On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 15:35:27 -0800, "David Stuve" wrote:

Why do ex-presidents have to keep their mouths shut?

Same reason retired CEO's of corporations keep their opinions to
themselves. They are no longer running things and because of their
previous position of authority, some within the various agencies who report
to the sitting president may tend to act more in line with the prior
leader's wishes than the current leader's wishes.

Freedom of speech is
the absolute cornerstone of our democracy, and should be encouraged.

This is more protocol and maintaining a reasonable sense of decorum.
Those former presidents had their 4 or 8 years to shape the landscape of
American life. To continue to attempt to influence events beyond
supporting their party's activities gives the appearance of attempting to
undermine the sitting president. Most of the former presidents have had the
dignity and wisdom to realize what that kind of activity during their terms
would have meant. How do you think that kind of thing looks to the rest of
the world (something about "a house divided" comes to mind).

I
think Bush and Reagan kept their mouths shut becuase in their heart of
hearts they really didn't give a crap about the rest of us.

... and Truman, and Ike, and LBJ, and all of their predecessors who
survived their terms. Yep, none of them cared about the rest of their
constituents.


When Mad King
George gets impeached or manages to somehow cling to office through the rest
of his term, he's going to go back to fishing and golf, and will never look
back. Like him or not, Carter seems to really want to keep trying to make
the world a better place.


Going to Havana and praising their health care system while excoriating
our own country was a real good move in that direction. He'd have been
better though of if he had stuck to habitat for humanity and woodworking.
Now he just appears to be a bitter old defeated politician trying to claim
another few minutes in the spotlight.

A former president(s) criticizing the sitting president in a time of war
on that war and military action does not help make the world a better
place. In fact, it most likely emboldens those whom we are fighting and in
so doing, puts our troops at more risk because the enemy will fight harder
knowing there is a possible source of division that they can exploit.

Why can't we talk about Carter's love of woodworking on the wreck here
without people feeling the need to rip on him as president?

Probably would have been a good thing. Funny thing was, that there was
really only one comment made in that vein. Now you've managed to turn that
into an excoriation of not just the sitting president, but all former
presidents who didn't share your party affiliation or apparent left-wing
views.

I wish he was
president right now instead of the lying loser we currently have.

Why does one fairly mild comment regarding an ex-president have to lead
to a diatribe and interjection of one's personal politics against the
sitting president and several former presidents? You could have taken the
high road and ignored the comment, keeping this on the topic of woodworking
but chose instead to interject your own personal, vitriolic politics into
this thread.

Besides -
Carter got a bum rap - Nixon and Ford left him with a world angry at the US
and an economy addicted to cheap oil..

...assuming for a moment that your opinions are correct, he successfully
fixed this, how?

And everyone seems to forget that
Reagan committed high treason when he negotiated with the Iranians to keep
the hostages longer to hurt Carter in the election.

You forgot your tinfoil hat and forgot to mention the Bush SR-71 trip to
Iran. ;-)

Do you realize how illogical your statement is? Why in @#$% would the
Iranians want to have Carter defeated? He was the best friend they had
compared to what they knew would occur under Reagan. (Yeah, let's support
he person who is going to more than threaten military action against us and
send in more than a couple of helicopters. Really brilliant logic there.)

And as a final insult,
conservative columnist George Will delivered a stolen copy of Carter's
debate briefing notebook to Reagan, making sure that Reagan had memorized
catchy combacks to Carter's debate points - making it look like Reagan
actually understood the issues. A shameful time in our country's great
history.


So one comment regarding the ex-president becomes a political diatribe of
paranoid conspiracy theories. Certainly the other side never did anything
similar. Let's see, a couple of grandparents going Christmas shopping in
Florida turn on the cell phone receiver in their Cadillac (don't all
Caddies come with that option) and just happen to hear Newt Gingrich
discussing political strategy and then turn on the tape recorder (that
apparently comes with the Cadillac cell phone receiver). Seems there was a
similar instance in the prior debates that went the other direction.
Doesn't make it right, just makes sure that people realize that the other
side is not pristine in this issue.

Do you want to talk shameful? How about
1) Holding a news story until the Saturday before an election, then
releasing it in order to provide a last-minute shock to the election
process
2) Forging documents that supposedly showed that the sitting president had
received favorable treatment in the National Guard and getting those
documents promulgated by the main-stream media (anxious for anything it
could get to damage the president whether true or not)
3) Knowing that your candidate in New Jersey (under indictment for bribery)
was going to lose the election, having him drop out after the deadline for
withdrawing, then getting the state supreme court to allow breaking the
state law that indicated "no changes to ballots could be within 90 days
before an election"

Something about "people who live in glass houses" comes to mind here.

There was never any doubt that Reagan understood the issues, he had been
active since the mid-60's in identifying the direction he thought the
country should be headed and and what the US needed to do to unleash the
creativity and abilities of its citizens. Do you really think the
Republicans needed Jimmy's notebook to know what his positions were? [Well,
then again, maybe they needed the notebooks to know what positions he was
going to express, not necessarily what position he held]





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If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

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