US Presidents

I'm not going to attempt to rank them much less come up with some definitive top ten of the very best.  A lot of it is completely relative as it is, although there were some who were mere officeholders and some who attempted great things, some who were caught up in hard times and some who rode good times.  So I'm going to give some thoughts to all the US Presidents, including a +, -, or n, for neutral, indication of their overall impact (with the two most recent receiving that distinction, as it's far too early to rationally judge them). 

• George Washington (1789-1797) (+) The first and among the easiest consensus as being a positive influence on (father of) his country. 
• John Adams (1797-1801) (+) These early Presidents almost by default achieved great things, regardless of how even partisan politics this soon threatened to smear their reputations.  The second one was the first victim of this trend, but the dude was great by any reasonable standard.
• Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) (+) The first politician to emerge as President, beneficiary of some of the greatest myth-making the country has ever seen, and probably deserves it.
• James Madison (1809-1817) (+) Arguably the guy who had the most heavy lifting of the early Presidents, at the end of the Founding Fathers era, left holding the bag on the perennially underappreciated War of 1812 climax.
• James Monroe (1817-1825) (+) Arguably the President who most ensured that the Civil War would eventually happen, but also the bridge between the foundation of the country and the next generation.
• John Quincy Adams (1825-1829) (+) Arguably better post-Presidency, where his role in attempting to hold the line of the country's moral character set the standard for which the Union was eventually preserved.
• Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) (-) Here's one of the most famous early Presidents, and the most famous post-Founders era, who solidified the role of petty politics for future generations.
• Martin Van Buren (1937-1841) (n) Jackson's appointed successor, knew enough not play the game in exactly the same way, likely figured that out when Jackson's policies ultimately proved disastrous.
• William Henry Harrison (1841) (n) Died almost instantly but election proved that the Jacksonian era was already being repudiated.
• John Tyler (1841-1845) (n) The politics of character assassination if you don't like the guy in office began with Tyler, "His Accidency," although in practice he proved that the system absolutely worked.  However, after term in office, sullied legacy by signing up with the Confederacy.
• James Polk (1845-1849) (n) A strong record of expanding American territory ended up producing mixed results leading up to Civil War.
• Zachary Taylor (1849-1850) (n) Abbreviated term indicated a figure closer to Lincoln than might be expected from obscure legacy.
• Millard Fillmore (1850-1853) (-) The weakening Presidency meant great politicians were less likely to find themselves in the office, and the others only managed to dig deeper toward Civil War.
• Franklin Pierce (1853-1857) (-) Virtually guaranteed Civil War.
• James Buchanan (1857-1861) (-) Guaranteed Civil War.
• Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) (+) After winning the war and subsequently being assassinated, elevated to sainthood, but at the time was considered the worst president ever.  But now routinely considered the best.  And he probably was.
• Andrew Johnson (1865-1869) (+) Everything everyone hated about Lincoln was basically dumped on this guy, given the thankless task of Reconstruction.  And so the petty politics that almost ruined Lincoln, ended up being Johnson's legacy.  Undeservedly.
• Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877) (+) Politics were broken well before the Civil War, but somehow everyone likes to blame Grant for the state of affairs he and his predecessor had to deal with.  The fact that the Union held together and we of course still have it today is proof enough that no matter how difficult the process, his and Johnson's work was a success.
• Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881) (+) So thankless a task was Reconstruction that hardly anyone knows this guy even existed today.
• James A. Garfield (1881) (n) Another brief Presidency and the second assassination, and all he ended up doing was proving how ridiculous politics are.
• Chester Arthur (1881-1885) (+) A quiet plus here for having the bravery to represent political reform, which at this point was clearly badly needed.
• Grover Cleveland (1885-1889) (1893-1897) (-) The only nonconsecutive two-term President thus far, he was kind of the personification of the Republican Party's degeneracy, signaling the first cracks that would eventually shatter under Democratic pressure, in fact the party's first (and second) office holder since the Civil War.
• Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893) (n) The Republicans had this guy in between the Cleveland administrations, but he ended up being blamed for a recession.  Maybe the Civil War had something to do with that? 
• William McKinley (1897-1901) (+) A return to a more confident Presidency, at last.
• Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) (+) Literally enshrined on Mount Rushmore.  The last of the strong Presidents until, well, his cousin.
• William Taft (1909-1913) (+) Teddy was pretty annoyed that his chosen successor wasn't enough like him.  But close enough.
• Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) (-) Democratic Party mythmaking began with this guy, praised as the genius behind the League of Nations, but also the guy Teddy Roosevelt openly despised.  I tend to agree with Teddy.  Also not famous enough for being the bastard who actually screened Birth of a Nation at the White House.
• Warren Harding (1921-1923) (-) A weak President at pretty much the worst time.  Probably most responsible for the Great Depression.
• Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) (-) Harding and Coolidge were literally the Great Depression versions of pre-Civil War Presidents.
• Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) (+) Blamed for the Great Depression.  Which was ridiculous.  Immediately set about an FDR-type program.  Which didn't even work for FDR until WWII.
• Franklin Roosevelt (1933-1945) (+) Deserves praise not so much for the New Deal as the brilliant prosecution of WWII.
• Harry Truman (1945-1953) (-) The asshole who actually dropped not one but two atomic bombs.  History will eventually get around to condemning him.
• Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961) (+) Perhaps the last President not to be defined wholly by his political affiliation.  Thankless task of handling the early Cold War.
• John Kennedy (1961-1963) (+) The last great man in office.
• Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969) (+) Everything good he did was following the Kennedy playbook. 
• Richard Nixon (1969-1974) (+) Angered political opponents mostly for successfully completing the ideas of his immediate predecessors (who were technically party rivals).
• Gerald Ford (1974-1977) (n) Sort of proved how harmless the Nixon administration really was.  And that's about it.
• Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) (-) Perhaps a really great person, but a terrible President.
• Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) (+) Ushered in the modern era by ending the Cold War.  Every Democratic Party candidate ever since has had to pretend this didn't happen.  And we're somehow actually letting that work.
• George Bush (1989-1993) (+) Put the finishing touches on Reagan's administration.
• Bill Clinton (1993-2001) (n) It's hard to know what exactly he accomplished.  He inherited an economy primed by the accomplishments of his immediate predecessors.  And generally still gets all the credit.
• George W. Bush (2001-2009) (+) The thankless task of leading the country post-9/11.  And his opponents almost immediately politicized it.
• Barack Obama (2009-2017) (n) Hard to know what he really accomplished yet.
• Donald Trump (2017-present) (n) Hard to know what he's really accomplished yet.  Political strife not a legitimate determinant. 

Cults of Personality

I admit that I first heard Living Colour's song "Cult of Personality" as wrestler CM Punk's entrance music.  The song is about charismatic people who trick other people into following them, their charisma often masking their true identities as ruthless dictators.  The 20th century was awash in the cult of personality.  Here in the 21st century, a lot of people have decided that a much-maligned US president was destined to join the ranks of the cult of personality.  But the thing is, the US presidency is somewhat...immune from what Living Colour was singing about.  There're just too many checks and balances in place.  No matter how big the personality and no matter the character of the cult, the system keeps the president within reasonable confines.

But that doesn't mean the cult of personality has nothing to do with the presidency. 

I'm here to argue that the most surefire way to win the presidency is by cult of personality.  Simply put, the biggest personality invariably wins on election day.  It doesn't matter how the personality is defined.  The biggest, the best, the most easily defined personality wins.  I defy you to name an election outcome that contradicts this. 

Within living memory, Kennedy famously bested Nixon because he was better on camera, and a whole mythology soon followed, even if he became incredibly contentious, capped off by the assassination that has become his chief legacy.  Johnson (who in personality was pretty much exactly the equal of the current president, although media coverage greatly diverges) didn't have to worry about campaigning, since he essentially acted as Kennedy's surrogate until he decided he wouldn't run again, at which point Nixon no longer had a problem of rivals.  Then the Democrats found their next surrogate Kennedy (Carter, followed by Clinton, followed by Obama).  Republicans had a movie star(ish) in Reagan (H.W. Bush slipped in one term essentially riding his coattails), and then W. Bush won over a robot with a lockbox (and later, too late, an environmental messiah complex).

Reasonably, the current president had no real competition.  His rival in the election was the Clinton with no personality.  It'd've been a far different story if Clinton had run with Clinton (just imagine!).  Instead we have an endless bemoaning of the (latest) end of the world.  And yet, the presidency remains the same as ever, and...will anyone figure out how these elections are really won?

If history proves anything, no.  But campaigns can produce counterfeit cults.  Isn't that really the whole idea? 

877. I legitimately haven't made up my mind yet about the election

I don't really like either candidate.  This is not a unique position.  Plenty of people like me have chosen to support a third party.  But who are we kidding?  None of them has a chance to win.  The leading contender, Gary Johnson, keeps betraying deep international ignorance.  There's also Jill Stein, but then there's also your neighbor, who you could vote for as a write-in, if you were so inclined.  Or Mickey Mouse.  I mean, Disney is pretty popular these days, right?

Trump is the consummate businessman, Clinton the consummate politician.  That's really all you need to know about either of them.  Strip everything else away, the specifics about what they've said or done, whatever their triumphs might be and of course their gigantic mistakes, how they conducted themselves in the first debate, all of it.  I think anyone can agree with that assessment: this is a battle between the two ruling classes of this country, the business people and the politicians.

I think we can agree that the country needs some work.  Both of them do.  Of course they do.  The only thing that bothers me is the persistent media insistence that Clinton is the obvious choice.  The media exists to be objective.  Theoretically, anyway.  If Clinton were such an obvious choice, it wouldn't be so easy to disagree.  It's not just diehard partisans and conspiracy theorists who think she isn't so easy to root for.  This is the not the basis for an argument.  You can't just say the other side is a poopyhead.  That's grade school reasoning, and I'll thank you to raise the bar of your self-worth before addressing anything adults might be considering before addressing the topic.

Because as adults, we owe it to ourselves to make reasoned decisions.  I get that we have a two-party system, and that most people tend to side with one of them, and that as a result they despise the other one.  I'm registered as independent.  Always have been.  I despise partisan politics.  Always have.  This country's history is a tapestry of partisanship.  George Washington was referred to as King George.  I kid you not.  People got fed up with Virginian politicians and Boston brahmans.  So we ended up with Andrew Jackson, a man so thoroughly likable and also so thoroughly incompetent that he sent the nation into a financial quagmire for decades, and we thank him by putting him on the $20 bill.  That's the kind of people we are.  We're basically idiots.  We're a nation of idiots, and happily so.  We're incredibly passionate about everything, no matter how stupid our opinions are, just so long as there are other idiots supporting us.

That's how we got Trump and Clinton as candidates for president.  This would hardly be the first time we've had less than ideal options.  The list of presidents is littered with incompetents.  We also thought Lincoln was incompetent, by the way.  We voiced this opinion loudly throughout the Civil War, right here in the Union (where we technically all reside today, thanks to him).  The famous anecdote about the Gettysburg Address is that he wasn't even the keynote speaker, and Lincoln's future historic speech was little noted that day (heh).  It took his assassination, and a lot of follow-up incompetence in the White House, for us to realize what we had with him.

Because we hardly ever know what we have.  We're too busy shouting our idiot opinions to stop and think what they actually indicate, about ourselves, our times, and least of all what history might say about us.

History is a fickle bitch.  The play Hamilton is a noble and worthy artistic achievement, but it also plays fast and loose with Alexander Hamilton's legacy, who he was, how he found a place for himself, and what led to the fatal shootout with Aaron Burr.  You'd expect the man to have been destined to shape the country into something truly great, instead of what we actually got.  Listen, a lot of Founding Fathers went on to become president, and none of them were universally loved, even amongst themselves. 

The United States of America is a unique creation.  It's continually a work in progress.  We find ourselves in an election that seems destined to put it in a new direction.  But I say, as I've suggested in the past, neither of these candidates will be the cause for change.  Actually, they will be.  We don't like either one.  This is hardly likely to change once they're elected.  But it will force us to think more carefully about who we want to elect next time.  Because I don't think any of us wants a repeat of this campaign season, and it's somewhat safe to say whoever's elected this November, they're destined to be a one-term president (hopefully).

The thing is, this exact thing happens every campaign season.  We allow ourselves to be suckered into partisan politics because it's supposed to make things easier.  In reality, it just keeps things in a holding pattern.  That truly is the American way.

No, I haven't made up my mind yet.  Despite how despicable they are, in their separate ways, Trump and Clinton both offer things that could incrementally benefit the country.  A vote for Clinton is essentially a vote for Obama's vision of America.  If you think Obama was a pretty decent president, Clinton's your woman.  (The historic nature of a woman as president has its own unique appeal.)  If you think four more years would be enough to fix glaring oversights from the last administration, even, vote Clinton.  The checks and balance system worked pretty well the last time a Clinton was president.  If you think the last eight years have seen a lot of egregious mistakes, Trump is your man.  There's really not a simpler way to explain him.  That's how Obama was elected, plain and simple.  Again, the checks and balance system would curb Trump's worst impulses.  We know this.  Put rhetoric aside.  Stop letting the pessimists convince you.  I understand pessimism.  Most of the time, I'm a pretty pessimistic guy, but this isn't a time for pessimism.  If you think Trump's worse impulses are themselves not worth supporting, then by all means don't take him seriously.  If you think Clinton doesn't have a decent enough record, then by all means don't take her seriously.  But one of them is going to be president. 

You have to weigh a lot of things, and above all keep things in perspective.  Don't allow yourself to be convinced by rhetoric.  Presidencies don't succeed on rhetoric.  There's a reason history still doesn't think Kennedy was a great president, because the best of him was essentially rhetoric.  Presidencies are what happen once you're in office, not what you said on the campaign trail or in your best speeches.  Anyone who says differently is just trying to get elected.  ("Read my lips;" still one of the cheapest campaign tricks I ever saw, those ads.)  The realities of the office are very different from what you tell your supporters.  It suddenly becomes far less easy to tell what the right thing is.

Kind of like being a voter.  That's why we have these ridiculous campaign seasons to begin with, to try and come to a reasoned decision.  Anyone who decided last year, or four years ago, or twenty years ago, isn't taking their responsibility seriously.  There are too many distractions for anyone to make up their mind that easily.  If you're depending on what other people are saying to choose your candidate, then you're not doing it right.  If you're depending on what the candidates are saying about each other, then you're not doing it right. 

Try to be objective about it.  That's what I'm trying really hard to do right now.  I registered as an independent.  That's got to mean something.  I realize most people are registered to one of the two major parties, or are trying to get smaller ones off the ground.  Most of them have already made up their mind.  I can't do that.  I'd like to think more people are capable of reaching their own conclusions, too.  It's a messy process.  So's democracy.  Clearly.  This is exactly what it looks like.  It totally sucks.  But there you have it. 

858. The Circus of American Politics, 2016 Edition

A long time ago, a guy named John Kennedy was shot.  And I'm pretty sure American politics is still struggling to recover from that.

Kennedy's Vice President, Lyndon Johnson, succeeded him, was officially elected himself the next campaign season, did everything he could to build on the New Frontier in his Great Society, and then chose not to run for a second time.  This brought us Richard Nixon into the White House, the man Kennedy had successfully defeated for the office a decade earlier, finally humiliated out of public office, or so it seemed at the time.  Then Nixon resigned the Presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Ford pardoned him, Carter left office amid the Iranian hostage crisis, and Reagan dominated the '80s, could claim victory in the Cold War, and his Vice President, George H.W. Bush, took office, and after a single term Bill Clinton did his very best to be the new Kennedy, then George W. Bush, and then Barack Obama. 

Now, I've always maintained a neutral voting status even though I tend to think Republicans are generally more honest in what they think than Democrats.  Democrats, I think, are as hung up on Kennedy as anyone else.  Clinton and Obama both fervently courted his persona of cultural popularity while maintaining their status as direct answers to what Democrats at the time were thinking about Republicans. 

Reagan made Democrats particularly mad because he was on the whole one of the more successful Presidents in history, whether or not you choose to believe he more or less singlehandedly finally ended the Cold War nearly five decades after it began in the wake of WWII.  The only President to rival his popularity in the twentieth century would be the Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, who was successfully elected to four terms as President and has the distinction of ending the quagmire of the Great Depression.  Democrats since his time have been following in Roosevelt's footsteps in all their policies, just as they've desperately sought the mystique of Kennedy.

Kennedy's legacy otherwise is hard to quantify.  Since he was in office only a thousand days, and was known for epic blunders as much as anything else, and Johnson or Nixon got to hit all the big marks he'd set out to accomplish, some historians tend to downplay his impact.  Yet his is the template, as much as Roosevelt's, that Democrats have courted ever since, without ever really considering that it was more than just popularity that created his Presidency.

Yet there you have it.  Clinton undermined the first Bush's chances at reelection in part because he was a born campaigner.  Part of his early legacy was the book Primary Colors, which amply demonstrates exactly what helped drive Clinton to the White House.  There are few people, besides perhaps his wife Hillary, with as much political ambition as Bill, who savors the idea of being great without really knowing how to achieve it.

So Republicans really had a field day during his whole time in office, culminating in a nominal impeachment over his sexual indiscretions.  A lot of people thought he was a pretty great President, though, all told, because otherwise things seemed to go great and he stayed out of international trouble, for the most part. 

Then his Vice President, Al Gore, attempted to succeed him, and Democrats started to show just how petty they really are, painting his rival, the second Bush, as an idiot, because that's the best they could do.  They trotted out States Rights in the disputed election results (because historically, States Rights is a brilliant American legacy) that followed, and decided it was okay to quickly divide the nation in the wake of 9/11, returning to their story that Bush simply wasn't worth supporting, which was in direct retaliation for how Clinton was treated, which was in direct retaliation for how popular Reagan was, which was in strict opposition to everything the Democrats hoped to have achieved with the legacy of Kennedy...

So then Obama became President, and we've become so bitterly divided as a nation that the primary candidates to replace him all seem equally unlikely to unite the country around them, all for different reasons.  Hillary Clinton, because she's what everyone thought was actually the worst about her husband (despite seemingly garnering massive amounts of sympathy in the wake of his impeachment hearings).  Sanders because of the socialism line.  And Trump?  Because he's what results when the Republicans do what Clinton and Obama did before him, shouting very loudly against everything his opponents have been failing to do.

Even if you don't agree with all my characterizations or conclusions, the fact is, we have an election season that has a lot of unappealing options.  I've got Ted Cruz in my pocket in that he once did an epic filibuster, and I wrote about that here, the same way I wrote about Obama years before he became President.  (Like Clinton's legacy, Cruz could at least claim to know how to be a politician.)  It just seemed like a moment signaling the future.  Maybe Cruz doesn't have a shot at getting the nomination, because the Republicans are really all over the place on whether they'll let Trump go all the way, and Cruz looks like the last man standing in his way. 

The problem with Cruz, and with Trump, and with Clinton, and with Sanders, is that none of them are interested in saying how ridiculous partisan politics have become.  That's maybe not what you do when a candidate hasn't even been decided yet, but I think a lot of people would start feeling a lot more comfortable if there were someone out there who put political differences aside for the moment, and just tried to do right by the country.  I don't particularly like Democrats, because traditionally they've been the first ones to badmouth the competition.  I just think that's bad form.  The big Republican names from the '90s, like Newt Gingrich, never had a shot at winning the big office.  I think that's telling.  And yet now we have Trump, who's playing very much the Democrat game precisely because it's been so, so successful for them, in a way that, say, the Tea Party wasn't for Republicans.  Trump is an extreme Reaganite.  Without Reagan, there would be no Trump.  As far as I know, no one has made that connection.  But it shouldn't surprise you to hear something like that. 

Trump gets to say the insane things he says because Obama has spent so much time dodging the big questions, building a legacy that isn't even particularly from the Democratic Party.  I mean, I have firsthand experience with Mitt Romney's version of Obamacare while I was living in Massachusetts.  But Republicans can't admit that anymore than Democrats can, because this is the circus of American politics, circa 2016.  Trump exists, is still surging in the polls, because he's sure of what he says, rather than the extreme caution Obama has consistently exhibited through his two terms in office.  The obstructionism he's experienced is the same obstructionism that Bush experienced before him, which I assume is what Clinton experienced, too, or so Democrats certainly thought.

It's insane.  So we've got an insane election season.  Because, or so I'd like to argue, a guy named John Kennedy was shot.  We'll never know what he could have achieved had he lived.  But we do know he was unpopular, too, in his time, for exactly the same ideological reasons as we experience today, which have existed for as long as we've been electing people in this country.  Jefferson and Adams died as friends, but lived as bitter enemies.  Kennedy became more popular in death than he ever could have been in life.  The same thing happened to Lincoln, and to a certain extent Washington, who was dead in the water as a general during the Revolutionary War.  Like Grant after him, victory meant people loved him regardless of his personal attributes or fitness for the highest office.  History doesn't particularly care about the facts.  Memory certainly doesn't.  And the present absolutely doesn't.  We're a people who believe what we want to believe.  That's literally what it means to be an American.  It's what makes it so interesting, and so frustrating, to be one, and why someone like Donald Trump looks like he has a real shot at becoming President.  As with all the best scare tactics of modern life, his detractors claim Trump would turn out to be Hitler, if elected.  Which is utter nonsense.  Kennedy, and everyone after him, helped prove the limits of power in the United States.

For better or worse.  It's not what you say, but what you do.  And we have excellent ways of curtailing what presidents do here.  Because on the whole we hate them all, until they're just a memory.  And then we sometimes reconsider.  Try to keep that in mind.

#775. Rolling Stone 1217

Last month I read Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc.), which among other things got me thinking about investigative journalism.  At work recently I saw a copy of Rolling Stone with Robin Williams on the cover, referencing of course his death last August, and so I had a look at the magazine, a complete issue, for the first time in ages.  Back in high school (would this have been the last time Rolling Stone was actually cool, or just the last time I myself was paying attention?) I read it all the time.  Rolling Stone, in case you've never read much less heard of it, is a rock 'n' roll magazine that's also known for Peter Travers' movie reviews, music reviews, and yes, investigative journalism.  Mostly, it's a magazine that took rock pretty seriously about taking an alternative approach to life, not so much what we consider alternative today (because the thing the '80s did to alternative music and alternative everything else was, apparently, irrevocably split it so that it's increasingly uncommon for any one person to experience all or most of what there is out there; sucks culturally to be so splintered and isolated, but at least there's a lot of diversity!).

The Williams story is itself pretty interesting, since his own history in Rolling Stone is probably indicative of the arc his life took.  There's reference to the three other cover stories he merited, and they came from 1979 (circa Mork & Mindy), 1988 (Good Morning, Vietnam), and 1991 (Awakenings).  Post-1991, you could say, Williams went a little too mainstream, which is that odd period of public life after you've become famous (Mork & Mindy) and you somehow stay there institutionally for a little too long (the '90s seemed to be unforgivable success for Williams, including the sonic id of Aladdin, Mrs. Doubtfire, and even Good Will Hunting; it seems strange, since given his track record with the magazine and how The Birdcage was ahead of the road-to-LGBT-community-culturally-accepted era, you might actually have expected that to have rated a cover, too; although even his early '00s stretch of dark roles, including One Hour Photo but for me, more significantly, Insomnia with Al Pacino and Christopher Nolan, didn't merit much more than an oh-that's-interesting reaction).

Williams was undoubtedly uniquely talented, but he definitely fell victim to our increasingly fragmented society, which is also why most of the movies that are wildly popular these days are event movies and movie stars are the people who manage to be cast in lots of them (which is actually good news for Tom Hardy but also a major reason Samuel L. Jackson is among the top-earning stars despite pretty much never starring in his own movies).  Used to be, movie stars were defined by their ability to make any of their releases the latest event movie.  Williams was one of the early victims, critics suddenly finding it very easy to completely overlook whatever he was doing.  I remember Man of the Year in particular, in which he basically plays Jon Stewart running for president, and the only thing anyone said about that was how Williams was far too mainstream to pull off Jon Stewart.  That would have been an absurd statement at the height of the Rolling Stone covers era (which was ironically right before Rolling Stone stopped caring).

The rest of the issue has compelling material, too, which is why I decided to write about it here, getting back to Larsson's ideas in his trilogy  Larsson himself was Swedish, so everything he had to say about investigative journalism should be understood to reflect Sweden directly, but crusading journalists were huge news in the United States at one time, thanks to Watergate.  I still don't quite understand the Watergate scandal.  I mean, I get that Nixon was officially exposed as, I don't know, incredibly paranoid.  I guess he was also exposed, I don't know, as a politician working on getting reelected?  (Oh no!  They stole campaign secrets!  It reminds me of the "scandal" I keep hearing on sports radio about the Patriots being "exposed" for stealing play calls during their incredible championship run in the early '00s.  I mean, who doesn't?  All this is really about is trying to bring down a team or a president you don't like.  Well, congratulations.)

The last time there was serious investigative journalism in the US was during the Clinton presidency.  I don't know if you remember, but that wasn't just a time where we joked about inhaling or what the dude was doing with personal assistants and getting impeached for it or even Primary Colors, but there was huge paranoid right wing talk about all the people the administration was eliminating behind the scenes.  That was the whole reason the Democrats officially declared war on the Republicans, why they hated Bush even before he officially became president (when is it ever acceptable to make fun of someone because they have a penchant for misspeaking? but that's all you heard for years about the guy, until people made it official to declare Iraq the new Vietnam, which is to say even before the war began), and how Obama (it's true) became president (because he declared most smoothly that, basically, he wasn't Bush, something he began uttering, and if you click the "politics" label you'll see I even remarked on that at the time, in 2004).

But you don't hear anything of that concerning Clinton's legacy these days.  The latest smear journalism we've gotten was the Chris Christie Crisis.  I don't mean to turn this whole blog into a political quagmire (which is why I don't generally talk politics), or declare one party to be better than the other (the truth is, they're pretty much equal, except on the issues they zealously defend without really thinking about them, and are as such convenient smokescreens for their constituents more than anything).  No, instead we're headed toward Hillary officially being president (it kind of seems inevitable at this point, although I guess we'll see in two years), right after the last time anyone heard from her was how she probably wouldn't run because, you know, health scare.

The irony of all that is that one of the stories I want to talk about is exactly about the ridiculousness of US politics, and how the platform you're reading from is bound to try and gear its perspective, come hell or high water (but enough about Chris Christie!) based on its political bent.  It's Tim Dickinson's feature entitled "Biggest Tax Scam Ever," which if you can believe it exposes big corporations of being incredibly greedy.  Shocking, I know!  I'm of the mind where we're basically at the point where we need a modern equivalent of the trust-busting, monopoly (but not the game Monopoly) era that saw the end of the big businessmen of a different age (Rockefeller, names like that).  You'd think the Great Recession and everything everyone knows that led to it would have already led to this, but I guess not.  The problem is, except for a few names, most of the big businessmen of this era are completely anonymous.  You know geeky Bill Gates, but there are so many others you just don't.  Anyway, Dickinson explains how corporations exploit tax loopholes that allow them to hide the vast sums of their fortunes on foreign land.  He even goes so far as to detail how these practices began (in the Clinton era), but goes on to blame Bush for the bulk of it (because, Republicans!), and tries to paint Obama in a sympathetic light ("we're working on that!") even though the problem has only gotten worse under him.

Nice work, Dickinson.  But I don't think Sweden will sweat your work.  I don't think anyone will.  Maybe things really do work differently in Sweden, but I think Woodward and Bernstein were the last time anyone worried about journalists in the US.  I find that to be a problem.  Where's the worth of public accountability if everyone who works so hard to screw everyone else (oh wait, I think I just identified the problem...) can so consistently get away with it?

There's also an article about LGBT teens who end up homeless because their parents threw them out.  This is a legitimately sad one and perhaps the only real piece of journalism in the magazine.  Curiously, as I noted early, we're in an era where society has acknowledged more than ever before (at least in modern times; curiously the whole reason Oliver Stone's brilliant Alexander landed to such popular opposition was because it featured the title Great one in a time when people were openly bisexual) that LGBTs exist, so I don't know why there isn't greater support for these outcasts.  I mean, why are they even outcasts at all?  You would think a country that successfully (although it seems less and less so sometimes, after public outcries over Trayvon Martin and Ferguson) learned from the Civil Rights era would be more culturally accepting, but then, we still have a huge problem with immigration even though we're a whole country of immigrants.  (Seriously, my hometown newspaper, the Sun Journal, for some reason had a whole article about immigrants who for one reason or another chose not to apply for citizenship; I understand that newspapers, like magazines, face greater opposition than physical books and therefore will try anything to try and reclaim readers, which Sun Journal has clearly been trying to do in recent months, but they need to make a little more sense than that article did, considering it chose for examples people other than anyone who was actually relevant to these particular immigration times, which for instance in Maine in particular is Somali-heavy.)

...I didn't really mean to deviate greatly from what this blog is usually about (although I think I've done enough of this kind of talk where it isn't completely unusual), but.  Larsson.  Blame Stieg Larsson.  Which is okay, although also hugely unfortunate, because he's dead.

To lighten the post up a little, the issue also has a ridiculous interview with Ariana Grande, who apparently has seen demons  Or something.  When I first heard "Problem," I thought it was kind of dumb.  But it's not so bad.  So, "Problem":

There's also a really positive review for the latest Maroon 5 album, plus recommendations for fall movie releases, plus my favorite article, detailing the imminent release of Bob Dylan and the Band's complete Basement Tapes sessions from 1967, an apparently fruitful, mythic, and nearly lost slice of Dylanalia.

I don't if any of this makes you want to read Rolling Stone (also, Almost Famous and the career of Cameron Crowe, which is oddly reflected in a tribute to Charles M. Young), but I figured it was worth writing about.

#633. 150 years ago today...the Gettysburg Address

This was the speech that wasn't supposed to make history.  It was short, not even the featured one on the dedication day.  Lincoln, to be frank, wasn't even that popular.  He got in, got out, and probably thought that was the end of it.

But the Gettysburg Address has become not only a cornerstone of his legacy, but one of the defining moments in the Civil War, American history, politics...It became pretty important.  Here's the text, with italicized phrases that demonstrate how pervasive it's become, because you will surely recognize them:

Four scour and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.  We are met on a great battle-field of that war.  We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.  It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground.  The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.  The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.  It is for the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.  It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

It is indeed a short speech, and much of it is filled with formalities, but it reaches a crescendo at precisely the moment it needs to, striking memorable turns of phrase, some of them ironic (we do note, Abe, we do), and none of them addressed directly to Union or Confederate interests, but rather the nation as a whole, which was always his great concern.  It's remarkable for everything it isn't, and for everything it is.  No politician today would stake his reputation on so few words, although some of his noteworthy successors (FDR, JFK, Reagan) as orators understood what he had stumbled upon in all modesty, that it's not the empty rhetoric but sincere emotion and conviction that rings most true.

#612. Superpolitics, or It's Great to Be a Politician When Your'e Doing What Politicians Do Best

I'm not going to get into the politics of the government shutdown, but I figured it would still be fun to talk about.

The crux of it seems to be that President Obama is desperately trying to ensure the Affordable Care Act (or "Obamacare") remains intact, because he sees it as his lasting legacy, just as Republicans are using this to maneuver themselves for 2016.  It sucks about all the economic fallout that's resulting from all this, but then, we haven't exactly been in the best possible shape for a good number of years now.

What excites me is that aside from the economic frownie face, this is politics as you read about it in the history books.  JFK wrote the whole of Profiles in Courage about this.  (If you've never read it, consider it your 11/22/63 anniversary duty.)  Who doesn't vaguely remember the one dude who beat the other dude right on the senate floor, and how batshit insane that was even for that time?

No, this is politicians doing what they do best.  Voters naively believe that politicians are elected to perform a civic duty.  No, politicians are elected so that they can make impressive speeches in front of each other.  The same principals they espouse during their campaigns are the same things they talk about upholding while shaping new laws and whatnot.  And they're so busy doing that, trying in vain to convince each other, that nothing ever gets done.

Every once and a while, all this grandiose posturing makes an impression on people other than politicians.  Ted Cruz made a 21 hour filibuster to kick off the shutdown.  Now, granted, his filibuster was probably not nearly as awesome as Patton Oswalt's.  Nothing will ever be that awesome.  In evidence:

But still, Cruz had the real world equivalent, and that's something to celebrate, even if you couldn't possibly sit through all 21 hours of it awake, or agree with everything he said.

And that's the sort of thing that's been going on ever since.  Great time to care about politicians being politicians.  Because this is what they love the most.  Aren't you happy to see them so happy?

#89. Politics, Barack Obama, Wrestling, Tickets to See Wrestling, Last Comic Standing, Boomtown, NCIS, Fall TV Preview

Because you can't be more patriotic than the Patriotic Party.

What's that? Oh, just toiling with an idea or two. Everyone's saying that the National Conventions, as recently held by both the Democrats and the Republicans, have become irrelevant. Their basis for this claim is that the purpose for the conventions has been to formally nominate each party's presidential nominee, and since that is obviously done long before the conventions nowadays, what's the point of the pomp and circumstance? Well, here's an idea on that: Yes, we no longer have to wait until the conventions to learn who the nominees will be. The primaries, the caucuses, they take care of that. But what the conventions offer is a platform for the parties, to give a State of the Party address whose natural conclusion is reached by a speech from their presidential candidates. Think about it. This year the Democrats made a big deal of bringing Barrack Obama into the national spotlight, while the Republicans gave California's obscure governor a national spotlight of his own. The speeches highlighting each party's impending agenda (by which most recognize as mostly the opposite of what the other party is planning, at least in terms of symantics), and as they try to elevate the standing of the presidential nominee they also bolster the image of their own party, the Party of Past, Present and Future (come to think of it, both conventions could easily use PoPPP as their slogan, and could carry on using the same kind of rallying music as before to boot, all the while shaking like a Polaroid picture).

Anyhoo, just a thought...Last night was WWE Raw's Unforgiven pay-per-view (Smackdown's No Mercy drops on Oct. 3, the early date of which has me wondering if Raw is going to shoehorn another HHH, I mean PPV on the market). Chris Benoit and William Regal got to start the show off by defeating Ric Flair and Batista. I can think of at least two participants in that match who could have used singles action on the card instead of a meaningless tag team match. (For that matter, why was it Benoit, and not Eugene, who was in this thing?) Tell me Raw had enough time for this PPV, and I'll tell you something else. This night could easily have been a better-planned Smackdown affair. But I digress. Maybe it was a great match and maybe that was he whole point. Benoit and Flair has to be worth the price of admission, right? In any computation? I guess...

Then continues the saga of Evolution Lite, I mean Christian, Trish Stratus, and Tyson Tomko, who like the original Team E got a few months wasted away while members served in Injury Limbo. Lite's return has me wondering if there was a point to this threesome all along, and that's why it was so important to strike the band back up once all the players were in place again. Stratus retained against Victoria in a match that was months in coming but delayed this long while Trish squatted on the sidelines with a title she should technically have been stripped of. Could Raw not come up with compelling womens division action without her? Really? Tomko also got to beat up Stevie Richards in yet another bizarro guise worthy of Harvey Wippleman, which possibly put Tomko over as at least a Mordecai-level brute! Woo! The point for now seems to be that Trish is switching her affections from Christian to Thrasher, I mean Tomko. Maybe it won't suck too much...

I got tickets for the Portland, ME (as opposed to the Or. variety, from which parts this PPV originates), and Edge was advertized as defending his Intercontinental championship against Batista. (I intend to publish results here.) I guess that's not going to happen, since he was, what? stripped of his title due to injury. That cleared the way for a ladder match between Chris Jericho and Christian, who will have worked through every gimmick match in their endless feud by the end of the year. Jericho picked up the win and the championship in no doubt what was a thrilling match come months late because of sidelined stars. Next time: midget tag team partners!

But the end of that feud may have come: a promo after it featured Edge threatening Jericho, who is apparently a record seven-time Intercontinental champion now. Like I said, from one brother to another...

Another feud-held-in-the-making (how many people like Goldsworthy will be complaining about this like they did with Angle-Guerrero?) saw Kane battle Shawn Michaels in his return. This one was as much about unwedded bliss and treacherous Litas as it was about the match itself. HBK is a trucker this year, no doubt. Is he really destined in this push to run with HB Cade? And will that really be worth it? Only time...

Next came La Resistance (now with spelling changes in their name!) defending their tag team titles against Tajiri and Rhyno. This is a match that has been so long in the making it's embarrassingly obvious Raw has no idea what to do with its tag team division (in stark contrast to the furtile grounds of Smackdown). And for all the effort put into creating the contending team...Sylvain Grenier and Robert Conway still walk out the champions...

And for the main event...Randy Orton, defending the World heavyweight title he won from Chris Benoit last month, two months removed from another effort from Triple H to recapture the title from the Rabid Wolverine, lost the title...to Triple H. There isn't even an effort to disguise it. Triple H is the only man Raw wants to have as its champion. Sure, it's had Shawn Michaels, Goldberg, Chris Benoit, and now Randy Orton interludes, but Hunter Hurst-Helmsley's (I should say, Jean-Paul Levesque-McMahan) domination continues. I can only imagine how this is supposed to feel competitive. I hear all the time about the great, long, reigns of years past, of how great those champions were. I can't imagine anything less truly competitive. You break the fourth wall every time you create a champion like that. you say, we've found the guy we want to be champion, and there's no one out there who's good enough to defeat him, by which we mean there's no one else we really want to be champion. This guy's our man.

The fans complain all the time about how RVD never gets his due, how he's always being kept down. And maybe so. I don't think he's got even JBL-size potential to be a compelling champion. He'd be another Triple H, a guywho's champion because of the transparent reality that he was given the title for some popularity rating or another. Great champions aren't manufactured, they're born. Chris Benoit was a guy people rallied around, Eddie Guerrero was another. They brought meaning to their reigns. So has JBL, a guy nobody wants to see as champion, a sentiment shared with Triple H, though in a different, unflattering way. Hunter hasn't let anyone else flourish in all this time. He's done his best to make sure no one can size up to him, thereofr creating the false impression that no one can size up to him. I love the guy, I think he's a gift to wrestling, but he's overwhelmed the realm of credibility in his smothering tactics. Evolution is the first thing that needs to go. Thankfully this deconstruction has already begun with Orton's defection. Batista is the next that must be cut loose. He's been held back exponentially by his association with the stable. He never gets to do anything meaningful as a singles star because he's got his obligations to Evolution. To thrive, and he could probably be Triple H's next credible challenger if this happened, Batista must be set free.

Smackdown has a similar situation with Luthor Reigns, but he's only been around since April or so, and Thursdays have allowed him to peform the duel taks of serving Kurt Angle and developing his own interests slowly but surely. This past Thursday he was the last guy who stood up to the returning Big Show. The week previous to that, he attacked Eddie Guerrero, and not to Angle's pleasure. That's a character development. As far as Show is concerned, Reigns is like a surrogate Brock Lesnar (practice squad Viking, but that's still good considering the odds), the brute who can and will stand up to him, challenge his illusion of total dominance, which the arena massacre was meant to demonstrate. With Angle returning as a full-time wrestler, Reigns is needed less and less. For the talk of Angle becoming another Triple H, that would never happen in a million years. The Olympian has always been a Rock-style champion, amassing championships of short Reigns, I mean reigns that establish him as a perennial threat to the champion but never a dominating one. He's the biggest fish in Smackdown, but there are plenty other good-sized fishes in the pond. Unlike the Triple H-HBK feud that marked much of Hunter's early Raw dominance (and again this year), the Angle-Guerrero feud is more even-handed. Not to mention the pup waiting in the wings in the championship scene, John Cena, is already far more seasoned than Randy Orton, who missed valuable developing time to injury and got Evolution to do the rest for him. And there's Big Show, Undertaker, JBL, Luthor Reigns...Smackdown has competition in its ranks mostly because it's the underdog, I guess.

And that status has done nothing but allow those sticking around to appreciate JBL's reign as champion to savor it all the more. Last Thursday our champion wrestled Charlie Haas, who is fast overtaking Shelton Benjamin in the developing all-around talent race (and by that, I mean who's to become the next Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Kurt Angle) thanks to injuries once more. So JBL is not an especially memorable wrestler past his Close-line from Hell. But he's still a heck of a presence. It certainly doesn't hurt that he's given Orlando Jordan relevance. Good news for Bradshaw is good news for Oz (as I believe he was mistakenly called by JBL; I'll not pass the opportunity to grant him a nickname better than OJ), which is only more good news for Smackdown. They make an exceptional pair, with their chemistry. I love their bit about what town they're in. It's a small, but amusing joke. I hope they keep it up.

Speaking of tandems, Kenzo Suzuki and Rene Dupree became Smackdown tag team champions after the continuing saga of Billy Kidman's lost faith cost him and Paul London the titles (and maybe the FBI will be Suzuki and Dupree's next opponents?). This gives the new champs something meaningful, not to mention gold, to further their own immediate (and lucrative) futures with while also pushing Kidman into relevance again. Maybe he'll finally become a man. Anyhoo, it'll probably give us a really good match between himself and London. Dupree, who escaped Raw tag team hell to Smackdown singles glory (for a while, as he figured prominently in Cena's US title defenses for much of the year), doesn't come off worse for wear by having to maintain his presence in another tag team. He's proven his singles worth, and the good thing about teaming with Suzuki is that their styles are nothing alike. Each can further their own goals in this tag team combination and not lose a step in their development of singles careers.

Speaking of units, there's the Dudleys, who're starting to misfire. Give these guys direction already! This was the second week in a row Rey Mysterio was forced into a defacto six-man tag team match, and this time it was mostly do to the directionlessness of Spike, D-Von, and Bubba. This time Mysterio received the totally unexplained assistance of Hardcore Holly, as well as Rob Van Dam. This feud could just as easily be on Raw! And include Chris Benoit!

Cena-Booker T, the series of 5 folk, are gearing up to the pivotal fourth match. Booker has won the last two (one of them at an Australian house show!), meaning Cena must (and probably will) win this one, setting up, most likely, the deciding match Oct. 3 at No Mercy. Five years ago, a series like this made Booker's singles career when he battled Chris Benoit over the same title in WCW. Now, in 2004, he's got something else to prove. He's still worthy of such a high profile. Cena's on the rise, while Booker has an upper-midcard status to maintain that could always propel him to the top if he plays his cards right. He's definitely doing that right now. Considering the unnamed stakes, this is perhaps the feud of the year. And it has a lot more structure than anything on Raw beyond the Eugene saga. These feuds have as much to do with the matches as the heat between the competitors outside the ring. Y2J and CLB have plenty of heat both ways, but it's been steaming away the reasons for most of the feud. Guerrero-Angle, which will probably conclude before long, has gotten things right and have parlayed a series of false endings to magnificant effect.

Was last night a false ending to the Triple H-Orton feud? Is Orton really the downfall of Hunter, or just another step in a long march?

A less serious contest of champions is going on in NBC's Last Comic Standing, version III going on now which pits the first and second seasons against each other. I gotta say, I love Dat Phan, whom I missed last year because I never really got into that season. But this year's has a bunch of comics I love, including Gary Gulman, Alonzo Bodden, and Jay London. I'm also won of Ant's few fans ("It doesn't take Scooby Doo to solve this mystery," even repeated ad nauseum, is still amusing, and catchy). LCS and Scrubs are Tuesday appointments! Speaking of the new season, I caught most of last night's premiere of Jack and Bobby and I didn't mind what I saw. It has possibilities, is all. I also caught some of Neal McDonough's new show, Medical Investigation the other night. In related news, the first season of Boomtown is out on DVD. Savor this series! There's but a third of a season more. Entertainment Weekly called MI NBC's apology to Neal. He hopefully won't be disappointed for accepting it. The best thing I can say is that it's better than NCIS (I think the "Navy" part was finally dropped), which spoiled Michael Weatherly...

TV Guide teased its fall previews two weeks ago by releasing an edition splotlighting stars of news series who'd be failure from old ones. This week they finally print the Returning Shows edition, and next week the Fall Preview. I already have a good idea of the new season, but collecting those issues has become a tradition, and I think they do a good job with them. Shows I'm excited about include Lost, Desperate Housewives, Joey (great premiere last Thursday, btw), Boston Legal (Spader and Shatner make a terrific duo), Kevin Hill, and CSI:NY.

I think that'll do for now...