Don't miss what's happening in Kingwood
People on Kingwood.com are the first to know.
Go to top of page
Close
 
Close
Back
* CONTEST TODAY: 24 Hours Only - Win a $25 Gift Card to Panera Bread!  Ends in 17 hrs Read more »

Rating the Presidents

Rating the Presidents

« Back
This discussion has been locked.
Message Menu
by: ProblemAgain Active Indicator LED Icon 10 OP 
~ 9 years ago   May 2, '14 2:16am  
From FDR to Obama, John Dingell rates the presidents


 


11:53 PM, May 1, 2014
  |  






Comments



 


 




























AA

 










Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich. on April 28 in Washington. / H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY
 


by Susan Page, USA TODAY
Filed Under
USA Today newsUSA Today politics








WASHINGTON - At age 15, John Dingell Jr. was watching in the
chamber of the House of Representatives when President Franklin
Roosevelt rose to decry the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - "a date
which will live in infamy" - and lead the United States into World War
II.
Dingell, then a House page and the son of a Michigan congressman, has
been around for most of the big speeches and crucial congressional
debates in the seven decades since. As a congressman and a powerful
committee chairman himself, he's played a key role in shaping and
passing iconic legislation from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the
Affordable Care Act of 2009.
Now, at 87, the longest-serving congressman in American history is retiring.
He's not going quietly.
"Unfortunately, there is a lot of reason why people disapprove of the
Congress and I think the reasoning is oft-times sound," Dingell said in
an interview with USA TODAY's Capital Download. "We've accomplished
very little. We've been engaged in all manner of small, spiteful
fights." In short, he says, "we have failed to carry out our
responsibilities in addressing the big issues of the day."
He faults Supreme Court decisions that have cleared the way for "huge
money interests" to influence officeholders and Tea Party followers who
see compromise as a dirty word. The personal relationships and
political give-and-take that made landmark legislation possible
increasingly are things of the past.
"A lot of these new ones here have no awareness ... of the need to
work together, no awareness of the need for members to be friends off
the congressional campus, no need they see in their lives to be
responsible in terms of building trust and relationships to let us work
together."
Has that made the job less satisfying? "It's not satisfying at all,"
he replies. "It's outrageous. And the result is people are not getting
full value."
In his heyday, as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee,
Dingell held sway over major pieces of health care and environmental
legislation and was known for wielding the investigative powers of his
post.
"For decades, he was an imposing and intimidating presence in
Congress, with colleagues and with private citizens and civil servants
who were called before his oversight committee and sometimes left
terrified and abused," says Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the
Brookings Institution. "He was a key figure in Democratic Party
policymaking," especially on health care, although in 2008 he lost the
committee chairmanship to a challenge from California Rep. Henry Waxman.
"Dingell really was a committee chairman at the time that committee
chairmen ran the show," says Michael Heaney, a political scientist at
the University of Michigan who worked on Dingell's committee for a year
as a congressional fellow. Over time, committee chairmen began to lose
power to the party leadership. "He embodies the committee system, both
in its rise and its fall."
RATING THE PRESIDENTS
The people who can claim to have worked with a dozen presidents form
what is surely a very exclusive club. In the interview with the weekly
video newsmaker series, Dingell obliges when asked to make a quick
assessment of each of the presidents he has known.
â?¢ FDR: "The giant, one of probably the three greatest" presidents in U.S. history.
â?¢ Harry Truman: "Right behind him. He saved the country."
Not to mention Dingell's own life, he says. "I was scheduled to be in
the first wave into Japan" as a second lieutenant in the Army during
World War II, "and if it hadn't been for Harry Truman dropping the
(atomic) bomb on the Japanese, I wouldn't be here talking to you today."
â?¢ Dwight Eisenhower: "A fine chairman of the board, a pretty good golfer, but didn't do much."
â?¢ John Kennedy: "Ran a very, very, very, very exciting,
pleasant White House. But he was killed before he could actually show
what he could do."
â?¢ Lyndon Johnson: "Johnson could say that he had largely
completed the New Deal: Federal aid to education, War on Poverty,
Medicare, Medicaid, whole bunch of other things that he did."
â?¢ Richard Nixon: "Nixon in the cold light of history looks
like a better president than he did when he was there. Had some
considerable foresight on things like health and the environment." But
Dingell cites an academic study that concluded Nixon was a paranoid
schizophrenic. "If you looked at his behavior, you would have to come to
the conclusion - and I speak as a layman, not as a doctor - that that
was a right conclusion."
â?¢ Gerald Ford: "Gerald Ford was a good president, not to say
a great president. But unfortunately he carried the pardon that he gave
to Nixon, which I thought was a terrible thing but which I now think
was a necessary thing. And Ford brought the country down, calmed it,
settled it down."
â?¢ Jimmy Carter: "Very decent, good-hearted human being.
Regrettably he could see every tree in the woods but he couldn't see the
woods, and that handicapped in terms of dealing with complex
legislation."
â?¢ Ronald Reagan: "I thought he was a very mediocre
president. I thought he had the misfortune of being a president who
showed signs of senility much earlier than it came out that he was."
â?¢ George H.W. Bush: "Accomplished decent things. He knew how to work across the aisle."
â?¢ Bill Clinton: "Delightful fellow. If Bill Clinton had not
had one fault, he would have gone down as a great president." What
fault? "I don't need to tell you. Ask any man or ask any woman and
they'll tell you."
â?¢ George W. Bush: "I was very fond of both Bushes. ...
Unfortunately George W. Bush allowed people to lie to him about Iraq and
about going into battle in the Middle East. He didn't read history and
he had the misfortune of being probably the least concerned and
historically interested presidents in the history of the country."
â?¢ Barack Obama: "He has the misfortune of not having had the
experience and not having had the scar tissue. This means that he
wasn't hurt. You have to get cut up and sliced as you go through public
life, and if you're not hurt, you don't get to understand what these
things mean to the country and to the average guy. I don't think he
really had that."
Still, Dingell predicts history will judge Obama more kindly than
pundits do now, calling the Affordable Care Act "a triumph." He adds, "I
think he is a very decent, good-hearted, honorable man who is trying
hard but his staff is, I think, not as strong as they should be."
RUSSIAN BOARS AND WHITE MARLINS
Dingell, who once stood 6'4" tall, is known around Capitol Hill as
"Big John." Now he is stooped by age, arriving for the interview leaning
on a carved cane from Harrods in London. An avid hunter and fisherman,
he has lined the walls of his congressional office with elk and caribou
antlers, a Russian boar head and a 4-foot white marlin. Next to his desk
is a photograph FDR inscribed for his father - "to John D. Dingell from
his friend," Roosevelt wrote - and on a nearby shelf is the gavel
Dingell Jr. used when presiding over the House as Medicare was enacted
in 1965.
Southeastern Michigan has long been represented by his family. His
father served in the House for 22 years. When he died, Dingell succeeded
him. Now his wife, Deborah, who is seeking the Democratic nomination
for the seat, is favored to win it in November. Dingell says he looks forward to hunting, fishing, and spending time with his children and grandchildren.
During a lifetime of representing the Detroit area, he has been a
champion of the auto industry, sometimes putting him at odds with other
Democratic leaders on issues such as tougher mileage requirements.
That's made the current controversy over GM's missteps in the recall of
faulty ignition switches especially painful.
"I'm troubled by it, just like everybody else is, and for all the
same reasons," he says. "Plus the fact that I'm a friend of the industry
and I hate to see them do a poor job producing safe, desirable
automobiles."'
As he exits Congress, what would he like his epitaph to read?
Dingell pauses. "He did his damndest," he finally says.
Copyright 2014
USATODAY.com 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
What are your thoughts? Log in or sign up to comment
Replies:
Message Menu
mikecox24 Active Indicator LED Icon
~ 9 years ago   May 2, '14 4:06am  
Carter before Reagan?  Please! 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
WskyTngoFxtrt Active Indicator LED Icon 10
~ 9 years ago   May 2, '14 7:13am  
Carter before Reagan?  Please!
 
@mikecox24:
 
It's in chronological order, not rated that way. 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
Message Menu
Fallon Active Indicator LED Icon 18
~ 9 years ago   May 2, '14 7:15am  
Removed By Request 4951
* Reactions disabled on political threads.
This discussion has been locked.
« Back to Main Page
Views: 2
# Replies: 3

Pirate's Cove Car Wash




Mallard Creek Apartments Logo Primrose School of Eagle Springs Logo River Rock Pools Logo K&M ACE Hardware Logo The Atrium Center Logo Home by Zia LLC Logo Orion's Rain Logo T.A.P.S Home Repair & Remodeling  Logo Caliber Auto Care Logo Motorwerks Auto Group Logo Madd Roofing Logo Mammoth Cleaning Services Logo Kingwood Garden Center Logo Crander's Roofing Logo Foundation MD Logo Kingwood Mortgage Guy Logo Houston Hyperbaric Oxygen Center Logo G & S Tire and Auto Logo
Sponsor an ad Sponsor an Ad »