As we come up on Presidents Day Weekend and Week, it is a good time to reflect on the record of the most outstanding Republican Presidents, and how they made great investments in infrastructure, in many ways their greatest contribution.
Abraham Lincoln made the building of the transcontinental railroad a high priority, although the Civil War slowed up the completion of the project, the finishing of the Union Pacific Railroad, to the year 1869, four years after his death. He saw the transcontinental railroad as a promoter of economic growth, and to make America truly a nation unified by a massive transportation system.
Dwight D. Eisenhower saw the importance of the development of the Interstate Highway System, and committed to it in the 1950s, as a way to promote economic growth and national security, and the continuous expansion of that system is a testimony to his commitment to this greatest of all public works projects.
Theodore Roosevelt saw the preservation of the environment through the building of a great national park system as good for the unity and growth of the nation, and he presided over the quadrupling of the our parks and other nature sites as the long range commitment to our future, as a nation which cared about its natural resources and respected the significance of nature.
Each of these three greatest Republican Presidents, about 40-50 years apart in their Presidencies, made a contribution to the future of our nation which cannot be measured by normal parameters. No wonder they are ranked as among the top ten Presidents in polls of intelligent observers of the office of the American Presidency!
Good examples of what the Government must and can constitutionally do, infrastructure and security.
Yes, Juan, so why does the GOP fight Obama on this? Because it is Obama, and they will NOT allow him to have ANY credit for ANYTHING, but the reality is that Obama has an ENVIABLE record in so many areas, and will be ranked high in listings of Presidents, including this coming week of Presidents Day—way above Bush II, which is appropriate!
Because the majority of the spending was not spent on infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, and so on as the President always says. Don’t you see he repeats the same mantra every year, yet the “shovel ready jobs weren’t so shovel ready”.
The reason why more was not spent on “shovel ready” projects is that the GOP insisted on tax cuts, being against public works projects, so Obama could only get a smaller amount, but if he had fought for what Paul Krugman and others said, the recession would have more easily been overcome, but of course, the GOP would have fought tooth and nail against that! And the filibuster was being utilized in an abusive way already in 2009-2010, and look at how far that abuse has gone since then!
“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.â€
Thomas Sowell
That is a funny quote! 🙂