Comment by Ken Worsley

November 11, 2006 @ 2:27 pm

So you think we need to get another actor for ‘08?

Comment by DeOrio

November 11, 2006 @ 4:31 pm

All the leading men are gone, I fear.

Comment by John Sheridan

November 11, 2006 @ 8:15 pm

Aww, come on…what about Ben Affleck? He could be President.

Comment by ken

November 11, 2006 @ 11:38 pm

Some interesting reading:

US-Japan Relations Declassified from the National Security Archive. Yes, I lifted the pic from that page.

Comment by DeOrio

November 12, 2006 @ 12:15 am

Cheers to you , Ken. That picture is so classic Reagan.
John, I’m going to be a wet blanket here and offer a semi-serious response to your jocular remark.
The old school leading man was not only handsome and debonair, but exuded a certain gravitas. Sure, Cary Grant could wash his drip-dry suit by acting like a monkey while taking a shower in it, but that was clearly a man blowing off steam. Ben Affleck, possibly the closest thing to a leading man there is today, is at most an earnest adolescent. (I love Kevin Smith films, but. . .) Jimmy Stewart, Gregory Peck, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Paul Newman, and, yes, Ronald Reagan, who was a pre-WWII A-list actor, are men a man could aspire to be. Ben Affleck merely reminds us of who we were.

Comment by DeOrio

November 12, 2006 @ 12:16 am

And look at that picture to see how quickly Reagan was able to read his surroundings. Two, maybe three days in Japan, and he was already doing the pair look thing with Nakasone.

Comment by Steve Schapiro

November 12, 2006 @ 1:34 am

Oh hell yeah! I remember when we had a real President. I also remember when we thought Japan was going to overtake us.

Comment by Ken Worsley

November 12, 2006 @ 2:29 am

DeOrio,

You forgot John Wayne. And Burt Reynolds.

Comment by Ken Worsley

November 12, 2006 @ 2:47 am

How about actors who have played the President?

Kevin Costner in 13 Days
Dennis Haysbert in 24
Michael Douglas in The American President
Harrison Ford in Air Force One
Bill Pullman in Independence Day
Kevin Kline in Dave
Anthony Hopkins in Nixon
Peter Sellers in Dr Strangelove
Hal Holbrook in The Kidnapping of the President
John Beck in The Alternate
Don Cosney in The Undercover Kid
Severn Darden as U.S. President “Fillmard Millmor” in The Virgin President

Comment by DeOrio

November 12, 2006 @ 12:21 pm

They just don’t have that leading man combination of strength and charm, the ability to be funny, romantic, and action heroes all rolled in together. Besides, Anthony Hopkins is and Peter Sellers was British.

Comment by John S

November 12, 2006 @ 7:14 pm

‘Fillmard Millmor’? Just might be our guy in ‘08.

Comment by DeOrio

November 13, 2006 @ 2:31 pm

I think we need someone who could do both comedy and serious roles convincingly. If, for example, politics aside, Martin Sheen were better at comedy.

Comment by Cal Hobbs

November 16, 2006 @ 1:54 am

I have grown very tired of all the “Bush is stupid” rhetoric. It goes nowhere.

It works politically as the Democrats now are back in total control of the US Congress. And there is no need to wonder about what they will do since they are returning most of the wonderful cast of idiots from 1994 - Waxman, Dingell, Conyers, Rangel now headed by the great brain of Nancy Pelosi. She IS the first woman to head the House. Sad isn’t it that the most that can be said for her is something over which she had no control - the 2nd X chromosone.

And some here in the US are surprised to learn that all the Democrats can now offer on the one true issue of the recent mid-terms — Iraq — is a study group. Some poor souls actually thought the Democrats had a plan. Nope. Just a whine.

That is American politics - whine.

Reagan was a great President. I think the difference in 23 years is more than just the man. The people have grown soft and comfortable. To many in the great Heartland (the Midwest) terror attacks are simply a political scare tactic. They have never been in NYC or DC, knew no one there and are right that there is nothing in the Heartland worth attacking. Well, there was that Federal building in Oklahoma City but then the bomber was an American and he and his co-hort, Mr. Nichols acted alone. Didn’t they? I mean that’s what EVERYONE said. John Doe #2 - hat dark-complected, dark-haired man — did NOT exist. The otherwise very reliable witness who said he looked like — ‘an Arab’ - had to have been mistaken.

So there is nothing to fear in the Heartland, the TSA and concerns about security are a joke and none of the terrorists are in Iraq. Those insurgents just got together and decided to rape and kill to mock GWB.

But if someone else was President all would be right with the world. Like it was in 93-2000 when all we had was WTC 1 and the USS Cole bracketing terror attacks on US facilities around the world and that little building event in Ok. City. And THAT President was really smart and he talked real good too.

Yep, that George Bush is a dumbie.

Comment by Garrett

November 16, 2006 @ 9:47 am

Cal,
I’m like a dog straining at a leash here. I’ll get back to you to address your comment later today, when I have the time to give it the dismantling it deserves.

Comment by DeOrio

November 16, 2006 @ 11:37 am

Cal, I’m going to have to take this point-by-point as I get time.
First, who said anything about Bush being dumb? I compared him unfavorably to Reagan because there’s no way not to. I pointed out, rather indirectly I might add, a few objective facts: Reagan began his address with sincere and gracious thanks to his hosts, which was a habit of his. He used the names of people he had talked to, also a habit of his and markedly not a habit of George W. Bush’s. Bush seems to make a point of avoiding the use of foreign people’s names: General Pervez Musharraf was “General. . . General,” manyof world leaders as referred to as simply “the Prime Minister” at best, often rudely as “Hey you,” etc. When he does use people’s names he invariably butchers them. The President of the US being, among other things, the Head of State, means it is most definitely important that he remember and be able to use the names of other leaders with whom he deals. Shout “Yo, Blair!” or inventing diminutive or even derogatory nicknames that are then used in public is unacceptable, puerile behavior.

I don’t know how you got on to the Democrats, but I’ll take the bait.
Very few observers would suggest that the Democrats’ “thumpin’” of the GOP was anything other than the Republicans resoundingly losing the election. You’re right, the Democrats don’t have much in the way of a plan, but that’s better than spending years lying and cheating to push a plan that doesn’t seem to exist and that is clearly not working if it does.
The choice in 2006 was like the Presidential election of 2004: You can have a Democrat who may not have much of a plan or a Republican who has proven himself dishonest and incompetent. Who would choose a proven bad over an unknown?

Jumping on Nancy Pelosi for not doing then when you’re defending Bush is rich. Is Nancy Pelosi going to be a great Speaker? I don’t think so. Is that the point? Not at all. Besides, the whole fear-of-Pelosi push was disingenuous. Neither you nor I can vote in San Francisco, so it was a remote issue for both of us. I wasn’t about to vote for the lesser candidate in Broward County, Florida just to avoid Speaker Pelosi. That’s counterproductive.

More to come.

Comment by DeOrio

November 16, 2006 @ 12:08 pm

OK, moving on.
The Iraq Study Group headed by James Baker is not a new thing thought up by the Democrats. The group has been meeting for a while and it is now the White House that is promising great ideas, much to the chagrin of the group members themselves. What great ideas have the Republicans come up with? Starting a war is always brilliant. Having no real pla, assuming an unrealistically good outcome, cherry picking and lying about intelligence and chasing out your most experienced intelligence personnel was a great idea.
Maybe you’re right about some people being stupid to believe what they believe. Anyone who thought Iraqis would be happy to be invaded, for instance.

People in the Heartland are more likely to put terrorism as a top concern than people in New York or Washington, who were and are overwhelmingly against the invasion of Iraq and are overwhelmingly against the continuing war on an abstract noun.
I’d heard of a third guy being involved in the Oklahoma City bombing, but remember him being described as looking “Arab” only in the most muckraking of right wing sources. Besides, what does it matter? Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable and almost no Americans can tell the difference between Arabs, Persians, and people from the Indian subcontinent. I wouldn’t put much stock in that. Are you saying McVeigh and Nichols are not guilty?

I agree that the TSA is a joke. Such measures are for show, to make people feel better. Officials involved in it and most serious analysts seem to agree on that. Who is the show for, though? People who are afraid of what has already happened.

If someone else were President, yes, things would be much better.

More to come.

Comment by Ken Worsley

November 16, 2006 @ 1:33 pm

Mr Hobbs

No offense sir, but the only reason to be tired of hearing the “‘Bush is stupid’ rhetoric” is because one has already knows to oneself that Bush is, in fact, stupid, and because that fact embarasses oneself that he can be the leader of one’s nation.

Examining Bush’s speeches, for example when he has noinated a new Supreme Court Justice, against the speeches of past Presidents in the same situation, shows this very clearly.

Bush’s inability to communicate, to explain things clearly, clearly demonstrates an inability to organize thoughts in a manner consistent with an intelligent person.

Bush’s simplistic views on religion, international law and ‘with us or against us’ views demonstrate the sort of bankrupt fundamentalist thinking that I thought died a long time ago. I was wrong.

His continued inability to pronounce names, places or even simple words like ‘nuclear’ correctly is stupid, arrogant and not indicative of the sort of intellect necessary to run a country.

But then again, he went to Yale and Harvard, so he must be right at home with those Northeastern Liberal elites.

Comment by DeOrio

November 16, 2006 @ 1:52 pm

Were someone else President, things would be better because out biggest problems now are either due to the actions of this White House or to steps the President could have taken, but didn’t.

As horrible as September 11th was, it is not a big problem facing us today. It was a spectacular act of terrorism - it’s psychological impact on Americans and the world was far greater than it’s actual impact. The death of so many people is a disaster, it’s sad, and it is right to mourn them and feel anger against those who committed such an act. Routing the Taliban in Afghanistan was a good move. Attempting to set up a stable, accountable government in Afghanistan was a good idea. We should have focused on that and, were we truly worried about preventing future threats to the US and American interests, we would have.

The invasion of Iraq came out of left field. We’d been in a status quo with Saddam for years and it was not a desirable situation, but it was not becoming increasingly dangerous. I, for one, was shocked to see that the US actually was planning an invasion. I, just an ordinary rather conservative guy, watched the TV news, read the papers, checked the Internet, including government sites, and thought it looked like BS, even without knowing about Saddam’s not actually having WMD.
In the early 1950s, a man from Ohio wrote to the mathematician John von Neumann, who was portrayed as an advocate of a first strike against the USSR, and said, “The only thing a war can prevent is peace.”

A tautology, but a worthwhile sentiment.
I won’t get into questioning the motives of the White House for starting the war, although they need to be questioned, and I won’t even get directly into discussing Bush’s intelligence. I will, though, say that starting a war to increase safety is stupid at best and exactly what America has fought against for most of its history. Both World Wars, the Korean War were fought, and even, to some extent, the Vietnam War were fought against “bad guys” who were doing exactly what we did. Not even what we are now doing.
Now I am not saying that it was good to have Saddam in power, but I am saying that things were better under him than they are in the midst of a bloody, unnecessary war. To quote an Iraqi doctor interviewed on WBEZ Chicago’s “This American Life”, “Under Saddam, there was no light at the end of the tunnel. . . Now there’s no tunnel.”

The Iraq War was unnecessary, but we are now in an imbroglio from which we cannot extricate ourselves. There is no good option now. The Iraq War is absolutely, entirely, 100% the fault of the Bush administration and is one of America’s biggest problems today.
The mess in Iraq is hurting our ability to do good in Afghanistan and is most definitely causing a lot of people to hate us who either didn’t care about us or even liked us before. This is self-evident. There is no honest argument against this. US and coalition forces, especially bombs, were the leading cause of death in Iraq in 2004, outstripping even illness and accidents. Conservative actual research and surveys into the number of Iraqis killed since the invasion estimate nearly half a million dead. Infrastructure and utilities are in worse condition than they were under Saddam, hospitals are either destroyed or poorly supplied, life expectancy had dropped dramatically, and there is a chaotic civil war going on. US forces did not directly cause most of these things, but they would not have happened had we not invaded.

America is widely hated around the world, and it’s not a vague hatred, it’s specific and it’s real. We are widely viewed as the bad guys, just like our stories of the British Empire, the Romans outside of Rome, et alia. And you know what? By our own standards, by the rules that are instilled in our children, by who we call “good” and “bad” in our stories and histories, we are becoming the bad guys.
That is the Bush administration’s fault.

Shall I go on?

How about science? Until a few years ago, the thing people outside of the US admired most about the US was our technology, our science, and we were an undisputed leader in that area.

More to come.

Comment by DeOrio

November 16, 2006 @ 2:29 pm

Blocking stem cell research, giving vocal support to the inane bullshit warmed-over creationism known as “Intelligent Design,” and stopping federal funding of labs that do anything, no matter how small, dealing with banned research. Intimidation and arrest of scientists. The very idea of prohibiting any kind of research or academic inquiry!
On top of that, paranoid, almost xenophobic security rules are making it exceedingly difficult for foreign students and researchers to enter the US, much less stay for a long time. Being able to attract people from all over the world to the world’s best universities kept us on top, we’re slipping now and on our way to free-fall.

Is George W. Bush stupid? I don’t know. Does he seem to want to dumb-down the country? Boy howdy! Has he made a string of incredibly stupid decisions and lied to defend them? He’d make Nixon blush. Once you add the profoundly stupid things he’s said and his absolute inability to cough up a coherent, much less correct sentence in his own native language, it’s easy to see why he’s so widely perceived as stupid. He certainly doesn’t do or say anything to dispel that notion and backs it up as often as possible.

So, yes, we’d be better off if someone else were President. Just about anyone else. You’d have to work very hard at spiking the world’s greatest nation into the ground to do much worse than Bush.

Reagan was one of America’s greatest Presidents, a leader - controversial, but a man of vision. George W. Bush is the worst we’ve had. Harding could duke it out with him, but he’s just no match for Bush.

So the question stands. “Hey, America, remember when we had a real President?”