[Rictor]

To me, the foreign policy of a US President is by far the most important aspect of his presidency.

I mean, the domestic policy affects what, 200 million people. The forign policy affects the other 6 billion. If he's nice to 4% of the world's population, but an asshole to the other 96%, he's an asshole.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Rictor
To me, the foreign policy of a US President is by far the most important aspect of his presidency.

I mean, the domestic policy affects what, 200 million people. The forign policy affects the other 6 billion. If he's nice to 4% of the world's population, but an asshole to the other 96%, he's an asshole.

Unfortunatly, it's the 4% that do the voting (well, post votes and then have them disqualified).

The foreign policy of the US, I think, should play a massive role in how the leader is judged - simply because a superpower state wields so much power that the repercussions can reverberate for decades afterwards.  Just look at the Iraq situation for a custom made example.... Reagan provided Saddam with satellite photography of Iranian troops and chemical weapons.  Then Saddam felt he was 'owed' for taking on Iran, and invaded Kuwait....etc.

[mikhael]

Let me, then, give you an alternative point of view, Tin Can.

My father is 54. My mother is 50. They lived through "Carter's mistakes" and all three of us lived through Reagan's. Indeed, Reagan fixed things for my father (and hence for me) by doubling the enlisted paycheck. My father thinks that Reagan was a great man.

However, we both agree that he wasn't such a hot president.  See, my parents were there for the Carter years too. And they don't think that he did such a bad job.

Now, I have to ask you: if GDP was up, unemployment was declining, and the economy was growing WHEN REAGAN TOOK OFFICE, how can you say that Carter left the country in a shambles? Perhaps (now this is just a crazy idea) his administration put the cart back on the tracks?

Perhaps, the Vietnam War had screwed over the US economy pretty badly, draining it of both money and manpower. Perhaps--just perhaps--Carter took over a bad situation. Maybe, just for the sake of argument, his fiscal iniatives, which whilst not entirely effective, were the start of the 'prosperity' (if you want to call it that) of the Reagan era?

[Janos]

It's all Clinton's fault!

[Liberator]

mik, using your logic G.W. arrived when the "dot bomb" went off and his policies stopped the recession from being worse than it is.

Do you own your own house, or are paying a mortgage?  Odds are you couldn't have during the Carter administration, high interest rates and high taxes put a rather large clamp on what a young, middle-class couple could purchase on credit.

[Kazan]

the dot-com bomb was well done and overwith before the election year even began

[Liberator]

Do you really think so?  Amazon didn't post a real profit till 2000 or 2001.

[Rictor]

Coke or Pepsi; you decide.

[Liberator]

Real nice, unbiased article there Rictor.

[Gank]

Aye, agree with ya there Lib, Pilgers one of the best journalists out there.

[Liberator]

The thing is there used to be a thing called a reported who worked for newspapers and TV news stations.  They reported the facts of a story and tended not to editorialize in they stories, they saved it for OpEds.

Nowadays, all we've got are Journalists with the only reporters being old men on the verge of retirment.  It's very sad.

[Kazan]

Originally posted by Liberator
Do you really think so?  Amazon didn't post a real profit till 2000 or 2001.

and that has to do with the dot-com bomb because?!

Amazon wasn't one of the companies riding the dot-bubble

[Grey Wolf]

A good deal of the companies who rode the dot com bubble collapsed.  Good luck waiting for them to recover.

[Gank]

Originally posted by Liberator
The thing is there used to be a thing called a reported who worked for newspapers and TV news stations.  They reported the facts of a story and tended not to editorialize in they stories, they saved it for OpEds.

Eh, the first thing that comes up when you click on the link is ITV.com, one of the biggest tv channels in the UK. Theres also the names of two newspapers he writes for on a sidebar. And where has he said anything that isnt a fact, he may have worded in a way you dont like but that doesnt make it any less true.

[Grey Wolf]

Originally posted by Liberator
The thing is there used to be a thing called a reported who worked for newspapers and TV news stations.  They reported the facts of a story and tended not to editorialize in they stories, they saved it for OpEds.

Where and when was that? Every single article ever written has to have some sort of bias. And what about "Yellow Journalism", the thing that actually started the Spanish-American War?

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Liberator
mik, using your logic G.W. arrived when the "dot bomb" went off and his policies stopped the recession from being worse than it is.

Nice idea, but you failed to check your dates. The "dot com" economy went "dot bomb"  starting in 1998. The tech bubble was pretty much over by the the RUN UP to the 2001 election started, not after. Even with the bursting of the tech bubble, Clinton bequeathed Bush an economy that wasn't just growing, but whose rate of growth was accellerating, and a budget surplus that was growing and accelerating likewise. It took less than two years for Bush to reverse that growth rate and take us into deficits. Even if you discount the economic impact of September 11th--which is often exaggerated by the Bush administration--Bush's tax cuts and trade policies bear the lion's share of the blame for this hole that your children and theirs will be paying for. Just like, I guess, I had to pay for Reagan's horrible economic decisions. The only people who paid for Clinton's economic policies wer the one's paying taxes in the Clinton era. Imagine that. Paying in cash. Not sucking on the deficit like a leech.

You could attempt to draw a parallel between the Carter->Reagan and Clinton->Bush transititions, but the facts do not back you up.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Liberator
The thing is there used to be a thing called a reported who worked for newspapers and TV news stations.  They reported the facts of a story and tended not to editorialize in they stories, they saved it for OpEds.

Nowadays, all we've got are Journalists with the only reporters being old men on the verge of retirment.  It's very sad.

So who would you say is a "journalist"?

Me, I was listening to NPR today. I listened to the news. They told me what the outcome of the Martha Stewart case was. They didn't give me any spin, or opinion, or editorialize. They just gave me the facts. In fact, that's generally what all the anchors on NPR do, and most of the ones (outside the editorials on the financial shows) on  BBC do.

[Grey Wolf]

Speaking of the BBC, it was quite amusing listening to my AP American History teacher talk about how the British government issued the report on the BBC's war coverage. He seems to think he's a moderate, and doesn't quite realize that he's truly a conservative.

[vyper]

[q]He seems to think he's a moderate, and doesn't quite realize that he's truly a conservative.[/q]

I think wanker is more appropriate.

[Rictor]

Form what little I know of John Pilger, he's an excellent journalist and more aware than anyone of the media bias present in modern society.

Lib: When Rupert Murdoch owns a media empire, and uses it to totally do away with journalistic integrity, I don't hear you saying anything. Does it not worry you that the man in charge of a significant portion of Western news services is also a staunch Republican? That would tend to put a *slight* bias on the news.