The Worst President in History?

Mr FartR, your apology to Setanta is due.

BernardR wrote:

No, you weren't in the bars I went to--We didn't cater to "legs" in those days. We merely roughed them up and left them in the trash outside.

Did that ever happen to you? It would explain a great deal!!!

Bernard name the bars in Fayetteville on the strip from those days and the two main streets they were on..... please now and not hours from now after you've googled the info from your wheelchair.....

....

As Jon Stewart puts it:


"There comes a point in every president's career when he has to reassure the people that he isn't the thing that everybody thinks they are. Richard Nixon famously said, 'I am not a crook.' Bill Clinton assured us, 'I did not have sex with that woman.' What point does this president have to clear up?"

Joe(Who wants to answer this one?)Nation

I somehow doubt it will be 'I am not an idiot.'

Can you give an example of a specific unrealistic fear on Bush's part, since you say that this is one of his salient characteristics?

Brandon9000 wrote:

Can you give an example of a specific unrealistic fear on Bush's part, since you say that this is one of his salient characteristics?

From watching and listening to him over these past painful years, it's apparent that George is afraid of almost anything he doesn't understand, and that's a lot of things, from stem cell research to Islam to what roles other nations in the world play in making peace and war.

His greatest fears, however, are 1) uncertainty, the feeling of being out of control of events, (a glimpse at one of his speaking engagements which are hermetically sealed against anyone who might harbor an opposing view of the world is revealing of his need to be in control.) and 2) that he will make a mistake and that someone will notice and point it out. I've known others who think like that, mostly they have been children who have been browbeaten by one parent or another into trying to be perfect on the soccer field or at chess. They freeze like George does when he is confronted by a question, they make the same grim face as he does, they make the same claim denying that they have made any mistake or mistakes whatsoever. When you meet such children you always hope that they will have time to outgrow their condition, George is beyond such hope.

For him, and other conservatives, a heightened need to manage uncertainty and threat is the driving force in their lives as well as the need to dominate others. I think it is a life strategy that works well for people like George who obliviously has had some years of complete chaos in his life, but it doesn't seem to me to be a very healthy way to run either a Republic or a Democracy or any combination of the two.


Joe( Scaring the bejeezus out of the electorate does seem to work though it might be that we'll become what we fear.)Nation

For him, and other conservatives, a heightened need to manage uncertainty and threat is the driving force in their lives as well as the need to dominate others. I think it is a life strategy that works well for people like George who obliviously has had some years of complete chaos in his life, but it doesn't seem to me to be a very healthy way to run either a Republic or a Democracy or any combination of the two.

joe said

Quote:

For him, and other conservatives, a heightened need to manage uncertainty and threat is the driving force in their lives as well as the need to dominate others. I think it is a life strategy that works well for people like George who obliviously has had some years of complete chaos in his life, but it doesn't seem to me to be a very healthy way to run either a Republic or a Democracy or any combination of the two.

I think so. It's very difficult not to see the similarities between the fundamentalisms of this administration and its supporters with the fundamentalisms arising elsewhere in the world. Modernity, or change which threatens old ways almost always gains such a reactionary response in some percentage of a community.