The great politician trust charts - you get to rank them!

nimh wrote:

Ellinas, and I thought you were a Berlusconi fan!

I said I prefer him instead of Prodi. If Prodi was on the least too, I would place him before Bush.

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kelticwizard wrote:

I found it much easier to approach it by asking, "Rank these in order of people whom you wouldn't trust a friggin' thing they say", then reversed the order. The list went quickly.

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Thomas wrote:

... Wait a minute, nimh: When you say "Mandela", do you mean Nelson or Winnie? My answer is for Nelson. Winnie would be much, much farther down the list.

Nelson, Nelson! Yes, Winnie would be somewhere near the bottom on mine too.

najmelliw wrote:

Seeing all these lists really makes me wonder about this Obama fellow. I guess I'll look him up and see what he stands for.

Obama '08
Only 165 pages... ;-)

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Thanks eBeth, Soz, Osso and Walter for your lists!

Gotcha, Ellinas.

Ticomaya wrote:

Marion, I think you've hit it on the head ... nihm is always trying to minimize the extent to which Bush has led the world into chaos.

MarionT wrote:

I know what he is. He seems to me to be a moderate. They are the most dangerous of all. If there are too many moderates, too many of them will vote for Republicans in November. That is why they call them moderates.

Actually, I consider myself an anarchodemocrat (a term I'll admit to having created myself because none of the existent ones fitted me).

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nimh wrote:

Actually, I consider myself an anarchodemocrat (a term I'll admit to having created myself because none of the existent ones fitted me).

Quite understandable, though.

I missed that response by MarionT (and all of her latest).

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nimh wrote:

Actually, I consider myself an anarchodemocrat (a term I'll admit to having created myself because none of the existent ones fitted me).

I had it easier. Anarcho-capitalists already existed before I became one (off and on, but mostly off).

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MarionT wrote:

I will ask Nihm if he is aware that the most powerful nation in the world is the USA. Then I will ask him if he knows that the USA's influence in the world is not the most damaging to the rest of the world? To put the names of non-entities along side of the most dangerous man in the world is trying to obfuscate. Bush is far far more dangerous and by far the least trustworthy in the entire list.

I will actually grant you the point you're making here, hard though it may be to discern from amidst your vituperousness.

Yes, indeed - the US has much greater power than most all of these other global players Ive mentioned. And with power comes the capacity to do right, and the capacity to do wrong. In that sense, US's policies should be measured in a much more finely calibrated way than those of Mugabe's, for instance. Even a moderately significant mistake in US foreign policy has much more devastating consequences than a gross miscarriage of justice in Turkmenbashi's Turkmenistan, after all, because it is felt on a much larger scale, by many more people.

That's why if the question had been, "Who poses the greatest threat to world peace/security", the answers would have been very different. That question is in fact asked every few months by some international pollster, and the result is always good for outraged incomprehension in US media: Europeans and/or Arabs consider Bush a greater danger to world peace than Osama! Are they crazy!? But that answer makes more sense than it seems, exactly because of the above. The respondents are not saying that Bush is a more evil person than Osama - just that his actions arguably cause greater harm. Osama may be evil incarnate, but - not to belittle the suffering of his victims - he hasnt been able to affect more than a series of bomb attacks with several dozen deaths each, since 9/11. The US can cause much greater numbers of casualties - and has done so in Iraq.

But that is a different question. And just like that question has its merits, this question here in this thread also has its merits, its point. Its not either/or.

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Hey Walter, Thomas. Yes, quite..

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Then quit playing parlor games, Nihm. The bunkum about who do you trust most and who do you trust least which includes people who do not and can not affect our lives at all is just a parlor game and it takes away from the very serious business at hand. In November if the Republicrats control the Senate or, horrors, both the House and the Senate, nothing will be done to combat the evil of Bush and Rove. Don't you realize the world is at stake here? Why not do a post on listing the damage that Bushie has done since 2000. That would be informative to those who don't know.

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MarionT wrote:

Then quit playing parlor games, Nihm. The bunkum about who do you trust most and who do you trust least which includes people who do not and can not affect our lives at all

Oh, bollocks. Some of you Americans with your megalomania.

Yes, the US is more powerful than other countries, but that doesnt mean that people like Nelson Mandela or Vaclav Havel (both in my list) have not greatly affected the lives of people as well.

This is a global forum, we're NOT all Americans. My life, certainly, is affected by the decisions of Ms Merkel, Mr Blair and Mr Chirac, determining much of the EU economy as they do, as much as by those of George Bush. My day-to-day life is influenced more by the decisions of Balkenende, PM of the Netherlands, and Gyurcsany, PM of Hungary, than by those of Bush. Similarly, the decisions of Turkmenbashi certainly affect Turkmens more than those of any other person in the world; and those of Chavez have an effect that reaches Cuba, Bolivia and shortly, London (ok, that one was in jest).

Quit the Amerocentrism. Your perception of Bush and the US as the only players that wreck evil of significance in the world is, in a way, as chauvinistic as that of those who believe America is on a unique mission to bring good to the world - it just comes in an inversed appearance. You may be provincial enough to not even know half of the names on my list, but dont mistake what appears on your narrow horizon for the only things that affect people around the world.

And furthermore, there's a very simple answer to your problem: if you dont like the topic of this thread, go to another one. There's plenty of conspiracy threads to play on. Other people are enjoying this one.

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MarionT has not understood the question post.

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Re: The great politician trust charts - you get to rank them
OK, this, I think, is a good time to.. come up with my own list!

In my list, I have applied the double criterion that some others have, more discretely, avoided. Can I trust them to tell the truth? And can I trust them to do the right thing? With a nuke, for example?

The two don't necessarily always overlap, as Naj and I were discussing before. If I know someone will always tell the truth and act on it, but the truth he will act on is that he believes the poor deserve to be poor because they are lazy, or that the white race is superior, or that laws should be based on the word of the Bible, then that is not, after all, a leader I can trust with my life - even if he's totally honest about it.

On the other hand, if he is a leader who can basically be relied on to do what I want him to do policy-wise, but is never bothered by any scruple, than obviously thats also not a politician I can trust.

So there's some compromises, especially in the middle part. I think McCain is a more honest man than Kerry, but I'd sooner trust Kerry to govern my life. I agree more often with Chirac than with Merkel, but I trust Merkel more than the sleazeball.

Anyway. The list..

Havel
Mandela
Zapatero
Obama

Category "good guys (with reservations)":
Lula
Kofi Annan

Then there's the Category all mixed-up.

Here, Hillary, Kerry and Blair are of the "I wouldnt trust them with no secret, but I think that, submerged in vanity, they do mean well" variety. With the distinction that I agree a hell of a lot more with Kerry and Hillary than with Blair.

Merkel, McCain and al-Sistani seem like fundamentally upright people - but I wouldnt want to be governed by them (in steeply declining measure).

And then there's Chirac, who was never in it for anything but personal glory and wealth, but who's ended up steering a fairly decent-hearted course anyway.
Kerry
Merkel
Hillary Clinton
Chirac
McCain
Blair
al-Sistani

Sliding rapidly down - the category "would probably be fine with being dictator if given the chance":
Berlusconi
Chavez
Bush
Putin

Putin is already almost in the next category - the category "outright dictators" (ranked by balance between pragmatism and brutality):
Hu Jintao
Gadaffi
Turkmenbashi

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Mandela
Havel
Zapatero
Kofi Annan
Obama
McCain
Chirac
Merkel
Hillary Clinton
Kerry
Lula

Putin
Hu Jintao
Blair
Bush
Gadaffi
Berlusconi
Turkmenbashi
Chavez

---

I understand this is a "trust" list, not a "how much would you like this person to be the head of your government?".
The space is put as a dividing line between the "rather trustable" and the "rather untrustable". It's a shame Blair falls in the latter category.

Hu Jintao is a dictator who doesn't hide it. But I'd rather be governed by Blair, Bush and even Berlusconi.

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Yay, fbaezer! I was hoping you'd drop by.

And yowsa, the top of your list is eerily similar to mine.

Yes, there's a tension in the question. Just kinda navigating around it...

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Relieved to see a couple of people put Turkmenbashi at or near the bottom of their 'lists'. Couldn't figure out for a bit why he was even included, but it eventually came to me.

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SierraSong wrote:

Couldn't figure out for a bit why he was even included, but it eventually came to me.

I studied Russia and Eastern Europe studies right during and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, so anything post-Soviet has my eye... and Turkmenbashi sure catches one's eye. (Or if he doesnt, at least his giant, gold statue that revolves 24 hours a day to face the sun will).

Also, of course, as the one absolutely undoubtable, iredeemable bad guy among bad guys in the list, he has the added benefit of being someone we can all agree on.. ;-)

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I have not understood the question post says ossobuco. Yes, I have understood it only too well. Who gives a damn if Nihm wants to play parlor games so he can show how good he is at Trivial Pursuit? Who cares about Turkenmenbashi and Hu Jintao? Why doesn't Nihm go play with his EU neighbors? When the USA and the Soviets were pointing their missles at each other in the early sixties, none of the tinpot dictators meant a thing. Nihm trivializes the crisis we face by playing such games. Maybe that is his aim.

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Quite a lot of us give a damn.

Based on some views I'll have to look harder at Zapatero.

I have been oriented in the question as to who I could trust to act as they spoke and who would speak as they do, and further, would not change with the wind for political reasons - whatever their viewpoints. I watch, say, McCain, who I partially appreciate, move about.. So probably I didn't understand the question either. At least as I worked it out I thought I was oriented that way. So, I could put Putin higher than some others since I see him as more mechanistic than some, like, say, Chavez.

What I found that I did was put the folks I thought were near insane or (....) at the bottom. The people I perceive to shilly shally with the political wind in some kind of order in the middle, and the people who seem to act out to form near the top.

Given those categories, I probably screwed up since I know some less well than others. Merkel, for example, is an apparent stable sort to me, but I dunno.

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MarionT wrote:

I have not understood the question post says ossobuco.

I think that as well.

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That's not what I wrote. At least not all of it. Go back to read the rest of it. It said--Yes, I have understood it only too well. Who gives a damn if Nimh wants to play parlor games so he can show how good he is at Trivial Pursuit? Who cares about Turkenmenbashie and Ju Hintao? Why doesn't Nimh go to play with his EU neighbors? When the US and the Soviets were pointing missles at each other in the early sixties, none of the tinpot dictators meant a thing. Nimh trivializes the crisis we face by playing such games. Maybe that is his aim.

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The great politician trust charts - you get to rank them!

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