I voted for A. Roosevelt.

My ideal candidate for President would be someone who orders the treasury to hand out a couple of million to every man woman and child in the country. So will poverty be eliminated at a stroke and everyone would become a millionaire. There'll be no need for any of us to worry about rent or bills anymore. We can all just kick back, enjoy a life of luxury and go off on holiday any time we want !

 

"Sigh."

I'd sooner invest in a money tree.

The problem with polls of this type is the tone the author takes while writing the descriptions of each candidate. Let's list all the terms used to describe each one:

 

Candidate A: Corrupt, astrologers, mistresses, smokes and drinks heavily.

Candidate B: Fired, sleeps, smokes opium (drugs) and drinks heavily.

Candidate C: Medal-holder, war hero, vegetarian, occasional drinker and no marital affairs.

 

Do you see a bias? Being a semantics and logic buff, I recognized this immediately and refused to vote. Candidates A and B are shed in a damaging light, while Candidate C in an optimistic light. If you want a different perspective on the candidate's histories, reverse the bias by reading their complete bios. Candidate C is now overwhelmingly negative, while A and B are positive.

 

While it may be interesting to discuss the philosophical viewpoints of misrepresentation, for all intensive purposes nothing is learned unless you can distinguish between localized bias and comprehensive truth.

 

- Zombie

I thought the point of the poll was to show that each individual historical statesman had both good things and bad things going for them. Very often historians want to represent someone in a particular way, so they tend to deliberately overlook things that don't fit this pattern.

 

For instance, if you look through a book of English history, you can see how the historians have divided English kings into good kings and bad kings (generally based on how they got on in wars against neighbouring countries), thus saving the reader from having to go to the effort of actually thinking. King John = Bad King because he was defeated by the French. Henry V = Good King because he defeated the French.

I guess it all depends upon if you view sleeping in, smoking drugs and drinking as bad things.

I thought the point of the poll was to show that each individual historical statesman had both good things and bad things going for them.

Do you see any positive points about Candidate A and B? Nope, just the bad were listed. What about Candidate C? His attributes never list he was a genocidal maniac who orchestrated the deaths of millions of people in WWII.

 

The purpose of polls like this is to deliberately lead the person to choose a candidate which they would never vote for. However, the information given is only part of the picture. Had everyone seen the full representation of each candidate, I'm sure no one would vote for C.

 

Perhaps the rationale of polls like this is to point out the dangers of not knowing everything about the candidate you are thinking of voting for.

 

- Zombie

I think Troll and Zombie are right. (What the hell, I feel like I'm talking to a couple of RPG monsters... The names.)

 

It's deliberately meant to make you pick C, but that's nowhere near the point of the article. (If it was, then they ended up sending a significantly bigger picture.)

 

Zombie's final sentence seems to work for me. (Even if it does disagree with the point he made just one paragraph prior. ) It's an eye opener in some ways. But really now... They were all good leaders, on terms of skill. I guess nature has ways of compensating for morality... (Didn't do any of the other crap, so Hitler made up for it by murdering thousands. >_< )