Zonie63
Posts: 2826
Joined: 4/25/2011
From: The Old Pueblo
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quote:
ORIGINAL: NorthernGent
I'm not close to this so just going off gut instinct but Clinton came across as a right smarmy fucker. Wouldn't have trusted him one bit.
I liked Bush as a character. Let's be frank, politicians don't run countries these days and Bush knew that and got up on the podium and just got on with it usually laughing at himself. In his own way, he was a likeable character.
But, of the three, surely Obama is the most believable?
I don't really look at any President as being his own man. I look at them more as news anchors; they're just there to look pretty and read words written by someone else.
While I was born under LBJ, the first President I actually remember in my lifetime was Nixon. That is, he was President at the point in my formative years when I was starting to become politically aware. The overall political atmosphere at the time gave me an early cynical view about politics, government, and the Presidency. But Nixon's deeper voice carried a more serious and authoritative tone that stuck with me and set the standard by which I judge the oratory skills of Presidents I've heard in my lifetime.
Ford and Carter seemed pretty weak by comparison. I was never impressed at all by Ronald Reagan either, although for reasons I was never able to fully comprehend at the time, the country seemed to go into some kind of "trance." Season 5, Episode 17 of Saturday Night Live (with Strother Martin) had a skit called "Invasion of the Brain Snatchers," in which people were going door to door, canvassing for Reagan and giving away free pillows, which were large, green, and had "Reagan" written on them. People would fall asleep on these pillows and wake up as some kind of pro-Reagan zombie. While it wasn't their funniest or best known skits on SNL, I recall that it captured the essence of what was happening in America at the time. Prior to that, even a lot of Republicans weren't really all that enthused about Reagan, but at some point, quite suddenly and inexplicably, all the criticism seemed to evaporate. It was uncanny. Even the Democrats started taking a softball approach, and the media turned him into the Teflon President.
Reagan wasn't very bright, he was no great communicator, yet I kept running into people who kept singing his praises and somehow felt he was some kind of "savior." Bush cashed in on Reagan's popularity and was given an even bigger boost when the Democrats picked Dukakis to run against him. But neither he nor his son really struck me as great orators of any kind. I agree with your assessment of Clinton, but he was the solution to the image problem Democrats were facing at the time. Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis just didn't seem to measure up, so the Democrats needed to do a bit of a makeover, and the result was Bill Clinton. I actually liked Gary Hart back in the 80s, although in 1992, I supported Jerry Brown in the Democratic primary.
Clinton had more of a talk show host approach which seemed to click with a lot of people. He had a certain likability on a superficial level that appealed to the TV generation. I think Obama appeals to people in a similar way. He comes across as a rather friendly, affable kind of guy, but I still can't help but view him as a "TV President," much like those we've had since Reagan. It presents a somewhat sanitized and idealized view of the Presidency and politics in general. I think people may fall in love with the image they present, and that's where their enormous fanbases come from. But I try not to confuse media hype with good oratory, which are two completely separate things.
As far as believability and trust are concerned, that may be a bit of a red herring in politics. On an individual basis, one might "trust" a politician on a certain level, but that doesn't mean everyone in their organization is trustworthy. When it comes to heading up the Executive Branch of the United States Federal Government, we want someone we can trust, but it's also important to have someone who can competently lead such a huge organization as that. The kind of "trust" that people seem to gravitate towards these days is someone who isn't going to be rocking the boat and who will maintain the status quo.
Maybe that's why Presidents can be likable and laugh at themselves, because they're just going along for a sweet ride.
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RE: President Dither - 
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