Democrat Barack Obama would crush Republican John McCain in the U.S. presidential race by an almost four-to-one margin — 56 per cent to 15 — if it were up to Canadians.Well duh. The Republican Party makes our Conservatives look like hardcore socialists. Also:
Forty-two per cent of respondents called Mr. Bush one of the worst presidents in U.S. history, 23 per cent said he was the absolute worst.I wouldn't go so far as to rate him the absolute worst. A lot of presidential historians rate James Buchanan pretty near the bottom. The introductory paragraph on his Wikipedia page is hilariously harsh:
As Southern states declared their secession in the lead-up to the American Civil War, he held that secession was illegal, but that going to war to stop it was also illegal. Taking his own advice, he did nothing.
Heh.
2 comments:
Certainly there have been plenty of Presidents worse than Bush, but most people vote in these things only on their personal experience. To many people today, Jimmy Carter is ancient history, let alone Presidents of the early 20th and 19th centuries.
Another interesting point that gets floated sometimes is that the Presidency has become a more attractive office as it has become higher-profile and more powerful (especially in post-FDR). This explains why someone of Buchanan's (lack of) quality would struggle to get the position today.
We also live in a very high-information age compared to the 1860s. The candidates get a lot more public exposure. Every word they say is instantly relayed across the nation through electronic media.
Famously, television was crucial in deciding how candidates would henceforth get elected; during one of the debates between Kennedy and Nixon, those who listened on the radio thought Nixon had won, while those who watched on television thought the opposite.
So yes, there's a lot more scrutiny nowadays, but the criteria on which people decide their vote is also different.
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