Have to disagree there, bud.

Reagan was the master of what Adm. Hyman Rickover used to call the "Say do." He said things about smaller government, but did not do them. Reagan presided over raging deficits, And before you blame that on Congress, his proposed budgets were larger than the congressionally-approved budgets 5 out of 8 of the Reagan years.

As for legitimacy on the world stage? Have you forgotten the Contras, trading drugs for arms, appeasing the Iranian terrorists, abandoning Beruit after 241 Marines were killed and attacking Grenada a few (four?) days later to distract Americans from the tragedy...? No, American power was used to do some very bad things under Reagan -- things we're paying for now, just like his deficits.

First of all: the country is Greneda, not "Granada."

Now with all you say about Reagan, pls. tell me who the last Democrat, besides Teddy Roosevelt, who sought to build up America rather than marginalize the country and its standing in the world.

Carter? Kennedy? Clinton?

Carter - the reason his less-than-stellar presidency didn't split this country apart over deficit, inflation, a looming recession, as well as the U.S. being kicked around by Iran, was Reagan, and how he rallied the U.S. into not just a great power, but a great power that systematically destroyed Communist Russia.

Kennedy - the whole reason we have a deficit. The man was a sham, horrible statesman and dictated horrible foreign policy, pitching us face-first into Vietnam and the brink of WWIII with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Castro may be hospitalized, but I bet he still gets a good chuckle about Jack's true history as a subpar president, closet drug addict and whore ****er - a real statesman.

Clinton - his fault was a feel-good embrace of just give the middle east a big hug and everyone will get along. Two lousy Secs. of State (Christopher and Albright), and partly to blame for the *****hole situation we're in now. As well, he failed to address an overheated economy based on false hopes and promises such as the Internet boom his VP supposedly invented. :rolleyes:

Reagan's budgets mirrored Reagan's mission of restoring some esteem to the U.S., and yes, I do blame the (at the time, IIRC) a Democratic congress who wanted only, as they now do, be contentious with a party-opposite president. Also, IIRC, Reagan's ideas about downsizing govt ran into so much left-sided contention, he was hamstrung.

Iran-Contra was an ill-imagined act of vindictive vengeance against the Khomeni which should never have occurred - I'll grant that. But Greneda was in no way a distraction from Hezbollah driving a truck filled with explosives into a Marine compound, unless you don't think we were blameless for the cowardly act of suicide bomber. Why on Earth Greneda should have been a distraction is beyond comprehension. I don't know from where you came up with that one.

In my view a conservative seeks to bring the country together, and usually in response to some detritus a Democratic president began: Reagan did this as did Bush I, and to a very large extent - just to be fair - Clinton continued until a weak foreign policy caught up with him in the end.

Even Nixon cleaned up after Johnson's claim to fame of Vietnam escalation. After all, with the lion's share of Nixon's faults taken into context, with the aid of Kissinger, Nixon did systematically decrease the U.S. role in Vietnam.

Bush II, meanwhile, is not where conservatism ends. Bush II was never a conservative to begin with. His presidency began with a single mind toward vengeance and will end with his failure to conceive anything close to that, even if his vengeance was at one time (9/12/2001) legitimate.

America's standing globally was never higher than it was in 1860, prior to the coup d'etat by Lincoln, and the rest that followed. Teddy Roosevelt was a closet socialist who was a Republican in name only; pushed for the US government to become an international interventionist, successfully on a western hemisphere scale with his theft of the land for the Panama Canal from Columbia via military threat, and other related activities. The Democrat Party took up the military interventionist cudgel when Wilson took the country into World War One, with the help of the Pulitzer newspaper chain and government propaganda personel.

The last president to enhance America's standing globally was Calvin Coolidge, and not one since.

None of the above-named presidents were dumb enough not to realize the militarists were lying about the strength of the 'enemy.' Reagan was. With a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the USSR five times over, he still threw money into the hands of the military contractors to build a technically impossible fantasy system dreamed up by a bunch of sci-fi writers -- star wars.

Internationally, Reagan didnt' really 'build up' America, he made it seem random and cruel to the rest of the world. Iran - Contra was part of that. Grenada was a total joke and sideshow. And yes, it was to distract from the Hezbollah bombing. It was so transparent, there was a movie created about it -- Wag the Dog. The military has never seen such a shower of medals for a single military action, on a per capita basis. The whole thing was much like the rest of the Reagan presidency. Feel-good time.

And you're still buying into the talk about downsizing. For the second time, his budgets were larger than those approved by congress 5 out of 8 years. So you can repeat that tired old cr@p about the Dems making him do it, but Reagan was a complete dunce when it came to economics -- either that or a complete liar. Your choice.

dd74, "...Clinton was a uniter above all other things - at least the country wasn't nearly as split as now when Clinton was in office."

I think you are mistaken. Clinton's poll numbers were not any better then than GW's at this point. But this time around I think things are different. I mean, I think American are thinking blo jabs aren't really that bad after all.

This time around in Clinton's administration, the economy was beginning to go south and Monica had everyone's panties in a bunch. The U.S., however, was not nearly as divided as now.

But you are correct: a blowjob does not in any way compare to blowing America's future.

Au contraire mon frere.

Bush, Now
Approve
35%
Disapprove
57%

Clinton, 11/1997
Approve
57%
Disapprove
31%

Absolute, positively, this is what baffles me the most. Even idiots like myself know that in chess and politics, the winning strategy involves controlling the MIDDLE. I know why political parties create the artificial perception that we are a nation divided. They do this for marketing purposes. To differentiate. Still, the winner is going to be the party that best captures the center. So........why are they both leaving that area unguarded?

The Republican Congress in the mid90s cooperated with Clinton's effort to balance the budget. The stock market took off with great exuberance. Then came the Monica period--where sex became more important in Washington than policy--a sign of good times. And Mr Greenspan pushed up interest rates just in time for the 2000 elections. That killed capital investment--and the DOW. And Judge Jackson went after Microsoft. That killed NASDAQ. Political? Who knows.

The "conservative" Republicans forced big tax cuts and deficit spending on the country. Maybe it's time to elect those "liberal" Democrats to balance the budget again. It could take that to resurrect the stock market.

The Republicans have gained an edge because they spend a lot more time and money pushing the Democrats to the left than the Democrats do pushing the Republicans to the right. That was Kerry's undoing--Gore's as well. Fact is, both parties are pretty close to the center--the voters are just being influenced by perceptions generated by all that phoney TV advertising, which hurts the democratic process. Having said that, Bush's deficit spending and his Iraq policy, not characteristically Republican, may turn the tables.

Actually, 8/98 would be the equivalent point in Clinton's presidency in terms of time served/left to serve. But I'm pretty sure that Clinton's numbers never approached Dumbo's even when the GOPs in congress were impeaching him, something to do w/ all that peace and prosperity going on. Everyone was too busy water skiing and buying schit. :)

I saw an interview with Buchanan during the Presidential election.
Pat was spouting his ideas on the economy and foreign policy. The interviewer said, "Pat, you sound a lot like Kerry. How come you're not supporting him?" Buchanan looked at the interviewer incredulously and said, "I can't support him... He's a liberal!"

So much for labels. Issues be damned. The "conservatives" these days in Washington are behaving like old free-spending liberals, and the "liberals" are behaving like budget-balancing, isolationist conservatives. The media will figure this out in a few years.

The Republican party is still basically big business. The "religious right" will figure that out in a few years, too.