Richard Reeves article spits at Dean and Edwards.

[Cascadian]

You have to read this ilk. Warning...be near a barf bag! By the way...is Richard Reeves a right-winger???

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/030710/79/4mx3m.html


John

[diplomats]

1. Not at all

believe it or not. I'm pretty sure he's a liberal.

[Cascadian]

2. Or at least a centrist.

John

[diplomats]

5. I kind of see his point

even if I don't totally agree with it.

[shance]

13. Why is Reeves "Al Goring" Dean and Edwards. There are no points given

to make this a valid article, or argument for that matter. All he gives is very weak ill-founded comparisons.

Comparison to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton? As fine individuals they both are, they lack the fight, fire, and courage Dean encompasses.

Its obvious he doesnt know Howard Dean, and sounds very evident he has not taken the time to read up and/or listen to Dean. Could be that Reeves likes the system the way it is, even though he rages about Bush from time to time. To say Kerry or Gephardt are the best choices, as likeable as Kerry may be, Reeves blaringly indicates he is just fine with D.C staying the same, and would like to maintain the existing broken system.

I have liked Reeves articles in the past....this one feels almost well, bought. He doesnt present any argument or valid points to prove his point. Its akin to an Al Gore smear piece.

[blm]

3. He's one of this country's best historians.

Leans liberal. DETESTS BUSH.

[Cascadian]

4. I will have to read more of his works

I must admit I am not familiar with him, but now I am.

John

[diplomats]

7. He seems to be advocating

that the Dems pick someone with experience so they won't have such a steep learning curve.

[hedda_foil]

6. Reeves is a pretty good biographer ....

But this is one of the shallowest opinion pieces I've seen, and I've seen a LOT of shallow op/eds.

There's no there there.

[tjdee]

8. The Reagan worship is a bit much.

When I read something like this:
"Here, in the style of a very short history of everything, is why I believe President Dean or President Edwards would be a disaster for party and country. I could actually tell that history in five words: Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton."

He says that because of them, "The Democrats are no longer seen as a party ready to govern."

That's why Americans rejected them when Clinton won a second term and Gore won the popular vote, right? I dare him to ask anyone not in his tax bracket how much of a disaster Bill Clinton was.

HE HIMSELF calls Poppy Bush a failed president, and starts his 'history' lesson after both Nixon and Ford. :grr:

And this crap:
Reagan "he was an effective and decisive leader, a man of few ideas deeply held who rallied his people around the flag."

He's welcome to his opinion, and he raises a valid question about being able to govern once elected, but his reasoning is flawed and selective.

[Davis_X_Machina]

What a complete and utter tool. n/t

[w4rma]

9. It seems he doesn't like President Carter or President Clinton much either

Here, in the style of a very short history of everything, is why I believe President Dean or President Edwards would be a disaster for party and country. I could actually tell that history in five words: Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

I gave that editorial a "1".

[Eloriel]

10. Pathetic

Not to mention wrong.

Here's but one example:

He (Carter) seemed so unsure of himself that the Soviet Union decided that it could get away with invading Afghanistan <.i>

Brzezinski has bragged about how he LURED the Soviet Union into Afghanistan, specifically as a ploy to weaken them, which it did.

So much for Reeves' credentials!

Eloriel

[CMT]

11. I like his books but think he is wrong headed

he compares Dean and Edwards to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton making those fine men out to be failures as president--Carter was better than many people think, and an increasing number of historians are coming to believe this--hopefully Mr. Reeves will one day. If eight years of peace and prosperity including reversing the deficit and millions of new jobs makes one a failure as president then I guess Bill Clinton is a failure.

I'm astonished that he thinks as well as he does of George W. Bush who in my estimate has been a total failure as president. He really hasn't accomplished one positive thing. The world has gone to hell under his leadership and so has the US economy. So basically I dismiss Mr. Reeve's arguements.

[chaumont58]

12. More blather from Reeves

Reeves is a legend in his own mind. He's stuck in LA, away from his beloved beltway, while his wife has a teaching gig at UCLA. The phoney bullshit in his column is a prime example of someone who accuses people of being too clever by half, when he, himself, is too dumb by more than a half.
Refering to both Dean and Kerry, he writes this:

"I don't think either of them is experienced enough or capable enough to effectively govern the vast enterprise (news - web sites) that is the United States of America."

He goes on to write:

"Whatever one thinks of the very decisive George W. Bush's personal capabilities, he has inherited impressive Republican governance, beginning with the kids of the Nixon administration, Vice President Richard Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld among them. They know what they're doing, even if what they are doing may turn out to be spectacularly wrongheaded."

Jesus Christ! Is this guy on the same planet I am? He says Cheney and Rummy know what they are doing! Cheney with his energy task force and Rummy with his Eyerackey war? Shit howdy!

[legin]

14. Got to be a classic

"They know what they're doing, even if what they are doing may turn out to be spectacularly wrongheaded."

I don't know what he's on, but I want some.

[ProudGerman]

15. Yeah, he's basically saying

that being pigheaded and wrong is more attractive than being openminded and appearing indecisive.

He sounds like most Americans. They like George Bush because he says what he means, even if its unintelligible gibberish sometimes. They fail to realize that he's not a straight talker because he has values and stands by them, but that he's a straight talker because he's an idiot who latches onto the first impression he gets and is too lazy to really think about things.

The intelligence gathering on Iraqi WMD's being a prime example. He just decided that they had them, and didn't bother to look into it, hell, he even made a concerted effort to not be informed otherwise.

People thinking the way Reeves does in this editorial is why the 2000 election was close in the first place. How else can a simpering idiot even get the election close enough to steal?

[Iverson]

16. permissible liberal

Richard Reeves is a permissible liberal. That is: his opinions are allowed to be the leftmost boundary in the New York Times.

I would argue that his column did not spit on Dean and Edwards, but rather it damned them with faint praise.

[nannygoat]

17. He says John Edwards is from South Carolina!???

Edwards was born there but he represents NC. Get a grip, Reeves.

"Senator Edwards, from South Carolina, has something to say, too: The Democratic candidate has to have some appeal in Southern states to win back the White House."

[trumad]

18. This guy's a dinosaur...

He states "I don't think either of them is experienced enough or capable enough to effectively govern the vast enterprise (news - web sites) that is the United States of America".

Apparantly he'll overlook Dubya's er lack of experience... Plus the dude praises Raygun and throws a little Diss towards Clinton...

Presidential historian my ass.....

[CWebster]

19. Lame

Scratching the bottom of the barrel to hatch an argument.

Dean never claimed to be a liberal, and this establishment party hack is adopting RW talking points to pigeonhole him.

Since Reeves can't really produce a case whose merits stand on it's own, he has to create one by comparison scenarios. Goes to show you how desperate the insiders are--they seek to claim greater legitimacy on their experience as leaders, when outsiders are gaining due to the dismal failure of those presently in leadership positions.

And, why is it that when cosidering winning the South, Afro-American voters are never considered? It's always about who can pander the best to the good ol'boys.

[onecitizen]

20. He obviously has his OWN man.............

he wants to see in that coveted position and it's NOT Dean or Edwards. So, he's using the power of his pen to sway folks from the excitement and energy garnered for Dean at this point. I expect to see much more of this type of thing in the months to come. We might as well get used to it and have plans to counteract it.

[Octafish]

21. Not surprised many DUers don't know Reeves.

Newspapers, on the whole, run conservative columnists and authors. Reeves speaks from a Liberal perspective. Those who read may remember his column from a while back where he said Bush's war on terra would only lead to more terra, including the likely assassination of the pretzeldunce.

Regarding Dean and Edwards: Reeves, a Presidential scholar who's written on JFK and Nixon, knows what he's talking about. Neither guy has the experience the Presidency requires.

So there's no confusion: I'm for Kerry.

Here's an excerpt from one Reeves column:

THE DIPLOMATIC DISASTER OF THE CENTURY

PARIS -- The United States is about to go to war saying that diplomacy has failed. They're right about that. Day after day, month after month, President Bush and his men have made things worse for themselves in one of the most ruinous exercises in diplomacy the country has ever seen.

Not to put too fine a point on it -- and no matter how the war against Iraq goes -- it is hard not to conclude that the president is ignorant, the secretary of defense nuts and the secretary of state incompetent.

SNIP...

The world of the only superpower is shattering around us, at least diplomatically. We have alienated and divided our own allies, from France and Turkey right up to the 51st state, Great Britain. We have divided our most creative diplomatic initiative of the last century, the United Nations. We have divided the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, our inspired military response to communist expansionism, a military arm that won a war without fighting. We have, with ignorance and arrogance aforethought, brought the world (and ourselves) to crisis -- and perhaps to chaos.

Our president, confusing the United Nations with the Texas Legislature, seemed to believe that we could bully, bluff and buy the rest of the world into going along with whatever we wanted, wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted -- no matter what arguments he used and changed. Sept. 11, disarmament, regime change, a stabilized Middle East, whatever. Instead, as Bush now knows, he was getting lousy advice from Secretary of State Colin Powell, who told him time was on our side. It was not.

CONTINUED...

http://www.uexpress.com/richardreeves/?uc_full_date=20030312

Here's where you can read more of what Reeves thinks:

http://richardreeves.com/archive/

[blm]

24. People are going to vote through the prism of 9-11

no matter what. Say what you will about Clinton, he keeps reminding Democrats of that fact because it's TRUE.

[dsc]

25. Is he lying in your piece

or the original poster's? His description of the 'good' governence that Bush inherited from Nixon in the original post can't be reconciled with the description of the same men in the piece you site.

[Octafish]

26. He says the same thing. A crook is a crook.

Nixon was a crook. The people working for him worked for a crook. Perhaps many were crooks, like VP Spiro Agnew and AG John Mitchell and White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman and Domestic Policy Advisor John Dean.

Ooops. There's that name again.

Some who might be Nixon crooks weren't convicted, like Henry Kissinger and VP/President Gerry "What JFK Conspiracy?" Ford.

Reeves said Nixon's cadres were "efficient and loyal." Nowhere does he say they were moral or democratic — nor even loyal to the Constitution.

Regarding Howard Dean: Reeves is correct in his assessment there, too. The guy doesn't have the experience the job requires.

[Classical_Liberal]

22. It makes no sense. He attributes the "failed presidencies"

to lack of experience on the national scene when the succesful republicans suffered the same problems. He claim that their advisors made the difference, but it isn't like Dean and Edwards can't hire good advisors.

[Octafish]

23. Good points CL, but the President ...

... to be really good, needs to know MORE than his advisors. I define "knowing more" as having a better perspective on the Big Picture, which comes through experience in more than one area.

Consider JFK was getting almost unanimous advice for all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union over the Soviet Missiles in Cuba. They even called Kennedy a coward for not ordering an invasion of Cuba. Thankfully, JFK stood up to the Joint Chiefs, the Congressional Leadership, and just about everybody in the CIA and found another way out of the situation.

Now it's one thing being the smartest person in the room. And it's another thing to know one doesn't know everything. Nobody does. So no matter who is president, the man or woman will need advice.

Worst of all is not knowing more than anybody else. In any room. Or any place. Ever. THAT is what got Dim Son into so much trouble. And that is why today America finds itself in the most perilous situation since November 22, 1963.