Thursday, January 15, 2009

Best and Worst Presidents

Everyone is saying GW Bush will go down in history as the worst president ever. Is he worse than Nixon?

I hate to admit it, but as creepy as he was, I sort of liked Nixon, but mostly as a kind of character in a novel (too bad he was real), a study in paranoia. Maybe it's because I met him once, ever so briefly. He was so so weird, waving his fingers in the air. Hard to say I like someone who bombed the hell out of Vietnam without any sense of remorse, who was always sneaking around, doing creepy things. But his wife seemed decent enough. I mean she supported the ERA, was pro-choice (with reservations), traveled the nation and the world, went into the combat zone is South Vietnam, and seemed to have a social conscience. I don't think she knew about Watergate, and she appeared to enjoy Nixon (she always looked miserable with him, esp in the end) about as much as the rest of us did.

Laura Bush, I read recently, is so boring that several major publishers are not interested in bidding on her biography. GW said about her: She's the perfect wife. She does not go into the spotlight.

I think Andrew Jackson is hard to beat as a candidate for the worst president. It seems that Jackson, Nixon, Bush and Cheney all thought they were above the law.

Eleanor Roosevelt might have been the best president ever. She was the heart, the legs, the conscience, and probably most of the brains of FDR. Funny to think he initially wanted her to stay out of the public eye and serve tea to guests of the White House. Maybe join the stitch and chat with the other women of her day . . .

3 comments:

. Salon Noir . said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon_mask

Nin Andrews said...

OHHH! That is scary. He was ugly for sure, but not that ugly . . . Wow.

Unknown said...

I think Bush is pretty much a push with Nixon.