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[Zrk2]

So, are we already at the point where I start cheering for a Paul because everyone else is retarded in different, worse, ways?

[smjjames]

Well, there are a few who have expressed interest who might be good.

How far back would you have to go to find a decent non-retarded republican candidate that ran in a presidential election? My experience mainly goes back to 2004, I don't really remember the other candidates that ran in 2000.

[Helgoland]

McCain didn't seem so bad at the time - then again I was thirteen back then...

[FearfulJesuit]

Well, there are a few who have expressed interest who might be good.

How far back would you have to go to find a decent non-retarded republican candidate that ran in a presidential election? My experience mainly goes back to 2004, I don't really remember the other candidates that ran in 2000.

Bush Senior wasn't the worst- he was strong on environmental issues and is probably most notable for signing the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Reagan was terrible- pretty much all of the modern GOP's dysfunction was conceived during Reagan's tenure. (It's arguable that Nixon laid the egg that Reagan hatched, especially with the Southern Strategy.)

Ford was decent. Nixon was pretty decent on domestic issues and had one or two foreign-policy victories that weren't bombing campaigns, notably opening up to China. Further back than the 1970s you're looking at an entirely different party- if Dewey, Eisenhower or Rockefeller ran today American liberals would think they'd died and gone to heaven.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

McCain didn't seem so bad at the time - then again I was thirteen back then...

The big thing with McCain is that he holds a grudge against the GOP for effectively killing his career-defining legislation: the McCain-Feingold Act. As such, he does indeed have the will and the record of going against the party's will. But that's about it. He's a born and bred Reaganite.

[Sheb]

He also focus on foreign policy, an area where Republicans tends to be less batshit insane.

[Angle]

Or at leas, less distinguishable from democrats.

[smjjames]

He also focus on foreign policy, an area where Republicans tends to be less batshit insane.

Foriegn policy? Pfft, look at Bush Jr. I don't know that much on Bush Sr. though.

[FearfulJesuit]

He also focus on foreign policy, an area where Republicans tends to be less batshit insane.

Foriegn policy? Pfft, look at Bush Jr. I don't know that much on Bush Sr. though.

Bush Sr. got us into a single war with Iraq that lasted a few weeks, was for a very good reason, and (compared to his son's adventures) costed barely anything. Otherwise, he pretty much presided over the transition from the Cold War to the relative stability of the 1990s.

[Sheb]

40% of Democrats in the House and 60% of Democratic Senators voted to invade Iraq. Being stupid abroad is one of the few things people from both parties can agree on.

[smjjames]

It was also, understandably, not all that long after 9/11 and the patriotic rage was still going.

[FearfulJesuit]

In some ways, the GOP's foreign policy is now better-intentioned than it was decades ago, and it just makes bigger messes. Since the end of the Cold War, we've been very gung-ho about democracy abroad, often without really understanding how the countries we're "liberating" actually work.

Democracy was not going to work in Iraq. It's an unstable country with a small middle class and ethnic and sectarian tensions that completely override any sense of national or economic identity. Instead of partitioning the country along said lines, which would probably have given us some measure of stability in at least Kurdistan, we imposed a system that we knew wouldn't work on a society that didn't want it (because real democracy means giving up your sectarian bickering- anyone can hold elections, but they're not the same thing).

Then, pretty much as soon as we left, Iraq collapsed, as it had been itching to do since we overthrew Saddam, and ISIS filled the power vacuum.

Why do Americans keep doing this? Because we think everyone is an American, yes, even Republicans when they're clear-minded enough not to indulge in bigoty. Everyone is an enlightened Westerner at heart; if we just remove the evil dictators and insurgents that oppress them, they'll put away their silly sectarian divisions and be part of a modern Western society. (I think part of the issue is that America is defined not by an ethnicity or sect but by the lack of any clear ethnic or sectarian identity. This is what makes America wonderful, but it means we don't understand why Iraqis insist on thinking along religious or ethnic lines.)

There's a case to be made that a bit more realpolitik could have saved us a lot of money and bloodshed. Instead of propping up impotent democracies in Baghdad or Kabul, Nixon or Eisenhower would just have put in better strongmen. They'd have maintained national stability at gunpoint, but if we're unwilling to redraw borders, is that actually worse than the very real alternative, where insurgencies maintain national instability at gunpoint while the federal government sits back and panics?

[smjjames]

And we're getting drawn back in again, largely due to the same ripple effects of us leaving the power vacuum. As for the splitting up of Iraq, yeah, nobody (the politicians at least) seriously considered that as a possibility previously. Now, it looks like that could very well happen anyway. I suppose we had too much hope and optimism initially.

We seem to be doing somewhat better with Afghanistan, probably in large part due to there being an actual Afghani ethnic and cultural identity.

[mainiac]

40% of Democrats in the House and 60% of Democratic Senators voted to invade Iraq. Being stupid abroad is one of the few things people from both parties can agree on.

It helps the cause of stupidity where you are being lied to by the sources that are supposed to vet the information.  In the US government system congress doesn't do prospective investigation, at most it does retrospective investigation when something is fucked up.  The executive branch can just lie to congress and congress can't do anything except consider impeachment after the fact.  Congress was lied to in two very important matters:
1) The executive branch vastly overstated the thoroughness of it's investigation before the vote
2) The executive branch said that it would only invade as a last resort and after further inspections.  In fact they planned to invade immediately.

So congress was hardly commendable but it's not like they were all jingo-istic hawks.  Their approval for reasonable steps to avoid WMD programs was abused by the executive branch.  Not that what the executive branch did was illegal, just unprecedented.  (And yes I am aware of gulf of Tonkin, Maine Incident, etc., but the manner in which this was done was different from previous warmongering in American history.)

[FearfulJesuit]

And we're getting drawn back in again, largely due to the same ripple effects of us leaving the power vacuum. As for the splitting up of Iraq, yeah, nobody (the politicians at least) seriously considered that as a possibility previously. Now, it looks like that could very well happen anyway. I suppose we had too much hope and optimism initially.

We seem to be doing somewhat better with Afghanistan, probably in large part due to there being an actual Afghani ethnic and cultural identity.

IMO, restoring the Afghan monarchy would have been the smartest move- absolute monarchies have legitimacy that strongmen or even democracies don't always have. Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, and the Emirates all escaped the Arab Spring with nary a peep. It's no coincidence that they were all absolute monarchies. The difference between a dictatorship and a monarchy is still very much a real one in the Middle East.

(Now, replacing a democracy with a monarchy, which we did in Iran in 1953, is a dumb move. But if you can't get a working democracy in place, a monarchy may be your next best bet.)

But, of course, we are too enlightened and liberated in the twenty-first century to impose absolute monarchies on people, now, aren't we?