If you don't believe in the devolution of the human race...

Consider this. 200 years ago, the United States had an agrarian supremacist Republican named Thomas Jefferson as President. Today, we have a, well, whatever the fuck he is, Republican named Twitshit de la Dweeb as President. The earlier Republican was the greatest defender of civil liberties to ever sit in the White House. This Republican is the worst abuser of civil liberties to sit in the White House. That earlier Republican had  a vice President who had a distinguished military career who killed a man in a duel and then resigned. This Republican has a a Vice President who dodged his generations war and then shot an acquaintance in the face, and didn't resign. That earlier Republican had a pair of disciples named James Madison and James Monroe. This Republican has a pair of sycophants named Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales. That earlier Republican defeated and crushed the Islamic threat of his era, the Barbary Pirates. This Republican divided his forces attacking an irrelevancy while barely holding the Islamic threat of his era in check. Of that Republican, a future president once said when addressing an assembly of Nobel Prize winners, "This is the greatest assemblage of intellect ever to grace the White House except when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." This Republican will probably be considered the least intellectually and most corrupt President in history, shouldering aside the James Buchanans and Millard Filmores and Warren Hardings in the race to history's trough. That Republican had been ambassador to France, speaking and reading French, German, Greek, Latin and Hebrew. This Republican can barely read or speak English. That Republican was in fact a Democrat. This Republican is really a Kleptocrat.

Comments

[TGGP]

Hey, aren't you forgetting about Wilson, Lincoln and FDR in the civil-liberty violation competition? Adams' Sedition Act was an impressive one too. Also, Warren Harding was one of the greatest Presidents we ever had, along with van Buren, Garfield and Coolidge. Harding inherited a recession more severe than the Great Depression and had it licked within a year. He promised a "return to normalcy", and kept his word which is why hardly anyone remembers him rather than the warmongers in chief historians worship.

[Crusader AXE of the Lost Causes]

I said "worst" not only. Jefferson, of cours, led the reaction to the Alien and Sedition Acts. Which were about John Adams' vanity as much as anything. Harding one of our greatest presidents? Humor, sarcasm or crack? His return to normalcy was a return to being an ostrich, combined with massive corruption on a scale not seen before and not since, until early 2003.

Given the government's approach to fiscal and monetary policy in the early 20s and Harding's really exciting approach to governance in general, I don't know if we can credit them with starting a recession. I know damn well we can't credit them with stopping it. In order to stop something, you have to do something...I suspect they watched it stop, for a while.

[TGGP]

Ostrich is an improvement over Wilson. If by "doing nothing" you mean stop doing the idiotic things the government had been doing, then yeah he did nothing. He did pardon Eugene Debs for protesting the (previous) war though.

Sure, his administration was corrupt. I'll take a corrupt do-nothing over an unimpeachable warmonger. The way I figure it the Teapot Dome was already stolen as soon as it was in the feds' hands, the people that bought it are just accomplices to the theft.

Someone else sticks up for Harding here, but unfortunately it's someone I have at most negative respect for. If an idiot says the sky is blue it doesn't make it green though.

[Crusader AXE]

Interesting approach. Of course, when the choice is between Twitshit de al Dweeb and ineffectual, stupid corruption, there really isn't a lot to choose from. Harding's best point remains that he died. Now, Cal Coolidge was at least a principled do nothing whom I suspect really didn't want the job.

Which is why I think our next President should be Madonna.