When the Republicans controlled the legislative, judicial and executive branches of our government, the conservatives always pointed out how the liberals were “whining” about everything. Now the Democrats are in charge and the liberals are still whining. But, this time the whining is coming from the top. Congress moaned about having to work on Christmas Eve. There are 10-20% of Americans without good jobs who would feel blessed for being able to work on December 24. Then there’s the president himself. He repeatedly claims he is faced with the biggest challenges since Franklin Roosevelt. YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!!!
Either Obama doesn’t know his history (maybe he’s too young and inexperienced to remember his predecessors) or, more likely, he thinks the average American is not as smart as him and his elitist crew. Here’s a president who has appointed 92% of his gang from the ranks of government-only backgrounds, compared to his predecessors of the past 100 years (including FDR) who appointed 50% from private industry. Obama’s elitists must think they can distort U.S. history and fool the rest of us. Not me!
Here are a few examples of what the presidents since FDR had to confront. The reader can compare these enormous issues with the relatively few problems of today:
1)Harry Truman- the problems of post-WWII Europe and Mid-East regarding those countries’ political and economic future, the Soviet total disregard of the agreements at the Yalta Conference, the creation of the United Nations and determination of the powers of its Security Council, Russia getting the atomic bomb, the creation of Israel, the massive labor strikes where the unions wouldn’t accept a 24% wage increase, the Korean War, etc.
2)Dwight Eisenhower- ending the Korean War, McCarthyism, the problems created by the earlier communist revolution in China including the protection of Formosa (now Taiwan), the communist infiltrations all over southeast Asia, the Suez Canal Crisis where France/England/Israel went to war with Egypt, the U-2 spy-plane fiasco, inflation during a recession, agricultural commodity prices sinking so far that farmers were going broke, political revolutions in most Latin American countries, desegregation of public schools, etc.
3)John Kennedy- the fight against corruption within the same unions that helped elect him, the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis that could have resulted in another world war, the steel industry (the backbone of economy at the time) being shut down by the unions, etc.
4)Lyndon Johnson through Jimmy Carter- the horrible dilemma of the Vietnam War, the Arab Oil Embargo, the unusual event of double-digit inflation while the economy was going nowhere, racial tensions all over the country, ending the Vietnam War, the proliferation of anti-American Americans, Watergate, etc.
5)Thanks to Ronald Reagan and his economic and political policies, life has been much easier for the politicians who followed him, including the “Whiners.”
