, 'Tell us what you need to do in order to get them [decided] in four weeks,'" Mr. Chu says.

Sage and more than a dozen other companies have so far labored for more than two years to win loan guarantees through a program authorized by Congress in 2005. Wary of financing projects that might default, the Bush administration took another two years to adopt regulations governing the program. Congress eventually authorized the DOE to issue $42.5 billion in loan guarantees for ventures that many lenders would otherwise consider too risky.

The program is now seen as a test of the department's ability to speed up projects that could both create jobs and help steer the country away from a reliance on oil. But the experience of some of the companies still awaiting their loan guarantees raises questions about whether the DOE will be able to radically change its ways fast enough.

Sage Electrochromics makes windows that can get darker or lighter on command, making rooms easier to cool in summer or warmer in winter. Sage first approached the Energy Department in late 2006 about securing a loan guarantee that would allow the company to build its first commercial-scale glass factory about 40 miles south of the Twin Cities in Minnesota.

In October 2007, Sage was one of 16 companies that won initial approval. The company, which is seeking a $65 million loan guarantee, is now awaiting a ruling from the DOE on whether it will have to pay a fee for the service. After that comes a due-diligence review that will require a team of lawyers, engineers and market researchers, and could cost up to $1 million, according to Sage estimates.

"I'm guessing that we will have the money by the end of the year at the earliest," says Mike Kennedy, Sage's chief financial officer. "There has to be a way to do this faster."

In Massachusetts, Beacon Power Co. has stood in line for 25 months to win approval for a $50 million loan guarantee that would let the company break ground on an electricity-storage plant about 30 miles southeast of Albany, N.Y. The plant would absorb power and feed it back onto the grid when the supply drops, a function that traditional power plants do much less efficiently.

The vetting has been so thorough, says Beacon spokesman Gene Hunt, that the company to date has supplied the Energy Department with 96 documents, which together fill six thick, three-ring binders. One of the documents is a draft 87-page environmental-impact study for the proposed two-acre site. That study required Beacon to hire archaeologists to scour the site for signs of prehistoric remains. The team found a mound of debris from a century ago that was deemed of no historic value.

David Frantz, who directs the DOE's loan-guarantee program, said he couldn't comment on specific applications, but said the agency is moving to "significantly shorten the cycle time from application to loan guarantee to ensure good projects get funded quickly."

On Thursday, Andy Karsner, assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy under President George W. Bush, told a Senate panel that a combination of "bureaucratic dysfunction," "organizational intransigence," and "institutional barriers" had contributed to the agency's "painfully slow" progress on loan-guarantee applications in recent years.

An Earful About Delays
The Energy Department has missed deadlines and misjudged the costs of projects before. Shortly before Mr. Obama took office, the agency halted contract talks on more than $2 billion worth of energy-efficiency projects at federal buildings, after realizing belatedly that the projects' costs would exceed the limits the department had set for them. An Energy Department spokesman said the agency didn't "adequately keep track of the value of projects in the pipeline," but that most of the affected projects were still in their early stages and that the department is working to move them along "with as little disruption or delay as possible."

Mr. Chu has heard an earful about such delays. He says when it comes to loan guarantees, the level of documentation the agency requires from companies "may be too much." He says he's talking to officials at other agencies that he says have "a better track record" of getting financial aid to companies quickly. Some of those agencies' employees could be temporarily reassigned to the DOE to help it mete out funds.

Speeding Up the Process
His aides are also pressing the agency's lawyers and loan-guarantee managers to identify ways to speed up the process. The agency's legal department, says Mr. Chu, has been "very conservative," in waiting to vet loan-guarantee applications until after the deadline for submissions has passed, rather than "triaging" them on a "rolling" basis.

David Hill, who was the Energy Department's general counsel under President Bush, says there are reasons for the DOE to tread carefully in funding alternative-energy projects. During the 1970s, he says, the DOE made multiple loan guarantees to support the development of synthetic fuels and geothermal power, only to see many of those projects default and the projects' sponsors abandon them.

"We have to be careful to not make the same mistakes that we made before," Mr. Hill says.

Business groups like the Chamber of Commerce have called for expediting federal environmental reviews to help speed spending. Otherwise, they say, many stimulus-funded projects will be delayed for years. Environmental groups object to such proposals. "The way to ensure stimulus money is spent quickly is to fund the right initiatives, not waive solid laws," says Erin Allweis, a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The frenzy of activity is unfolding as government watchdogs are warning the Energy Department not to lose sight of its traditional duties. A report in December by the agency's inspector general, Mr. Friedman, said the department still faces a "monumental task" in cleaning up the more than 1.5 million cubic meters of solid radioactive waste and 88 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste left over from more than 50 years of nuclear defense and energy research work across the country.

Another challenge: making sure money designated for states gets funneled through quickly to the people it's meant to help. A good chunk of the DOE stimulus money, around $5 billion, will flow in the form of grants to states for programs to supply insulation for homes in low-income neighborhoods. There, too, states are scrambling to prepare to handle unprecedented sums of money. Massachusetts, which is farther along than most states in weatherizing homes, expects an injection of upwards of $161 million into a program that last year spent $14 million.

Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican who sits on a House panel that controls the DOE's budget, worries that the scale of the stimulus will throw the agency off track. "You have a huge policy shift here of moving a bureaucracy that's been focused on research and development to being a manager of a massive amount of money," he says, calling it, "a prescription for abuse and waste."
******************************************************************

It seems as if the Energy Secreatary bit off more than he could Chu.

Really- Why do you say that? Are you an expert on Presidents? Are you a presidential historian?

I think you have no idea what Presidential Historians ( who are at least twenty times better informed that you are) say about President Reagan. I don't think you will read the following because you are afraid of any thing which bursts your left wing balloons. I know you won't try to rebut the CONSENSUS OF THE GROUP OF PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIANS. THE MOST YOU CAN DO IS TO QUOTE A LOONY LIKE MARCOS MOULITSAS BUT YOU WONT BE ABLE TO QUOTE FROM A CONSENSUS OF A GROUP OF AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIANS.

If you are able to read--the following shows that President Reagan was ranked am average of 15th among 44 presidents. But, you,JTT, as a left wing ignoramus wouldn't know that, would you.

Scholar survey results
Green backgrounds indicate top quartile. Red backgrounds indicate bottom quartile.

Chronological order President Schlesinger 1948 poll rank Schlesinger 1962 poll rank 1982 Murray-Blessing survey of 846 historians Chicago Tribune 1982 poll rank Siena 1982 poll rank Siena 1990 poll rank Siena 1994 poll rank Ridings- McIver 1996 poll rank CSPAN 1999 poll rank Wall Street Journal 2000 poll rank Siena 2002 poll rank Wall Street Journal 2005 poll rank CSPAN 2009 poll rank
01 George Washington 02 02 03 03 04 04 04 03 03 01 04 01 02
02 John Adams 09 10 09 14 (tie) 10 14 12 14 16 13 12 13 17
03 Thomas Jefferson 05 05 04 05 02 03 05 04 07 04 05 04 07
04 James Madison 14 12 14 17 09 08 09 10 18 15 09 17 20
05 James Monroe 12 18 15 16 15 11 15 13 14 16 08 16 14
06 John Quincy Adams 11 13 16 19 17 16 17 18 19 20 17 25 19
07 Andrew Jackson 06 06 07 06 13 09 11 08 13 06 13 10 13
08 Martin Van Buren 15 17 20 18 21 21 22 21 30 23 24 27 31
09 William Henry Harrison " " " 38 26 35 28 35 37 " 36 " 39
10 John Tyler 22 25 28 29 34 33 34 34 36 34 37 35 35
11 James K. Polk 10 08 12 11 12 13 14 11 12 10 11 09 12
12 Zachary Taylor 25 24 27 28 29 34 33 29 28 31 34 33 29
13 Millard Fillmore 24 26 29 31 32 32 35 36 35 35 38 36 37
14 Franklin Pierce 27 28 31 35 35 36 37 37 39 37 39 38 40
15 James Buchanan 26 29 33 36 37 38 39 40 41 39 41 40 42
16 Abraham Lincoln 01 01 01 01 03 02 02 01 01 02 02 02 01
17 Andrew Johnson 19 23 32 32 38 39 40 38 40 36 42 37 41
18 Ulysses S. Grant 28 30 35 30 36 37 38 38 33 32 35 29 23
19 Rutherford B. Hayes 13 14 22 22 22 23 24 26 25 22 27 24 33
20 James Garfield " " " 33 25 30 26 30 29 " 33 " 28
21 Chester A. Arthur 17 21 26 24 24 26 27 32 28 26 30 26 32
22, 24 Grover Cleveland 08 11 17 13 18 17 19 17 16 12 20 12 21
23 Benjamin Harrison 21 20 23 25 31 29 30 31 31 27 32 30 29
25 William McKinley 18 15 18 10 19 19 18 17 15 14 19 14 16
26 Theodore Roosevelt 07 07 05 04 05 05 03 05 04 05 03 05 04
27 William Howard Taft 16 16 19 20 20 20 21 20 24 19 21 20 24
28 Woodrow Wilson 04 04 06 07 06 06 06 06 06 11 06 11 09
29 Warren G. Harding 29 31 36 37 39 40 41 38 38 37 40 39 38
30 Calvin Coolidge 23 27 30 27 30 31 36 33 27 25 29 23 26
31 Herbert Hoover 20 19 21 21 27 28 29 24 34 29 31 31 34
32 Franklin D. Roosevelt 03 03 02 02 01 01 01 02 02 03 01 03 03
33 Harry S. Truman " 09 08 08 07 07 07 07 05 07 07 07 05
34 Dwight D. Eisenhower " 22 11 09 11 12 08 09 09 09 10 08 08
35 John F. Kennedy " " 13 14 (tie) 08 10 10 15 08 18 14 15 06
36 Lyndon B. Johnson " " 10 12 14 15 13 12 10 17 15 19 11
37 Richard Nixon " " 34 34 28 25 23 32 25 33 26 32 27
38 Gerald R. Ford " " 24 23 23 27 32 27 23 28 28 28 22
39 Jimmy Carter " " 25 26 33 24 25 19 22 30 25 34 25
40 Ronald Reagan " " " " 16 22 20 26 11 08 16 06 10
41 George H. W. Bush " " " " " 18 31 22 20 21 22 21 18
42 Bill Clinton " " " " " " 16 23 21 24 18 22 15
43 George W. Bush " " " " " " " " " " 23 18 36
44 Barack Obama " " " " " " " " " " " " "

More than 1,000 people have participated in the surveys. The issue of the validity of the rankings has been of special interest to historians and political scientists, who have tried to specify the relative importance of personality, leadership, issues and partisanship. Quantitative ranking by groups of scholars has been in favor in recent decades, displacing the traditional methods of evaluation by individual writers as typified by Bailey (1966) and most biographers.

Because Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms as both the 22nd and 24th President, the total number of Presidents in each poll is at least one less than the number of the most recently serving President in the poll. Because of their short time in office, Presidents William Henry Harrison and James Garfield are sometimes omitted from these polls.

THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES MUST DIRECTLY CONTROL THEIR OWN INDIVIDUAL STIMULUS OF OUR ECONOMY.

President Obama and the Congressional majority are approving what they call a "stimulus bill" that distributes government revenue to private individuals and private organizations. Nowhere in the Constitution is the President or Congress of the USA granted the power to do this. President Obama and the Congressional majority are violating their oaths to support the Constitution of the USA by adoption of their "stimulus bill." By failing to support the Constitution of the USA, the President and the Congressional majority are committing treason against the United States. They are "adhering to the USA's enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Among these enemies are those who seek to overthrow the Constitutional Republic of the USA by replacing it with a socialist republic.



;




LINKS TO THE TEXT OF THE STIMULUS BILL:
http://www.propublica.org/special/stimulus-plan-taxcut-list
http://www.propublica.org/article/download-the-stimulus-bill-090213

SOLUTION

If we must accumulate trillions more in debt to get us out of our current economic mess, then instead of the government spending us into debt its way, let's do it ourselves our way by reducing federal taxes and by trusting the people to spend their own money more wisely, efficiently, and effectively than the government is capable of doing on their behalf.

When reducing taxes let’s replace the current tax system with a flat tax, a single tax on each and every dollar of gross income. That way every American carries his own weight and pays his fair share of the cost of the benefits of our government securing our constitutional rights. Let’s eliminate all exemptions, deductions, paybacks, or refunds, except deductions for gifts to a qualified charity not totaling more than 99% of gross income. A qualified charity shall be any individual or organization that does NOT pay back any amount of the charity to the donor, and is NOT part of the donor’s family: that is, NOT the donor’s spouse, former spouse, offspring, sibling, parent, grandparent, great grandparent, uncle, aunt, or first cousin.

Does that make you feel better about yourself, attacking a dead man?

FYI, Reagan was in complete control of his mind during his presidency.

His alzheimers was diagnosed several years AFTER he left the White House.
I would have expected that kind of childish statement from others, but I thought you were above that.
I guess I was wrong.

Mysteryman-- It is clear that JTT is a left wing Ideologue. He has not read anything about Reagan written by Presidential Historians. As you may have noted in my quote from WIkipedia, the CONSENUS of Presidential Historians ranks Reagan SIXTEENTH out of FORTY-FOUR.

But JTT either doesn't know that or does not want to know that.

Genoves offers support for a war criminal and a felon ... surprise, surprise.

ICAN--You wrote_


If we must accumulate trillions more in debt to get us out of our current economic mess, then instead of the government spending us into debt its way, let's do it ourselves our way by reducing federal taxes and by trusting the people to spend their own money more wisely, efficiently, and effectively than the government is capable of doing on their behalf.

When reducing taxes let’s replace the current tax system with a flat tax, a single tax on each and every dollar of gross income. That way every American carries his own weight and pays his fair share of the cost of the benefits of our government securing our constitutional rights. Let’s eliminate all exemptions, deductions, paybacks, or refunds, except deductions for gifts to a qualified charity not totaling more than 99% of gross income. A qualified charity shall be any individual or organization that does NOT pay back any amount of the charity to the donor, and is NOT part of the donor’s family: that is, NOT the donor’s spouse, former spouse, offspring, sibling, parent, grandparent, great grandparent, uncle, aunt, or first cousin.

*********************************************************************
'
I have always thought the flat tax was an attractive alternative to our present tax system. As you are aware, I am sure, under the present phony stimulus package,most of the largess will find its way to the great unwashed--the illiterate and those who have been on welfare for years.

Of course,Obama is a populist who thinks that if he buys off enough of the votes of the illiterate and wefare crowd, he will continue in office.

What he does not know, of course, that as occured in the FDR years, the productive and affluent citizens in our country will withdraw their support, stop opening factories, stop investing, stop creating new inventions, so that we will be in the same mess FDR was in when his massive government intervention failed to get us out of the Depression. We were still in a depression in 1937 -FIVE YEARS AFTER FDR WENT CRAZY SPENDING.

This has nothing to do with me personally. Dead man, live man, it makes no difference, MM. He was a war criminal, a liar of epic proportions and a felon.



That doesn't change the fact that he was an idiot.

Why don't I find it surprising that Genoves and MM, to name but two, found Reagan to be a bright guy. Not only do they nominate and elect them, they happily embrace this type of stupidity.

That's simply answered: they are of the same "league" in brain power.

I didn't call it a vacation. Fox did.

I only pointed out if she wanted to compare Camp David trips by other Presidents to Crawford then we can't ignore the days Bush spent there.

JTT- Are you really going to try to equate the blurbs from non-professionals with the findings of professional historians?

I challenge you to try to show that the professional historians who compiled the ratings below are not fifty times more knowledgeable about Presidents and their policies than the individuals you mention. I can find( and will find )12 politicians etc who praise Reagan but their personal opinions are not based on professional Historians whose job it is to examine reams of correspondence and evidence.

Sorry,JTT.good try but you lose.
*********************************************
The following shows that President Reagan was ranked am average of 15th among 44 presidents. But, you,JTT, as a left wing ignoramus wouldn't know that, would you.

Scholar survey results
Green backgrounds indicate top quartile. Red backgrounds indicate bottom quartile.

Chronological order President Schlesinger 1948 poll rank Schlesinger 1962 poll rank 1982 Murray-Blessing survey of 846 historians Chicago Tribune 1982 poll rank Siena 1982 poll rank Siena 1990 poll rank Siena 1994 poll rank Ridings- McIver 1996 poll rank CSPAN 1999 poll rank Wall Street Journal 2000 poll rank Siena 2002 poll rank Wall Street Journal 2005 poll rank CSPAN 2009 poll rank
01 George Washington 02 02 03 03 04 04 04 03 03 01 04 01 02
02 John Adams 09 10 09 14 (tie) 10 14 12 14 16 13 12 13 17
03 Thomas Jefferson 05 05 04 05 02 03 05 04 07 04 05 04 07
04 James Madison 14 12 14 17 09 08 09 10 18 15 09 17 20
05 James Monroe 12 18 15 16 15 11 15 13 14 16 08 16 14
06 John Quincy Adams 11 13 16 19 17 16 17 18 19 20 17 25 19
07 Andrew Jackson 06 06 07 06 13 09 11 08 13 06 13 10 13
08 Martin Van Buren 15 17 20 18 21 21 22 21 30 23 24 27 31
09 William Henry Harrison " " " 38 26 35 28 35 37 " 36 " 39
10 John Tyler 22 25 28 29 34 33 34 34 36 34 37 35 35
11 James K. Polk 10 08 12 11 12 13 14 11 12 10 11 09 12
12 Zachary Taylor 25 24 27 28 29 34 33 29 28 31 34 33 29
13 Millard Fillmore 24 26 29 31 32 32 35 36 35 35 38 36 37
14 Franklin Pierce 27 28 31 35 35 36 37 37 39 37 39 38 40
15 James Buchanan 26 29 33 36 37 38 39 40 41 39 41 40 42
16 Abraham Lincoln 01 01 01 01 03 02 02 01 01 02 02 02 01
17 Andrew Johnson 19 23 32 32 38 39 40 38 40 36 42 37 41
18 Ulysses S. Grant 28 30 35 30 36 37 38 38 33 32 35 29 23
19 Rutherford B. Hayes 13 14 22 22 22 23 24 26 25 22 27 24 33
20 James Garfield " " " 33 25 30 26 30 29 " 33 " 28
21 Chester A. Arthur 17 21 26 24 24 26 27 32 28 26 30 26 32
22, 24 Grover Cleveland 08 11 17 13 18 17 19 17 16 12 20 12 21
23 Benjamin Harrison 21 20 23 25 31 29 30 31 31 27 32 30 29
25 William McKinley 18 15 18 10 19 19 18 17 15 14 19 14 16
26 Theodore Roosevelt 07 07 05 04 05 05 03 05 04 05 03 05 04
27 William Howard Taft 16 16 19 20 20 20 21 20 24 19 21 20 24
28 Woodrow Wilson 04 04 06 07 06 06 06 06 06 11 06 11 09
29 Warren G. Harding 29 31 36 37 39 40 41 38 38 37 40 39 38
30 Calvin Coolidge 23 27 30 27 30 31 36 33 27 25 29 23 26
31 Herbert Hoover 20 19 21 21 27 28 29 24 34 29 31 31 34
32 Franklin D. Roosevelt 03 03 02 02 01 01 01 02 02 03 01 03 03
33 Harry S. Truman " 09 08 08 07 07 07 07 05 07 07 07 05
34 Dwight D. Eisenhower " 22 11 09 11 12 08 09 09 09 10 08 08
35 John F. Kennedy " " 13 14 (tie) 08 10 10 15 08 18 14 15 06
36 Lyndon B. Johnson " " 10 12 14 15 13 12 10 17 15 19 11
37 Richard Nixon " " 34 34 28 25 23 32 25 33 26 32 27
38 Gerald R. Ford " " 24 23 23 27 32 27 23 28 28 28 22
39 Jimmy Carter " " 25 26 33 24 25 19 22 30 25 34 25
40 Ronald Reagan " " " " 16 22 20 26 11 08 16 06 10
41 George H. W. Bush " " " " " 18 31 22 20 21 22 21 18
42 Bill Clinton " " " " " " 16 23 21 24 18 22 15
43 George W. Bush " " " " " " " " " " 23 18 36
44 Barack Obama " " " " " " " " " " " " "

More than 1,000 people have participated in the surveys. The issue of the validity of the rankings has been of special interest to historians and political scientists, who have tried to specify the relative importance of personality, leadership, issues and partisanship. Quantitative ranking by groups of scholars has been in favor in recent decades, displacing the traditional methods of evaluation by individual writers as typified by Bailey (1966) and most biographers.

Because Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms as both the 22nd and 24th President, the total number of Presidents in each poll is at least one less than the number of the most recently serving President in the poll. Because of their short time in office, Presidents William Henry Harrison and James Garfield are sometimes omitted from these polls

Eisenhower must have been right near the top. He was playing golf at Augusta almost constantly.

You didn't even read it, AGAIN. I'm quite certain, from your postings, that you don't possess the intellect necessary to even be called Republican/conservative. You just stick your fingers in your ears, close your eyes and stamp your feet when faced with facts you don't like.



Margaret Thatcher, Patti Davis [Reagan's daughter], James Barber [presidential scholar], Clark Clifford, Larry Speakes, ...

JTT, genoves doesn't have any brain or ability to discuss anything in any meaningful manner. He's one of the few on my Ignore list; trying to get meaning from his gibberish is too painful.

Yes, JTT-Non Professionals. The people on the thread I referenced were PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIANS. The people you referenced may have been professionals but not presidential historians. Perhaps you had better listen to Cicerone Imposter and put me on ignore. Cicerone did that after I eviserated his goofy arguments time and again.

But if you are not afraid, as Cicerone Imposter appears to be, let's keep going!.
I know I will not convert you and you will not covert me. It is up to the posters on these threads to read( if they are not paralyzed by fear as Cicerone appears to be) and rebut with evidence and documentation, our individual submissions to these posts.

But you might get a kick out of this, JTT.

January 17, 2008
Obama Praises Ronald Reagan as 'Singular Figure'
Rick Moran
Hard to guess what Obama's game is here but in an interview with the Reno-Gazette editorial board, the Democratic contender for the nomination praised Ronald Reagan and gave some decidedly un-progressive reasons for his admiration:


"I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what's different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."

That is a quote from Obama, JTT

And this,

"They told stories about how inattentive and inept the President was.... They said he wouldn't come to work--all he wanted to do was to watch movies and television at the residence."
--Jim Cannon (an aide to Howard Baker) reporting what Reagan's underlings told him, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President: 1984-88

Oh, I am sorry, JTT, but Obama's comment is far more important than Jiom Cannon's. Unless you think that Obama is just a fraud who knows very little, as some of the radical right wingers say. But Cannon is not a Historian.

Here is what a respected Historian says:

In Praise Of Reagan, Communicator Extraordinaire



Douglas Brinkley has written books about Dean Acheson, Jimmy Carter, Henry Ford and John Kerry. Photo courtesy of Rice University


, February 5, 2009 · Historian Douglas Brinkley considers Ronald Reagan one of the top five American presidents of the 20th century.

Brinkley, who edited The Reagan Diaries, says that it was Reagan's ability to connect with the population at large that distinguished him as a leader. In the book's introduction, Brinkley writes that Americans could see "something of themselves reflected in [Reagan] " a modern American unashamed of the nation's majesty and his own pride in time-honored traditions."

A fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, Brinkley is the author of The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.


Related NPR Stories

NPR, I hope you know, JTT, is NOT a right wing site. It leans to the left.