U.S. Presidents - Cold War and New Millennium Edition

don't know what to tell you shakey, i don't know how you can look at the history of china between mao's killing fields and today and not conclude it's a huge success in human well-being. even with all the single-party totalitarian bullshit still there! just look at the numbers.

xp US banks in the 19th cent owned all of europe's debt while our exports ruined their craft industries. just roll with it comrade!

The more I read about Eisenhower (and by him; his journals are gripping, if you like this sort of thing), the more I admire his refusal to get more aggressive with the Communists, despite the right's nudges (and the Democrats!).

Thanks to him though we have an empowered CIA, charged with fighting the secret wars to which Eisenhower would not commit the military.

i don't know how you can look at the history of china between mao's killing fields and today and not conclude it's a huge success in human well-being.

it's a normative success, sure, I just don't think you can attribute that to Nixon (of all people). Seems perfectly realistic to me that had Mao not been legitimized by Nixon, he would have been murdered/pushed out and more pragmatic heads would have prevailed even sooner. Maybe even sans all the gangster-totalitarian party nonsense.

also I don't really see how China's success in and of itself is beneficial to the US. cuz in some ways it kinda hasn't been. They own our debt AND destroyed our exports, or have you noticed that everything you are wearing, sitting on, typing on, and living in was probably made in China.

They own our debt AND destroyed our exports, or have you noticed that everything you are wearing, sitting on, typing on, and living in was probably made in China.

tbh this is capitalism. It woulda happened if, say, Chad had three billion underpaid workers and future consumers.

funny how well a bunch of purported "communists" understood that, eh

(I don't count Mao among their number btw, mostly his successors)

Reaching out to China was more of a let's get things 'normal' thing and a way, following Vietnam and Korea, to open channels of communication w/a regional power. Plus it scared and pissed off the Russians.

Deng is the one who liberalized the economy.

Nixon claimed at the time that "opening a channel" to China would persuade her to stop helping the NVA, which was nonsense -- China had soured on Vietnam for at least three years.

a way, following Vietnam and Korea, to open channels of communication w/a regional power

tbh this is all Mao wanted to begin with - legitimacy - and needling the Americans via those wars was simply grandstanding to this end, akin to the sabre-rattling Kim Jong Il does. He was ACTING like a regional power in the interest of achieving international legitimacy and power. He didn't give two shits whether the North Vietnamese or North Koreans won (and reportedly hated the North Korean regime from the get-go, complained about and denied their requests for greater support, etc.)

And yet, if Obama arranged a secret meeting to meet face-to-face with Kim Jong Il (whose basically like Mao 2.0, only shittier and less powerful) and say "yeah dude, yr okay, let's have some trade and btw you can keep doing whatever crazy shit yr doing within your own borders, what do I care) I dunno if I would view that as a good thing.

(and reportedly hated the North Korean regime from the get-go, complained about and denied their requests for greater support, etc.)

What?!

What about late 1950?!

I've only read a couple books about Mao (neither of which I have on-hand at the moment, one of which is this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao:_The_Unknown_Story, which I know has been controversial) but yeah that's my general recollection, I don't recall specifics at the moment

iirc Mao was eager to use the Koreans as a proxy to provoke the Americans, but he wasn't interested in actually sacrificing precious resources. he promised Jong Il a lot, but he didn't deliver on a lot of it. He wanted to project the appearance of a regional power without having to actually pay any price for it.

Basically, MacArthur thought the PVA wouldn't intervene and was pushing up the peninsula ready to defeat the KPA and take over the North when he ran into the PVA and had to retreat.

That's the problem-- it wasn't a tough decision for Truman. His attitude was "hey, we've got a great new weapon to kill some Japs with."

I've read lots of books on Nixon, and a few on Johnson and Clinton, but I think just one on Truman, the Merle Miller book. That was many years ago, so I have no recollection of how Truman's decision was portrayed. I skipped around a bit on the web, and you seem to be more or less right--he was pretty steadfast in his intent to use it, and never recanted afterwards. About the closest I came to finding some equivocation was this:

Yet to a senator who, after the Hiroshima bombing, had urged continued attacks until the Japanese were brought "groveling to their knees," the president replied: "I can't bring myself to believe that, because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in the same manner." Indeed, after the Nagasaki bombing, Truman reportedly told his cabinet members that there would be no more such attacks because he could not bear the thought of killing "all those kids."

But just because he was adamant in his actions, I have to believe that in his thoughts, if not in his public utterances, he was aware of the moral weight of what he was doing. You make him sound like a kid playing a video game, and call me naive but I just don't believe that.

Also: Truman was shrewd about his give'em-hell-Harry public facade, which Merle Miller does his best to preserve without once probing.

I can't rank Truman very high because, beyond his executive order desegregating his armed forces (rooted in his "inherent" Comm in Chief powers) his domestic achievements are nil. His SCOTUS appointments, including chief justice, were a total joke too.

Nixon definitely the most fun to read about - Nixonland, All the President's Men, The Boys on the Bus, The Selling of the President, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail - but not someone I'd vote for here. Hard to set aside Republican-hate and objectively recognise Reagan's achievements. Conversely, fond of Carter but he was objectively a disaster. I feel that my in-depth knowledge is too localised: mainly 1960-1974 and 1990>

The reevaluation of Truman as a near-great president is a result of presidents stepping into the Oval Office and realizing what super-cool powers he bequeathed them.

After Nixon, Reagan most fascinates me. The ultimate Jay Gatsby: the man from nothing whose soul was a compendium of Reader's Digest anecdotes, Hollywood stories, and some Hayek for spice, with spectacular PR skills. I give him credit for realizing how batshit his foreign policy advisers and trusting Gorby, going so far as to reach an agreement at Reyjavik to categorically -- to the horror of his advisers -- ban ALL strategic nuclear weapons. You should read Reagan's press clippings in 1988 -- the likes of Krauthammer, Gingrich, et al thought he was Neville Chamberlain.n

*how batshit his foreign policy advisers WERE

Have you read Lou Cannon's Reagan biography? An amazing piece of work - equally good on his strengths and weaknesses. Only after reading that did I feel I really understood the man and the presidency. His genuine horror of MAD surprised me, having grown up on the 80s left-wing idea that he was basically Slim Pickens at the end of Dr Strangelove.

Yup. Still the best. I'm very, very fond of Edmund Morris' Dutch though. It got a LOT of flak in the late nineties for basically approaching Reagan as if he were a character in a novel, but the transcripts of the chats b/w Morris and Reagan are hilarious, and Morris still writes beautiful narrative prose.

Apparently the turning point happened in 1983: Grenada, Beirut, the shooting down of the Korean airplane, and attending a screening of The Day After.

The way Cannon describes detente with the USSR makes you realise how much luck was involved. Those 1983 events you described > Chernenko dying and letting Gorbachev in > Iran/Contra driving a lot of the hawks out of Reagan's orbit and letting cooler heads prevail.

so let's see some rankings then

After becoming very interested in presidential politics through high school in the late '70s, I tuned out altogether through Reagan. He didn't hold any interest for me whatsoever. All my favourite bands hated him, but he just didn't register. His inaction on AIDs--I seem to recall in the Randy Shilts book that he didn't say the word publically until deaths had reached 50,000--was probably as reprehensible as anything you can pin on anybody else on the list. (Willful inaction, to me, seems like a more grevious transgression among politicians than well-intentioned action that turns out badly.)

Ehhh. I'm gay and don't think it's as reprehensible as you claim, considering that it took the death of Rock Hudson to mobilize any sort of mass public interest in the disease as an epidemic. Reagan was as blinkered as Walter Mondale would have been; nothing in that generation's DNA suggests they would have bee comfortable discussing condoms, gay sex, blood transfusions, etc (that's why congressman and senators around when Roe v Wade was upheld get a pass from me; do you think FDR's second generation of New Dealers were prepared to discuss a woman's right to an abortion?).

Reagan gets some points for appointing C. Everett Koop, who's as conservative as it gets yet recognized the threat from the get-go (and he made some headlines a few years ago for lamenting the Bushies' inattention to science).

Also: Reagan was the first prez to allow an openly gay male couple to spend the night and share a room in the WH, if that means anything (probably not).

But just because he was adamant in his actions, I have to believe that in his thoughts, if not in his public utterances, he was aware of the moral weight of what he was doing. You make him sound like a kid playing a video game, and call me naive but I just don't believe that.

― clemenza, Wednesday, August 4, 2010 10:56 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

Well I think part of it was that Truman was so out of the loop that at first he didn't realize exactly what this weapon was. So when he first heard about it, his feelings were much less complicated by how horrible nuclear weapons are. It was just: hey, we've got a great new weapon!

But there was never any question in his mind over whether they'd use it, AFAIK.

Dubya really stands out on this list as a fucking moron, huh?

I understand your point about generational inertia, but doesn't that also excuse Eisenhower's inaction on civil rights in the '50s? I think Mondale would have been much better than Reagan on that one particular issue--I'm sure he would have finessessed how any kind of governmental action was presented to the public, but I think he would have been much more pro-active. You cut slack for Reagan that you don't (on other threads and on other issues) for Obama--is that because Obama's of a generation that's supposed to know better?

Yeah, I'd like to think that the President of the United States would bother to mention a massive outbreak of a new deadly disease.

tbf it wasn't even really identified as a disease for quite awhile - it was an amorphous set of symptoms that was fatally and disproportionately striking a particular demographic. Montagnier and Gallo didn't identify HIV until 1983.

The difference between Eisenhower and Reagan is seventy years of inaction, inertia, and Supreme Court rulings gutting federal intervention. The NAACP already existed and was a powerful force. Civil rights commanded attention in a way that sympathy for AIDS victims didn't. I'm not excusing either one, btw. It's also worth noting that Reagan adamantly opposed (and even wrote a column) California's proposal to fire gay school teachers in the seventies.

As for Obama, I expect him to know better! He did come of age when gay rights mattered. I also realize that I might judge him differently if the landscape's changed for us in six years.

also: 1983 to 1987 (when Reagan and the surgeon general publicly committed federal funds to resarch) isn't that long, even when it understandably seems so when thousands of victims are dying.

*research

tbf I do think it's fairly unforgivable that Reagan didn't acknowledge AIDS until 1987 after tens of thousands of US citizens had died and the disease had already spread across the world. that this catastrophic failure of the national healthcare system happened on his watch is pretty fucking odious. There were plenty of people pressing for a much stronger national response to the crisis between '83 and '87, and the difference could have meant savings literally millions of lives down the line.

AIDS is one big strike against Reagan, apartheid another which I find even more unforgivable.

anyway, rankings:

Ike tied w/LBJ
Bill Clinton
John F. Kennedy
Jimmy Carter
Gerald R. Ford
Ronald Reagan
Harry S. Truman
George H.W. Bush
Richard M. Nixon
George W. Bush

but yeah all these guys did some loathsome shit, I'm not excited about any of them really

Clinton did a lot of lame shit but at least he didn't annihilate any other countries/embroil us in wars and the economy more or less functioned well

Why Clinton so high? Not that I disagree, just that his failures spring to mind far more readily than his successes. [oh wait, you've just answered that, sort of] And I'm surprised you rate Carter and Ford so highly, but I'm sure there's stuff I'm forgetting.

Really hard not to put George W at the bottom, whichever angle you're coming from.

As the Morris and Cannon biographies stress, by 1987 Reagan was in his early seventies, visibly aging, and his attention only held by (a) negotiating with Gorby (b) freeing the hostages. You could legitimately argue that Alzheimer's was already showing itself. It's a stretch for me to imagine a man of his age and generation to talk openly about gay men and hemophiliacs.

This sounds like I'm forgiving him, but I'm not as outraged. I just don't think any presidential candidate (Ted Kennedy excepted) would have given this crisis an evangelical force. Had Carter won reelection in '80, his political appointees wouldn't have done much either.

Shakes, your list is fascinating. Why Ike tied with LBJ? Why Reagan over Truman?

otoh I hold Reagan responsible for, yes, apartheid, and his batshit Central America policies.

it's more like Carter and Ford were the LEAST BAD as opposed to any good - maybe would've been more reflective of my actual opinion to include a "fuck the rest" category as Alfred did.

I've always kinda had a soft-spot for Jimmy due to his energy czar/"we must pursue renewable energy" schtick, even if it went nowhere. Ford's a jackass but he didn't really do anything bad afaict apart from pardoning Tricky Dick. The bottom four are there for being war-mongers, basically. I give Reagan credit for the Cold War management, which in hindsight really is remarkable. But that's as far as I'll go with him. Reagan never nuked anybody, ergo he beats Truman. In general I'm not down with the American war machine, LBJ's embrace of it is easily his biggest failing - it's just that in his case I think his other accomplishments almost (but only almost) make up for it

x-post

Great bit in the Cannon book where he mixes up El Salvador and Nicaragua when he's talking about who the US is backing. Adds a note of black comedy to the whole cynical mess.

haha -- I have to remind myself too. "Oh, right, El Salvador had the right wing junta ruling, while the Contras were the American-backed militia."

I think I'd rank them like this, with some ambivalence about how to weigh up general ineptitude against real achievements + evil shit. Seems to me that Reagan was in most senses a better president than Carter or Ford, even though he did far more things I disagree with. Otherwise, pro-Dem bias a given.

LBJ
JFK
Ike
Truman
Clinton
Reagan
Carter
Ford
Nixon
Bush Snr
Bush Jnr

man I went full ham on IKe in this thread, eh?

haha and apparently back in 2010 i voted for ike in this poll! not really sure who i'd go for now.

still think he's the least worst, and that anecdote cited in LGM has been refuted in a few places; Earl Warren and Ike did not get along.

If you re-polled this with Obama...my guess would be third, but I still don't know how Jimmy Carter got 8 votes, so who knows. Carter's presidency was not successful by almost any measure, starting with the simple fact of a serious challenge within his own party and losing in a landslide.

I bought this as a remainder when I needed something to read with coffee (the two are inseparable, and I'd left whatever I was already reading at work). Started it, but because of its length, I wasn't sure I'd keep going.

http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1441042033l/14821639.jpg

Excellent, as it turns out. It's an overview starting with Teddy Roosevelt, one chapter per president (Harding and Ford and a couple of others get folded into other chapters), with the central point that the modern presidency--the power accrued to the presidency--returns (with a vengeance) with TR, after a parade of non-entities post-Lincoln. Probably well known if you're American; I'm not. I remember Frank Kogan once derisively nicknamed another rock critic (he's still around, so I'll leave his name out of it) John "Overview" Smith--loved that, but overviews have their uses. Leuchtenburg writes with a lot of humour, or at least summons forth lots of funny anecdotes and quotes (Truman's "Senator Halfbright"). And you can spot just about everyone from the recent past 60, 70, 100 years ago: "That's Palin...that's Obama...that's Clinton."

I read it last summer and agree with the thumbs up. Check out his brief Hoover bio published in 2009.

I thought some of the funniest stuff had to do with the Harding/Coolidge/Hoover sequence. "Keep Warren at home. Don't let him make any speeches. If he goes out on a tour somebody's sure to ask him questions, and Warren's just the sort of damn fool that will try to answer them"--Palin! I came away liking Taft and Harding, two guys who clearly didn't want the job.

the roaring 20s!

I knew Eisenhower had a poor civil rights record--alluded to that in an early post on this thread--but I thought that was primarily a matter of misguided inaction, of just hoping the issue would magically go away. But going by Leuchtenburg's book (which seems to me to be about as even-handed as these things get), he was much worse than that--his inaction, his actions, his words and attitudes.

No rhetoric for Ike, just following the law, and he let Nixon and LBJ take the lead in getting the '58 civil rights bill through the Dixiecrat-dominated Senate. One of the frustrations of Ike is how he never risked his enormous popularity on anything noteworthy.

Something I've never come across before: Oliver Jensen, around the time Eisenhower was leaving office, recasting the first two sentences of the the Gettysburg Address into Eisenhower-ese. I realize deadpan wasn't invented yesterday, but there's something about the tone here that feels very modern. As funny as Tina Fey as Palin:

I haven’t checked these figures but 87 years ago, I think it was, a number of individuals organized a governmental set-up here in this country, I believe it covered certain Eastern areas, with this idea they were following up based on a sort of national independence arrangement and the program that every individual is just as good as every other individual. Well, now, of course, we are dealing with this big difference of opinion, civil disturbance you might say, although I don’t like to appear to take sides or name any individuals, and the point is naturally to check up, by actual experience in the field, to see whether any governmental set-up with a basis like the one I was mentioning has any validity and find out whether that dedication by those early individuals will pay off in lasting values and things of that kind.

(Leuchtenburg cuts the excerpt off there; there's more at http://powellhistory.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/if-eisenhower-had-given-the-gettysburg-address/.)