We probably haven’t had an honest man in the White House since Lincoln. And maybe before that.

Our democratic republic is an imperfect system. And I should more often voice my thankfulness for the good in our system and country, instead of harping so much on the negative.

But we are in a hand-basket, and we do happen to be going somewhere.

I can think of many things worse than campaign finance reform that GW Bush did that have hurt the United States, but I don’t say that he betrayed his country, because that type of rhetoric is unhelpful. Not every compromise is a betrayal, and not every disagreement about the true interests of the country is a question of black and white. Recognizing the existence of shades of gray in questions of foreign policy and national security is a mark of maturity, not of weakness.

And look how rare an exception he was among the sinful kings. And taken in context, he was also a war-lord until he made himself king. The few positive sentences about him and his reign don’t give a complete picture, just that he was popular after he took over, and the people prospered.

FDR, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Clinton. None of them were Russian spies.

God is the judge of the eternal consequences. But I’ll stand by my assertion that at least the repeaters and the unrepentant cheaters shouldn’t be political leaders or in positions of national security.

Having said that, I would agree with Kaimi’s overall point that it is possible to be a good president and be a philanderer, based on what history tells us.

I’m sorry, Bookslinger, but that level of blanket assertion is just silly, and is wholly unsupported by the evidence.

First, the phrase is extremely vague. What on earth does being unfaithful to one’s country mean? That he will become President of another country, on the sly? That he’ll sell secrets to the Russians?

Your examples of alleged betrayals which you use to prove your case just show how untenable the idea is: You cite to missile technology sale, national park creation (!), and campaign finance reform law. I know that some folks really dislike campaign finance reform, but ranking it as a betrayal of the country?

We’ve had several known philanderers in the Oval Office: FDR, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Clinton. None of them were Russian spies.

Of all of the problematic actions of recent past presidents, the most clearly problematic were Nixon’s actions — if anything constitutes betraying one’s country, then seeking to undermine the democratic process like that has to qualify. After that, the most problematic acts were probably Reagan’s constitutional shenanigans in Iran-Contra, and Clinton’s lying under oath.

The minimal overlap between the groups does not support your statement. And in fact, sometimes a philanderer is also a very effective President — most notably, FDR piloted the country safely through one of its most dangerous crises in history.

I do think that moral character matters, but as I’ve said elsewhere, if I have to choose, I’ll go for someone with leadership ability, intelligence, and political understanding. Jimmy Carter is possibly the only President of the past three decades who you would want your daughter to date, but he was also a very ineffective leader.

I say let’s get off the road entirely. Because, by going slowly, people don’t realize where we’re going, like the boiling a frog analogy.

Maybe Obama’s and the Demo congress’s wild ride that they’re taking us on will do more damage in the short run, but it might wake people up, so we get off the road to socialism and actually go in reverse.

Ya know, if you study US national political history since the 1960’s, the Republicans give the Democrats exactly what they want, only it’s usually 20 to 25 years after they first start asking for it.

I think it’s all staged. It’s a false or artificial conflict of opposites that focuses our attention on the small battles, but keeps us from realizing that both sides are taking us to the same place. It’s just that one side wants to get there faster, and one side wants to get there slower, but they’re both going to the same place.

Let’s pray for a 1994-like turnaround in Congress in the 2010 elections.

But in general I agree he’s not much better than a dog biscuit.

McCains views on political freedoms were expressed in the “McCain-Feingold” bill that violates the 1st amendment, and which I hope gets overturned by the Supreme Court. (It’s too much to go into here, but McCain-Fiengold bill is evil in its muzzling of free speech.)

Vietnam veterans hate McCain. McCain sold out and collaborated with the North Vietnamese much more than has been let on. I personally spoke with a former POW who heard McCain broadcast over their POW radio system, that was piped into most all of the POW camps. Granted, McCain had a gun pointed at his head (figuratively if not literally) when he did that. But only a small minority of former POW’s supported McCain.

There was a huge movement by veterans in the 2000 election to keep McCain out, and that’s when some of the dirt on him was brought out, but the mainstream media didn’t run with it.

Indiana veterans also hate McCain for his screwing over of Bobby Garwood, another former POW who was branded a deserter and collaborator. But Bobby Garwood was a scared kid, and McCain was an officer at the time. More was expected of McCain, but he screwed over Garwood for doing no worse than he did.

McCain also got to privately redact and seal his POW records. So the official documentation of what he did may not officially get out until many years after his passing.

The thing is, all POWs eventually cave in and cooperate with their captors for survival. However, POWs are supposed to resist, and draw it out as long as possible before giving in. But McCain’s behavior was not honorable in the eyes of other POWs.

G. Gordon Liddy also had some choice words for McCain, and good comments on the question of whether you want a stealth-liberal in office or someone who everyone knows is liberal. A known liberal is most often better than someone who says they are conservative but actually votes liberal.

McCain’s voting record was actually more liberal than some democrats. But not as liberal as Obama’s, who was the most extreme liberal voter. So in my book, McCain would not have been a good president, just the lesser of two evils. Like having to eat a dog biscuit instead of dog poop. Yeah, I’d rather eat the dog biscuit, but I wouldn’t like it.

Bush was in some ways a stealth-liberal, spending like a drunken sailor, prescription thing with Medicare part C, the excessive spending on rebuilding infrastructure at our expense in Iraq (paying for our military is one thing, but we spent even more on building infrastructure that the Iraqis and other oil rich Arabs should have paid for), and Bush is the one who started the whole “bailout” business with TARP.

So maybe we do need a real and open liberal in office so the American people can re-learn the lessons we seem to have forgotten with Carter.

I don’t know the circumstances of McCain’s first marriage and its ending. McCain may not have been a “serial adulterer”. I don’t know if I made it clear, but a serial adulterer (like Clinton) is worse than a one-timer. And you don’t have to be an adulterer to be a bad president either (Carter).

Based on his anti-constitutional voting record, McCain seems to illustrate my point of “if you’re unfaithful to your wife, you’ll be unfaithful to your country.”

But I do acknowledge your point, sometimes the lesser of two evils, the dog biscuit, is better than the alternative.

You can make the argument, and I think it is a fair one, that McCain has been loyal to his current wife for many years now. There should be some kind of statute of limitation and exception for people who have apparently changed their ways — that’s what repentance is all about. But the situation is a bit more complex than we might think.