So with all the hoopla and hype we have experienced another peaceful exchange of power in Washington. I defer all comments on both 43th and 44th Presidents to present and future historians. What I relish in is that the system with all its' faults still works.
Sure there any lots of problems out there. I work in the lumber industry so you don't have to remind me there are problems.
I like to read about leaders of the past and draw on their experience to hopefully guide me in the future. I came across a quote by Margaret Thatcher tonight. "Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't." I like that. I know a little about Thatcher but haven't read a book about her. So I did a little research and looked up some titles.
I'm reading a customer's review on Amazon on a Thatcher biography which starts out, " Not every British Prime Minister is a Thatcher or Churchill. Not every American President is a Lincoln, Kennedy, or Clinton." I have no clue what the rest of this review says. These two sentences stopped me dead in my tracks.
Thatcher and Churchill may be a good comparison, I know they are both highly regarded. I know more about Churchill and if I could have dinner with 8 people living or dead he would be one of them.
But putting Lincoln, Kennedy and Clinton in the same group!!!!!!!!!! As Phil Rizzuto put it "Holy Cow"
Let see Lincoln gets put on the ranking of President by historians oh first or second, right up there with Washington and FDR. Kennedy on average is in the mid-teens in the ranking. He didn't get a full term, so we will always wonder what if. Two things they have in common is they are both on coins and both caught a bullet in the head. Something neither one planned on, but links them forever in history. Now Clinton he is right around an average of 20 on the rankings.
Lincoln is remembered for freeing the slaves and guiding the country in the war between the states, preserving the Union. Clinton is best remembered for dropping his pants in the west wing and somehow preserving his Presidency.
Will Rogers put it best. "If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone, 'America died from a delusion that she has moral leadership."
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A fine point, and drawers notwithstanding (JFK didn't keep his on either or perhaps that should read, "at all") is it moral for a leader to represent 15 percent of the population at the expense of the other 85? Or even 51% at the expense of the other 49? The goal of politics is to win. The goal of government is to legislate and preserve the union. We get confused.
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