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Host, I think you misunderstood what I said about Moynihan. I didn't say he was a Democrat I can support, in fact I didn't mention which party he was because to me it didn't matter. I said he was the last time I voted for someone who I felt was both decent and honest, whether or not I agreed with him on every issue (and no, I didn't claim he was perfect - he was human, he couldn't be). I certainly have voted for plenty of Democrats and have voted likewise for plenty of Republicans. My point is that my criteria are not partisan, they're more a set of principles and character traits. That's why Eliot Spitzer is disappointing me terribly right now - I voted for him because he said during the campaign that NY state government is a sinkhole of corruption and dysfunction and that he would fix it. He was right and I was optimistic that he could do what he set about to do - and then when he got into office he promptly did the same old log-rolling that his distinctly unimpressive predecessor, George Pataki, did, and then compounded it by deciding that the way to fix the culture in Albany was to do a political smear against the Senate Majority leader, who is a Republican (and whom I don't care for, but his political sins are the same ones as the Speaker of the Assembly, who is a Democrat). So Spitzer turns out to be the same old story of someone who talks a good game and then does the opposite. See what my issue is?
Huey Long is your idea of a good politician? Host, I find that terrifying. Really. Have you been to Louisiana? It's still suffering from a hangover from the Kingfisher, so far as I can tell, even all these years later. I used to think NY had the worst state govt in the country, but I was wrong - Louisiana does. The degree of corruption down there is frightening. Huey Long was a demagogue.
If you look at the really great presidents, they combined backbone and flexibility, and the judgment to know which of the two to use in which context. To take just two: Jefferson, who was a revolutionary suspicious of all government power (especially federal power), sent troops overseas to defeat the Barbary Pirates and engineered the Louisiana Purchase. Lincoln was a corporate lawyer and defender of private property who liberated more human beings from slavery than any other person in history.
I understand you think the main criterion for evaluating an elected government official is whether he helped people. That's fine, but you still have to define what it means to help people, and to supply the definition in the context of the job the person was elected to do. I think if you speak to most people of either party they'll say they want politicians to make the country a better place to live, for all its citizens - but that is a standard devoid of content. The question is which tools will be used to achieve that, and what criteria should be used to measure it.
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