Eisenhower could have run as a republican or a democrat, and would have still been elected.. His presidency was the calm before the storm.. No one disliked Ike.. Our country was basking in the glow of a successful war, millions of bouncy war-babies, beautiful foreign war-brides, ex-soldiers, turned college students, a housing boom, jobs as far as the eye could see.. It's little wonder that he had a successful presidency.. BUT.. what followed has been 50 years of strife, anxiety and just pure hatred. So many things coincided with Ike's leaving office, and none of them have been settled quite yet. I think the country-club republicans of the fifties, regret their deal with the devil when they joined forces with the rabid dixiecrats of the south, and their hyper-religious kinfolk. Before Kennedy, when a president was elected, that was IT. The opposition party learned to deal with the president they had, and went about their business.. With kennedy's election, something changed. The republican sense of entitlement kicked in, and Kennedy never got the support he could have counted on in past times. Perhaps Nixon's sour grapes over the election he swore was stolen from him, started the ball rolling, and it's been rolling ever since.. Kennedy was loved by "the people", but there were dirty-tricks aplenty going on behind the scenes. I think he really thought that by having a Texan as vice president, he was inoculated.. Republicans (and dixiecrats-turned-republican) have never gotten over the civil rights issues (and probably never will).. Perhaps the assassination was to get rid of the liberal north easterner, and the good-ole-boy-Texan to follow would "see things their way".. We all know what happened.. Johnson never had a moment's peace, and was gone soon.. Nixon's tenure was shit from start to finish, and watergate was the culmination of the hard feelings that never healed.. Ford was just a placeholder,and didn't engender much feeling from either party.. Carter was maligned from the get go, and undermined at every turn.. Reagan was force-fed to the country, and due to the "actor" in his soul, and a complicit press and a compliant opposition, he hung on for 2 terms, but dug us into a very deep ditch... People seemed to like him as a person, and cut him a lot of slack.His excesses would be exposed after he left.. Bush1 was another place holder, tolerated, but unloved.. He basically played out Reagan's 3rd term, much like Schwarzenegger is playing out pete Wilson's failed governorship here in California.. Clinton was beset upon by republican wackos before he even was elected, and was never given a moment's peace.. .. Nixon ushered in the great divide, and it's been with us for so long now, I don't see any president getting the respect and help owed the office. It's especially dangerous with the world we now live in,.. We're not talking about a road not getting built, or some people not getting their pet projects handed to their state.. we`are talking about the actual survival of the country physically AND fiscally. Our whole system is seriously fractured, and we are just putting band aids on,. where traction, tourniquets and surgery would be more appropriate. Our schools are broken, our infrastructure is broken, our voting system is broken, our treasury is broken, our public image is broken, our military is in the process of being broken. our congress is broken,our judiciary is broken... Perhaps we had all better HOPE that there is a God somewhere who is blessing America..and that soon He/She will stop sparing that rod, and whip us all back into shape...before it's too late..
