There are a lot of things that, whether we like it or not, the president of the United States can’t do: wave a hand and fix major economic problems quickly; force Congress to pass his/her favorite bills; make Sarah Palin shut up. But in the area of foreign policy and our relations with friends and foes around the globe, who we have placed in the Oval Office can make all the difference in the world.

Take John Kennedy and George W. Bush, for example. Today is the anniversary of the day JFK announced an air and naval blockade (or “quarantine,” as he called it) of Cuba, following the detection of Soviet missile bases there. A mile-high-or-so stack of books has been written about the Cuban Missile Crisis, but one thing sticks out as having been of ultimate importance — and by that I mean “human civilization survived.” Pres. Kennedy, who was a decorated veteran of World War II, managed the most intensely dangerous and stressful foreign relations crisis in U.S. history — world history, actually — in a way that avoided the nuclear catastrophe everyone feared was inevitable. On the other side of the world was Nikita Khrushchev, who had seen first-hand the vast loss of life and destruction of cities brought by Hitler’s militaristic folly; Khrushchev, like JFK, understood that if he unleashed nuclear weaponry, that would be all she wrote for humankind as we know it. One thing both of those leaders did in October 1962 was to refuse to cave in to military commanders who were telling them their nations had to go launch military attacks.  Make no mistake: any clear reading of what happened in ’62 shows that if we are here today in the lovely 21^st century, we have John Kennedy to thank for it.

Contrast that White House performance with George W. Bush’s. Bush, who got out of going to Vietnam by taking the National Guard route, recklessly pushed the U.S. into a horrendous, unnecessary war in Iraq, upon the advice of his equally inexperienced-in-war, but bomb-happy, advisers like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. You know the results. Yesterday, Bush told a crowd that his biggest mistake as president was not privatizing Social Security. Not the trillion bucks and thousands of lives wasted overseas, but Social Security. Not the bottomless debt incurred by simultaneously fighting two wars and handing huge tax breaks to multi-millionaires. Social Security. In a way, it’s good to see that Dubya is still as clueless as we knew he was back in the day. But the point of all this is: Two presidents, two completely different mindsets, one led us away from nuclear catastrophe, the other led us into a couple of foreign quagmires we’ve yet to get out of. It does make a difference who's in the White House.

• Pres. John F. Kennedy

• Pres. George W. Bush

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, wants Anita Hill to apologize, nearly 20 years after Hill delivered her electrifying testimony of being sexually harassed by Thomas. Hill, a Brandeis University professor, says she has nothing to apologize for, and we agree. Ginni Thomas has a ton of nerve, considering how many women came forward to confirm Hill’s description of Clarence Thomas as a serial harasser with a fixation on hardcore pornography and telling jokes about pubic hairs on Coke cans.  Today’s piece by Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus was appropriately titled “It's not Ginni Thomas who deserves an apology.”

Justice Thomas has spent the past 19 years in a rage, denying the sexual harassment charges and fuming over the Senate hearings, which he called “a high-tech lynching.” Thomas’ “lynching” metaphor didn’t hold up, though, since, A. he had every chance to refute the testimony presented against him, and B. being confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court is hardly the same as being lynched, no matter how paranoid you may be.

Ginni Thomas has obviously bought her husband’s guilt-denial story, and although one hesitates to criticize someone for defending her spouse, the multiple cases, and piles of evidence, regarding Thomas’ lecherous comments and odd suggestions during his younger days  are, to put it mildly, very convincing.

If anyone still doubts Hill’s contentions about Thomas, they should ask Charlotte resident Angela Wright, a former Thomas employee, and subsequently a reporter for the Charlotte Observer and a county government PR flack. Wright told Senate investigators at the time of the hearings that Thomas pressured her for dates, showed up unannounced and uninvited at her apartment (obsessive-compulsive, anyone?), and often made comments about her breasts and legs. At one point, Wright told the Senate investigators, "Clarence Thomas would say to me, 'You know you need to be dating me ... You're one of the finest women I have on my staff."

Wright, though, did not testify before the full committee. Stories vary on why she wasn’t called, but the general consensus was that the Democrats were getting so much pressure from the  Bush administration over Hill’s testimony, they caved in (there’s a surprise) and dropped the idea of having more women testify to Thomas’ behavior.

So if any apologies are due here, it’s Clarence Thomas who needs to be delivering them. Except for one more apology we'd love to see: The Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 (including now-VP Biden) need to apologize to the American people for dropping the ball and letting Thomas slide through to the nation’s highest court, where he is widely regarded as one of the most clueless justices in the Court’s history. Maybe he’s distracted, trying to find pubic hairs on everyone else’s Cokes.

• Justice Clarence Thomas: Why in hell did Ginni have to bring this stuff up again? Somebody hand me a Coke.