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

Actually, Kathy, I have to agree with you here. It's time for me to stop going on about the election of 2000. But the reason why I have said so much about it is that the details of that election shocked me so deeply. And then the President who got elected by such an incredibly narrow margin - who wouldn't have won at all if the ballots had been counted individually - started behaving so outrageously, indeed as if he had been appointed by God himself, as he made dictates to the whole world.

Yes, I'm politically left-wing. Very much so. But that doesn't mean that I have some sort of blanket hatred for Republican politicians in America! Absolutely not. The first American President that I can remember clearly is Richard Nixon. And no, I didn't like him very much at all, because of the Watergate scandal. But guess what? I admired America like heck because of the way it went to the bottom of the Watergate scandal and because of the way it dealt with Richard Nixon! Wow! I thought it was all so great. Those of you who are Americans, you don't know how much I admired your country during the last two Nixon years!

Besides, it wasn't as if I hated Nixon himself, either. I really, really admired him when he went to China and started his "ping-pong diplomacy". Really! I thought that he made the world so much safer than before! You think that I always hate Republican Presidents? Think again.

(And besides, Nixon ended the Vietnam war. He didn't start it, but he did end it. Now wasn't that admirable? You bet I thought so!)

Then there was Gerald Ford. He didn't make very much of an impression on me, and what I can clearly remember about him is that our Swedish newspapers wrote that Gerald Ford couldn't chew gum and walk a straight line at the same time, because he had played football when he was young and gotten so many concussions... No, I didn't really believe that Gerald Ford was slow, and I most certainly didn't think that he was brain-damaged, but I couldn't help giggling at him a little. I regarded him as "mostly harmless", as Earthlings are famously described by the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Don't be angry at me for giggling at Gerald Ford. I was a kid.

Then Jimmy Carter became the next President. Ah, poor Carter. I really think that he was unlucky about the kidnappings of American diplomats in Khomeini's Iran.

Then there was Reagan. I'll be honest with you... when I saw how right-wing Reagan was about certain things, I realized that I just couldn't define myself as right-wing anymore. Yes, I had voted for right-wing parties in Sweden up until that point, but because of Reagan I redefined myself politically. I have called myself politically left-wing ever since then.

But does that mean that I hated Reagan? Absolutely not! I, too, was touched and moved by Reagan's charm. You think Bush Jr. is charming? Hah! He can't hold a candle to Reagan's charm.

But there was more to Reagan than a charming smile. I'll never forget how he behaved after he was shot. People, consider. Someone had tried to murder him. And they had hit him, too, and he was in hospital, and he had had to have surgery. But afterwards, he was smiling, leaning on his wife Nancy, and that smile... oh wow! The optimism that was there in that smile, the faith in the future, both his own future and America's future... it almost blew me away. The sheer power of his personal strength and optimism.

And how did Reagan deal with the world? Not by making war on it. Not by telling the other countries of the world that they were either for America or against it, and if they were against it, they would have to deal with the consequencies. Not on your life! Not Reagan! No, what Reagan said was this: "Please, Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall." And the wall fell, only a few years later. And the cold war ended. Those were the days.

Then Bush Sr. became President. George Herbert Walker Bush. He made war on Iraq because Saddam had invaded Kuwait, and I thought that Bush was so totally justified in his decision. And he went about the war so cannily, too. He made sure that almost the entire Arab world was behind him and took part in the war. It was brilliant. It was not Bush Sr's war, it was just as much the Arab world's war against one errant Arab nation.

And Bush bravely raised taxes. Bravo! When Clinton came after Bush, he was given such a great starting point because of the extra money that Bush Sr. had brought in to the Federal coffers. Clinton was in a position where he could lower taxes - and unless I remember wrongly, he did, too - and yet he didn't create economic problems for his country. Instead, during the Clinton years, the U.S. economy was booming.

And during all this time, I felt so good about the United States. I liked it so much. I felt so lucky that the United States was the strongest country in the world. I could think of no other country that I would be even remotely as happy with in the role of "stern but kind Daddy to the world".

And then Bush Jr. came along. Sigh.

How do I describe Bush? Do I hate him? Oh, what a simplistic word. Hate. It doesn't explain what I feel about Bush at all.

I guess the closest I can get is to say that this is what Bush Jr. has done to my image of America:



A new President will be coming soon. I can hardly wait.

(But I hope it won't be McCain... bomb, bomb, bomb Iran... )

Ann