yip, RIP another perspective, the article omitted to mention, probably the biggest blemish in 41's political career, the dog-whistling / transparent racist "Willie Horton" ad in his presidential campaign against Dukakis https://www.vox.com/2018/12/1/18121221/george-hw-bush-willie-horton-dog-whistle-politics Trump, the copycat, had used this same dog-whistling messaging against Mexicans, Muslim, non-white immigrants
60 minutes is doing a story on him right now. Has Clinton, W Bush and Obama giving their views. Heard from GWB so far. Interesting stuff.
So I can’t be friends with any republicans? Man, that’s gonna be tough. I have a lot of people in my life I disagree with politically but that doesn’t in any way make them bad people. Sad that this is how people think these days. For me, it’s pretty easy to separate the 2 if it’s warranted. Could I do that with a person like bobthemediocre? Probably not. Nothing about him says he’s a decent human being. President Bush did so much for humanity outside of his 4 years as president. He is a good person and I’m ok saying that about a republican.
For those wondering. The Gallup trial heat tracking polls from 1992 show that when Perot dropped out in the summer Clinton surged. later on when he returned Clinton's numbers dropped. Perot hurt both candidates but without him Clinton still likely wins the election and by probably a larger margin. https://news.gallup.com/poll/110548/gallup-presidential-election-trial-heat-trends.aspx
Very mixed feelings on George HW Bush. He pandered to the Christian fundamentalists which mean’t taking a hardline on homosexuals and LGBT. He said some very negative things about homosexuals only to improve his election chances. He was worthless in the fight against AIDS. He also helped empower people like Dick Cheney. From a positive perspective he did agree to pass the ADA. He was always very professional and he never was an embarrassment. He was bright and qualified for the Presidency. At the end of the day I read him as a decent man but someone with a real ambition and a willingness to take positions that he knew were bigoted or wrong in order to win. He was an excellent citizen, as was his wife. He was very involved in the community and mellowed a lot with age. Most Presidents have skeletons in their closet, and GHW did too, but less than most.
This is a revision of history though, the reason Clinton's numbers surged was Perot voters were pissed at Bush because they blamed him for Perot dropping out due to the Bush campaign going after his daughter, that's why Bush's numbers tanked, not because Perot voters would actually vote for Clinton any more than Bernie voters went for Trump. If there had never been a Perot in the first place, Bush wins in a landslide.
You are in no way friends with him. His actions as a president are in your mind erased because of his far less meaningful and significant actions as a retiree.
Perot got more than ten percent of the popular vote even after he dropped out when he realized his chances were better than he anticipated as an issues candidate. Sure Clinton ran as the New Left that went on to make Dems more left of the center gutless labor dodging zombies we deal with today, but i don't think Clinton's appeal lied in attacking the deficit and balancing the budget. We saw what Nadir did to Gore. Bush definitely suffered more in terms of mindshare (the out of touch tax raising doofus who doesn't even own command of issues within his own demo) and similar voting blocs to the point where it provided just enough attention for the lechy hick governor known more for Paula Jones and his sax than bringing a country out of a recession. EDIT: I saw the subsequent poll numbers you posted. Perot already accomplished his mission when he dropped out, which was to cripple hw enough to lose. Spend tens of millions for a spot on primetime TV every week during the four channel network era, and that might provide a shift in Gallup polls and force people to think of incumbent alternatives.
ur entitled to ur opinion, but not to fabricate ur alternative facts. Clinton ran as a centrist; he was more conservative than his Dem predecessors, such as Carter, LBJ and JFK u do know that Gore won the popular vote, and lost the electoral vote by 3, no? btw, it's Nader; and he was not muceh of a factor. Gore lost because he ran an incompetent campaign, headed up Donna Brazille, who ignored Gore's home state of Tenn, which pissed off the voters there. Gore had previously won every political election that he had entered in his home state. But for his presidential run, he lost Tenn's 5 electoral votes Had Gore won his own home state, he'd beaten W, regardless of the Fla result
That's not true, he didn't run as a centrist, he ran as the new hip saxophone playing left. Bush ran as a centrist, and Perot ran as a right wing economic reformer very similar to the "tea party" stuff that came later. Perot successfully bashed Bush as a weak centrist who gave in to Democrats too much when it came to raising taxes and things of the like. The biggest issue was when Bush and the Republicans went after Perot and his family, specifically his daughter. The blowback from that was the single worst thing to happen to Bush's campaign making him look bad and pissing off his conservative base that were warm to Perot's message. If there was no Perot, Bush wins in a landslide. Clinton alone wouldn't have stood a chance. It was a very different time, by today's standards Clinton would be viewed as an extreme right wing Republican, by the standards of the day he was a slightly left of center Democrat.
Bubba was more conservative than his Dem predecessor, Carter, LBj and JFK. what part of that you don't understand ?
The part that is entirely inaccurate, which is all of it except potentially Carter. Clinton is seen as much more conservative than he actually was because he was a skilled politician who worked with the other side in order to get things accomplished. If he had the votes, he'd have pushed through some kind of socialized health care in the 90's and other ideas that were seen as fringe left at the time. He campaigned on some of that, he just didn't have the votes. Don't ask, don't tell was seen as a left wing thing when he did it because it outright allowed gays in the military something others were unwilling to outright endorse at the time. I mean, sure, we look back on that and that kind of policy seems far right, but it didn't at the time and that's what matters and what gets lost on revisionists. When it comes to JFK, you have a guy who believed that a strong military was the best way to guarantee peace, he believed that tax cuts were the best way to grow the economy, he was 100% anti abortion, he was a lifetime member of the NRA....sorry guy, JFK would be viewed as a Nazi today by a good portion the left if they actually payed any attention to his stances on policy instead of only thinking about him as a liberal icon. Your "alternative facts" and revisionism won't change reality for those old enough to remember or those willing to do the research.
talk is cheap. just the facts, Bubba has been the only POTUS, post WW2, to generate a budget surplus. that's as conservative as a POTUS can be
Sure, he gets credit for signing the budget the Republican congress gave to him. I give him full credit for being willing to work with Republicans for the best interest of the country.....but you're fooling yourself if you think there's ANY chance there would have been a surplus with a Democratic party controlled congress and Bill Clinton in the White House. If you want to see the difference, compare the deficits of the 102nd and 103rd congress' under Democratic party control to those of the 104th congress after Republicans took over. When the DNC controls the power of the purse, deficits surge. That's just how it is. Now I'm not saying the Republicans are truly fiscally responsible, they just are by comparison to Democrats who are always REALLY fiscally irresponsible.
bingo, what bobby small has just described is a centrist Dem POTUS ! unwittingly, the less-than-informed bobby small is strengthening my point, but i don't need the help
No, that was just a POTUS that put country ahead of party or ideology. When Clinton had control of Congress he pushed more of his own ideology but didn't have the votes for a lot of it due to a lot of his policies being viewed as too far left of center for Democrats at the time. Democrats then lost control of Congress and Clinton was forced to work with Republicans and move away from his own ideology and policies in order to get things done. He wasn't a centrist (at the time), but he ended up looking like one due to him not having the votes to push his own ideology. A willingness to compromise doesn't make you a centrist, it makes you a pragmatist. It's interesting and noteworthy though that you've already started with really lame and weak personal attacks once your argument was destroyed. This is always how it starts down here.
I mislabeled Clinton as New Left rather than a New Democrat, but the fact remains that they consider themselves left of center rather than a pure centrist. A more modern label would be Neoliberal. Would a centrist use their first year to enact sweeping healthcare reform during a financial downturn? You have two examples here. The more recent example ran on vague hopes and dreams that inspired a strong liberal base only discover he acted moderately when he was in power. Still on the left in the American political scale. As for Nadir, your condescension still ignores that Gore would've won both voting standards if he had a tenth of Ralphies' votes in Florida alone. Ten percent of the popular vote, the most from a third party since Teddy Roosevelt, can be considered a crude benchmark but I still haven't seen real data to consider the counterfactual alternative judoka presented. Just because Clinton beat Bush in the EC doesn't ignore the individual state votes where they follow a winner takes all scheme.
There wouldn't be too much kind I would have to say about Bush's politics or his legacy. He ended his political career as an unpopular president for a reason and I think we do ourselves a disservice in forgetting why. There's something really strange about our political culture in that we tend to treat dead senators and presidents with the same regard as others regard their monarchs, which is to treat any mention of political misdeeds as heretical, lest we spoil their legacy. But with that said, I remember him when I was four and had no notion of politics. My grandmother worked in his office in the Heights, if memory serves me correctly, during his failed Senate run. I just knew it as where my grandmother "worked." She brought me in once and had to stay for an hour or so and he kept me busy to keep me from distracting the staff. He taught me how to type my name on the campaign's IBM Selectric typewriters and gave me typing lessons, a life skill that has undoubtedly served me well. It was the first time I ever remember meeting an adult I didn't know who didn't patronize me or ask the usual dumb questions adults usually ask small children. I always respected him for engaging me like a person, and asking me very pointed questions about my four-year-old life that I wasn't used to answering. I was even less used to an adult listening so carefully. I suspect it's this sort of awareness of others that makes a politician a politician that wins elections. In any case, that hour of my life left a very strong impression on me. I can say in all sincerity he was definitely someone I would have wanted to share my grape Kool Aid with, and I was sad to hear he died.
