From Newsgroup: soc.history.what-if

john0714 wrote:
I was talking to a preacher friend of mine today about various
scandals polticians have gotten into.
He asked me who would make a better POTUS, one of those politicians or
Billy Graham in his prime? I said Billy Graham. He disagreed claiming
one of those politicians, due to experience and soforth, woul make a
better POTUS.

So let me ask you, considering Watergate and all that, how good or bad
would it have been if Billy Graham were elected POTUS in 1968 instead
of Nixon, and why?

Not sure about 1968 but we could probably use someone like Billy Graham as POTUS right about now.


This is a response to the post seen at: http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=98439064#98439064
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From Newsgroup: soc.history.what-if

On Mon, 03 Mar 2025 13:22:18 -0500,
mummycullen@gmail-dot-com.no-spam.invalid (MummyChunk) wrote:

So let me ask you, considering Watergate and all that, how good or bad
would it have been if Billy Graham were elected POTUS in 1968 instead
of Nixon, and why?

Not sure about 1968 but we could probably use someone like Billy Graham as POTUS right about now.

Certainly a much better choice than his son Franklin who is very much
tied to the hard core fundamentalist preachers - his father had the presidential connections he had because he wasn't - and was also far
more empathic than Franklin.
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From Newsgroup: soc.history.what-if

On 3/15/26 12:34, MummyChunk wrote:

x wrote:
On 3/12/26 19:24, MummyChunk wrote:

x wrote:
On 3/5/25 10:30, The Horny Goat wrote:

On Mon, 03 Mar 2025 13:22:18 -0500,
mummycullen@gmail-dot-com.no-spam.invalid (MummyChunk) wrote:

So let me ask you, considering Watergate and all that, how good or bad
would it have been if Billy Graham were elected POTUS in 1968 instead
of Nixon, and why?

Not sure about 1968 but we could probably use someone like Billy
Graham as POTUS right about now.

Certainly a much better choice than his son Franklin who is very much
tied to the hard core fundamentalist preachers - his father had the
presidential connections he had because he wasn't - and was also far
more empathic than Franklin.



I disagree. The office of (sh*t) was fundamentally evil
from day one.

The US would have been much better if Article 2 of the
US Constitution never existed, and in essence the name
was used for something a lot closer to the Prime Minister
of England, as an identically named office existed
under the Articles of Confederation.

No party can redeem the corrupt and degenerate office, It
should be abolished and all offices under Article 2 should
be transferred to Articles I and III.

It is difficult to say if the US would have been much much
better if Article II of the US Constitution would never have
existed. but it definitely would have been no worse, and if
you start talking about all of the evils done by the imitators
in other countries, that right there is enough reason to abolish
Article 2 in the US Constitution now.




So let me ask you, if the presidency is supposedly so fundamentally

evil

from day one, why has the US managed to function under it for over two
centuries, while the real problem seems to be what particular people do
with the office rather than the office existing at all?

I mean, you can definitely argue that Article II gives the

executive too

much power, especially after everything that's happened since Watergate
and beyond, but that's not really the same thing as proving the whole
thing should never have existed.

And I don't really think the comparison to the Articles of

Confederation

works either, because that system was notoriously too weak to hold the
country together in the first place.

Seems to me the better argument is that the presidency needs stronger
limits and tighter checks, not that abolishing it would somehow have
made everything no worse by definition.

This is a response to the post seen at:
http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=98439064#98439064

You know, maybe it is more than viable to have censored a post
in a thread about Billy Graham.

For the long and the short of it, I get the idea that there
might be something called 'democracy'. At least in modern
times, if you start saying that one person is needed out
of over 300,000,000 people for anything, but try to use the
word 'democracy' at the same time, to me that seems downright
silly.

That still does not really get you where you want to go.

Saying democracy should not revolve too much around one person is a criticism of excessive executive power, not proof that having an
executive office is inherently illegitimate.

The question is not whether one person exists in the structure. The
question is how limited, checked, and accountable that person is.

This is a response to the post seen at: http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=98439064#98439064

You know the 1968 presidential election was a rather
interesting one.

There is a place called 'Alabama' and once upon a time
there was someone named 'George Wallace'. He however
had a wife named 'Lurleen Wallace' who died of cancer.
It is strange however because it might almost have seemed
like a surreal version of the Japanese movie 'Ikiru'.

Maybe however I have been simply watching too many
episodes of the series 'Dark Shadows' recently however.



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