President Gas

I think you are right. I wondered at the term 'president' considering that they are English but 'president' has three solid syllables whereas 'prime minister' is a bit clunky. More importantly though, it reinforces that they don't care that much about specific countries and specific variations of political philosophies within the basic, democratic paradigm. The whole point of the song seems to me to be, 'It doesn't make any damn difference; I still can't afford a bloody doctor'. Personally, I think its more a resigned cynicism, rather than any sort of call to arms.

@neon56 @neon56 YES drumpf is a poisonous gas, & it's looking more & more like he may well be the ACTUAL antichrist!

@neon56 maybe they should re-do the song..."President Trump is President Trump again!"...

Thinking of the moment and not commenting much. I could not pass on this:
It appears to me that most artists usually express opinions of their own vision or actions in that moment (i.e.: Smiths (his sexual suppression in the 80’s) or Morrisey (lost and confused in the 90’s)) same person in a new package. Remember we are life in a fluid that rarely changes any color; in essence we only see through a glass prism.
If this is a true political song - it would lean me toward an English Prime Minister. Knowing that there was a new president in the United States (Reagan) inheriting a torn nation from the Vietnam War to the Iranian hostages in the Middle East; while dealing with Russia on the newly signed - Strategic Arms Limitation Talks II (Salt II treaty: 1979).
Reagan might be (arguably) the first outspoken MAGA (Make America Great Again) presidents; but we must ask ourselves when was America great or not great? This will depend on how you, the individual view’s this moment in time. He was also known to say, “It’s a new day”. This was so we could have a warm fuzzy feeling and to soften a severe recession we were experiencing in the 80’s. The nation was also coming out of an unpopular Carter presidency. The far right found an unconditional love with Reagan which in many ways caused the left to barely keep any peace within their own ranks, not unlike today’s right.
Peter Bart’s piece (November 5, 2020), “Donald Trump Stole the Reagan Strategy and Slogan but Failed to Make His Presidency Great Again”. So, if this song is in fact a political statement through poetry. I am not sure that Trump known for his grifting would be a good choice to reference here. Maybe, the Ford or Nixon cabinets (political rivels known to be caught in an oil and gas war that was created by OPEC or just the Iran and Iraq war raging in the middle east in 1979 to 1988). I could go deeper but I will digress from going any further into this topic.
Although, “Make America Great Again” was a main part of the red wave that hit the US at that time ("Let's make America Great Again” or “We Can Make America Great Again.") was famously used in Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign ads at the time. The United States was suffering from a worsening economy marked by stagflation; he also used the motto “Every new day begins with possibilities” in many of his ads.

This is a great song for the sign of the times..everytime I hear it reminds me of the current state we are in.

@jamesisnose One minor correction, on health care: Reagan wasn't opposed to health care reform. In fact, he was the one who wanted to reform the system—but in a disastrous way. He argued that allowing for-profit HMOs and completely deregulating the insurers would let the market magically fix the system. And when he won and implemented his plan, it had exactly the effect Anderson and Bush predicted in the primaries: insurance cartels and provider cartels began colluding, and prices skyrocketed, and they've never stopped.

@jimesh Greatest president of the 20th century. You're obviously an idiotic leftist nothing, who's been inculcated by neo-Marxist windbags. Numbers don't lie. Failed leftists do.

Well said, sage. Spoken like a true sociopath.

@sage113409 True, numbers don't lie. And so many numbers did change dramatically under Reagan, and they're all nicely documented and easy to look up. The federal deficit, the personal bankruptcy rate, the number of administration officials indicted while in office, the percentage of personal income spent on health care.

Unfortunately, they all changed in the wrong direction. And numbers don't lie.

I can take conservatives like Buckley who argue that spending America into near-bankruptcy was the only way to force the Soviets to actually spend themselves into bankruptcy, freeing half the world from tyranny, because at least they're arguing from the actual facts.

People like you who choose to believe in obvious lies, or just avoid ever looking at the facts, just so they don't have to change their team, you're not at all conservative. You don't have any ideology at all, because you don't need one. Which is exactly what President Gas is hoping for.

@Flagfalcotronon @bekkaz As usual, political failures don't have arguments to back them up. Yes, the numbers are quite clear. Federal spending is a red herring that people like you only pretend to care about, to ape cable news talking points. As a percentage of GDP, federal expenditures grew barely from 21.6 percent in 1980 to 21.8 percent over the decade. Voters vote with their wallets, and we saw what happened in 1984. The US citizen had not done so well since Eisenhower.

Conservative paper, the New York Times wrote: "we do know from official economic statistics that the seven year period from 1982 to 1989 was the greatest, consistent burst of economic activity ever seen in the U.S. In fact, it was the greatest economic expansion the world has ever seen - in any country, at any time.

....From November 1982, when President Ronald Reagan's new economic program was beginning to take effect, to November 1989, 18.7 million new jobs were created. It was a world record: Never before had so many jobs been created during a comparable time period. The new jobs covered the entire spectrum of work, and more than half of them paid more than $20,000 a year. As total employment grew to 119.5 million, the rate of unemployment fell to slightly over 5 percent, the lowest level in 15 years. Creation of wealth.

The amount of wealth produced during this seven year period was stupendous - some $30 trillion worth of goods and services. Again, it was a world record. Never before had so much wealth been produced during a comparable period."

The economic boom under Reagan lasted 92 months without a recession, from November 1982 to July 1990, the longest period of sustained growth during peacetime and the second-longest period of sustained growth in U.S. history. "The growth in the economy lasted more than twice as long as the average period of expansions since World War II."

From 1973 to 1982, it averaged only 1.6 percent. The Reagan economic boom restored the more usual growth rate as the economy averaged 3.5 percent in real growth from the beginning of 1983 to the end of 1990. His tax reforms created prosperity that continued well into the '90s and '00s.

So, while you have emotional bleating, you don't have numbers to back you up. You screech like a banshee, because you're ideologically driven, and you cling to whatever phony argument you think can convince other people as dumb as you are. Just admit it. I've debated this too many times for someone as lame as you to attempt to refute me. It doesn't work. Revisionism is attempted by those who can't stand the fact that Reagan largely discredited their economic theories and relegated them to the dustbin of history. You're pathetic.

@falcotron @bekkaz As usual, political failures don't have arguments to back them up. Yes, the numbers are quite clear. Federal spending is a red herring that people like you only pretend to care about, to ape cable news talking points. As a percentage of GDP, federal expenditures grew barely from 21.6 percent in 1980 to 21.8 percent over the decade. Voters vote with their wallets, and we saw what happened in 1984. The US citizen had not done so well since Eisenhower.

Conservative paper, the New York Times wrote: "we do know from official economic statistics that the seven year period from 1982 to 1989 was the greatest, consistent burst of economic activity ever seen in the U.S. In fact, it was the greatest economic expansion the world has ever seen - in any country, at any time.

....From November 1982, when President Ronald Reagan's new economic program was beginning to take effect, to November 1989, 18.7 million new jobs were created. It was a world record: Never before had so many jobs been created during a comparable time period. The new jobs covered the entire spectrum of work, and more than half of them paid more than $20,000 a year. As total employment grew to 119.5 million, the rate of unemployment fell to slightly over 5 percent, the lowest level in 15 years. Creation of wealth.

The amount of wealth produced during this seven year period was stupendous - some $30 trillion worth of goods and services. Again, it was a world record. Never before had so much wealth been produced during a comparable period."

The economic boom under Reagan lasted 92 months without a recession, from November 1982 to July 1990, the longest period of sustained growth during peacetime and the second-longest period of sustained growth in U.S. history. "The growth in the economy lasted more than twice as long as the average period of expansions since World War II."

From 1973 to 1982, it averaged only 1.6 percent. The Reagan economic boom restored the more usual growth rate as the economy averaged 3.5 percent in real growth from the beginning of 1983 to the end of 1990. His tax reforms created prosperity that continued well into the '90s and '00s.

So, while you have emotional bleating, you don't have numbers to back you up. You screech like a banshee, because you're ideologically driven, and you cling to whatever phony argument you think can convince other people as dumb as you are. Just admit it. I've debated this too many times for someone as lame as you to attempt to refute me. It doesn't work. Revisionism is attempted by those who can't stand the fact that Reagan largely discredited their economic theories and relegated them to the dustbin of history. You're pathetic.

@falcotron "the percentage of personal income spent on health care" Lol. You just exposed yourself as not only duplicitous, but a blind ideologue. Your wish is to expand oligarchical bureaucracy, no matter what, and limit individual economic independence, including health. It's a perverse savior complex that amoral wish to live out, while claiming care for the disadvantaged. Yet when someone actually lifts record numbers of people out of economic doldrums, you truly hate it, because it makes those people less dependent on sociopathic oligarchs. That's your only end. Expansion of power for those who see themselves as cosmically ordained to engineer society -- for no other reason than their impervious sense of moral superiority, based on things like expressed rage on lyric pages. You're obviously not a serious thinker, so please don't bother me again about things beyond your grasp on '80s lyric pages. Dismissed.

*people

@v00n President gas
Oh oh oh oh ohhh

You have to have a party, when you're in a 'state' like this...

etc.