Henry Wallace

As I've been immersing myself in electoral politics, especially in the 20th Century, it's important to look at the decisions made by the major parties and how they won in critical years.

For each party, there's usually one president who embodies the modern party. For Republicans it's Ronald Reagan, and for Democrats it's either JFK or FDR. The two are similar in that they are both charismatic liberals, Machiavellian intellectuals, and defense hawks. Because JFK carries a lot of modern day baggage (his wacky adultery, Vietnam, Bay of Pigs), I prefer looking at FDR as the model Democrat. Not only was he the most successful president (4 wins!) but he created the modern United States as the combination of free-market and state-support, a belief in helping every citizen and also watching out for the world. OK, he should have done more to help my relatives escape the Holocaust, but I doubt Wendell Willkie would have been any better (given that the Republicans in 1940 were pretty happy staying out of the War).

Anyway, the crucial election for understanding FDR's success is 1940 - when he broke with the unwritten rule set up by George Washington that a president should only run for two terms. FDR dropped his VP of the previous two terms, John Garner, who pretty much defined the stereotype of a useless VP. Garner said the immortal phrase about the Vice Presidency "not worth a bucket of warm piss." Tell that to Grand Moff Cheney.

FDR chose Henry A. Wallace as his running mate in 1940 - dumping Garner, a Texas conservative Democrat and former speaker of the house. Wallace had been the secretary of agriculture from 1933-1940. Before that, he was, I think, a farmer. Also a Buhddist. Or something. He was definitely a wacko.

Note, when the 1944 Election came about, the Democratic party bosses insisted that the pro-Communist freaky-deaky Wallace be dropped as VP in favor of someone who could actually, ya know, lead the country in the case that FDR would drop dead (which had been expected at any time by those in the know).

I bring up these footnotes to history in order to understand the present day, especially the choices facing Americans in a wartime election (like 1940 & 1944) in a disastrous economy (like 1932) and with a sick old guy who could die sooner than later (FDR vs. McCain). Specifically, how does FDR's decision to reject Garner, accept Wallace, then reject him for Truman compare to the selection of Palin, Biden and even Quayle. Anon.

Am I Worried About November?

Well, in a large abstract way, I am worried about the election in the same way I'm worried about death or Nazis. Two national elections have been awarded to a profoundly unqualified man (Bush) and a party that decided to commit themselves to strange and evil policies.

2000 was terrible but until 9/11 most of us thought that the damage would be temporary, given that we were living through peace and prosperity. 2004 was heart-rending because it was clear how bad Bush was and things were getting worse and worse. The past 4 years have been horrifying and I know my kids will ask me about them with the same hushed awe I asked my parents about 1963-1968 (assassinations, Vietnam, Nixon). And if things were teetering on the bad in 2004, the re-election of Bush in 2008 would be a full-gonzo catastrophe.

It bears repeating: all of us who warned about the horrors of a second Bush term, and were ridiculed by Goopers who claimed we were being paranoid hysterics, were proven to be correct. And I was not correct by accident - i.e. many people are correct only by chance. For example, the smartasses who said that John Edwards was *of course* cheating on his wife... basing their assertions on the sole facts that (a) Edwards was good-looking, and (b) they disagreed with Edwards' policies/profession/accent.

Not liking somebody, and thus attributing to the disliked person all sorts of crimes, does not make your criticisms prophetic. You just got lucky.

However, if you said that Edwards was a wife-cheater because of certain provable factors (e.g. you knew of some shady behaviors, you read in his book that 'cheating on your cancer-stricken wife ain't the worst thing a person can do', or if you personally slept with him), then - fine - you can be considered a perceptive prognosticator.

For the record, I didn't believe the rumors that Edwards was cheating on his wife because I didn't think that someone as successful as him (self-made multi-millionaire, young Democratic senator in a red-state) would do something so destructive and stupid. I mean, it was Spitzer-esque! And even then, I had some glimmering that Spitzer was a sexual-schkutz because he intermarried. Ya see, that's a provable indicator. Sex crime here leads to sex crime there. But Edwards? Why would someone running for president - someone who constantly references his wife's terminal cancer - have an affair on the campaign trail.

Anyway, I went on this tangent to talk about the stakes of the election: just as the loss in 2004 was bad, and I knew it would be bad beforehand, I can say with confidence that McCain winning in November would mean total freakin' disaster for the U.S. of A. McCain is unfit to lead and will most likely die soon in office (based on simple actuarial prediction) leaving the country in the hands of a serial-fabricator hillbilly Evangelical.

And, as some dude pointed out, Bush managed to destroy our country from the starting point of Clinton's peace and prosperity. McCain - an uck-fup of Bushian magnitude - would be elected in the midst of two draining wars and an economy teetering on the brink.

Stop, You're Scaring Me!

I hear you cry. Yes, if McCain wins in November, we are totally screwed. But I don't expect it to happen. In fact, and you can quote me, the only way for the GOP to win in November is through fraud. I say this based on three proofs: (1) the frauds of 2000 & 2004, (2) the 2006 midterms, and (3) American history.

1. The only way the GOP won in 2000 and 2004 was through fraud.

Yeah, the Goopers amongst you will deny that 2000 was fraud, even though, based on facts, it's clear that Gore *would* have won in Florida if the votes that the voters cast were actually tabulated. If you prefer winning at all costs, and see a 'win' as proving retroactively everything done as right and correct, then the fact that the Supreme Court allowed Bush to win Florida, and thus the whole election, to be enough to say that Bush actually won.

But in the world of facts, it's important to remember than no matter what the weird rules stated, Gore won in 2000. A sports analogy, if I may. If quarterback Jack Drake throws a 95 yard touchdown pass while being tackled by a blitz of linebackers, yet the play is invalidated because the second-string slotback was barely offsides, do you credit the QB with a touchdown.

In the official game scoring, Jack Drake does not get credit for a touchdown. In the world of real life and of commerce, Jack Drake will be known as an amazing athlete who can perform under pressure and whose expertise was proven in real events. The rules of sports, while important to those who follow sports, are arbitrary and do not determine actual events.

Gore *should* have won in 2000; and for this argument it means that the country was willing to have a third Clinton term, and to elect Gore-Lieberman, even though arbitrary (and ultimately skewed rules) undermined the true events.

2004 was not as close as 2000 and for months after the election I was devastated not only because Bush was still in office, but with enough of a margin to suggest that people approved of his idiocies.

However, as the numerous scandals that were uncovered from 2006 on have shown, the Bush administration was involved in systematic voter fraud in every election since they took over the Justice department. I don't have time or space to get into great details - yet, they are easily found all over the internet - but event after event has shown that Bush administration politicized every aspect of the executive branch, skewing policy and actions to help Republicans get elected. The very core of the attorney scandal was that Bush/Gonzales were forcing the U.S. Attorneys to (a) suppress the vote of probable democratic voters (e.g. minorities), and (b) indict Democratic politicians or their staff-members close to the election date. The 8 attorneys who were fired all refused to engage in malfeasance.

Read the data, get scared, and conclude - as you should - that 2004 was won via fraud.

Now, this does not deny that the Democratic candidates of 2000 and 2004 were poor candidates. They were pusillanimous, uncharismatic, and not great leaders. But also recognize that conditions were such in 2000 and 2004 that would have made the country vote for an accept a mediocre Democrat.

Barack Obama is not a mediocre politician. He has many detriments, tis' true - he's young, black, and smart. But he also is a galvanizing speaker and a sober thinker who has raised the most money in history and did so with small donations. Which means he excites millions of people. These facts militate against the not-unfounded anxieties that Americans won't vote for a black man with a funny name. I'd have said that - and in fact did - back in 2007. Today, it's an unfounded fear.

2. The 2006 Midterms showed that the country wants change.

Even with the Justice Dept. vote-fraud, even with the Senate lineup stacked against the Democrats, we still managed to win Congress in 2006. Things were so terrible, in just 2 years, that the country threw their bums out. And, it needs to be said, it's hard to throw out congressional incumbents, and a switch-over in the Senate is not a great way to gauge public mood since only 32-33 people are up for election and not always in states that express the public mood. Even with all that, the Democrats won in 2006.

In 2008, the country is in even WORSE shape. The economy is teetering on the brink of collapse, the Iraq war is still hated (and our soldiers are still dying), etc. Add onto that the fact that congressional oversight of the Executive has led to mass firings in the Justice Dept. and elsewhere, making it very hard to repeat the fraud of 2002, 2004 and 2006.

Without the fraud, it's very hard for the GOP to win... even in a good year. And this year is one of the worst.

3. The past 100 years have shown that it's very hard for the incumbent party to win a third term in the presidency.

Since 1900, there have been a few third terms:

1. 1896-1912: McKinley was re-elected, but his assassination makes things difficult to gauge, so we start with Teddy Roosevelt. He had two terms, and he was succeeded by Taft who only had 1. Note, Taft would have been re-elected if Roosevelt hadn't run against him in '12, so following my Gore-2000 rules above, I think the GOP should get real-world credit for winning in 1912.
   
2. 1920-1932: Harding's death led to Coolidge's ascension and his two terms was followed by Hoover's 1.
   
3. 1932-1952: FDR had four terms - the only true 'third term' proof we have - and he was succeeded by Truman who won 1 term on his own right. He would have lost in '52 if he had run.
   
4. 1952-1960: Eisenhower almost won a third term; Nixon barely lost in 1960 (and, following Gore-2000 rules, it could be that this is a third term).
   
5. 1960-1968: LBJ, despite being elected via a grief-fueled nostalgia landslide in 1964, was quite unpopular in 1968. His successor didn't get a third term (even though I could hear an argument that he would have won if Wallace wasn't a third-party spoiler, but it was a complicated year).
   
6. 1968-1976: Nixon led to Ford who lost to Jimmy Freakin' Carter.
   
7. 1980-1992: Reagan was able to secure a third term for his bland VP.
   
8. 1992-2000: Clinton won a third term, but just just barely.

What does the chart prove? That a party can win a third party only when things are going very well, and the incumbent is popular. Coolidge, FDR and Reagan are the successes that prove this rule. Even when the incumbent is pretty popular, and the country is in good shape, the party still has a hard time staying in power: Nixon in '60 and Gore in '00 show this. Even if you want to say that Nixon and Gore actually were cheated out of their deserved victory, it's also demonstrable that the elections were very very close.

The bottom line is that a party gets a third term when (1) people like the outgoing president and (2) the country is in good shape.

In 2008, Americans hate George W Bush and 80% think the country is on the wrong track. The Iraq War is killing our soldiers, breaking our military and draining our coffers. The economy is going through shocks unseen since Herbert Hoover. Just on history alone, it's nearly inconceivable that the voters will reward the incumbent party with a third term.

This is why, ultimately, I'm not so worried about 2008. Barring fraud, which will be hard to do this year, the GOP will lose.

P.S. If my enormously long-winded description above doesn't comfort you, doesn't quiet the 2004-embedded fears that the GOP is so scummy and/or the American people so stupid, that they will defy the rules of logic and history and elect Growly McSame and Jesus S. Palin, I will just say that there are three presidential debates coming up. If the polls are still depressing after the debates, then it will be time to panic.

Top Notch George Will

George Will is still an unrepentant Reaganite, but there are time when he can nail a column. He is a fierce critic of the lawless GW Bush - from the Right - and he has even less love for the Clintons. Today's column is a scorcher. Some choice lines:

After Tuesday's split decisions in Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton,... will, creatively argue that she is really ahead of Barack Obama, or at any rate she is sort of tied, mathematically or morally or something, in popular votes, or delegates, or some combination of the two,...

Or perhaps she wins if Obama's popular vote total is, well, adjusted, by counting each African-American vote as only three-fifths of a vote. There is precedent, of sorts, for that arithmetic (see the Constitution, Article I, Section 2, before the 14th Amendment).

"We," says Geoff Garin, a Clinton strategist who possesses the audacity of hopelessness required in that role, "don't think this is just going to be about some numerical metric." Mere numbers? Heaven forefend. That is how people speak when numerical metrics -- numbers of popular votes and delegates -- are inconvenient.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur said that every military defeat can be explained by two words: "too late." Too late in anticipating danger, too late in preparing for it, too late in taking action. Clinton's political defeat can be similarly explained -- too late in recognizing that the electorate does not acknowledge her entitlement to the presidency, too late in understanding that she had a serious challenger, too late in anticipating that she would not dispatch Barack Obama by Super Tuesday (Feb. 5), too late in planning for the special challenges of caucus states, too late in channeling her inner shot-and-a-beer hard hat.

Most of all, she was too late in understanding how much the Democratic Party's mania for "fairness," as mandated by liberals like her, has, by forbidding winner-take-all primaries, made it nearly impossible for her to overcome Obama's early lead in delegates.
...
Tuesday night must have been almost as much fun for John McCain as for Obama. The Republican brand has been badly smudged by recent foreign and domestic policies, which are the only kinds there are, so McCain's hopes rest on the still-unattached cohort called "Reagan Democrats," who still seem somewhat resistant to Obama.

McCain's problem might turn out to be the fact that Obama is the Democrats' Reagan. Obama's rhetorical cotton candy lacks Reagan's ideological nourishment, but he is Reaganesque in two important senses: People like listening to him, and his manner lulls his adversaries into underestimating his sheer toughness -- the tempered steel beneath the sleek suits.

Will shows he's smart because he recognizes that Obama is consistently underestimated - which people may do less since he has just defeated the most talented political couple since FDR-Eleanor - and that he is very much like a liberal Reagan. Go-bama! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Most Unpopular President So Far

So Bush finally became the most unpopular president in polling history. What took so long? It shows that it takes nearly total system collapse for the country to forget the drummed-up fear post-9/11.

Now, in terms of unpopularity, I understand Nixon's low numbers, but why was Truman so unpopular? Should his numbers even be counted, considering that in 1952 the last deeply unpopular president was Hoover and that was 20 years before. I mean, compared to the angelic (at the end) FDR, who wouldn't have been unpopular?

Well this Explainer explains the whole basis for the unpopularity (yet he doesn't get my point, ah well).

h/t for CNN link - TPM. Pic from here. Backpost finished on 2009-11-25.

The Sad Tale of Wilentz

In the last post I described the core constituency of Hillary as basically women, old people, dumb people and racists. So where do Professor Sean Wilentz, and his fuzzy alter-ego Paul Krugman, fit in? Both are not women, dumb, or racist. Why do they hate Obama, and like Hillary, so much.

Part of the answer comes from analyzing their screeds. For Wilentz (who, I should add, was my professor in college and knows me personally, even if won't remember my name correctly), see this piece of guano in the New Republic:
"Making the Case... for Hillary Clinton" and for Krugman, just read any column over the past 4 months.

What both have in common is the small group of the Democratic elite who support Hillary:

1. Baby-boomers (who are the "old" category of the previous post)
   
2. and/or fierce liberals who hate the GOP so much that they want to keep fighting the fractious red-blue wars of the 90s (and the 60s, go figure).
   
3. and/or pundits who endorsed Hillary too early - before Obama showed himself the real deal - and are now trapped in either cognitive dissonance or, worse, Pundits Dissonance (the malady that afflicts moron commentators, disallowing them from admitting error).

Wilentz and Krugman are in all three of these groups.

Baby-Boomers Against the Youngin': These hypocrites were inspired by JFK as teenagers, flocked to an inexperienced hillbilly when he was in their age group, but now that the candidate is younger than they are - like the narcissitic nihilists they have been since the banana-peel smoking 60s - they can't handle it. Punk bastards. I'll be glad when they are shoved aside, because the next president will either be the anti-baby boomer Obama (say that 5 times fast) or the stodgy crew-cutted square that the hippie boomers rejected back in the day (McCain).

Liberal Fighters: Nothing quite so sad as a victim turned bully. Especially when they don't know how to bully well. Wilentz and Krugman don't want the culture war to end. They hate Bush and the GOP so much - for what happened to Bill and Hill in the 90s and for what Bush has done since then - and heck, maybe allaway back to Nixon - that they want to keep the fight going. The logic - and Wilentz/Krugman say this explicitly - is that the GOP needs crushing and Obama is a weenie and Hillary is a fighter.

Let's take this apart, because all three premises are wrong. First, we see what a great fighter Hillary has been (even when this was first proposed, back in 1-15, and its crystal clear now): she's awful. A shrill maladriot. She can't convince a drowning man to drink and she can't beat Obama - a political newcomer with a funny name, handicapped skin, and who refuses to fight back! Hillary is as good a fighter as Kerry/Dukakis/Gore. That is, she sucks.

But the real false premise combines the misdiagnosis of Obama and the nature of our battle with the GOP. Assume for a moment that the GOP needs to be punished for the horrific misdeeds of the past 15 years (the Clinton-Bush terms). What's the best way to do that? There's the shrill victim way - that of Hillary/Wilentz/Krugman - which is just fantasy. The victim getting the upper hand on the bully... doesn't happen in the schoolyard, and it certainly doesn't happen in the boardroom. Power is power and doesn't switch hands unless the bully is in a coma.

Which brings us to the weenie charge. Only true weenies - like Hillary/Krugman/Wilentz, and their mentors in weenie-dom: George W. Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, John Yoo, Rush Limbaugh - think that direct conflict is the way to win a war. Obama's skill is that of great politicians (think FDR or LBJ): diplomacy. To quote LBJ: "Remember the prophet Isaiah: Come let us reason together. Telling a man to go to hell and making him go there are two different things." A diplomat will defeat a bully unless he's outnumberd 5:1.

Obama has the true political skill that converts enemies into allies and to get his agenda - which is delightfully left-wing - passed. Bullies and other weaklings want wars because they like the glory of battle (specifcally the glory of winning). Obama, following the principles of Master Sun Tzu, will win. And if Wilentz/Krugman were real culture warriors they would flock to Obama because of that. But they're blinded, or bullies, and can't escape their prisons of thought.

Pundit Dissonance - Just as Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge became towering figures because they were the populist opposition to Pres. Clinton, so academics like Wilentz and Krugman were the necessary opposition to Bush. Especially when the mainstream press rolled over and played dead during these years, these pundits were must-reads, providing information and courage during the dark times. These smart guys became talking-heads, and they lost their academic skills and fell into a papist 'just so' trap, where they considered that their words were incontrovertable truth (note: this is also known as the Charedi Rosh Yeshiva With Only a High School Education trap).

But times have changed since Krugman had been elevated into infallibility. From 2000-2006 his indispensibility was valid and unquestioned. But then came the realigning midterms of 2006, the explosion of trusted blogger journalism, and Youtube. The Democrats now have the GOP in a fair(ish) fight, the news and reality are getting out there. Krugman is not indispensible, and he seems to have let the revolution pass him by.

One proof of Wilentz/Krugman's failure is to assume that Hillary is experienced, and/or liberal, and/or a fighter, or whatever new guano comes out of her self-inflicted wounded bunker. Her claims are demonstrably false. Any intelligent person can see that. Wilentz/Krugman won't. They are infallible! They cannot be wrong. It is we mush-headed youngsters who are being snowed over by a talented black man! Whatever.

The mystery fourth category

Even were my above analysis to be wrong (and it isn't because I am now a pundit), I have discovered, through this painful primary, a mystery fourth category that Wilentz/Krugman - and many other wrinkly Democrats who support Hillary - are in: they are McGovern-Mondale-Dukakis-Kerry Democrats (MMDKD). I'll explain that later.

Backpost: 1/15/08, 1:48 PM. All I had was the link. I'm adding the context and commentary now. Pic from here of Wilentz in 1994, 2 years after I had him in class.

Toni Morrison Endorses Obama

Toni Morrison's endorsement is very important because she's the one who coined the phrase/concept that Bill Clinton was the "first black president" (which I bristled at when i first heard it but its been repeated often by the black community)

I read the original article (which I can find somewhere). her point was that Bill Clinton was being hounded and persecuted for no reason - something that black men and women understand. Note, Jews understand that too. But anyway. I remember hearing Chris Rock in the late 90s talking about and defending Clinton. It's one reason why they feel so angry now - that the Black community stood by Bill during the impeachment (because they thought it was a lynching) and now that there's a viable black candidate, they want him to stand aside.

However, what the black community has always been angry about is that the white do-gooders are doing things selfishly and not for altruism. Altruism would be to stand aside and let Obama take the nomination. In that sense, I think the Kennedys are being altruistic here - they want Obama to be president because of his talent, yes, but also because he's black.

Ironically, the Clinton-Kennedy split occurring right before our eyes is a sign of which direction the history of the party will take.

Back in 1960, the decision was between FDR vs. Truman. JFK wanted the mantle of FDR while Truman himself argued in favor of Estes Kefauer.

In 1992, Clinton wanted the mantle of Kennedy; but as I said yesterday, Clinton was basically Reagan-lite (and, note, I don't mind that!). But Obama is a liberal, and he'll be an effective liberal.

Obama's liberalism is seen by his work in the Illinois legislature. Against great opposition he managed to get bipartisan agreement for many things - some examples from the Washpost:

"he played an important role in drafting bipartisan ethics legislation and health-care reform. He overcame law enforcement objections to codify changes designed to curb racial profiling and to make capital punishment, which he favors, more equitable."

Here's the Times description of the endorsement with Morrison's key statement:

In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which, coupled with brilliance, equals wisdom.

I totally agree.

{2009 Update, added some missing lines from the original email source and the picture, from here.}

We Need a New Excuse

The Washington Post had a story last week about a bunch of veterans who were tasked with the Top Secret task of interrogating Nazis. And, no, they didn't torture.

Didn't torture Nazis? Didn't they realize they were in a war? Against Nazis?? Well, sure, they knew that. But it appears they didn't torture for two important reasons:

1. Torture is morally wrong (and especially when torture is the hallmark of your enemy... how can you use their hated tool?)
   
   
2. Torture DOES NOT WORK.

Here's the facts: the president has authorized torture. And against people who have largely turned out innocent. Congress seems to know that this is happening. Yet, the American people, so far, have not erupted in outrage. It looks like the President will not be impeached.

Here's the problem: HOW??!? I thought the American people have tacitly accepted torture because we were attacked on 9/11, so that allows the president to do whatever he durn well pleases to anyone he wants. Kill, torture, rape innocent people - why not? - because we were attacked. Wah wah, poor us.

Yet we were attacked in WWII, too. Remember Pearl Harbor, day live in infamy, ring a bell? No? It was like 9/11. No? It was a big deal, believe me. Anyway, we didn't turn into rabid, stupid monsters back then... so why now?

We need a new excuse.

P.S. Next time some moron says that great people don't make history, remember the difference between FDR and GWB.

{2009 Update: Great pic of the Torture Statue of Liberty from here.}

Even the Economist

In case you're wondering what kind of lily-livered pinko bleeding-heart liberals are warning about Bush's economic policies, there's the Leftist smear rag The Economist. True, The Economist is generally seen as a conservative magazine (when they say they're Tories, they mean 18th Century style), but how can they be if they claim that Bush's trade deficits and all-around economic bumbling will soon convince the world to dump dollars in favor of Euros?

Does anybody think that Bush is doing good things for the US economy? Can anyone say that our situation is truly the aftermath of 9/11 and not the results of the first MBA president (who never ran a successful company and doesn't even know what assets he himself owns?)

Thank Jezuz that Bush has a plan to save the economy by gutting social security. His evangelist-hypnotist guru must have told him that if he really wants to channel Hoover he not only needs to lose more jobs but also to plunge the country into depression. This does explain why Bush hates social-security - how else to be Hoover but to reverse everything FDR did? The next step? Bush will un-cure polio and discontinue the dime.

Backpost finished 2/16/05 - all I had was the article link, which still works, so here goes...

The Dime?

The Reaganistas are at it again; this time to replace the face of the dime from FDR to Reagan. I'm not sure what the thinking is: the most obvious reason is that Reagan is the anti-FDR and/or Reagan's legacy is reflected by a cheap coin.

Look. We have these presidents on these coins:

• PENNY = Lincoln (Republican)
• NICKEL = Jefferson (Democrat-Republican)
• DIME = FDR (Democrat)
• QUARTER = Washington (Federalist)
• HALF-DOLLAR = JFK (Democrat)
• DOLLAR = Eisenhower (Republican)

That's a breakdown of:

• Democrats: 2.5
• Republicans: 2.5
• Federalists: 1

What we *need* is not another Republican (which would upset this tight balance), but, if anything, a Whig. Tyler should work. And put him on the nickel, so we keep parity.

FDR should have the dime because he is associated with that currency, more than any other of the current hosts are associated with theirs and, to be honest, any other president can be associated with any of the currencies. The dime is associated with FDR because he began, in 1938, "The March of Dimes" to combat polio (from which he suffered). They don't like this whole thing one bit.

Polio crippled FDR but rose above that to become the most popular president since, well, since his other currency predecessors (Mr. Penny, Nickel, and Quarter). Polio is part of the FDR biography and the disease is almost wiped out.

Maybe if the "March of Nickels" were started to eradicate Alzheimer's - of which Regan is as much of a poster child as FDR is for polio - then we can kick ol' Jeffy out.

Moreover, Ike is on the dollar. Why?! Even then, Ike is a thinking man's Reagan (both genial grandpas; Ike was president in the 50s, Regan thought it still was the 50s; both conservative icons) - Ike was President of Columbia University after he left being Supreme Commander of the Entire Planet. I don't see Reagan filling the 'college president' mold (or supreme commander, now that we mention it).

If the Reaganistas want RR to be on a coin, replace Ike.

P.S. After looking at the mint page, I see that Ike is no longer on the Dollar (he was 'til 1978 when Carter got weirded-up and put Susan B. Anthony on there; now the only dollar in circulation is the Sacagawea golden-dollar. So put RR on the dollar; be my guest).