Thanks for the articulate and educational response.

You are correct that I don’t know American history well enough to classify Bush as the worst (I mentioned the same in my post). However, I think you successfully answered my question: Bush might not be the worst, but certainly has his place amongst their ranks.

I agree that Kerry was a non-starter. When I mentioned that we “failed to produce a worthy alternative”, I was referring to Kerry. The only saving grace I think Kerry would have brought to the situation would have been to show the world that we as Americans also thought Bush was going down the wrong path; but I’m not sure the county would have been any better for it. We’d probably have been worse off, since Kerry would have had a single term at best, and might have spent the whole thing getting his bearings (not to mention boring us to death with his endless droning). I think a political humor site whose name I have forgotten put it best: “Don’t Switch Horsemen Mid-Apocalypse.” :)

I really do think we failed as a people, though. In a country that prides itself on being able to choose its leadership, you’d think the process of throwing them out when they suck would be better defined. Based upon opinion polls alone, everybody seemed to have had enough of Bush about 18-24 months before he left office.

As for Obama, I think the bloom is already off the rose with the debacle taking place around the latest stimulus package. I still think he’s an educated and well-intentioned guy, but he did not shepherd the process of writing this bill very well. I can’t understand why there is a single penny of spending toward anything except the economic recovery; recovery alone should be the bill’s singular purpose, with everything else being thrown out. And if the two parties can’t agree on the whole thing, they should approve the bits they can agree on to get some juice flowing, and then go back to the table to figure out the rest. To borrow Obama’s campaign mantra, the whole thing strikes me as more of the same.

Thanks for the kind words about the blog and my shift of involvement in the CF community. Now that I’m more focused on Flex development, I find I still rub shoulders with many familiar faces from the CF circuit since many have made the same transition. I’m going to be speaking at a Flex event this year (hopefully the first of many) so I’ll try to avoid doing too much damage in that community. :)

- max

Bush sucked, this is true. But you really don’t know American history if you suppose him to be the worst, or even consider it. The first bad one was Adams (paranoid guy who fled back to Quincy on every pretense large or small – if you think Bush took excessive vacations, you need to read about Adams), then Jefferson who must be Bill Clinton’s hero because they are somewhat similar (not on the sex part though) on all the bad things. Madison, well, it was downhill for him ever since he betrayed his arguments in the Federalist papers. Monroe had some character flaws in addition to not being generally well regard for intelligence (Eliza Hamilton never forgave the injury Monroe did to Alexander). I could iterate through every president and give you failures, poor character and other bad stuff. Of course, that’s not a knock on the nation of my birth, just a statement on human nature. I’m a big fan of the Constitution and hope that it survives.

The problem is that otherwise intelligent people, and I consider you such having met you on a couple of occasions, remove objectivity and context with Bush. Yes, he is inarticulate, fiscally not conservative, exercised questionable judgement in foreign policy and was out of touch with more than half the country. However before condemning the people for voting for him look at the choices. Kerry went to the same university at the same time, belonged to the same fraternity/secret-society/whatever and was involved in the same washington political scene – but he did falsely accuse his peers of atrocities when he got back from Vietnam – and it is not clear how he would have been a tremendously better choice. As for Bush vs Gore (sounds like the description of a horror flick), I’m happy I voted Libertarian and thankful Gore lost.

We’ll see what we get in Obama, but for all his self-comparisons to Lincoln (actually quite funny if you study Lincoln as Lincoln wasn’t that great of a president, from a libertarian, pro-Constitution point of view. Ironically, Obama should thank Jefferson Davis more for the opportunity to be president than Lincoln) I’m not optimistic. As the bumper sticker goes, ‘I’ll keep my money, my freedom and my guns, and you can keep the “CHANGE”‘.

I enjoy perusing your blog, and while it’s the CF world’s loss that you moved on to other languages, I hope you enjoy success in your endeavors.

And thanks for the link to T-Shirt Hell … my wife and I laughed for awhile while browsing through the shirts (though sad to see them go for the reasons they indicated)