[extropy-chat] can't war protesters do better?

[David Lubkin]

Al Brooks wrote:

>This is encouraging. Perhaps we can get a president of the stature of 
>Lincoln elected in 2008, rather than the stature of the son of the 
>Gipper's veep. Bush is tough, Americans admire toughness as much as 
>anything; Bush is savvy, Americans admire savviness more than intellectual 
>angst. However could it be possible to elect a president who is tough, 
>savvy, with a first class mind but not an effete intellectual born-agin 
>like Jimmuh Carter?

We came close; we at least had one on the ballot in 1964. Beginning last 
November, I've taken to wearing a "Goldwater in 1964" button on my lapel.

It's funny -- I'm on another list that obsessively discusses politics, and 
is fairly evenly split between liberal, conservative, and libertarian. When 
I brought up Goldwater, amazingly everyone agreed that they thought highly 
of him. All those who were old enough to have voted in 1964, and did vote 
for LBJ, wished they'd voted for Goldwater.

Goldwater was tough, savvy, smart, knowledgeable, compassionate, and at 
least 80/80 libertarian. But he was too honorable to adequately counter 
Bill Moyers' campaign smears of him, the latter being all that most people 
remember of him.


-- David Lubkin.