In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile.

Well, at work I thought it'd be fun to make a post about Bush's iPod selection. What a hoot, right? He can supposedly work his computer! But then I get home and realize that, apparantly, everyone has gotten sick of talking about the Pope, as every blog of note had a piece about the First iPod (once Best Week Ever blogs it, it's dead).

So, I figured I could follow up on some reading I did this weekend. After Hunter Thompson's death, I decided to go and re-read The Great Shark Hunt. It was fun going until I got to Part II, which covers Nixon's run for election all the way through his pardon by Ford. When I originally read this book, it was during the Clinton administration, and reading for the first time in some great detail what Nixon had done was (in perspective to what Clinton was guilty of) quite the disillusioning experience, especially considering how he won in what was the biggest landslide victory ever at that time. How could the public be so easily duped by a man who practically gave off this "registered sex offender" vibe, even before his criminal acts were made known. Was there some charisma there that was apparantly lacking when he ran against Kennedy? (yeah, horrible comparison, I know). Surely, the public would gain some sort of "fool me once" mentality, learn from it's mistakes, and take care when electing the leader of the free world.

This was my juvenile train of thought in the latter part of the nineties, a time when GWB was still known only as "George Bush Jr." in my corner.

I digress. This time, I just wasn't tearing through Part II. It seemed outdated and almost archaic at this point, reading Thompson's railings against his greatest enemy, and all for what? A burglarly? Because he liked to keep tapes for posterity? (yeah, I'm glazing over a lot of shit...editing history is fun). I was just having a hard time, at 24, taking all of Nixon's personal defects as if they were the greatest affront to the American public. How fucking jaded I had become after these last five years...God, at least Nixon actually worked his ass off to become President. You've got to admire that on some small level. No one expected him to come back after the '60 campaign, and especially after his bid for governor of CA... we weren't supposed to have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore! Hell, he even had an exit strategy planned ("Ford, I'll let you take Agnew's place and become president...but only on the condition that I may call in this one favor whenever I see fit...")

So, the point I'm trying to get to after this spiraling post is, given what you know now, ignoring party lines, and if time & death didn't factor in to the equation, who would you vote for: George W. Bush or Richard Milhous Nixon?
(and yes, they are your only two options. People are holding guns to your head - it has literally become "vote or die")