Re: It's Really Sad That Barack Obama Is Making Empty Promises

On Feb 22, 10:49�pm, Dale Houstman <d...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
RichL wrote:

�> Dale Houstman <d...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
�>�>> RichL wrote:

�>>
�>>> Dale Houstman <d...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
�>>>
�>>>
�>>>
�>>>> Yes. LBJ - whatever his other flaws (and he had plenty and most
�>>>> �Texas-sized) he knew how Congress worked and when to coddle it
�>>>> and when to cudgel it. If he hadn't allowed his ego to be
�>>>> swallowed up in the war, he might well have been remembered as
�>>>> the fellow who extended and nailed down for good FDR's legacy -
�>>>> no matter what one thinks that might consist of.
�>>>
�>>>
�>>> A while back, I read Robert Caro's Johnson biography. �It's an
�>>> impressive piece of work; he did a very good job of capturing
�>>> Johnson's personality, including both the good and the bad. �I
�>>> came away from it with an admiration for Johnson and a feeling
�>>> that he was truly motivated to get into politics by real feelings
�>>> for the poor and downtrodden.
�>>
�>> From what I've gathered, I would agree, but such a real feeling for
�>> �the "under classes" can - with time and ego and power - turn
�>> pretty ugly: the Huey Lewis story for one comes to mind. Of course,
�>> I suppose one might say that it doesn't hurt to have blustering
�>> egomaniacs on "our" side from time to time, but getting power does
�>> horrible things to even the best of people. In this case, the war
�>> might as well have been a bull raping LBJ in a dollhouse. He didn't
�>> �have a chance.
�>>
�>>
�>>> If it weren't for the Vietnam fiasco, I think he would have been
�>>> regarded as one of the country's great presidents. �And I don't
�>>> think it's too much of a stretch to say that the country wouldn't
�>>> �have taken the rightward turn that it has over the last 40
�>>> years.
�>>
�>> Hard to say, but possibly. There's so much nuttiness out there on
�>> the question of what is liberla and what is conservative, and -
�>> from my political perspective they tend to (at least now) be pretty
�>> much the same house with different drapes. The little Republican
�>> racists at my job once said that thought Harry Truman - if he were
�>> alive today - would be a conservative Republican. But the one thing
�>> Truman most regretted after leaving office? Not getting through a
�>> universal governnment run healthcare system, which he saw as the
�>> final peg in FDR's little plan. Not much of a conservative...
�>>
�>> Thw Vietnam War - besides wrecking our economy good and thus
�>> creating all sorts of political craziness - also waylaid LBJ's
�>> truly cherished ideas about civil rights and a host of social
�>> networks, and unions etc. The dream is over...as someone said. This
�>> new war is about to put a big hole in the future of this country,
�>> and financial distress can bring along the potential for all sorts
�>> of new directions. Unfortunately, one of them is fascism, and the
�>> U.S. - with its crabbed religious beliefs, the cozy relations
�>> between government and corporations, and its handful of handy
�>> scapegoats (illegal immigrants, inner city blacks, homosexuals,
�>> etc) and decades of acutely humiliating blows to its thinning
�>> facade of unbeatablity and goodness, seems much more likely to
�>> become fascist than to embrace ideals of shared resources, and
�>> community action.
�>>
�>> We'll see...
�>>
�>> dmh
�>
�>
�> I presume you mean Huey Long. �Huey Lewis was pretty boring, but
�> blustering egomaniac is a stretch ;-)

Of course: it felt funny when I typed it, but I failed to grab the tiny
hint my failing mind threw up through the miasma! "I Wanna New Prez!"

�>
�> But I get your drift. �Johnson's massive ego ultimately got in the
�> way of what could have been a good thing. �But I wonder, is a massive
�> ego necessary for someone to have the drive to run for president of
�> the US?

Oh - I think it is more than that: in general, I think that most people
who run for President (or any national leadership role) are closer to
sociopaths than mere egotists. We only have the restraints built into
the governmental system, the sleepy media, and our own alertness to
prevent these maniacs from killing more and stealing more than they do.
Behind that general front of megalomania though, it is a certain core of
ethics, or personality learned in childhood and so which ameliorates the
practice of this horrendous power. You get someone like LBJ - who had a
lifetime to observe and dispair of rural souther poverty, and a very
strong mind, and you get the social giant he might have been, if not for
the fact he also was made insecure by Kennedy's Ivy League bright boys
and couldn't bare losing the war they had deepened for him. The mix is
different in all: Nixon was an extremely intelligent man driven by
paranoia and more insecurity. Kennedy: a bit callow, like his fanboy
Clinton, and too enamored of statistics that radiated from Eastern
academics new to power. Bush Jr: there's an empty suit which reveals
what unlimited arrogance combined with profound stupidity can really
accomplish combined with a lazy electorate and media and a gelded
"opposition" party. Ugly little vignettes in a dusty hole...

�>
�> To me, the presidency has too much power these days. �Congress needs
�> to assert itself more vigorously, but also the Court is overdue for a
�> major enema.
�>
I would agree. I think the Court needs to be locked in a steel cage
until a certain percentage of its current members die off. Then see what
can be done with it. But I imagine that's unconstitutional.

What I really think is the problem though is that - even given a good
rebalance of powers - the role of money in driving elections is such
that very little good will come of the process. We get tiny little
(usually cynical and meant-to-fail) thrusts at campaign reform, which
are quickly skirted, and soon the lobbyists are in the chambers writing
the laws again. And all that crap about "money being free speech" is
quite aggravating, since it means that someone with more money has more
free speech, and surely that doesn't really sound like a good idea. We
need (and I don't expect this to happen) to have totally government
sponsored elections, with less stringent entrance barriers to a wider
idea of candidate, and way shorter campaign seasons - like six months.
The notion that the longer it goes on the better we get to know them
(the Chosen Ones) is the purest drivel, because there is a rather
baroque system set up (those crappy debate-like things, the media's
horse race methodology, tec) to insure confusion increases with time,
until the relative clarity of cognitive collapse sets in, and we are
left hanging on to the nearest semblance to a raft, as we stare at the
Event Horizon beyond. It's absurd...

dmh

Bring on the Bama....it can't get no worse.
.

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