The best President in American history

[knobby109]

The Constitution is not an unmixed blessing. It can act as a straitjacket and prevent actions which would benefit people.
The UK has no Constitution as such yet nobody would pretend that its citizens are less free than their American friends, perhaps they are even a little freer.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by 9876543210

savage560. Sorry to say it but Obama hasn't kept the "Hoovervilles" away. We have one on the North side of town. Several hundred people. They used to be downtown at a building used previously by a car dealership then bought by the State. Someone decided that didn't "look good" on one of our main arteries (having a bunch of tents on the main drag) so they moved them all out North. I don't blame Obama. I blame the Republicans for not helping these people at all. But they are there. And I'm sure they're in other towns as well.

I happened to re-read this post and it reminded poignantly of the opening scenes in one the greatest of the 1930s Hollywood screwball comedies, the outstanding film My Man Godfrey. For those who don't know, this features the ravishing and very very gifted comedy actress Carole Lombard in her glorious prime, playing an apparently air headed and certainly very superficial society deb who has her eyes opened and a lot of crap emptied from her head when she forms a romantic friendship with a down and out tramp from her local Hooverville and starts to learn some things she should already have known, but isn't too proud to assimilate and think about when she finally does discover them. It is very unusual for such a light hearted genre to deal with such dark themes, but My Man Godfrey does it rather well and without cheapening or glossing over the hard realities of being in the gutter in 1930s America. Ironically, her co-star was William Powell, whom she had only recently divorced in real life, but who specifically asked for her to be cast in the film; they weren't on such bad terms, and he himself saw the advantage of their complicated private relationship being echoed in the complicated relationship and tensions of the two characters they were playing.

The opening scene features Irene Bullock [Lombard] meeting Godfrey [Powell] on the town dump, where she and her "friends", including her older sister, are looking for a down-and-out to produce as a "forgotten man" and win a scavanger hunt wager. He is openly hostile and chases away the others, but reacts better to Irene because she shows a little bit of humility and self-awareness and grasps quicker than the rest that she should not be doing what she is doing. Because she is sorry, where the others were not, he forgives her and they begin to connect as two human beings.

The opening scene is bleakly funny and chock full of the sense of irony which we British always say that you Americans haven't got. For example:

Godfrey: Hello Mike. Any luck today?
Mike: Well I figured out a swell racket and everything was going great until the cops came along.
Godfrey: Too bad it didn't work.
Mike: If them cops would stick to their own racket and leave honest guys alone we'd get somewhere in this country without a lot of this relief and all that stuff.
Godfrey: Well Mike; I wouldn't worry. Prosperity is just around the corner.
Mike: Yeah, its been there a long time. I wish I knew which corner.

The whole film is themed around America as a divided and alienated society: though actually the same divisions and alienation is inbuilt to all modern western civilisation in all modern industrial countries, both in 1936 and today. Mr Obama does deserve an awful lot of credit he isn't being given for successfully averting a crash on a monumental scale, very alike to the Great Depression, the Depression which is being depicted in action in the opening scene of My Man Godfrey. But the crisis of the spring months of 2009 was too severe to be managed so successfully that no one would have their life devastated by it. The world is full of grief and this cannot always be controlled.

A good president would give a damn that millions of Americans have fallen so low that they are reduced to living in Hoovervilles. It is legitimate to argue about how to solve the problem or at least deal with it. The conservative view would tend to be that God helps them that help themselves and that the solution should involve offering a way out of such shattering poverty for those who are willing to strive towards a better life. The liberal view would tend to be that people stuck in such abject circumstances must be helped, that we need more social housing, benefits for those who have nothing, and a social safety net to prevent anyone from falling quite this low. The common sense view might be that there is something to be said for both approaches and both ways of seeing, and that an intelligent strategy would accommodate both ways of seeing at least to some extent. But there is no good president who would know that there are Hoovervilles in America on his watch and not feel restless, bitterly dissatisfied, and determined that positive steps to address the problem are needed.

[Rogerbh]

I would argue that the losing battle in the War on Drugs causes more problems than the Constitution in the US. Name another reason why non-Hispanic Blacks commit murder at a rate of 20.8 per 100,000 (2000 DOJ figures), Hispanics at 12.2 and non-Hispanic Whites at 1.86? If it wasn't for the large numbers posted by the Blacks and Hispanics, the murder numbers in the US would be comparable to the UK rate in 2000 of 1.7. If you used only Asian American murder rates, the UK rate would be multiple times higher. (based on the Asian American 1/4th crime rate of US non-Hispanic whites)

I don't think the effect of drugs in the UK has reached US levels, but supposedly it is rising. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2...e-not-addicted Our present may be the UK's future.

I do actually feel sorry for the blacks in the US. Most older Asians hate blacks. The US imprisons young Blacks at a rate 10 times higher than whites http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p14.pdf Black males (1,072 prisoners per 100,000 black male residents ages 18 to 19) were more than 10 times more likely to be in state or federal prison than whites (102 per 100,000). This might be a major reason why the murder rate in the US has fallen over the decades. The police have become more efficient in controlling the root cause of murders. A contrary view - http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...-crime/385364/

If a US President could win the War on Drugs, they would be the greatest President in US history. Unfortunately that is apparently a pipe dream.

[trailmaster]

Originally Posted by SanteeFats

TM your date is a little off as George Washington being the first POTUS first took office in 1789.
Lincoln's proclamation only freed slaves in the states in rebellion against the United States. Which did lead to freedom eventually for the slaves.
Yes LBJ gave us his "Great Society" which has led, IMO, to our huge subsistence programs and the welfare babies.

Do I detect a little cynicism SF?

[SanteeFats]

Originally Posted by trailmaster

Do I detect a little cynicism SF?

I don't think so. I lived through it and have seen the results up close and personal. It is just my opinion.

[Staffsyeoman]

Watched a movie called "Good Kill" this weekend, stars Ethan Hawke as a grounded jet jockey who is now a UAV pilot operating out of a container at Nellis AFB. Story is set in 2010. The pilots all still wear jet jockey gear - flight suits on duty, leather jacket over flight suit driving home. Hawke pulls up at a stop next to a cop who says "How's your war on terror going?" "About as well as your war on drugs.."

As a Brit, it looks like in years to come it will say "Barack Obama, first black president." Not much
happening else. Sitting here, aware of his foibles and failings, best President? FDR.

[xenontrioxide]

If the people who have the power to make such a decision, (if they exist) ever decided to put another face on Mount Rushmore, whose would it be? I bet most people would agree on FDR. Three term president, out of the depression, WWII, cusp of the nuclear age, modern America is what it is because of Franklin Roosevelt. Ironically however, if FDR had his say he would almost certainly be against the idea as he apparently left explicit instructions against such monumental commemorations of his person, which, in way makes him all the more deserving.

[SanteeFats]