Are American Presidents embarrassing?

[ronthenekred]

Bush wasn't the best speaker, but not everybody feels comfortable talking to thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of people who are all hanging on your every word in front of you.

 

So I think the bushisms thing is largely irrelevant.

 

If you take it for what it is, probably the highest office in the world, nobody who ever reaches that level of Government will be dumb.

 

He's a graduate of Yale and Harvard, yet he's got a bunch of plebs on Sheffield Forum calling him dumb, yeah aight.

 

 

...a very influential daddy.

[janie48]

i don't think, as a whole, they are any more embarrassing than many other countries leaders

 

That's true, you've only got to look at our own lot.

[Electerrific]

No, Bush Dubya was dumb and moronic. I said it again and he was.

 

He got to be Pres. So? No backroom aid then? Naiive or what?

[erebus]

These days a good leader does what he is told by banks and large corporations, and if he is very good, then like Blair he becomes suddenly very wealthy;

 

The only heroes are those delivered from war zoned in boxes, the maimed are secretly forgotten, in the bright new world of celebrity leaders. Puppets do not need a brain, just the ability to con people, or appear to be sincere. They must also look good, smile a lot, especially when misleading people.

 

Obama is possibly the first academic to rise to power, but he is just a front to corporate requirements, can do nothing, will do next to nothing, and like the thick Bush just needs to be there, to exist, to appear to help the people who voted for him, while working for corporate giant interests. Say one thing allow the corporations to do the reverse.

 

So politicians like the variety of washing powders, might appear to be different, in different bright packaging, but in really are made by just two companies, another corporate cartel.

[Rupert_Baehr]

These days a good leader does what he is told by banks and large corporations, and if he is very good, then like Blair he becomes suddenly very wealthy;

 

The only heroes are those delivered from war zoned in boxes, the maimed are secretly forgotten, in the bright new world of celebrity leaders. Puppets do not need a brain, just the ability to con people, or appear to be sincere. They must also look good, smile a lot, especially when misleading people.

 

Not always. A couple of years ago a junior officer at Ft Bliss told his boss: "The President is on the base!"

 

Instant panic! (There was no scheduled visit and nobody even knew he was coming.)

 

Apparently the President (Obama) was in the area - at a local TV station doing a PR-boosting exercise.

 

Bush had heard that an aircraft full of wounded soldiers had returned to Ft Bliss and he decided to visit them (in his capacity as a private individual) to see if he could do anything to help them.

 

Obama is possibly the first academic to rise to power, but he is just a front to corporate requirements, can do nothing, will do next to nothing,...

 

You do surprise me! - Do they no longer have academics at Oxford University?

Have you heard of William Jefferson Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar?

 

 

and like the thick Bush just needs to be there, to exist, to appear to help the people who voted for him, while working for corporate giant interests. ..l.

 

That would be the thick Bush who graduated from Yale in 1968 and earned an MBA at the Harvard Business School, wouldn't it?

 

His verbal gaffes are legendary, but here's another view (by a lecturer at the Stanford Business School) : George W. Bush Is Smarter than You

 

Somehow, if you're as thick as a brick, I doubt you would get the job of President of the United States.

[blake]

I always got the impression that the American president, whoever it was, was just a front man and really had no say, just did as he was told by the real power, ie the backroom staff, who never showed their faces in public

 

that's another myth frequently repeated by idiots - especially with regard to Reagan. The 'puppet' theory of American presidents is really one for the infants. Reagan's approach to governing was like being the chairman of a board of directors - he wasn't a hands on manager at all, but that doesn't mean he didn't take decisions or wasn't autonomous. Unlike with many presidents there is no particular adviser as in a 'power behind the throne' that you associate with Reagan. Eisenhower had Dulles. Kennedy and Johnson, McNamara. Nixon, Kissinger. Bush Jnr, Cheney. Reagan didn't have anybody like that. He didn't have anybody even remotely like that. He got through six National Security Advisers in eight years. Reagan was a lot more autonomous than he is commonly given credit for.

[Hillpig]

The Soviet Union had wanted Helsinki, detente and SALT 1 in order to legitimize their empires border, gain equivalence in nuclear arms and to see off any internal demands from dissidents.

Helsinki clauses about of human rights were ignored by the Russians in their own and client states because they became an internal issue under Helsinki. This was wrong to both left and right in western Europe and America and a blow to activists in the East.

 

Leonid Brezhnev was barely able to make decisions because of his addictions and could not prevent or control events in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Somalia, Iran and Afghanistan. Without political support the Soviet military moved accurate SS-20 missiles to target western Europe. NATO countries and France demanded a response and got the Americans to put the even more accurate Pershing missiles into Europe.

 

Reagan changed the American policy of containment to a policy of roll-back.

 

Reagan was not an intellectual, he was no Kissinger who wrongly predict the future but he was an actor, of the left and right, a listener and devolved tasks to others. (Bush jnr had non of these).

 

The demand for rights in the East was rising. Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, Havel, Wojtyła, Walesa etc became the focus for movements that Mikhail Gorbachev

recognised as the beginning of the end of for Soviet rule.

 

In Reagan, Gorbachev found a person who would help dissolve the Soviet empire. History might be kinder to Reagan than we were at the time.

 

Spot on, the President of the US does not need to be an intellectual, he needs to be a symbol, a leader, the mark of a true leader is he surrounds himself with good advisers and is able to deliver his messages simply. Reagan was and is, under rated. I would suggest he achieved more than any US President than Roosevelt.

[erebus]

RUPERT, being an academic is not like Clinton just getting a degree, or getting into one of the UK's new academies, which I admit is a nice thought, although somewhat ill informed.

 

An academic has a bit more than a basic degree, they work, as in earn money in an academic institution, hence being an academic. Clinton and the rich lush Bush one who earned a degree and the other had it bought for him.

 

Obama is from a different academic persuasion. In late 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year, and president of the journal in his second year. During his summers, he returned to Chicago, where he worked as an associate at the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990.

 

After graduating from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago. Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review gained national media attention and led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations.

 

In 1991, Obama accepted a two-year position as Visiting Law and Government Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School to work on his first book. He then taught at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years—as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004—teaching constitutional law.

 

Thus he was as stated an academic and not a person that got a degree or two.

 

Suddenly visiting places is NOT a qualification of thinking for oneself, even if visiting ones mates down the pub is thought of as a serious personal decision. Presidents are managed, its a PR thing, about maintaining popularity, some need to know what is going to happen and most do not need to know. So forget free thinking presidents, the whole idea of any trip is a bit more than just a whim, its a decision agreed by a group, with the president, geared for publicity.

 

Being thick as a brick is a good qualification for president especially if the subject is very very rich. Like in the UK being a prime minister making decisions on subjects they know nothing about in any detail at all, is all about PR. Just ask a Cameron, who knows nothing about anything but pontificates like his friend at the treasury. Its who you know not what you know, and of course pretending to know with sincerity. Remember Blair and his sincere beliefs??? Its about fooling the people all of the time, and politicians are now puppets of the corporate sector...geddit????!!!

[Obelix]

Well Bush Sr may look a bit goofy now but it's in a good cause....

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23444771

[Rupert_Baehr]

RUPERT, being an academic is not like Clinton just getting a degree, or getting into one of the UK's new academies, which I admit is a nice thought, although somewhat ill informed.

 

An academic has a bit more than a basic degree, they work, as in earn money in an academic institution, hence being an academic. Clinton and the rich lush Bush one who earned a degree and the other had it bought for him.

 

Obama is from a different academic persuasion. In late 1988, Obama entered Harvard Law School. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year, and president of the journal in his second year. During his summers, he returned to Chicago, where he worked as an associate at the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990.

 

After graduating from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago. Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review gained national media attention and led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations.

 

In 1991, Obama accepted a two-year position as Visiting Law and Government Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School to work on his first book. He then taught at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years—as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004—teaching constitutional law.

 

Thus he was as stated an academic and not a person that got a degree or two.

 

Suddenly visiting places is NOT a qualification of thinking for oneself, even if visiting ones mates down the pub is thought of as a serious personal decision. Presidents are managed, its a PR thing, about maintaining popularity, some need to know what is going to happen and most do not need to know. So forget free thinking presidents, the whole idea of any trip is a bit more than just a whim, its a decision agreed by a group, with the president, geared for publicity.

 

Being thick as a brick is a good qualification for president especially if the subject is very very rich. Like in the UK being a prime minister making decisions on subjects they know nothing about in any detail at all, is all about PR. Just ask a Cameron, who knows nothing about anything but pontificates like his friend at the treasury. Its who you know not what you know, and of course pretending to know with sincerity. Remember Blair and his sincere beliefs??? Its about fooling the people all of the time, and politicians are now puppets of the corporate sector...geddit????!!!

 

As it happens, I do know a little bit about acadaemia.

 

What makes you think that Oxford University is 'one of the UK's new academies'?

 

Clinton is a Rhodes Scholar and whether you like that or not, that is generally accepted as being an indication of 'academic ability'.