Now this is the kind of fun I'm talking about.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bagwan
So Bag's you are one of those outside agitators :)
Just some meandering thoughts after returning from a 6 mile hike through the hills and riparian woodlands in solitary communion with nature at what Eddie Poe referred to as "The alters of Byron";
We should be able to have as much fun as the Britt’s have with their politics, unfortunately we Americans are not self effacing enough to be able to laugh at ourselves like they can. Jag Warrior you were right about rating Presidents. I had the unique opportunity to turn 18 the year the voting age was lowered to 18 from 21. The real reason for it being lowered was that there was a strong belief, and movement that if someone 18 years old can be randomly picked to die a horrible death in the jungles of Southeast Asia they are also old enough to vote. I was 19 when I got around to lower division political science as an elective for my B A and the first day of class the professor handed out a list rating the past Presidents. Andrew Johnson was only exceeded by Warren G Harding in that scholarly composed list. When asked, practically everyone in that class said that they thought Nixon who was in his final throws as President with Watergate well and truly revealed, would be at the bottom. Personally I didn't have strong feelings about it, I wasn't really a liberal or very politically opinioned at all at those times because I was a jock much more concerned with maintaining a good GPA while simultaneously playing on the baseball team. But he suggested that time would be a little forgiving to Nixon and he would not approach Harding in ineptitude. He also wasn't very PC as he pointed out that Harding was the first president elected after women received the right to vote and that it was not a coincidence that Harding’s greatest attribute was his good looks. The President of The United States of America Jimmy Carter currently comes in right around number 30, and yes Camp David was a significant accomplishment. It is also generally agreed upon by political scholars that arguably our greatest president Honest Abe Lincoln would never have been elected if photo-imaging was a little further advanced as he was a very gawky looking man even for those times and most of the electorate didn't know what he really looked like, which brings me to California. In an earlier post I explained rather indelicately the demography of California after a very diligent member provided data suggesting Ca. "blinked red and blue, and I think I should do a little clarification. Depending on what other issues or offices were being voted on, on that same ballot the west coast has had a couple of factors that make statistical analysis somewhat difficult. As in other states local politicians tend to do well regardless of their party affiliation if they did a decent job locally. Even though their wasn’t as much information when voting, it was much more straight forward and you had to have a very good reason for an absentee ballot. Projected results always reached the west coast well before the polls closed, along with early west coast counts that encouraged many voters to abstain when things were getting late and the elections outcome was already decided, also exit polls have always been huge, which only encouraged the voters on the losing side to still vote. To say nothing of the fact that it was common for voters to vote across party lines. Being red or blue is much more demonstrative now. Also the conventions were not a bunch of mudslinging and chest puffing except when delegates would do what they came there for to submit Electoral College votes. It was way more colorful back when the delegates for say Iowa for instance would say something like “The great state of Iowa where corn grows as high as your eye cast __ votes for the next President of The United States of America_____ ________." . ;)
Plus incumbent Presidents almost always ran opposed in their party’s primary. Something else that has changed is that during the submission of electoral votes, when they reached the point that the candidates had enough electoral votes for his home state to get him over the top the state that was next to cast its votes always deferred to the candidates home state, this year Mississippi deferred to Ohio a battleground state to try to up President Obama in that state this time in the DNC.
Just sayin'
