A Presidency of Dunces

I found an article from The Times (see link at bottom) where a "panel of experts from The Times" ranked every U.S. president in order of how "great" they were. Some of the results were very obvious, but some were not as easy to see as you'd think.
Lincoln topped the list as the best president of all time (surprise surprise...) and James Buchanan brought up the rear as the worst president. Neither of these were huge surprises to me. What I wasn't expecting was our good friend James Polk to be number nine. The reason they give for giving him such a high place on the list is that he acquired a ton of land for the U.S. It also celebrates him for suffocating the Mexicans. We are supposed to believe that he was one the the best presidents because of his ideals of "manifest destiny." I'm not saying he was bad, I really do think he was great (not that I know a whole lot about him), but I think that LBJ or Andrew Jackson deserve to be higher on the list then Polk. (Even though his name is a lot of fun to say.) LBJ did great things for the Civil Rights Movement that I think are more important historically than the expansion of the nation. Please understand, I'm not saying that the expansion of the U.S. wasn't importaint, in fact I think it was incredibly important for the nation. I just think that if I had to choose between U.S. expansion and the civil rights movement, I'd pick the second one.
On the note of LBJ, I think that he and JFK should've tied. JFK beat out LBJ by one place, but I feel like they kinda worked in tandem. JFK had the new ideals and the fresh policies, but he was assassinated before he could carry out many of his intended plans. LBJ picked up where he left of and made his political dreams real. They did a tie later in the list, why can't they do it here?
Also, I'd like to talk about the tie between Nixon and Bush Jr. I wouldn't move them from their place in the list, because they were definately not good presidents, but at least in Bush's case, I don't think he should be hated as much as he is. He was truely doing what he thought was right for the country, and how can he be completely blamed for that? His mistake letting people influence him into not changing what he was doing. He needed a drastic change in what he was doing. Also, I don't think he was suited for the role of president. But that doesn't mean we should crucify him. I personally think he seems like a really likeable guy, but people judge his character by his poor skills at being president.
Anyway I thought that was an interesting article. Also, it should be noted that I am not an expert at presidents, I just made judgements off of what I read in the article, and what I had learned from other places (such as AIS). I'm probably very wrong in most parts.

link

Dimming the City of Lights

"We'll always have Paris."
So says the hero of Casablanca, one of the many, many, cultural influences that over-romanticize the city of lights. Maybe it is deserving of all its hype, but you cannot deny that it is widely considered the end-all be-all of romantic hotspots. People call it the city of love, describing l'amor as something physical, floating through the city. The drifting cigarette smoke, the bohemians sipping cappachinos at a nearby cafe, the artists painting the surrounding city; it does have an air of romance. But what makes Paris so different from London or Madrid or Barcelona or heck, even Chicago? We've hyped up an otherwise normal european city to be the Mecca of love. I've personally never been to Paris, and I bet it's really great, but I find it hard to believe that it will the incredibly mysterious romantic city that it's built up to be.
In an article from away.com (see link at bottom), author Elina Furman writes lovingly about the beauty of the city and the many locations that are ideal for romance. "Everything about the City of Light... acts as a kind of elixir to the soul," she gushes shamelessly. I don't doubt that Paris is a beautiful city that I would one day love to visit, but it is so heavily romanticized that I feel almost suffocated by the idea of it. It's made out to be so unimaginably astounding that I'm worried the novelty will wear off before I even get to visit it.
If I ever get to visit Paris, I hopefully can get past my reserves concerning the over-romatic antics the city seems to be made from and just enjoy the city. There has to be something to the stories, right?

link