Un-Cheney'd and ya hit the ground runnin'

Last night I started to watch the Vice President Cheney interview on the Hannity show. I couldn't watch it all the way through. He was getting softballs thrown at him by Sean. The author of the 1% Doctrine had an arrogance about him that our country's treasure could be tossed around to cover every long shot in the book. The guy who told former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" now says, now says, that there is too much spending. In accounting, you can design internal controls that make everything 100% safe. However, it will seize up the operations of your company and bankrupt it.

He and Bush bankrupted America and helped wreck the Republican party. James Carville has written a book entitled "40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation ". I am starting to believe it, but I just don't think they will be successful. Will the next generation eventually understand the nature of the national debt and the unfunded liabilities of pensions, social security and medicare? Will they hold these leaders accountable? Will America be the last great superpower? The Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its corrupt system. America seems destined to do the same. The arrogance and cost of empire is more than any nation can bear. Ivan Eland wrote a book entitled "Recarving Rushmore: Ranking Presidents on Peace, Prosperity and Liberty". Eland profiles each U.S. president on the merits of his policies and whether those strategies contributed to peace, prosperity, and liberty:

The Peace Presidents

The Founders of the republic recognized that the United States had a fairly secure position against most military threats, with weak neighbors at its borders and two oceans buffering it from the world’s conflict zones. These advantages allowed the United States to stay out of most foreign wars and to avoid maintaining large standing armies in peacetime, which the Founders’ viewed as a threat to civil liberties. More recently, however, presidents have tended to abandon that foreign policy for one of overseas interventionism, a trend Eland views as counterproductive and costly.

Consistent with the Founders’ vision—and in stark contrast to rankings that often reward presidents simply because they provided “leadership” during wartime—Eland’s ranking method gives presidents credit for avoiding wars and for conducting only necessary wars of self-defense. “Presidents receive demerits for conducting wars of choice—that is, most wars in U.S. history,” Eland writes.

In the category of promoting peace, Eland gives his highest rankings to three presidents: John Tyler, Warren Harding, and Herbert Hoover. Tyler exercised restraint in dealing with an internal rebellion, a bloody Indian war, and a boundary dispute with Canada. In foreign policy, Harding was exceptional, keeping the U.S. out of the entangling alliance of the League of Nations, negotiating a separate peace with Germany, and securing the first significant arms control agreement in U.S. history. Hoover, although a proponent of U.S. interventionism abroad, showed restraint in foreign policy by avoiding sanctions and not threatening force against Japan after its invasion of Manchuria and by eschewing Wilsonian interventionism in Latin America.

Eland gives his lowest peace rankings to six presidents: James Madison (invasion of Spanish Florida, the War of 1812), James Polk (Mexican War), William McKinley (Spanish-American War), Woodrow Wilson (World War I, massive U.S. meddling overseas), Harry S Truman (Hiroshima and Nagasaki [I disagree with this one], Cold War, Korean War, interventionism in the Middle East and elsewhere, the military-industrial complex), and George W. Bush (Iraq and Afghanistan)—with John F. Kennedy (Cuban Missile Crisis, Bay of Pigs, Vietnam) and Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam) tied for the second lowest rankings in the peace category.

Promoting Prosperity

The Founders of the American republic generally believed that free-market policies would lead to prosperity, and they built that nation’s economy into the largest on earth on that principle. Accordingly, although other analysts’ assessments often reward presidential activism in the economy,

Eland deducts points for activism that violated the Founders’ original ideas and rewards presidents who encouraged the private sector to resolve problems with minimal government intervention in the economy. It is crucial to keep in mind that economic performance during one administration can be determined by policies enacted by prior administrations. “Jimmy Carter experienced stagflation during his administration, which was primarily caused by LBJ and Nixon’s Vietnam War and their economic mismanagement,” Eland writes. “Yet Carter fostered economic policies that eventually led to the prosperity of the Reagan years and set a precedent for policies that led to renewed prosperity during the Clinton years.”

In the category of promoting prosperity, Eland gives his highest rankings to John Tyler, Martin Van Buren, and Rutherford B. Hayes. Tyler supported a sound policy of limiting the growth of the money supply, and generally opposed high tariffs, a national bank, and federal welfare to the states. Van Buren showed proper restraint during an economic crisis and worked toward limiting federal and executive power. Hayes returned the United States to the anti-inflationary gold standard (which helped pull the economy out of a recession), restored the nation’s credit, and kept federal troops out of a violent labor dispute.

Eland gives his lowest prosperity rankings to two presidents: Franklin D. Roosevelt (the New Deal, wartime expansion of the state) and Lyndon Johnson (the Great Society and other federal programs). Closely behind are William McKinley (new taxes, favoritism for select businesses, progressivism), Woodrow Wilson (Federal Reserve System, Federal Trade Commission, renewed antitrust activism, groundwork for expanded government), and Harry S Truman (Fair Deal, intervention in labor disputes, increased economic intervention).

Preserving Liberty

Many presidents have expanded the executive branch beyond what the Founders envisioned. This inflation of presidential power has distorted the original system of checks and balances at the expense of the legislative branches of government and has resulted in the imperial presidency and the erosion of U.S. citizens’ liberties.

“Presidents often claim that they are preserving liberty while, at the same time, they are taking actions to subvert it,” writes Eland.

Eland ranks George Washington as the best president in the category of preserving liberty, with John Tyler and Grover Cleveland tied for second place. Although Washington expanded executive power beyond what the Constitution envisioned, he also limited presidential powers in crucial ways, stepped down after two terms, and ensured the survival of the new constitutional system. Tyler favored limited government but fought members of his own party on this principle—thereby torpedoing his chances for a second term. Cleveland pursued benevolent policies toward Native Americans, including trying to protect land in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) from white settlers, giving them U.S. citizenship, and doling out reservation land for individual Indians to farm under the Dawes Act.

Eland gives his lowest rankings in the liberty category to Woodrow Wilson (National Guard encroachment, Espionage and Sedition Acts), with Thomas Jefferson (Embargo Act, Indian policy) ranked second lowest. Tied for third lowest place are John Adams (Alien and Sedition Acts), James Polk (land grab, Indian and black war casualties), William McKinley (suppressed freedoms abroad), Ronald Reagan (Iran Contra scandal, signing statements [some disagreement here]), and George W. Bush (expanded executive power, erosion of civil liberties).

Readers will be intrigued to discover why, of the four men given exalted representations on Mount Rushmore, only Washington deserves the honor. They will learn why Teddy Roosevelt has been overrated; why Jefferson hypocritically violated his lofty rhetoric of liberty; and why Lincoln provoked a civil war that achieved far less than believed. Readers will uncover why some presidents are rated much higher than the conventional wisdom—for example, Warren Harding—and some rank much lower—for example, Harry Truman.

There is more at http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=77