Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls Poll: Which US presidential candidate do you like best?

Roger, you said:
In early 2003, my best friend's sister, Carina, who is married to an American, was in Sweden for a visit. We were talking politics because of the upcoming Iraq war. I was comparing George W. Bush to Bill Clinton. And Carina said:

"I really wonder what historians will say about Bill Clinton a hundred years from now. I'm sure they will say that he was the most disgusting American President ever."

"Why?" I asked, totally shocked. "Come on... the United States was doing splendid economically under Clinton, the dollar was sky-high... don't I remember... and you had a great budget surplus, and all of us in Europe were so thankful to you for coming to us and helping us sort out our Balkan mess! And I'm sure that the U.S. was quite well-liked in most other parts of the world, too. And you were not at war. Why would Clinton have been so disgusting? You mean because of the Monica Lewinsky thing?"

"He lied to us!!!" Carina replied, her eyes blazing. "He lied to the American people!!!!"

Carina is married to a conservative American, and she has adopted his views. She might have thought that Bill Clinton was the most disgusting American President of all time even if the American media had been Clinton-supporters. But there is no way that so many Americans would have disliked Clinton so much when America was doing so well at home and abroad, if the liberal media had ruled back then.

Only eight years after George Herbert Walker Bush, America's forty-first President, was defeated by Bill Clinton, his son George Walker Bush ran for President. I thought that this was quite noteworthy, but the American media didn't comment on it much at all. It was mentioned, but not discussed. In fact, I didn't read any comments on it at all, although I realize that there may have been many articles on it that I can easily have missed. Anyway, when I mentioned it to my brother, who I regard as well-informed, he protested. Was George W. Bush the former President Bush's son? Oh no, he wasn't! Surely the U.S. presidency can't pass from father to son like that. No, obviously George W. Bush had to be the elder George Bush's nephew!

This year there has been so much talk about how strange it would be if Hillary Clinton sort of "succeeded" her husband as the U.S. President. In 2000, George W. Bush's very close relationship with George H.W. Bush was seen as no problem at all, hardly worth mentioning. I don't see this as evidence that liberal media rules in the United States.

In the election of the year 2000, George W. Bush ran against Al Gore. Gore won the popular vote, that is, there were more Americans who voted for Gore than there were Americans who voted for Bush. But because of the American voting system, winning the popular vote doesn't guarantee that you win the Presidency. The election would be decided in Florida. There was an enormous amount of criticism against the sheer technicalities of the voting in Florida. I remember, for example, that the ballots were oddly designed. I saw a picture of a Florida ballot. There were many different names on it. It was easy and obvious to see where to punch a hole if you wanted to vote for Bush, because his name was placed in the upper left corner. There was no mistaking the proper spot to punch if you wanted to give your vote to him. Gore's name, however, was more oddly placed, and there was a real possibility that you might vote for another candidate altogether, Pat Buchanan, when you tried to vote for Gore. If one Gore-supporter out of a thousand accidentally voted for another candidate, that might make a difference.



Also, it was necessary to punch a hole clear through the ticket, or else your vote might be considered invalid. Lots of ballot tickets were reportedly deemed invalid because they were just "pregnant", they were just "bulging", instead of having a hole punched clear through them. It was up to those who counted the votes to decide for themselves if a ballot had a sufficently good hole in it to be valid.

The man who was responsible for the whole voting process in Florida was the Governor of Florida, John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, who is George W. Bush's own brother. Is it reasonable to assume that Jeb Bush was wholly neutral in his approach to the voting process? Would he have been just as happy to see Al Gore win as he was to see his own brother win? Is it at all possible to imagine that he might have done a little something, in his position as the Governor of Florida, to help his big brother win in Florida? Such as okaying the design of the Florida ballots?

Bush won a very narrow victory in Florida. If I remember correctly, he got a couple of hundred votes more than Gore. But given all the controversy over the "pregnant" ballots, somebody - I don't remember who - asked that the ballots in Florida should be counted and scrutinized again. The renewed counting of the ballots started. But before it was finished, the Supreme Court stepped in and ordered the renewed counting to be stopped. The Supreme Court thereby declared that George W. Bush was the winner, and the new President of the United States.

Guess what? Most of the jurors on the Supreme Court had been appointed by Republican Presidents. They had been picked partly because of their conservative views. Is it likely that these jurors were wholly neutral, when it came to making a decision which might have an enormous bearing on whether the United States would have a Republican or a Democratic President? Is it possible to assume that most jurors of the Supreme Court, who had been appointed by Republican Presidents, would prefer that George W. Bush won over Al Gore?

We can't know what the jurors were thinking, but by stopping the renewed counting of the ballots in Florida, they made sure that Al Gore couldn't win.

Let me summarize. In 1992, George Herbert Walker Bush is defeated by Bill Clinton. America is doing very well under Clinton, both at home and abroad. The media in America portray Clinton in such a way that at the end of his second term, Clinton is widely and strongly disliked.

George Herbert Walker Bush's eldest son, George Walker Bush, runs for the Presidency in the year 2000. George Herbert Walker Bush's younger son, John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, is Governor of Florida. George Walker Bush loses the popular vote to Al Gore, but the election will be decided in Florida. Because of the design of the Florida ballot, it is likely that hundreds of Gore voters accidentally vote for Pat Buchanan instead. It is also hard to say which ballots are valid or not, so those who count the ballots may be free to discard or accept ballots at their own discretion. When the Florida votes are counted again, the Republican-appointed Supreme Court steps in and stops the re-counting, thus handing the Presidency to George W. Bush.

Can you imagine what this looked like to a foreigner? During that election, the United States didn't look like a country with a fair voting process to me. It didn't really look like a democracy to me.

And it seems to me that if the liberal media had ruled the United States at this time, there would have been such an outcry that the Constitution would still be in the process of having new amendments attached to it, to make sure that the scandals of the election of 2000 could never happen again.

Then in the election of 2004... George W. Bush ran against John Kerry. Kerry was a decorated Vietnam War veteran. George W. Bush never went to Vietnam. You'd think that the respective Vietnam War records of the two candidates would speak very strongly in favor of John Kerry. But the "Swift Boat Campaign" succeeded in making John Kerry's medal of honour look like a stigma of deceit and cowardice instead. How could this possibly happen? Not because the liberal media were ruling the United States.

Yes, I agree that the mood in America has shifted. People are getting tired of Bush. They don't believe in him like they used to. And the liberal media are getting back at him.

He had it coming to him, if you ask me.

Ann