An Invisible President
The Ideal President
The president of the United States should be an invisible man, it would make the Skeptic deliriously happy. Why? It ought to be obvious but since you bothered to take the time to read the article the Skeptic will explain.
Throughout the history of the United States our finest days were when our presidents did the very minimum required to do the job because the genius of this country is, or was, that the freedom of the individual unleashes something inside of us that can achieve great things and that has been proven over and over again in America. We invented powered flight because two brothers, bicycle repair guys, did what governments and scientific organizations were unable to do because they were allowed the freedom to dream. We didn't invent the car but we found a way to make it cheap and available to the masses because of the dreams of Henry Ford. Hundreds of inventions that make our lives easier and better were invented here and all because people weren't held back by an over intrusive government but that is changing and changing fast.
The Skeptic thinks things really began to get of of hand with Harry Truman and his police action in Korea, while the reasons for sending in troops were probably admirable they were hardly justified. Presidents had initiated combat without official declarations of war before Korea but they never before cost so many Americans their lives. However, Americans still respected their president and their government, at least for the most part, but ten years after the Korean War another president waded into Asia and cost us another fifty thousand plus Americans their lives. This time Americans were less forgiving, the memory of Korea was still in the national consciousness and when hundreds of casualties began being reported on the evening news every night a lot of people decided that they could no longer stand still and allow President Johnson to pursue the foolishness without speaking out. This was the beginning of the end of what was truly a golden period in the history of America, people lost respect for authority, life became a lot more serious to a lot of people, life became less fun. The Skeptic isn't one of those people who continually long for the good old days or has this romantic notion of the fifties as a time when everything was good and America could do no wrong because that was clearly not the case, especially if you happened to be black, but it was the last time we had a really good president.
Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, seemed to take the war in Vietnam as a challenge to his manhood, he kept upping the ante, sending in more and more troops and all for what amounted to nothing. In the end the Skeptic thinks the war probably killed him too but it killed something else, it killed the trust Americans had in their government. Up until that time people tended to trust their government, if the president said we needed to go to war the people trusted his judgement but that all ended in the sixties as well it should have but that didn't stop future presidents from going to war for various and often unnecessary reasons, Democrats and Republicans alike.
Throughout the history of the United States our finest days were when our presidents did the very minimum required to do the job because the genius of this country is, or was, that the freedom of the individual unleashes something inside of us that can achieve great things and that has been proven over and over again in America. We invented powered flight because two brothers, bicycle repair guys, did what governments and scientific organizations were unable to do because they were allowed the freedom to dream. We didn't invent the car but we found a way to make it cheap and available to the masses because of the dreams of Henry Ford. Hundreds of inventions that make our lives easier and better were invented here and all because people weren't held back by an over intrusive government but that is changing and changing fast.
The Skeptic thinks things really began to get of of hand with Harry Truman and his police action in Korea, while the reasons for sending in troops were probably admirable they were hardly justified. Presidents had initiated combat without official declarations of war before Korea but they never before cost so many Americans their lives. However, Americans still respected their president and their government, at least for the most part, but ten years after the Korean War another president waded into Asia and cost us another fifty thousand plus Americans their lives. This time Americans were less forgiving, the memory of Korea was still in the national consciousness and when hundreds of casualties began being reported on the evening news every night a lot of people decided that they could no longer stand still and allow President Johnson to pursue the foolishness without speaking out. This was the beginning of the end of what was truly a golden period in the history of America, people lost respect for authority, life became a lot more serious to a lot of people, life became less fun. The Skeptic isn't one of those people who continually long for the good old days or has this romantic notion of the fifties as a time when everything was good and America could do no wrong because that was clearly not the case, especially if you happened to be black, but it was the last time we had a really good president.
Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, seemed to take the war in Vietnam as a challenge to his manhood, he kept upping the ante, sending in more and more troops and all for what amounted to nothing. In the end the Skeptic thinks the war probably killed him too but it killed something else, it killed the trust Americans had in their government. Up until that time people tended to trust their government, if the president said we needed to go to war the people trusted his judgement but that all ended in the sixties as well it should have but that didn't stop future presidents from going to war for various and often unnecessary reasons, Democrats and Republicans alike.