How much of the anti-Bush vote comes from people who don't know the meaning of the word "unilateral"? They seem to think it means something like "non-unanimous" or "lacking the French."

PapayaSF:

Good point.
By their definition, all future foreign policy moves by the US within at least the next two decades will be "unilateral", since there's no other nation or group of nations of comparable power to vote "aye".

Uh why blame Ike for not abolishing the New Deal?

The conservative movement was hardly the force it was pre-Goldwater back in the 50's and Americans were generally tired of the disorderly 30's and 40's and happy with the status quo.

Not to mention not even Reagan and Dubya have managed to make much of a dent in it even with a much stronger hand.

And I think the Guatemalans and Iranians would disagree about him staying pat against communism.

And I see Ike being in the party of McCain camp not the 9/10 Democrats.

Ali:

Quite, but the point is that only two things mattered in post-WWII America and no one even started dealing with them until Reagan.

Eisenhower was a stooge for Big Business, the sclerotic corporations that believed in using government to enrich themselves rather than in free competition in a free market. Eisenhower's foreign policy was little more than the betrayal of allies in the war against Communism, like the Poles, East Germans and Hungarians who rose up in revolt expecting American support and ended up getting hung out to dry and massacred, and craven weakness against the Muslim threat as exemplified by his betrayal of Israel, France and Britain in Suez and his despicable pressure on the French to leave Algeria and not support Christians in Lebanon. He was nothing more than bought and paid for pond scum, that this nation would have been better off just flushing into the nearest sewer.

His son is obviously no better and should consider being a participant with Veronica Reagan in the Mr. Irrelevant parade in California before the Rose Bowl.

Democrat Zell Miller's support of the President was not greeted as well as that of the aged son of a bygone President.

But there's no media bias, right?

oj: And how did Reagan deal with the New Deal?

Social Security is still around isn't it?

Why not toss a few grenades his way?

Ali:

I always do--it was his great failure as President and what makes George Bush the greater conservative.

Eisenhower was no Republican, not like McCain, not even a RINO. He would have been just as happy running on the Democrat ticket.

Wouldn't think so. His parents were Republicans and I'd see him fitting in pretty comfortably in today's party.

Lots of Presidential children say and do stupid things. Remember JFK's crack about why the Roosevelts hated the Kennedys?

Ike would have certainly been a 9/11 Republican, even if he wasn't a true conservative.

He certainly was saner and more genuine than most of his contemporary generals.

In fairness to Ike, the 1950"s came after twenty years of incredible dislocation where liberal democracy fought for its life against a lot of domestic and foreign enemies-and almost lost. The right had been completely discredited in Europe, for good reason, and it was still associated with Jim Crow, anti-Semitism and class privilege elsewhere. Decent conservatives made the mistake of assuming progressivism was inevitable and necessary to stave off much worse. They were basically running a holding action.

Churchill may have been the lion who saved Britain in WW11, but, as Andrew Morton has pointed out, he was a compromising wobbly about socialism in the 1950"s. It took first Goldwater, and then Reagan and Thatcher, to put conservatism back on the offence and bury some of the past stains.