From: lcargill99@comcast.com   
      
   Martin Gregorie wrote:   
   > On Sun, 10 Sep 2017 12:20:38 -0700, The old geezer wrote:   
   >   
   >> Carter, Clinton, Obummer.  'Nuf said!  And that ain't givin a pass   
   >> to the elitist Bushes!  Oh, for the days of Ike!!   
   >   
   > The Bushes have always seemed the worst of that list, at least to me.   
      
   I would say "no". HW is the last of the Yale upper class WASP   
   public servants. Since he rather invented the [1]Republican   
   Party in Texas he's had a lot of draw.   
      
   [1] non-Bircher variety...   
      
   He's a bit geeky is all.   
      
   > Not so much the first one who, to an outsider, appeared to have a few   
   >  braincells. However Dubya was dead from the neck up and,   
      
   Ah, no. Not at all. There is footage of Dubya running for Congrefs the   
   first time. Complete sentences and all.   
      
   The halting, simplistic delivery was a learned affectation.   
      
   > worse, had   
   > a genuine certified cretin picking his advisers for him.   
      
   He was scraping the bottom of the barrel after decades of bloody   
   infighting and essentially political autoimmune disease. His   
   administration turned over at least once.   
      
   This dates back to Nixon if not before. It found full expression   
   in Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" which incorporated a   
   ( curiously Progressivist ) "term limits" movement, which low-pass-   
   filtered those available.   
      
   If there's no longer a mechanism for accession to power, all   
   you get is a sequence of dark horse ( unknown quantity ) candidates.   
   Everybody since Bush41 ran *oustide* the system.   
      
   Some of that is the sheer number of discontinuities since Eisenhower,   
   whether it's Watergate or all the assassinations in '68. And shaking   
   loose Jim Crow has had its costs, bizarrely.   
      
   > As a result   
   > I've always dismissed him as a ventriloquist's dummy and wish   
   > somebody would properly allocate blame and opprobrium on Rumsfeld and   
   > his nasty cronies and the loathsome companies they ran..   
   >   
   >   
   You might enjoy Len Colodny's books then. :) They're a bit "Whut?" but   
   they're entertaining.   
      
   Of course they're nasty; by 2001 they'd all survived 40 years of   
   infighting in the sacred halls of power. And, FWIW, Rumsfeld pretty   
   much had his letter of resignation typed out the whole time.   
      
   The thing to wonder about is: why did American politics suddenly   
   turn into total blood sport under Johnson? Seems to be mainly   
   the legacy of the "peace" movement. I don't get it yet.   
      
   We've applied high-tech lubrication techniques to "climbing the greasy   
   pole."   
      
   --   
   Les Cargill   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)