Careful there, Brad. You’re coming asfully close to praising the gipper.

Yosef-
Yes I know, but honestly, despite what Yglesias says, I think the Gipper was about a billion times better than Bush. At least he didn’t weep like a little bitch every time someone said something mean about him.

And to be bipartisan, I’ll take a look later in the day of media coverage and the Clinton/NATO strike in Bosnia.

No matter how bad Bush is — and pound for pound, he’s the worst president since (at least) Buchanan — Reagan wasn’t much better. Never give these fuckers the benefit of the doubt.

He had many of the same cretins pulling his strings too, but then he was truly a genial, if vacant, guy unlike the mollycoddled, bitchy euunch who’s currently in the throne. Plus, Reagan wasn’t really that popular while he was in the White House.

The better analogy, in my humble opinion, is Clinton. The press and the GOP savaged him in a way that Bush has been able to avoid, but, as people LIKED Clinton and his policies, he overcame bad press with ease.

Mebbe Bush’s peeps ought to arrange for another Warren Hinckley special.

The better analogy, in my humble opinion, is Clinton. The press and the GOP savaged him in a way that Bush has been able to avoid, but, as people LIKED Clinton and his policies, he overcame bad press with ease

People liked Reagan too. I hate to break some reality on your ass, but he was a pretty popular president- and unlike Bush he was re-elected in a landslide.

Does this mean I’m endorsing him? Hell no. But he was, for the most part, a popular president.

I still get a kick out of the “they don’t show the good” line of irrational bleating. You know why they don’t show people painting schools? Because it’s not news. Watch your local news at 11 and tell me how many stories they show about people painting schools. Just because it’s happening in another country to schools that we blew up in the first place doesn’t make it newsworthy.

OT, but could someone with a higher tolerance for bullshit give us a breakdown of the Pantload’s ramblings in the LA Times this morning? I couldn’t get further than the headling, “Bush was right on WMD.”

J, don’t forget that Regan also was able to swallow his conservative bona-fides and pass a tax increase in order to avoid a fiscal calamity. Bush seems hell-bent on drowning the federal budget in red ink.

I know you’re not endorsing him or his policies, but it’s just not the case that he was a more popular president than most. The reality says that just ain’t the case.

The Gipper’s popularity bonafides are, let’s say, partly a product of the Wurlitzer.

Here’s an alternative look which shows that Reagan’s 52% average approval rating for his entire presidency was topped by Kennedy’s 70% average, Eisenhower’s 66%, Roosevelt’s 68%, and even by Johnson (54%), who eschewed running for reelection because of the unpopularity of his Vietnam policy. In short, about half– and sometimes more than half– of the US public did not approve of Reagan’s presidential performance. His approval index was not much better than the lowest modern presidential averages: Truman’s and Ford’s, each at 46%; Carter’s at 47%; and 48% for Nixon.

And sure, he increased taxes, but only after nearly decimating the economy with tax cuts in the early 80’s. The harm Reagan did domestically — from deregulating State Hospitals, breaking the Air Traffic Controller union, screwing education, blaming welfare queens for everything that went wrong and so, oh, so much more — is difficult to understate.

BUT, Bush combines the worst of Reagan with the worst of Nixon, so yeah, he’s worse.

Just stop thinking he was really all that popular.

You’re forgetting the power of The Krugman, who from his latte-machine equipped ivory tower is singlehandedly responsible for 20 percentage points of Bush’s disapproval ratings.

You’re forgetting the power of The Krugman, who from his latte-machine equipped ivory tower is singlehandedly responsible for 20 percentage points of Bush’s disapproval ratings.

Once again proving why Reagan was a better president. For two years, the Shrill One worked on Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors. The Gipper actually co-opted the Shrill One for a brief time!!!

I blame Reagan for Bush, as I believe the former gave rise to the latter. That said, I don’t think either was the worst since Buchanan; that dubious achievement has to go to Hoover.

I blame Reagan for Bush, as I believe the former gave rise to the latter. That said, I don’t think either was the worst since Buchanan; that dubious achievement has to go to Hoover.

Yeah, that guy sucked!

Thank you! Thank you! remember the 9:30 show is completely different from the 7:30. Tip your servers! I’ll be here all the week!

Dam that Hoover!

The only reason Bush isn’t worse than Reagan is that Reagan already did all the evil shit to poor people and working people before Bush could get a chance.

Don’t ever doubt Bush would have thrown the dysfunctionally mentally ill onto the streets or crushed the manufacturing base if he’d been able to. He was just beaten to the punch.

Sadly, I have to confess. During the ’80s, growing up in the most Republican county in Illinois, in the first presidential election I could vote in, I voted to re-elect Ronnie Raygun. It horrifies me now, but I was ill-informed. Before very long, into the second administration, I realized that i had made a terrible mistake. In the next election, I was actually one of the 20-30 people who actually voted for michael Dukakis, ’cause by then, my well-developed hatred for all things Shrub had manifested itself. When Shrub, jr. got the nom for 2000, I was like, “Didn’t we learn anything from the last one?” But he’s been much, much worse than I could ever imagined. Hell, I’d gladly take back H.W. over Dumbya to fill out the rest of the current term, even though H.W. has gotten wingnuttier over the years. He’s still about infinity better than his slackwit son.

The reason the ‘nuts are still so frantically trying to bail Bush out is that they see in him the most terrifying aspect of themselves: their loserdom. Reagan, for whatever else he was – and he was a mean, racist, homophobic bastard – was a winner. He actually was born a poor kid in Illinois, and parlayed middling acting talents into a successful acting and then political career. Bush, by contrast, is a loser. He’s not even up to the level of Bruce-Springsteen-song-ex-jock-antihero status. He’s just a whiny-ass loser, a Daddy’s boy who’s never done a damn thing right in his life. And man, must it hurt to face that awful reality in the mirror(s) every morning [cough…Jonah…coughcough Assrocket…cough etc. ad infinitum]{/non-union Mexican Rude Pundit channelling}

If the media showed nothing but painted schoolhouses, would we get the promised flowers and candy?

Besides, everybody knows it wasn’t the media…

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…it was the memedia.

well but Yglesias isn not right…That’s for sure…

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Hi ! Your site is very interesting. Thank you.