From: res@cbnewsc.cb.att.com (Rich Strebendt)
Subject: Re: Short-Term notes (Was Re: YYYEEEEESSSSSSS!!!)
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: chi
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 00:14:14 GMT
Keywords: lame birds, Election, deliverance, short-term notes

In article <1992Nov18.175008.22692@netcom.com>, mzimmers@netcom.com (Michael Zimmers) writes:
> In article <1992Nov18.142856.9642@cbnewsi.cb.att.com> gadfly@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (Gadfly) writes:
> 
> >We survived the last 12, and the 4 before that.  It's hard to
> >imagine even more incompetence than Carter, more senility than
> >Reagan, more meanspiritedness than Bush, more stupidity than
> >Quayle.  Somehow we manage.
> 
> Talk about meanspirited.  Reagan was not and is not senile.  Quayle
> is not stupid.  And Bush is not meanspirited, merely realistic and of
> a value system inconsistent with yours.  (I'll have to agree about Carter.)
> 
> There is plenty to beef about in our leaders; it isn't necessary to
> apply unkind and inaccurate labels to them.

I have to agree wholeheartedly with Michael here.  I have no problem
with disagreements about the policies and philosophies of our leaders.
Differences of opinion of that sort make for fun political
discussions.  I do have a problem with repeating the demeaning, flip
handles that the media have applied to these men and use to disparage
them.  Reagan's policies and philosophies were not to everyone's
tastes -- I voted for him but I disagreed with some of his policies,
so it does not surprize me that people who did NOT vote for him have
such disagreements as well!  Reagan was not in the throes of senility
during his term of office, nor did his age make it impossible to
discharge the duties of his office.  Quayle is constantly getting
bad-rapped by the press -- slips of the tongue are much more
entertaining and air-time worthy than the mundane images of a man
quietly discharging the responsibilities of his job.  I am not sure
that Carter was incompetent, but he may have found that, without the
backing of a few key Congresspeople, the Oval Office was a lot colder
and a lot tougher a job than he was ready for.  Rather than
incompetent, I suspect that he just did not have the right political
alliances set up before he was sworn into the job.  This is the same
situation that I expect Perot would have been up against, had he won
earlier this month.

Of course, as we look back into history we can find other Presidents
or leaders who were bad-rapped by the Media:

	Truman the "Haberdasher" - served well during a critical time
	in our Country's history.  I personally think that his
	decision to drop the Bombs on Japan was the most important
	made in this Century -- for almost 50 years afterward nobody
	was foolish enough to unleash that kind of horror on the
	world.  Without the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how
	long would the Cold War have STAYED a war of threats and
	nerves?

	Gerald Ford - "Clumsy" - a college athlete who kept himself in
	very good shape, but was quite a bit taller than the norm and,
	in the press of events, sometimes bumped into low
	obstructions.

It is interesting that those with whom the press becomes enamored do
not seem to get these perjorative characterizations.  For example,
Eisenhower (the War Hero), Johnson (the Leader of Leaders), Roosevelt
(the Savior of the Country), and of course, John Kennedy (the paragon
of Virtue and all that was Clean and Good).

Can some history buffs suggest some others who were ridiculed because
they did not follow the philosphies of the Press of their time?

					Rich Strebendt
					...!att!ihlpb!res
					r.strebendt@att.com
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