[net.politics] Facetious comments on the presidency

flinn@seismo.UUCP (E. A. Flinn) (01/17/84)

	Clarence Darrow once remarked that when he was a boy, they
told him that *anybody* could become president; "now," he said, I"m
beginning to believe it."

	I'm tired of the garbage begin put out by the White House (do
you suppose it's true that every time they tell a lie, Nixon gets a
royalty?) and wish we still had the relatively straightforward good
old days of, say, Eisenhower.  He was once genuinely upset to learn
that half the school children in the United States were below average
in physical fitness.  Here is a quote from a press conference, 
in which Eisenhower answered a question about whether his
administration had been lacking in courage in dealing with the
recession at that time:

	"Listen, there is no courage or any extra courage that
	I know of to find out the right thing to do.  Now, it
	is not only necessary to do the right thing, but to do
	it in the right way and the only problem you have is 
	what is the right thing to do and what is the right way
	to do it.  That is the problem.  But this economy of
	ours is not so simple that it obeys to the opinion of
	bias or the pronouncements of any particular individual,
	even to the President.  This is an economy that is made
	up of 173 million people, and it reflects their desires,
	they're ready to buy, they're ready to spend, it is a
	thing that is too complex and too big to be affected
	adversely or advantageously just by a few words or any
	particular - say, a little this and that, or even a
	panacea so alleged."

mjk@tty3b.UUCP (01/23/84)

"good old days of Eisenhower"?

You mean good old days of the Korean War?  The good old days of women
in their place and white males in charge of everything?  The good old
days of the cold war?