Missing Richard Nixon »
Posted By Progressive 2 months, 4 weeks ago in Health & FitnessPaul Krugman is a die-hard liberal, but lately, “I find myself missing Richard Nixon,” he writes in the New York Times. He may have been "the worst person other than Dick Cheney ever to control the executive branch," but his health care reform plan was actually stronger than what Democrats want to do now, and reminds Krugman that there was once an era when "leading figures in both parties were capable of speaking rationally about policy, and in which policy decisions weren’t as warped by corporate cash as they are now"
“What happened to the days when a Republican president could sound so nonideological, and offer such a reasonable proposal?” asks Krugman. Two things happened, he says: The right-wing fringe took over the Republican party, driving the moderates you could make a deal with into hiding. Second, money has taken over the system in a way it hadn’t in the early '70s. It’s gotten so bad “that I sometimes wonder whether the country is still governable.”
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Tumultuous2 months, 4 weeks ago
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What Paul Krugman fails to mention is the the Obama Administration has waved the white flag on the public option for health care.
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He got rolled by industry, and by the crazies who showed up at the town hall meetings.
If they were going to call him a socialist anyway, he should have pushed for single-payer. Instead, he proposed an inferior public option. And even on that, he refused to hold his ground and insist that he would veto any health reform bill that didn’t offer such an option.
He sold us out on that one even before the debate started.
Make no mistake: The American people are losing, and the insurance companies and drug companies are winning. -
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lum-chate2 months, 4 weeks ago
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In my mind there were many, many presidents worse than Nixon. If not for that silly burglary of which he initially knew nothing about Nixon would certainly be considered a top tier president. Obama or Bush should not be mentioned in the same sentence as Nixon.
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He was not an idealogue of the right like Bush or Cheney rather an enlightened conservative who was able to throw the left a bone from time to time. OSHA & the EPA come to mind.
He and Kessinger were the greatest foreign policy tandem in my lifetime, as promised he got all the troops out of Viet Nam, his China breakthrough was a gift to all and the stoppage of the Oct 73' war between Isreal & the Arab Nations was done at precisely the right time by he & Kissinger. During the Cold War with Russia
he stood up to Kruschev & trimmed poor old Brrusnev of whiskers & hope, like few American statesmen could have.
No president ever won the presidency by 18,000,000 votes he did.
Nixon in his day was the cream of the American team, & America would be in a lot better shape today if we had a Nixon to preside over affairs rather than a Bush or BO. -
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fritz10212 months, 4 weeks ago
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Nixon was the last of the Republicans that understood one thing
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You have to give in order to take Nixon was good at it and if you read you will find that Nixon was the Last Good Republican President in our nation.He understood the Value of Deal making. And as a result his was the last of the Great Republican Administrations who got things done on both sides.As a Man well thats another story!-
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gointop2 weeks, 1 day ago
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I find it interesting that on a range of social issues, Nixon was well to the left of today's leading progressives. It's the strangest thing -- We see an understanding about the hardships of poverty when talking about those in foreign countries, yet even America's left seems to have bought into the corporate religious doctrine stating that poverty is the merely the result of bad character, disconnected from economic/social/class realities. Even Nixon understood that ripping the social safety net out from under the poor would inevitably result in the downfall of much of the middle class, and the deterioration of the country as a whole. And he was right.
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