Aye-yi-yi

I love America. I’m just frustrated by the knowledge curve of its people – namely, the apparently widespread inability to remember more than two decades of history at any given time.

A new Newsweek poll reports that President Bush’s approval ratings have slipped to 28 percent, which of course we might have expected the week that he vetoed a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. But the pollsters also asked another interesting question, and received some depressing answers:

When the NEWSWEEK Poll asked more than 1,000 adults on Wednesday and Thursday night (before and during the GOP debate) which president showed the greatest political courage—meaning being brave enough to make the right decisions for the country, even if it jeopardized his popularity —more respondents volunteered Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton (18 percent each) than any other president. Fourteen percent of adults named John F. Kennedy and 10 percent said Abraham Lincoln. Only four percent mentioned George W. Bush. (Then again, only five percent volunteered Franklin Roosevelt and only three percent said George Washington.)

[Sigh…] Alrighty then, the left and right are nostalgic for their recent heroes and seem to believe that eight years without any major calamities is synonymous with political courage. Well, such a presidency is usually a sign of being a gifted salesman, not principled inflexibility. Reagan based his presidency on cutting taxes and annoying the Soviets – not exactly politically toxic moves – and in any case did everything he could to hide the process by which he made tough decisions. Clinton was many things (notably intelligent, competent, and charming) but “political courage” was not part of his repertoire – i.e., his changing stances on health care and welfare reform, the indefensible carnage caused by Sudanese air strikes, and his own little perjury mishap.

Who we should have seen at the top of the list: Abraham Lincoln, John Adams, Grover Cleveland, Andrew Johnson.