... he committed impeachable offenses and sullied the political process.  In doing so, he hurt the capabilities of the presidency for years.

I don't care if he's dead - I still want to impeach Nixon.

1. LBJ for Vietnam
2. Nixon for Vietnam and more importantly Watergate
3. At the time, Ford for pardoning Nixon, although in hindsight I consider his brief stint with the office to be remarkable given the aftermath of Watergate.

Of course, my general approach to politicians is that they are about as honorable as an axe murderer.

The profound difference between Bush and Nixon was Nixon was not hated abroad as much as he was in the U.S.  In fact, for many abroad, INCLUDING Europeans, it remained a bit of an enigma why he was impeached.  Our constitution I think flew a little bit over their heads!

... that said "Nixon's the One".

Carter, because he screwed up most everything he came in contact with and clinton because he used the power, we gave him, to screw most everything.

in that studly jumpsuit.  Oh, that didn't impress you.  Well, don't you know he's made the world safe and is slaying terrorists as we speak.  No, still not convinced.  Okay, I've got a picture of him holding a little girl who lost her family.  Not buying it huh ....  Try this, Kerry is a self-serving politician with no morals.  I bet you didn't know that.

Remember, we have won the war on terrorism - mission accomplished.  Say it with me 10 times.

Maybe this lack of history is why you are a new democrat.  Now Clinton was impeached, not convicted by the Senate, just like Andrew Johnson.

And for what its worth, Jimmy Carter was the worst president in the history of this Nation.  Most of our current problems stem from his mismanagement of Iran.  Carter more than any other world politician (current or historical) is responsible for Fundamentalist Islam's grip on the Middle East.

Carter heads my list of bad Presidents.

Especially since one of the Republican puppets in Congress was having an affair(good ol' Newt) while blasting Clinton about some blowjobs.  Typical Republican hypocracy!

-- Modified on 5/10/2004 6:37:49 PM

Nixon resigned because he knew he was going to get impeached & get his ass thrown out of office.  It's a crock that the crooked Presidents like Nixon (Watergate) & Reagan (Iran-contra) didn't get their just desserts for their criminal behavior, yet Clinton got impeached for lying about an affair.  He wouldn't have been impeached if the Republicans didn't control Congress at the time.

any Republican that happens to be the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.  Given that definition, as of 5/10/2004, that would be George W. Bush.

G.W.B. stands for "God, Whatta Bonehead".

Nixon, for all intents and purposes WAS impeached.  The House voted 4 articles of Impeachment against him.  He resigned AFTER the 4 articles were carried by the House, when his REPUBLICAN allies told him that they could not vote for his acquittal, in the face of "smoking gun" evidence of a coverup that appeared in the White House tapes.  His resignation rendered moot a trial in the Senate which Nixon knew he could not have won.

And he WOULD have faced criminal penalties, except that Gerald Ford pardoned him in order to get the nation focused on the future, rather than the past.

It's a bunch of semantic crap to try to imply that Nixon was not impeached.  In fact, the House DID vote 4 charges of impeachment against Nixon due to obstruction of justice in the Watergate affair.  His resignation was at that point, tantamount to a guilty plea.  The Impeachment proceedings, which had already been voted to proceed by the House, were then rendered moot by the resignation.  The reason Nixon resigned was that his Republican allies told him that in the face of "smoking gun" evidence of a Watergate coverup as revealed in the White House tapes, they, the REPUBLICANS, could not vote to acquit him.  At that point, he knew his cause was lost in an impeachment trial.

Bribite, Maybe this re-writing of History is why you are Bush Republican.  Re-writing of history to serve your goals seems to be a pre-requisite of being in the Bush Administration.  I.e. we went to war to liberate Iraq, not to find WMDs.

I agree with much of what you say here, save for elevating Carter over Clinton in the pantheon of bad Presidents.  P.J. O'Rourke did a column early on in the Clinton Administration: "101 Reasons Why Clinton is Worse than Carter."

Clinton was worse because he diminished the office as well as the nation.  Carter's only sin was in screwing up what Clinton --- after eight years of Ronaldus Magnus, and with a GOP Congress --- was unable fuck up: the American economy.  The problem is comparing men (so far) in different contexts.  I have no doubt that Clinton would have been every bit the foreign policy disaster that Carter was, and probably worse, since the Soviets would have exploited his weaknesses in ways that America's enemies in the 90s were unable to do.  Fortunately for the nation, Clinton was not elected (and was probably not electable) in such demanding times.  Carter was not a man who was able to rise to the moment, but there were not the obvious reasons to find him wanting in 1976 that would have been apparent with Clinton at a similar point in his career.

And I would also take issue which your assertion that "Carter more than any other world politician (current or historical) is responsible for Fundamentalist Islam's grip on the Middle East."  I'm not sure I'd not blame Churchill --- and I revere Churchill as the Man of the Century --- if anyone is to blame.  Islamo-fascism is, I believe, too much a function of historical and theological forces to place the blame on any one man.  Carter also did more to bring peace to Israel than any other world politician, and for that he deserves some credit.  It's difficult to blame him entirely for Iran, because that was more a failing of intelligence, much in the same way --- it may play out --- that our assessment of Iraq's WMDs may have been out of date.

That having been said, I can't say that I "dislike" any Presidents.  As Peggy Noonan once observed about Clinton (a comment equally applicable to Carter, as far as I'm concerned), "I don't hate him.  I hold him in contempt.  There's a difference."

All he did was preside over the 8 most significant years of economic growth in U.S. history.  Turned a huge deficit into a huge surplus.  And while on HIS watch, not a single major foreign terrorist attack was carried out on U.S. soil.

You are an alright guy!  

I adore Peggy Noonan, she's the main reason I read the WSJ.

That said, and I agree with all of your assertions about Clinton, Carter still has my vote, I give most of the credit for the for Israel/Egypt peace to Sadat, it kind of reminds me of Forrest Gump to think that Carter was even present.

Failing to fuck up an economy is a lot different than deserving credit for it.  The economic growth of the Nineties was attributable more to: (1) Reagan's tax cuts; (2) technological advance; and (3) a climate of deregulation started by Carter and accelerated by Reagan, than anything Slick Willie did.  

The majority of growth in the stock market didn't even start until after the 1994 congressional elections.

It was the GOP Congress that was more responsible for "turn[ing] a huge deficit into a huge surplus," just as it was Democrat Congresses that were responsible for the previously ballooning deficits in the preceding forty years.

And perhaps you missed the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.  Just because there weren't pictures of airplanes hitting them, they didn't fall down, and only a few were killed --- oh, and BTW, the Clinton Administration failed to recognize it as such --- doesn't mean it wasn't "a major foreign terrorist attack carried out on U.S. soil."

Thanks, bribite; you're not so bad yourself.

It's a debatable point, to be sure.  You make a valid point as to Sadat; I recall vividly the coverage of his death while in high school and mourned it.  A true man of vision and realpolitik.

Here's where I distinguish between Carter and Clinton:

Carter is a man of generally good intentions, naively out of his depth in the real world.  I met him in Atlanta after a few years of Reagan's foreign policy had already stopped Soviet expansionism cold, and it was clear that he hadn't learned a damn thing.

Clinton is a narcissistic, amoral swine with no real convictions whose main interest is in the pursuit of personal power, adoration, and sycophancy.

Hence, I would judge Clinton "worst."

Four articles of impeachment were voted out of the House Judiciary Committee, NOT the full House.  Hence, Nixon was not, in fact, "impeached."

As a matter of fact, it was the same number that were voted out by the House Judiciary Committee against Clinton, though only two went to the Senate for trial.

-- Modified on 5/14/2004 5:57:10 PM

Good post, unless you count the first World Trade Center Bombing in 1993, the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa, and we are starting to see a middle eastern connection to the Oklahoma City bombing.  Not to mention the fact that the rules that prevented the CIA from working with the FBI were put into place by Mr Clinton's administration.
   If you want to see the seeds for 9-11, you need to go back before the current President.

That was encouraged by the REPUBLICAN House leadership.  And sorry James, but I'm afraid that you'll never achieve your wish.