[quote=“Lucy_Gothro, post:53, topic:87391”]
Harry S. Truman.[/quote]
Better than most Presidents but tripled the defense budget, dragging the U.S. deeper into the Cold War and creating what Eisenhower termed the “Military-Industrial Complex.”
FDR. Lincoln.
Both suspended the writ of habeas corpus for thousands of American citizens. As mentioned upthread, FDR jailed entire families that were never even suspected of any crime. Lincoln’s views on race relations—while progressive for their time—would be repugnant today.
Polk
Imperialist who waged Mexican-American war.
Jefferson
Fucked underage slaves.
I don’t bring these things up to dismiss the good that these Presidents accomplished; they were men of their time who were often facing very difficult situations. But given the opportunity to appoint the reanimated ghola of any of them for another 4-8 years in the White House I’d still have to stick with Hillary.
Genuine question: Given the political system, do you think anyone with Clinton’s rather humble background could succeed without a high level of self-regard.
The thing about self-regard: some people are born with a silver spoon of self-regard, see the other Candidate. Some people’s self-regard is based on their incredible hard work and dedication. Given that the US is an individualistic meritocracy how do you imagine anyone could get to the top?
As to arrogance. Clinton’s team seems to have been very loyal to her for decades. A person who invites loyalty from visibly intelligent people is likely to pair their arrogance with some level of humility.
I would say “relatively humble”; she is from a middle-class suburb on the edge of Chicago’s North Shore, with excellent schools. Obama was from even more modest background (despite his banker-grandmother), but also went to an excellent high school (and from there good colleges).
This digression has been a public service message on behalf of the importance of access to good K-12 education to people from all backgrounds.
One more point - fundamentally a general election between two (or among 4, if you prefer) candidates will never give the typical voter truly worthy options (not in the “no true Scotsman” sense, more in the “accurately reflects the population’s desires” sense). Some set of processes filters the possible options down from the full population to just a couple, and most importantly those other processes happen first. Going first means you get to eliminate diversity on any dimensions you don’t like. For an uncontroversial example, the founders went first and put age restrictions in the constitution, cutting the diversity of both voters and candidates significantly and permanently.
Toy model: 32 chess pieces decide to become a democracy, and elect a new king by 5 players each eliminating half the options in series. First player (let’s call him the founder) eliminates everyone who isn’t a pawn. Second player (call him the rich) eliminates all the black pawns. How important are the last 3 players (call them the media, the primary, and the general election) who choose among the 8 white pawns? In the real America, the population gets cut in half 27 times before the general election, and about 24 times even before the primary campaigns start.
Without some kind of filtering process, voting will never produce a plurality large enough to have a credible mandate to govern. Maybe some combination or subset of ranked choice voting/liquid democracy/multiple runoff election rounds/something else I’ve never heard of could do better. I’d love to see it tried, but I don’t live in that world and I’m not smart enough to find a path to get there.
If they were upgraded to modern standards on attitudes re: race/gender/etc, rather than the standard views of their times? Pretty much all of the 20th C Democrats, plus Eisenhower. Maybe not Truman.
Apart from gay rights, US politics have shifted hard right since Nixon. On economic and foreign policy, Clinton would have fit comfortably into the Reagan administration.
Absolutely. Access to high quality education is key. The UK where 50% of Oxford / Cambridge Students come from private schools (while only 7% of the kids study at a private school) and where with two exception (John Major & James Callagham) every Prime Minister has been an Oxbridge graduate since WW2.
LOL. What are the US social-mobility rates, again? Poverty rates? Social composition of top 1%? Etc etc.
The US might, one day, aspire to become a meritocracy, once it removes umpteen obstacles which ensure huge swaths of the population will never get a chance to even improve their current status, let alone be recognised as superior to others. A meritocracy would not have unpaid internships as de-facto requirements for certain classes of jobs. A meritocracy would not require attendance of specific schools, membership of specific old-boys networks and so on.
The fact that there is no formalized hereditary class system does not mean that there is no hereditary class system at all; and the existence of such system automatically disqualifies the term “meritocracy”.
Agreed, should have written the US claims to be an individualistic meritocracy.
But in spite of it all, it is remarkable that ordinary people from average backgrounds, such as Clinton or Obama can become Presidents.
Not something likely to happen either in the UK or in Italy.
Edit: In my personal experience. Warning Anecdote from back in the 80s / 90s! doors were open, as long as you were a brainy kid, keen to learn. I was a very poor immigrant kid and received lots of support in the Salt Lake City education system. Again in the 90s as a student at U Mass Amherst I was one of many not privileged kids studying and being supported by the system. As long as you were willing to fit in–the US was a meritocracy at the end of the 20th century–more so, than most places I know.
On economic policy Clinton would have been at variance with his central policies, since she’s always been against supply-side, and has never been a proponent of the kind of deregulation Reaganomics pushed. She’s a DLC Dem., which does put her in a different class than the New Deal and Progressive Dems., but it doesn’t make her a Republican, so much as a crappy kind of Democrat.
On foreign policy, while she’s not a dove, she has actively worked on peaceful remediation of global conflicts, so she’s at great variance with Reagan there as well. She’s not a dove, but dovish US presidents are very, very rare.
With our military budget and permeated presence in so many areas of the world, I think it’s nigh hucking fimpossible to be a dove as POTUS these days. And anyone advocating slashing that allocation gets labeled an anti-American peacenik.
She’s an internationalist and coalitionist, which puts her at odds with people on the right (who don’t like giving up any decisionmaking authority) and on the left (who have strong isolationist tendencies). This will make it possible under a Clinton administration for people outside the US to help reign in our interventionist habit: just get your own damn leaders to stop advocating for intervention, she’ll mainly go with the consensus.
In the UK, I agree: if you did not go to Oxbridge, you have no chance to ever be PM. The class system here is formalized.
In Italy things are more fluid. Giulio Andreotti, probably the longest-serving PM Italy ever had (in aggregate) and a complete son of a bitch, came from nothing, like a lot of other politicians of his generation, simply by building connections in the Catholic Church. Most personalities emerged in the last 20 years actually come from variegated backgrounds, people like Pierluigi Bersani, who headed the currently-ruling party at the last election and came really close to becoming PM; past ministers like Cecile Kyenge; and young power-brokers like Debora Serracchiani. (And of course there’s Berlusconi, but his figure is complex.) The current opposition, M5S, is literally a bunch of nobodies led by a comedian. Generally speaking, in Italy it’s less about social class and more about hard interests and practical favours that one will deliver once elected. Obviously it helps to be rich and/or well-connected, but it’s possible to obtain connections in nontraditional ways - with a career in showbiz or sports, rising through trade-unionism, volunteering for community organizing and so on. The perception that “it’s all fixed” has more to do with the inability to change certain systems once “inside” rather than such systems being exclusive; if you join the Catholic Church or the mafia, you can rise as much as your abilities will allow you to, but you can’t expect to change them in any significant way.
