Remembering history the way they wished it had been
Presidential Greatness: People’s Choice Edition
Say what you will, Bush at his weakest hasn’t bottomed out quite so low as a sweaty war criminal tax cheat and the cardigan crazed man who lowered our thermometers.
Nixon and Carter still beat out Bush in Presidential Unlovedness.
Retire to the “ranch,” crank out the books and the path to redemption is clear.
Written On The Wind
Twists remain in some quarters’ pants after Jimmy Carter’s botched critique of President Bush and his image abroad. The former President ducked when confronted with blowback, but not before the great and the good, and others, were mobilized to comment on his comment.
“Presidential Historian” Doug Brinkley was called on to state the obvious, that this was Carter’s harshest criticism ever. [Look for more wisdom from Brinkley as he settles into a new job fronting James Baker’s Rice University think tank.]
Then the reserve army of gasbaggery stepped forward to recall a more innocent time when saintly ex-office holders donned their togas solely for good. Others weren’t so sure..
[A side benefit of Media Matters’ roundup of people making up “unwritten rules” about Ex’s is that it dragged me back to the glory days of one offender, single term Republican Representative John LeBoutillier. After losing his seat at the height of the “Reagan Revolution,” like so many of us he found shelter on the world wide web. LeBoutillier ‘s upbeat version of himself haunts Newsmax to this day. Unmentioned in his bio is his ill-starred Counter Clinton Library, a non-existent entity with a web page which got some ink when Clinton was opening his museum. Then the dream died, and even the web page is gone. But keep hope alive. I once got the site’s ghost from a Newsmax link, and surely the technically adept could summon it back from the great beyond.]
CARTERIZATION
The Carter Library is getting some of that web 2.0 action, launching a interactive user content generatin’ semi-personal web experience: “The Youth Space.”
Let’s rush to the Future, shall we?
Youthful visitors discover a new world of content, and they are in control!
The youth of today adopt a pseudonym to impersonate the ambassador of a supplicant nation, pondering what swell gift to grease the President with. Kids from 8 to 80 may not care what china pattern they’d give President Mystery Date, but there’s fun to be had making up juvenile names for oneself to play The Diplomacy Challenge, at the touch of a keyboard!
