A Salute to Pres Lincoln, Happy 200th to one of the (very few) decent Republican Presidents.

[SidneyCarton]

In fact I can think of only two others: Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, can anyone think of any others?

[Occam Bandage]

1. Nixon.

No sarcasm tag.

[SidneyCarton]

4. Ahhh, Tricky Dick.

What a complex legacy he leaves behind, particularly in the wake of Dubya. Sure, he was paranoid, corrupt and vicious as all hell, but he was also competent, hard-working, and bizarre as this may seem, I honestly think he thought he loved his country and thought he was doing right by it.

None of this excuses Watergate, Kent State, or any number of his other crimes, but much like Warren Harding before him Nixon seems to improve with time. Whether this is a function of our own forgetfulness, or the result of the abysmal performance of some of his ideological successors (I would argue for a combination of the two) is open to question.

[BOSSHOG]

2. I would have to suggest

that Gerald Ford was a decent human being.

[SidneyCarton]

3. I'll agree with Ford's inherent decency.

He carried the water for Nixon, which made him a stooge, but still not a bad person.

[BOSSHOG]

5. Any former president

who gets trashed by the right wing hate machine on a regular basis has got to be a decent human being. And, something I hold dear to My Heart, Ford was an officer in Halsey's fleet in the pacific which damn near got wiped out by a Tyhoon in 1944. He served on a small aircraft carrier and almost got washed overboard.

[SidneyCarton]

6. Well, he has just risen considerably in my estimation then.