I love to blame cable tv for almost everything, but in my heart I know better.  I have even diaried a few times about what I think the problem is:  our national ignorance and pride in stupidity, most recently here then here.

But in my own foolish attempt to decide who the worst president of them all--- the two prime candidates seem to be James Buchanan and the current guy--- something jumps off the age that seems to confirm my theory in a truly depressing way.

Hang in there and join me after the jump.  This could be fun or make you want to hide.

Sorry Keith.  Had to borrow it.  You can have it back after I am done.

You got to hand it to the Still President, as Jon Stewart calls him.  He has the chance to be thegreatest vote getter for a Democratic candidate since Goldwater or even, maybe, Hoover.

And he's just such a swell guy, too.  Even now, you can imagine the party big wigs (that is the Republican party big wigs) trying to figure out how to keep him off prime time during their convention.  

How about we offer him time to speak at our convention?  They can have Sen Lieberman.  I want to showcase George W. Bush.

But all this begs the central question.  Is he---has he achieved what one needs to accomplish, so to speak---to be truly considered THE WORST PRESIDENT IN THE WORLD, or, at least, of these United States.

I just don't know.

No time to do a full diary, but time enough to read things that cheer me to the point that I want to hide under a bed.

Explanations after the jump

There is no better way to explain how sad I am for all of us in the loss of Tim Russert, than to republish these excerpts from his interview, a little more than four years ago with the  then un-elected "President."  Those who feel it necessary to present contrary views and suggest that he did not do his job better than anyone else out there, or can think of other questions they might have asked should read this.

The view that Tim "pulled a punch", hardly born out below, is based on a conceit that while we smart people could see that Tim has proven the president is an idiot and a liar, many people could not.  Read my excerpts, or the the whole thing here, especially given what we now know, and see whether there is was any excuse for a person who saw MTP on February 8, 2004 to vote against Senator Kerry.

And who is going to ask these questions now that Tim is gone?

Ever since Governor Dukakis lost to Bush I after leading most of 1988, it has become hazardous to forecast the results of November elections from the vantage point of June.

Before this site turns from ugly attacks on a great United States Senator to support the nomination of Senator Obama  to ugly attacks on another United States Senator, a war hero and courageous fighter against the worst in his party, may I suggest another course?

I have plenty to write about, but no time to do so, other than to note this sad anniversary.  I was 16 in 1968, and, though I was and remain a devoted Kennedy-phile, for reasons I have and will write about, Senator Kennedy had not grabbed me yet, in that very confusing election year.  But none of that mattered when the California primary ended in such a horrible way.

Since we are thinking Kennedy these days---in my view that is always a good thing to do---we can reassert that this country is our country, too.  It does not belong exclusively to the right wing, or the self proclaimed patriots, to whom patriotism means flag pins, and the promotion of war as a foreign policy.

President Kennedy certainly did not see it that way:  he lost a brother in World War II and almost lost his own life and those of men for whom he was responsible.  When generals tried to stampede him into a war over Cuba---twice---he resisted them successfully (after making a mistake in the first instance---the Bay of Pigs---which he owned up to immediately.)

I know that most of you, particularly those who do not follow sports or baseball, hate these so I will try to keep it short.  Still, what happened in Fenway Park last night so illustrates so many important issues of our day, and of this election year, it is hard to resist.

As idiotic as this is, the extent of President Bush's limitations escaped the vast majority of Americans until Katrina, for reasons I will never, ever understand. Standing in line at a bakery on the day the Chief Justice died, I heard any number of people who had obviously voted for the the President angrily discussing his and the administration's incompetence, based on Katrina but spilling over to the war and, as news came of the Chief Justice's death, the Court, and cronysim, and so on and so forth.  And I stood there, dumbfounded, wanting to scream at these people who seemed to be suddenly discovering the nose on their own faces.

Though the DailyKos community is broad, it should be reasonable to expect that a huge majority would agree that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the greatest president we have ever had.  Many would, in fact, agree with the view that the "greatness" of this nation, founded on an idealism which was not completely realized through slavery, a civil war, and the turmoil of modern industrialism, was a function of the Roosevelt administration, in putting the government between otherwise unchecked forces which preyed upon our citizens, and, eventually in establishing our country as the ultimate force in protecting freedom around the world.

What follows is not meant for the "fans" on this web site: meaning those who have chosen a candidate and follow his or her campaign the way I do the Red Sox.  That is how I approach baseball, rooting for the team I first latched onto when I was six years old, growing up in Massachusetts.  It is not how I follow presidential elections, especially this one.

Aside from my annual confusion about why people who celebrate Easter do not also celebrate Passover, I do not quite understand why only Massachusetts, Maine and, uhhhhh, Wisconsin, celebrate Patriots' Day, especially after the John Adams thing on HBO has explained its importance.

All the blather about the ABC News debate and then  then today's Times article about the Pentagon conning cable tv (the modern equivalent of taking candy from a baby) furthers my favorite subject about howtelevision, particularly the cable version, but broadcast as well, has become overpopulated with the stupidest, least educated (but well dressed and beautiful) people ever foisted upon us (I suspect that, for instance, Edwin Newman could not get employed as an intern were he beginning his career today, and Edward R. Murrow would not have gotten within 100 miles of a microphone).  They have also become so intolerably undependable that it is scary.

I am certain that the rules do not permit me to repeat anything posted here before, but in view of this ridiculous cable tv tempest over comments Senator Obama would be better off not having made, but see Bob Herbert today, and the truly obnoxious way in which Senator Clinton has tried to hurt Sen Obama by a phony unctuousness, that rule needs to be broken to again raise a fundamental question.  

I don't think I am.  I stand by the view that the poor and getting poorer education that our children are getting is responsible for the elections of, in particular, such obviously unqualified (and proudly so) candidates such as the current president and the Reagan that has caused so many to become mistily reverential.  I adhere as well to the view that the failures of the modern press and broadcast media have made a bad situation worse.

But then, in rapid succession,there are three signs that things could be getting better, though very slowly

When we were growing up, there was television and it was, it seemed, always on.  Television was not always uplifting and often failed to meet the expectations of the best of those who appeared on it or those who valiantly tried to use the organs of government as instruments for the public interest.  

But, yet, amidst the "I Dream of Jeannie"'s, and "Mr. Ed" and "My Mother, the Car" there was some sense of responsibility among the networks:  some sense that they, too, had obligations as citizens.  And, sometimes, often when they had to because of tragedy, but often because the best among them demanded it, they rose to the challenge to either inform a dubious public or commemorate events of importance, and the history of our nation and world.

While we put all our intense attention on a presidential election that, for the moment, is in the hands of "professionals" other matters, critical to our lives, our freedom and our country, slide on by and, from where I sit, not in a very good direction.  I have written before about this general subject and the public’s responsibility for the re-election of an obviously unqualified president and that of a presswhich focused on his opponent’s windsurfing and ridiculous contentions about that opponent’s military record while reporters who mentioned that the president had lied about how he managed to avoid serving in Vietnam were fired.