O/T: The More Things Change, Etc...

Local PBS was showing some film documenting Richard Nixon's life, especially the 1960 campaign.

First there was a clip of Kennedy's campaign proposals, then Nixon's response.

I sat there dumb founded.

It was as if 48 years had passed, Kennedy was replaced by Obama, Nixon was replaced by McCain, but the verbiage covered exactly the same subjects.

It was a little eerie that we are still trying to resolve the same problems as we were 48 years ago.

Will we ever learn?

Lew

Reply to
Lew Hodgett
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Doubt it, we've not learned in the past few thousand years. Greed, quest for power, moral decay have done in many a strong empire.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

"Lew Hodgett" wrote

Hell, try this from 148 years ago:

" The nation has been great, but the statesmen of the nation have been little. Men have hardly been ambitious to govern, but they have coveted the wages of governors. Corruption has crept into high places--into places that should have been high--till of all holes and corners in the land they have become the lowest. No public man has been trusted for ordinary honesty."

"Ministers of the cabinet, senators, representatives, State legislatures, officers of the army, officials of the navy, contractors of every grade--all who are presumed to touch, or to have the power of touching public money, are thus accused. For years it has been so. The word politician has stunk in men's nostrils. When I first visited New York, some three years since, I was warned not to know a man, because he was a "politician." We in England define a man of a certain class as a blackleg. How has it come about that in American ears the word politician has come to bear a similar signification?"

Anthony Trollope's "North America, Vol 2", Chapter V. circa 1861

Reply to
Swingman

You don't have to read Trollope to find accusations (most of them true) of military supplier mismanagement: during the Civil War contractors sent weevil infested hardtack and spoiled meat as a common thing. It was more likely to happen than not. Cloth supplied for uniforms was a cheesy as possible...made to hold up until put upon the soldier's back.

Not a whole lot has changed.

Except I voted for Nixon back then and I won't vote for McCain.

Reply to
Charlie Self

It's worse than that. I was just reading an article in SA about the migration out of Africa - it started approximately 50,000 years ago. I suspect our ancestors even back then had a derogatory word for "politician" or the tribal equivalent.

And at least one tribal group that said the migration was a waste of time and resources :-).

Reply to
Larry Blanchard

One thing has changed. Today Obama wants to require employers (at least larger ones) to provide health insurance for their employees. Apparently that makes him a wild-eyed socialist. A few decades ago a sitting President proposed a similar law, his name was Nixon.

Reply to
DGDevin

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