"And I don't see much sympathy for Hillary in the White House from you either"
I'm fairly open minded. I even voted for her husband once.
"You'll find a much more positive JUNK when that cretin has left the White House"
Time will tell. I'm not optimistic however. The next US President will pursue an agenda that promotes it's self interests. Much the same as your nation.
"disapprove is more appropriate"
Isn't really giving him a fair shake, to label him before he takes the oath should he be the next President. It may get you a round at the pub with your fellow ideologues I suppose.
Nixon committed no worse crime/sin than Clinton did. Nixon resigned, Clinton went on to fame and fortune.
Harding/Charter, about the same. Both terrible.
Not yet on the McClain link, I'll get to it.
By the way, I was a member of PPRuNe before Bush, and the yank bashing was just as bad if not worse. I actually joined in late 1999 under the name of ozone ranger. I don't use that name anymore, so if anyone wants it you can have it.
Oh, by the way, Nixon was not disbarred as Clinton was.
Capt. K, where is the McClain link, I can't find it?
Clinton's impeachment procedure has been compared with Nixon. That's comparing apples with oranges, or comparing Kenny Boy Lay with a shoplifter. The whole Clinton impeachment was purely glass house tactics by Gingrich, who was accused of adultery himself during this period. Luckily his mistress was singing in the National Shrine Choir and was reading the bible while being with Newt, so that counts for them.
Clinton's impeachment procedure has been compared with Nixon. That's comparing apples with oranges,
Once again, the fundamental ILLEGAL action, lying under oath, is what brought Clinton to impeachment proceedings.
Nixon's ILLEGAL actions - the conspiracy and cover-up - were never brought to impeachment. He was informed he would be impeached (the articles of impeachment were voted out of committe, but never issued) and he resigned.
I'm not defending Nixon's illegal actions, however, he did do the right thing and resign.
Clinton should have as well. It's moot what the reason for his being under oath, he was. He committed perjury, was caught, and was impeached. He was responsible for the underlying cause and could have saved himself and the nation a great deal of embarrassement, but his (and Hillary's lust for power) was such that he couldn't bring himself to do the honorable thing.
Okay I read it Capt K. I am very familiar with the "Keating 5 scandal" which despite the op-ed "Independent" article McClain was cleared. As far as his so called 'Warmongering' attitude is that as far as I am concerned is just another left-winger jumping to conclusions to support his anti-US stance. Or at least his anti-Republican views.
So, nothing new here, move along folks, nothing to see here.
I was right there in D.C., sat up watching the show on T.V. There was Nixon with a large stack of loose-leaf binders behind him (each of which held only one or two pages), fighting off the need to release the tapes which would sink him.
There was no grace in that man. He only resigned when he knew he was going down. "We could do that but it would be wrong," as presented by Nixon turned out to be simply, "We could do that," in reality.
He was caught red-handed in all sorts of high crimes and misdemeanors, all his own twisted doing. He had been a thoroughly bad man all through his political career, starting with smearing his first opponent, going on to being caught with a slush fund as V.P. (when he saved his bacon with the "Checkers Speech"), showing himself as bitter and twisted with his "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more," final farewell in California and then finally and unbelievably selling himself to the booboisie as "the new Nixon," just what he needed to crash and burn most spectacularly.
To let the Chinese out of their little Communist box, to unleash them upon the world, this was political genius? Say what? We were far better off with them entombed in some sort of Maoist Stone Age!
Now we have people re-writing U.S. history, making Nixon out to be some sort of patriot for resigning, when it was just that he knew he had no hope of beating the case against him. As to disbarment, I think he simply resigned the practice of law rather than face that, but I could be wrong.
Nixon versus Clinton, well, Clinton has personality and that counts for a lot. (Identify that movie reference.) Clinton is Slick Willy, yes? Do you get upset when that bottle of Snake Oil turns out to be just tap water? Of course not, because you had so much fun from the salesman's spiel!
Hillary is another matter: I do not derive pleasure from watching her perform and just to have Bill performing in her side-show is no reason to put her in the White House. I think choosing her as candidate should make many Republicans very, very happy.
What similar trash have you generated on the other 3 likely to win the election?
Well, there's plenty of trash in the previous 45 pages of this thread, you do pay attention now, do you WC?
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So, nothing new here, move along folks, nothing to see here.
I disagree. Just as the article says, there's a side of McCain of which most "liberal" voters aren't aware of. I remember in the past someone described McCain once as a loose cannon. We'll see...
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to support his anti-US stance.
In your own words, when one critisize McCain it's just another anti-US stance. So how does that make critisizing Billary?
As for Clinton lying, JFK, whom I still regard as a brilliant President, was about 10 times as active, but in those days it din't matter, everyone knew it and kept his mouth shut because nobody would win with that. Nixon was a paranoid psychopath, Clinton is just Slick Willy.
I don't think Nixon was a head case so much as he was just a real mean guy. Life had not been kind to Tricky Dicky and he wasted a lot of his just getting even. He finally made it into the White House and then blew it comprehensively by pursuing his "enemies."
Okay, climbing onto Marine One to turn around and give it a huge, double "V for Victory" was a bit loopy, but what else could he do at that point?
Even then he wasn't through; he retreated to San Clemente to play the elder statesman, the man who resigned to spare us a national trauma. As if! Well, the further we get from the actual events, the more willing people are to buy into this fantasy. Perhaps he knew us better than we know ourselves. If one can hear Germans coming up with kind words for Adolf, why not re-incarnate Tricky Dicky as some sort of American patriot? Whoever said that there were no second acts in American lives?
I wonder when someone is going to get around to talking about the fact that Barack Obama once sold poisoned milk to schoolchildren. The rest of the candidates' closeted skeletons we mostly know about, of course. Over to you, Captain K.!
Chuks, listen to the Nixon Tapes (of whats left of it, the real nasty ones have been destroyed already), they're all over the intarnet. The man had a full blown Oedipus Complex and a case for psychiatrists, he's a complete fruit cake.
chuks, I was nine/ten when Watergate went down, sorry.
I wasn't 'rehabilitating' his reputation and I said he resigned. He resigned because he knew he was busted and would have been impeached, but the fact of the matter is, he did resign and not put the Office of the Presidency through more humiliation.
Clinton I chose not to do so.
I hope and pray (oops, there's religion being injected into politics) that there's no Clinton II.
I've heard the old chestnut about Clinton's disgrace having nothing to do with sex, rather with lying, about a thousand times from the usual suspects. We can all believe what makes us feel better I suppose, and if that's what floats your boat, far be it from me to argue. No other politician has ever lied in office, so I accept the Scouts Honour pledge.
But I have to draw a line somewhere and this
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...(Nixon).. did resign and not put the Office of the Presidency through more humiliation. Clinton I chose not to do so.
is where that line is drawn.
Sanctimonious humbug, brick. (Do I still have any rights to comment on bullshit since I'm not telling you how to vote?)
Watergate will remain for all time the dominant feature of Nixon's presidency. Its stain will forever cloud whatever good he did, and regardless of the semantics of resignation vs impeachment, he will remain a murky, unlikeable and unpopular president, even amongst his own natural electorate.
Clinton will have to bear the Lewinski blue dress jokes as part of his history. Those who hate him will never forgive him because it gives them a reason to hate him; they can even sanctimoniously justify their bilious hatred on the fact that he lied, rather than the real truth of the matter.
Whichever way you look at it, it is my firm opinion that Clinton's historical position will sit many rungs above Nixon's. Time will be the judge on that one.
Of course, this assumes that the conspiracy theory being thrown around that the Clintons have somehow murdered anybody who ever knew anything about anything is not proven true. I'm pretty worried about that one.
(All that said, I sincerely hope Hillary is not the Democrat candidate come November).
One of the strengths I think McCain has is the perception that he will buck his party structure and work with Democrats to find common ground. The implication is he will be less partisan and ideologically driven than the other Republicans, which might serve him well later in attracting the independent and centrist voters who will swing this election.
I thought hard, then voted for him in the Michigan primary and spent the last week in Florida, much of the time talking to people about the election. I was surprised at how often the above point came up. Obama and McCain both are generally perceived as being non-divisive and less partisan, and that quality has been missed for a good, long time.
Many voters aren't old enough to remember when the job of the opposition was to promote their views and priorities for the good of the country, rather than simply to undermine the party in power's administration.
You can pack sand as far as I'm concerned regarding sanctimonousness.
I never have and didn't defend Nixon's action. He broke the law. He resigned. Those are facts and not open to debate. He probably resigned to avoid going to jail and I suspect the deal with he and Ford was for that reason (and I don't blame Ford for it. Get it over so the nation can move on.). But Nixon did resign, the nation was not dragged further through a cesspool due to his actions in the form of an impeachment trial.
Clinton lied under oath while testifying to a grand jury. Regardless of the merits of why he was brought before a grand jury (and I also think it was ludicrous due to him porking a fat 19 yr old), he committed a felony. A politician lying while in office is nothing new; doing it under oath and at the risk of a felony conviction is. Bubba got caught, pure and simple.
If you read the articles of impeachment, nowhere does it mention his choice of cigarholder.
He should have resigned. He didn't. I think in part because it would have torpedoed Hillary's forthcoming open political career.
Politicians have resigned throughout history after being caught doing something naughty. Clinton professes to be a student of history, he should have followed precedent instead of creating one.
I'm not at all sure what "pack sand" means. Nevertheless my opinion is unchanged. In my years of watching American politics, and it goes back ten years further than Brick's, I had never seen such an open season on a President as I saw after Clinton was elected.
I used to admire, if not totally understand, the American approach of accepting whomever finally won that weird race where the contenders from each party did more to knock each other out than their opponents did. OK, seemed to be the resigned approach at the end of hostilities, we have a winner, he's our President. If we don't like him, we get another chance in four years.
That went out the window in 92. Clinton had his faults, and I'm talking about political faults, not his ability to keep his pants zipped, but he was and remains a towering intellect, especially given the four Presidents who preceded him. This is a stumbling block for dedicated right wingers.
Feel free to take a simplistic view about anything, but politics doesn't fit that mould. It makes people feel better to complain and bitch about everything one side of politics does, but I have always found it beneficial to ignore those with only one eye, or those who have perfectly functioning transmitters but no working receiver.
I'm always open to new points of view, they are crucial to a balanced thought process. Trite, predictable, biased commentaries are boring and unhelpful. Which is why I won't bother answering dushan.
We actually agree on something: the Frankenstein's monster-like witchhunt against Clinton I was over the top.
However, look at some of the vitriol put out during Jefferson's presidency, for example, and you'll see it's nothing new. Just that it went out via the written word in newspapers and essays. It was just as rough, if not more so, then as now. Read some of the writings against Lincoln for example.
The 24/7 'news' channels and cycle roughly coincided with Clinton coming into power and the political world has been made both instantaneous and less thoughtful as a result.
The private lives are put out immediately as well as the most casual utterances and broadcast/dissected/used for the other side's political advantage where in the past, it would have been ignored by the print journalists as they took their craft a little more seriously than today's ilk.
Ever read about Harry Truman having a whiskey with Republican senators in the Senate coat room? Almost a fairy tale in today's world.....
edited to add: Sure, Clinton I is an intellectual. He was so smart he thought he was above everyone else and could outsmart them. He attempted that his entire life. Examples of such are numerous. Turns out he wasn't above the law, however.
Ah, yes the leftie mantra: "we are so intellectually superior we will not engage in the 'predictable, biased commentaries' which are 'boring and unhelpful' to us."
I think I might have started this Nixon thing. So, just for the record:
I never suggested Nixon was anything other than a crook of the highest order. That's why he resigned under threat of impeachment. In making the deal with Ford, he destroyed Ford politically as well.
What I suggested was that some of the things that were accomplished in his administration were not appreciated at that time, obsessed as we all were with Watergate. Years later, most accept that he did accomplish some things. Could another have done better? Perhaps.
Compare Nixon and Clinton? To what end. Both sleazeballs. I agree that Clinton is the far more intelligent of the two. Perhaps that's what makes him (them) so dangerous.
"Watergate will remain for all time the dominant feature of Nixon's presidency. Its stain will forever cloud whatever good he did"
I don't disagree, but it doesn't stop me from acknowledging the good he did.
Talking about him doesn't have to end with "if it wasn't for"
"This is a stumbling block for dedicated right wingers"
A difference of opinion, not a stumbling block. I don't hold Clinton in the same regard as you do, but thats my opinion (and many others) versus yours. He did a lot of good, but he's not going to be remembered as a top tier President from where I sit.
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