Presidents Are Neither Idols Nor Demons

My life has seen exactly one president who did not seem to be turned into idol and demon by his supporters and detractors: George H. W. Bush (Ok, I'm not so sure about Ford, but he lost his bid for reelection when I was like two weeks old). Carter, Regan, Clinton, Dubya and now Obama all have sprung their own personal bands of worshipers and screaming angry detractors.

My personal politics and philosophy are that Dubya was a disaster, Regan was a net negative, Clinton was meh, Carter I judge as a good person who was president at a bad time and who did a poor job of responding to problems (at least publicly in dealing with the American people), and Bush the elder was a decent though hardly great president. Obama has not been in office too long yet, and my opinion is decidedly split: bailout bad, though not his fault; stimulus good though not enough; no prosecution of torturers deplorable, but we'll see what comes; foreign relations good, but those wars are still sticky; gay rights forgotten; and health care will continue to be frustrating until a bill is actually passed, and then maybe still.

Obama has not done anything to be compared with Hitler or Stalin, nor has he done anything to receive the benefit of any and all doubt. There is a cult of the presidency that goes beyond the office and which I find strange and creepy.

I thought that W was a horrible choice for president, but I agreed with him (still do) on immigration. I think Clinton was ok, but he was one more in the line of financially deregulating chief executives (I have no idea why the right gets a louder voice in economics even with Democratic presidents, but we are seeing that again with Obama--the left response would have been bigger stimulus w/o tax cuts and to nationalize any bank "too big to fail"). I voted last fall for the person I felt would make a better president. Given the alternative, I'm fairly sure that the Democrats could have nominated anyone and still received my vote.

Obama could well be(come) a transformative president--he certainly was such as a candidate--but he is a politician, not a deity, and I will always be somewhat suspicious of anyone who desires that office, power and corruption and difficulty and all.