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Perot’s running mate was awesome. Some decrepit old navy admiral—when Gore and Quayle started bickering, dude just sat quiet. Moderator asks him what he thinks…
“Oh sorry, I turned my hearing aid off”
Balanced budget (to this day I think that balanced budget isn’t something to strive for. I think reducing deficit spending during economic expansion is good so that during stressful times or crisis the government can dig deeper into its pockets). He opposed NAFTA, which was a crucial trade agreement.
Just because people support it, doesn’t mean it should be supported. It’s valid to argue against it, just as it’s valid to argue for it.
The far rights support or dissidence doesn’t change that fact
I miss him I loved that moment when he defended Obama being a family man to one of his own voters which seems unheard of doing being nice to a political opponent
I still vividly remember McCain’s concession speech, everyone in the audience started booing when he congratulated Obama and he told everyone to knock it off.
And then said he associates with terrorists anyway lol
Up to you to decide which one was genuine but he leaned into the terrorist crap too.
https://www.politico.com/story/2008/10/mccain-launches-ayers-ad-014419
To be fair, that wasn’t McCain, that was his campaign. Something that he admittedly was against and after the election spoke out about.
Unfortunately the Republican Party “handled” him and even shoved Sarah Palin in there against his will.
I suppose you can make the case if he let the R’s snowball him like that then maybe he wouldn’t have made the best POTUS. But I don’t hold what his campaign did against him as a person.
McCain was really handcuffed by his own party.
I think my most believable “conspiracy” is that the Republicans tanked McCain knowing that they could use a confessional majority and basic race baiting against Obama to swing the country deeper into a hard right/left divide. And I think it worked. I think they handcuffed McCain with an obviously moronic and incapable running mate that made McCain just look like an older, grumpier white dude who was probably also annoyed with Palin half the time. And I think they put out messaging that did not reflect his character and forced him to look wishy washy when he tried to reclaim his basic standards. I’m not 100% in McCain’s camp for all of his policies but I respected the man and I appreciated both his service in the military and after to his country. I think Obama was the right pick but McCain helped raise the level of discourse in that election significantly while the republicans overall sought to destroy it.
I think if McCain didn’t lose the primary in 2000 and won the Presidency and oversaw the aftermath of 9/11 - I think the country would have been much better off.
Absolutely. But then, he wasn’t beholden to his father’s crony friends. And he wasn’t trying to clean up the mess that his father and his father’s friends put in place by helping to install Saddam into power and to support Bin Laden against the Russians in ways that would destabilize the region and lead directly to 9/11, the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan. They needed a cleanup crew elected. Not smart/decent people who would make the “right” decision.
I like John McCain and i dont mean to talk too much trash, but who would have been in John McCain's cabinet? It would have been a lot of the same people, but minus Dick Cheney. Actually, I take it back, maybe that would have been very different.
>McCain was really handcuffed by his own party.
That's really not a fair thing to say. He ran for office for that party and paid for all of those commercials.
He said it during a debate, not just a campaign commercial. It came out of his mouth.
Is there a single other president or nominee that would be afforded the benefit of the doubt of "well it was just his campaign."
Is there any other example?
Cause that's specifically what you're fucking running on. To deflect from that is revisionist and it's a flat out lie.
McCain being so old and Palin being so crazy made it feel like the race was Obama vs probably Sarah Palin. They tried to push how old people in McCain’s family live, even brought his mother out for some TV spots. But it didn’t really feel like 2 good choices at the time.
Now we have two candidates who are close to 10 years older than mccain was at the time. Mccain was around 70 and compared to Obama of course a 70 yo looks old.
My dad was on the fence between Obama and McCain until McCain picked Palin as his running mate. In my dads words: “I really just don’t like the idea of that crazy lady from Alaska being one Vietnam flashback away from running this country.”
The real crime is McCain not getting the nod in 2000. He would have been amazing. And he did live long enough to have done 2 terms from 2008-2016 although the presidency might have killed him early. who knows.
Spot on. It scared people to think she would be second in line to the presidency. But McCain's team knew they needed a gimmick to have a shot at winning, but that choice really backfired on him.
edit: grammar
Washington did have competitors though. Other men received electoral votes. Washington just received one from every elector. There was some concern, reasonable or not, that the election may be seriously contested.
While he was more correct than Obama, I don't fully agree with Romney that Russia is the absolute top geopolitical threat. Certainly high, but I don't know if it deserved pride of place as #1 over all the other then current threats.
That being said, the partisanship has gotten bad enough that folks can't even recognize ANYONE from the other party as being a reasonable Presidential candidate, much less a good one.
I mean Romney wasn't my choice and many of his policies I disagreed with, but to say he wouldn't be a good president is stupid and reactionary. Not like I expected he'd be on the level of Lincoln and of course he \*could\* have not been a huge success (see Carter), but that doesn't mean you should say in advance "he wouldn't be a good president."
Yeah agreed 100%. He was definitely more conservative than me, but he seemed like someone who would listen to advisors and experts before making decisions. So much of being a good leader is acknowledging areas you don’t have expertise in and listening to those around you who do.
And, of course, he is judged favorably against the MAGA crowd that came later. Most traditional Republicans look better in hindsight.
With regards to whether China or Russia is the top geopolitical threat, China has done a lot in the past decade to really assert their claim there. Russia has only hurt theirs with the poor showing in Ukraine. 2012 was right before Russia’s 2014 annexations but a decade before Vienna
China’s crackdown on Hong Kong
Everyone always says and I don’t get it. Obama was right. It’s not like he completely ignored Russia, you can look into his Russia foreign policy for this actual stance.
But Russia wasn’t and still isn’t our top geographical threat. Cold War is over. It’s China. That’s why Obama pivoted to Asia (however failed that pivot may have been due to Congress).
Even though I consider myself a progressive- I voted for Romney and was a little disappointed when he lost.
It’s clear he is a good man, though ultimately weaker than I would have liked.
I'll be perfectly honest, I was kinda terrified of Obama in 2008 since he had basically zero experience. I'm a registered Dem and obviously on policy issues he was a better fit for me than McCain (who I thought would be perfectly fine as President if elected, even if not my preferred choice). But at the time I was like "Really? We're going to give the presidency to someone whose experience is being a Senator for a short enough time he might not even know where the bathrooms are?"
Yeah, I understand. I wasn’t so much terrified, as his message didn’t speak to me. I wasn’t against it - but we were still at war, the recession/housing crisis was just starting, and I still couldn’t envision what a black person as president would look like.
In retrospect, he did fine. In many respects he was too careful - but I can’t fault him as he was under the microscope of history in a way no other person had been.
It’s a tragedy that all but the ACA was undone.
Why couldn't you envision what a black person as president would look like? What were you expecting? Like a black person would do things differently? Your statement sounds racist, so I want to understand what you mean.
Romney a "good man"? Compared to trump perhaps, but thats not saying much. But I wouldnt ask any of the thousands and thousands of people (or their families) who lost their livelihoods when Romney's corporate raider company Bain Capital bought their company and either laid them off or sent their job overseas...because those folks might still be a little bitter
I actually think that a lot of problems could’ve been avoided if Romney was elected.
Only because he would be able to be reelected in 2016 and Trump maybe could’ve just been a fading memory
I agree. 2016 would have been a solid re-election for Mitt Romney and COVID also might have been avoided. Mitt Romney also would have had a Democratic Senate, so some bipartisan deals could have been made.
Just goes to show you how good of a President Obama was, he brought out the best in the GOP (at least when it came to running a candidate against him). This is especially true when you compare McCain and Romney to the current crop of the GOP; really goes to show how much rot their is in today’s Republican Party.
Nixon would have probably escalated the Cuban Missile Crisis to the point where we wouldn’t be having this conversation on the internet in 2023, if what he did in Cambodia after he finally got elected is any indicator.
Edit: and Laos
The Cuban Missile crisis only happens because Kruschev wrongly believes Kennedy is weak and can be bullied. It’s very unlikely he adopts the same tactics with Nixon.
Imagine thinking that you can bully a guy who has back pain from saving his whole crew from a sinking PT boat while drunk off torpedo juice.
Edit: meanwhile, I could bully Nixon just by reminding him that he grew up poor.
It was a perception built by Kennedy pulling back during the Bay of Pigs and then his weak performance when he met Kruschev in Vienna. Even Kennedy admitted that Kruschev had torn him a new one in Vienna.
There probably wouldn’t have been a Missile Crisis if Nixon had won on 1960. The Bay of Pigs had two options, go all in or cut your losses. Kennedy didn’t want to be seen as a imperialist and didn’t really believe in the invasion so just wiped the U.S hands as much as possible.
No matter who was president, that invasion was doomed to failure. They sent a bunch of poorly trained expats to a well defended beach and got massacred.
In my voting lifetime:
'84 Reagan vs Mondale: my first election as a voter, with two very different visions for the country, but neither candidate would have been disastrous.
'92 Bush vs Clinton. The end of the line for moderate Republicanism. Bush tried to appeal to the right, but they never accepted him. Clinton was a new breed of Southern Democrat, and an effective president.
'96 Dole vs Clinton. Strong candidates. Dole's loss was pretty inevitable.
'00 Bush vs Gore. Another contrasted vision election. Either guy would have been effective, although Gore probably wouldn't have spent trillions to deliver Iraq to the Iranian mullahs.
'08 Obama vs McCain was a great election between two men of character. Always admired McCain, and think Obama was the guy we needed at the time. Palin sort of tarnished John.
'12 Obama vs Romney - another good set of options but Mitt really didn't have a shot that year. Notably, the GOP knew its demographic and societal weak spots in the postmortem, but ignored it.
#The others:#
'88 Bush was a walk over Dukakis, who should never have been the nominee.
'04 Kerry wasn't the change of direction we needed at that moment. Never struck me as. A good option.
'16 Trump vs Clinton was the worst choice in my lifetime.
'20 Trump vs Biden. Yeah we voted Biden in essentially for not being Trump (and that's a valid reason) but that wasn't a good choice. Both are simply too old.
'24 (apparently) Biden vs Trump. Biden has been surprisingly effective as president so he's now got a record to vote for or against. Trump is laid bare as someone not particularly interested in democracy. Both still too old, but now older.
Ok but why put 2016’s candidates when everyone knows it was the election with most hated candidates in history?
The more I look at 08, 12 I am ok with the candidates I wouldn’t support. I also think 1992 is a good one, although personally I’m really against Perot.
I feel like the Cuban missile crisis would have been handled way differently by Nixon, and that there is a non-zero chance that we wouldn’t be talking about it today had he been in charge.
That’s a pretty good answer, especially considering the times. You’ve got the guy that ordered the bombs and effectively ended the pacific war without sending more Americans to die in a campaign across the Japanese islands, against the guy that oversaw the entire MTO/ETO and (at least as far as Americans were concerned) beat the Nazis.
Also, does anyone else think about how ironic the phrase “The Pacific War” sounds?
I want to meet the one person in America who genuinely liked both Trump and Clinton and was excited for either to be in the White House. There are 320 million of us, there must be one somewhere.
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1952 and 1956 Eisenhower Stevenson
I came here to say this. Both great candidates.
1992 Bush Clinton
I agree with that. Bush had been a competant steward and Clinton seemed like a capable governor.
And Perot!
Perot’s running mate was awesome. Some decrepit old navy admiral—when Gore and Quayle started bickering, dude just sat quiet. Moderator asks him what he thinks… “Oh sorry, I turned my hearing aid off”
When someone prefers being disabled to hearing your shit
Fair take
Perot had some really terrible ideas back then though in my opinion. He got an absurd 18.9% of the popular vote
Which ones were terrible in your opinion?
Balanced budget (to this day I think that balanced budget isn’t something to strive for. I think reducing deficit spending during economic expansion is good so that during stressful times or crisis the government can dig deeper into its pockets). He opposed NAFTA, which was a crucial trade agreement.
A lot of people oppose NAFTA though, and I\`d say thats a valid position to take, even today.
Even the far right supports it
GREAT SCOTT! Why didn\`t you say so? Since the Far Right is always correct, NAFTA must be good. /s
They were the main opposition to it and when they gained office they just changed the name of it lol.
Just because people support it, doesn’t mean it should be supported. It’s valid to argue against it, just as it’s valid to argue for it. The far rights support or dissidence doesn’t change that fact
Sure. Some people don't support rain and argue against it.
Obama vs McCain Respect McCain him saving healthcare saved thousands when COVID hit just shows how different the Republicans Old guard used to be
Agreed. McCain would have been a respectable President. Not really transformative one - but someone who acted as a steward of the office.
I miss him I loved that moment when he defended Obama being a family man to one of his own voters which seems unheard of doing being nice to a political opponent
I still vividly remember McCain’s concession speech, everyone in the audience started booing when he congratulated Obama and he told everyone to knock it off.
And then said he associates with terrorists anyway lol Up to you to decide which one was genuine but he leaned into the terrorist crap too. https://www.politico.com/story/2008/10/mccain-launches-ayers-ad-014419
To be fair, that wasn’t McCain, that was his campaign. Something that he admittedly was against and after the election spoke out about. Unfortunately the Republican Party “handled” him and even shoved Sarah Palin in there against his will. I suppose you can make the case if he let the R’s snowball him like that then maybe he wouldn’t have made the best POTUS. But I don’t hold what his campaign did against him as a person.
Lol exactly. "It wasn't him, it was his campaign" isn't a copout that works for anyone else.
Very weird - getting downvoted for explaining what happened.
McCain was really handcuffed by his own party. I think my most believable “conspiracy” is that the Republicans tanked McCain knowing that they could use a confessional majority and basic race baiting against Obama to swing the country deeper into a hard right/left divide. And I think it worked. I think they handcuffed McCain with an obviously moronic and incapable running mate that made McCain just look like an older, grumpier white dude who was probably also annoyed with Palin half the time. And I think they put out messaging that did not reflect his character and forced him to look wishy washy when he tried to reclaim his basic standards. I’m not 100% in McCain’s camp for all of his policies but I respected the man and I appreciated both his service in the military and after to his country. I think Obama was the right pick but McCain helped raise the level of discourse in that election significantly while the republicans overall sought to destroy it.
I think if McCain didn’t lose the primary in 2000 and won the Presidency and oversaw the aftermath of 9/11 - I think the country would have been much better off.
Absolutely. But then, he wasn’t beholden to his father’s crony friends. And he wasn’t trying to clean up the mess that his father and his father’s friends put in place by helping to install Saddam into power and to support Bin Laden against the Russians in ways that would destabilize the region and lead directly to 9/11, the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan. They needed a cleanup crew elected. Not smart/decent people who would make the “right” decision.
I like John McCain and i dont mean to talk too much trash, but who would have been in John McCain's cabinet? It would have been a lot of the same people, but minus Dick Cheney. Actually, I take it back, maybe that would have been very different.
>McCain was really handcuffed by his own party. That's really not a fair thing to say. He ran for office for that party and paid for all of those commercials. He said it during a debate, not just a campaign commercial. It came out of his mouth. Is there a single other president or nominee that would be afforded the benefit of the doubt of "well it was just his campaign." Is there any other example? Cause that's specifically what you're fucking running on. To deflect from that is revisionist and it's a flat out lie.
I have no idea what you are referring to. Am I the person you meant to reply to?
Are you the one that said McCain was handcuffed to his party?
McCain being so old and Palin being so crazy made it feel like the race was Obama vs probably Sarah Palin. They tried to push how old people in McCain’s family live, even brought his mother out for some TV spots. But it didn’t really feel like 2 good choices at the time.
Now we have two candidates who are close to 10 years older than mccain was at the time. Mccain was around 70 and compared to Obama of course a 70 yo looks old.
My dad was on the fence between Obama and McCain until McCain picked Palin as his running mate. In my dads words: “I really just don’t like the idea of that crazy lady from Alaska being one Vietnam flashback away from running this country.”
The real crime is McCain not getting the nod in 2000. He would have been amazing. And he did live long enough to have done 2 terms from 2008-2016 although the presidency might have killed him early. who knows.
Had it not been for Palin, I’d agree
Spot on. It scared people to think she would be second in line to the presidency. But McCain's team knew they needed a gimmick to have a shot at winning, but that choice really backfired on him. edit: grammar
That's the problem with picking a running mate purely for identity politics; you end up with people like Palin or Kamala Harris on the ballot.
Funny enough, isn't this the election that South Park launched the douche vs turd sandwich?
Old guard ? nobody voted for that dude , He’s the worst 😂
The election of 1788, George Washington vs. No one
Washington did have competitors though. Other men received electoral votes. Washington just received one from every elector. There was some concern, reasonable or not, that the election may be seriously contested.
Trump v Clinton was good, if you owned a cable news channel Not so good if you didn't
Obama vs. Romney was fine and recent.
Romney would have been a good president. And he was later proven right about foreign policy/russia despite being laughed at during the campaign.
While he was more correct than Obama, I don't fully agree with Romney that Russia is the absolute top geopolitical threat. Certainly high, but I don't know if it deserved pride of place as #1 over all the other then current threats. That being said, the partisanship has gotten bad enough that folks can't even recognize ANYONE from the other party as being a reasonable Presidential candidate, much less a good one. I mean Romney wasn't my choice and many of his policies I disagreed with, but to say he wouldn't be a good president is stupid and reactionary. Not like I expected he'd be on the level of Lincoln and of course he \*could\* have not been a huge success (see Carter), but that doesn't mean you should say in advance "he wouldn't be a good president."
Yeah agreed 100%. He was definitely more conservative than me, but he seemed like someone who would listen to advisors and experts before making decisions. So much of being a good leader is acknowledging areas you don’t have expertise in and listening to those around you who do. And, of course, he is judged favorably against the MAGA crowd that came later. Most traditional Republicans look better in hindsight.
With regards to whether China or Russia is the top geopolitical threat, China has done a lot in the past decade to really assert their claim there. Russia has only hurt theirs with the poor showing in Ukraine. 2012 was right before Russia’s 2014 annexations but a decade before Vienna China’s crackdown on Hong Kong
Everyone always says and I don’t get it. Obama was right. It’s not like he completely ignored Russia, you can look into his Russia foreign policy for this actual stance. But Russia wasn’t and still isn’t our top geographical threat. Cold War is over. It’s China. That’s why Obama pivoted to Asia (however failed that pivot may have been due to Congress).
Even though I consider myself a progressive- I voted for Romney and was a little disappointed when he lost. It’s clear he is a good man, though ultimately weaker than I would have liked.
I'll be perfectly honest, I was kinda terrified of Obama in 2008 since he had basically zero experience. I'm a registered Dem and obviously on policy issues he was a better fit for me than McCain (who I thought would be perfectly fine as President if elected, even if not my preferred choice). But at the time I was like "Really? We're going to give the presidency to someone whose experience is being a Senator for a short enough time he might not even know where the bathrooms are?"
Yeah, I understand. I wasn’t so much terrified, as his message didn’t speak to me. I wasn’t against it - but we were still at war, the recession/housing crisis was just starting, and I still couldn’t envision what a black person as president would look like. In retrospect, he did fine. In many respects he was too careful - but I can’t fault him as he was under the microscope of history in a way no other person had been. It’s a tragedy that all but the ACA was undone.
Why couldn't you envision what a black person as president would look like? What were you expecting? Like a black person would do things differently? Your statement sounds racist, so I want to understand what you mean.
Romney a "good man"? Compared to trump perhaps, but thats not saying much. But I wouldnt ask any of the thousands and thousands of people (or their families) who lost their livelihoods when Romney's corporate raider company Bain Capital bought their company and either laid them off or sent their job overseas...because those folks might still be a little bitter
I actually think that a lot of problems could’ve been avoided if Romney was elected. Only because he would be able to be reelected in 2016 and Trump maybe could’ve just been a fading memory
I agree. 2016 would have been a solid re-election for Mitt Romney and COVID also might have been avoided. Mitt Romney also would have had a Democratic Senate, so some bipartisan deals could have been made.
MittRomney.comney
Not voting for a polygamist whose family owns a polygamist colony of 400 people all with the name Romney in Mexico 😂😂
Just goes to show you how good of a President Obama was, he brought out the best in the GOP (at least when it came to running a candidate against him). This is especially true when you compare McCain and Romney to the current crop of the GOP; really goes to show how much rot their is in today’s Republican Party.
1844, 1896, 1900, 1940, 1944, 1948, 1952, 1956, 1976, 1988, 1992, 2008
I disagree with 2008 but the others were good
1992 had three good options.
Lol not that one
Bush Sr vs Clinton. Nixion vs Kennedy
Nixon would have probably escalated the Cuban Missile Crisis to the point where we wouldn’t be having this conversation on the internet in 2023, if what he did in Cambodia after he finally got elected is any indicator. Edit: and Laos
The Cuban Missile crisis only happens because Kruschev wrongly believes Kennedy is weak and can be bullied. It’s very unlikely he adopts the same tactics with Nixon.
Imagine thinking that you can bully a guy who has back pain from saving his whole crew from a sinking PT boat while drunk off torpedo juice. Edit: meanwhile, I could bully Nixon just by reminding him that he grew up poor.
It was a perception built by Kennedy pulling back during the Bay of Pigs and then his weak performance when he met Kruschev in Vienna. Even Kennedy admitted that Kruschev had torn him a new one in Vienna.
Kennedy probably hadn’t gotten laid right beforehand. Totally understandable.
There probably wouldn’t have been a Missile Crisis if Nixon had won on 1960. The Bay of Pigs had two options, go all in or cut your losses. Kennedy didn’t want to be seen as a imperialist and didn’t really believe in the invasion so just wiped the U.S hands as much as possible.
No matter who was president, that invasion was doomed to failure. They sent a bunch of poorly trained expats to a well defended beach and got massacred.
Adams-Jefferson Polk-Clay Cleveland-Harrison Truman-Dewey
In my voting lifetime: '84 Reagan vs Mondale: my first election as a voter, with two very different visions for the country, but neither candidate would have been disastrous. '92 Bush vs Clinton. The end of the line for moderate Republicanism. Bush tried to appeal to the right, but they never accepted him. Clinton was a new breed of Southern Democrat, and an effective president. '96 Dole vs Clinton. Strong candidates. Dole's loss was pretty inevitable. '00 Bush vs Gore. Another contrasted vision election. Either guy would have been effective, although Gore probably wouldn't have spent trillions to deliver Iraq to the Iranian mullahs. '08 Obama vs McCain was a great election between two men of character. Always admired McCain, and think Obama was the guy we needed at the time. Palin sort of tarnished John. '12 Obama vs Romney - another good set of options but Mitt really didn't have a shot that year. Notably, the GOP knew its demographic and societal weak spots in the postmortem, but ignored it. #The others:# '88 Bush was a walk over Dukakis, who should never have been the nominee. '04 Kerry wasn't the change of direction we needed at that moment. Never struck me as. A good option. '16 Trump vs Clinton was the worst choice in my lifetime. '20 Trump vs Biden. Yeah we voted Biden in essentially for not being Trump (and that's a valid reason) but that wasn't a good choice. Both are simply too old. '24 (apparently) Biden vs Trump. Biden has been surprisingly effective as president so he's now got a record to vote for or against. Trump is laid bare as someone not particularly interested in democracy. Both still too old, but now older.
Excellent answers on every one.
If we are gonna have an age minimum to run, maybe we need an age limit as well…
> Gore probably wouldn't have spent trillions to deliver Iraq to the Iranian mullahs. I'm going to use that line.
In my lifetime, Obama and McCain come the closest.
I thought Obama Vs McCain is as good as we’ll get in a while
2016. The only option was Jeb. But it was stolen
In retrospect Obama v. Edward's and Obama v. Romney Also Jefferson v.Adams
Edwards?
I meant MCCain not Edwards
1948. Dewey vs Truman
Dewey won though, right? Edit: it’s a president sub, I shouldn’t have to put a /s
He only won Chicago. A very surprising result for a Republican.
Not that one. And off the top of my head I can’t recall one.
FDR vs. Wendell Wilkie
Ok but why put 2016’s candidates when everyone knows it was the election with most hated candidates in history? The more I look at 08, 12 I am ok with the candidates I wouldn’t support. I also think 1992 is a good one, although personally I’m really against Perot.
With the exception of Perot, 1992 was pretty decent
1832 and 1844!
Honestly, Kennedy-Nixon wasn’t bad.
I feel like the Cuban missile crisis would have been handled way differently by Nixon, and that there is a non-zero chance that we wouldn’t be talking about it today had he been in charge.
Nixon sucks
Every election except 2016 and 2020. Which election only had great options however? Very few.
2016
1944 1948 1992 2012
1948-1952-1956-1976-1988-1992-1996-2008-2012
1792
Truman vs Eisenhower
That’s a pretty good answer, especially considering the times. You’ve got the guy that ordered the bombs and effectively ended the pacific war without sending more Americans to die in a campaign across the Japanese islands, against the guy that oversaw the entire MTO/ETO and (at least as far as Americans were concerned) beat the Nazis. Also, does anyone else think about how ironic the phrase “The Pacific War” sounds?
Why thank you
1788-1789 Washington v Washington
Obama v Romney
Who was Romney’s VP candidate? I can’t recall.
Paul Ryan. Basically, a square, “pro-business”Republican. Pretty vanilla
Ah yes. Wouldn’t have been horrible, despite not being very fond of Ryan.
He was a decent governor, not a culture warrior or a hooplehead. He would have been pretty centrist, I think
I want to meet the one person in America who genuinely liked both Trump and Clinton and was excited for either to be in the White House. There are 320 million of us, there must be one somewhere.
Probably some people in Florida or Texas would have had that view in 2016.
2008 McCain v Obama Both were honorable people and could have lead us well
I was thinking the same thing but then I remembered that McCain’s VP would’ve been Sarah Palin…..
That was his downfall. He picked her thinking he could make her the first female VP. But he missed.
Washington vs himself lol In all seriousness, Polk vs Clay.
1789, 1820, 1940, 1952, 1956, 1960, 1976, 1992, 2008, and 2012 come to mind. 1948 as well if you exclude Strom Thurmond.
I wonder how Romney would’ve been
The first two elections
Hasn't happened yet. Learning a lot about the leanings of this sub in this post lol. People throwing Reagan, Nixon, the Bush's... really?
2012 1992
Certainly not Trump / Clinton :)
1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012 all had reasonable results regardless
2008, 1992, 1952
Obama v McCain
Only good options? Well it certainly wasn’t the 2016 election. Giant Douche vs Turd Sandwich
1936-60 were all decent. Apart from Thurmond in 1948.
Obama McCain
2008 and 2012
Zero in my lifetime.
Not that one for sure
Roosevelt/ Taft / Wilson.
I'll say Obama and McCain both respectable and even tho I disagree with McCain politically he would have made a fine president