>>> I would not label Carter as the worst president in our general lifetimes, but I certainly would label him one of the most ineffective.
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>In hindsight, he was fortunate. GWB won the big hat just as the internet came into its own, which created huge challenges for him and it's worse for Obama. Convenient parochial spin has become practically impossible and it feels as if most of the world is determined to see what happens if they poke burning tapers into a fuel tank. Consider that Reagan got to stay on his ranch for another 4 days before he had to front up during the Lockerbie incident, and now imagine the furor if the Malaysian plane were a US jet and Obama stayed in Hawaii playing golf for another 4 days before fronting, or GWB stayed incommunicado on the Bush spread for a couple of days because there was a rodeo he wanted to attend. Modern presidents have it tough.


Same up here. alomost 200 Dutch were murdered in the plane crash. Our prime minister was not in the country at the moment, but got back within hours. From what I can see he's fully occupied with it, called putin several times to urge to get the remains back to The Netherlands while experts cannot even enter the site and start their investigation. Meanwhile our prime minsiter gets the wrath of a part of our nation for not doing enough.

What the hell do they expect him to do? Get the plane and do the forensics himself?? If putin is guilty of shooting down that plane (And I suspect he is), he will do whatever he can to frustrate the investigation and the return of the remains. Meanwhile the UN and EU are pressing putin to do what he promisses, but we all know there is a great difference between saying and doing. Essentially we feel powerless. All we want at this moment is get the remains back; we can look at the sanctions later.... but that is a concern for later.

Err.. anyways, some people are too emotional on topics to have an unbiased view on what a president/prime minister can do and what his actions lead to. It will probably need another generation that was not emotionally involved to get an unbiased view.