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

yeah I mean I fully understand that geeks will make lists and I am part of that culture, I guess I just expect better of academics and probably shouldn't.

tbh I was almost a historian and I never really liked ranking stuff. I mean I have my favorite guys/things to read about (medical education; shifts in the idea of what a physician was supposed to know and do and be; Lyndon Baines Johnson; Los Angeles; trying to extract cultural meaning from why popular media were so popular at any given time; how communities respond to the presence of sudden epidemic disease; etc etc etc), but there's also all kinds of material that I just don't have any inherent interest in (almost everything in intellectual history and military history, primarily), which kinda forced me to acknowledge that any say I had would be limited to how the thing I was ranking overlapped with what I knew about it. I could never ever rank like 1-44, but I will stan for Washington and FDR and Polk and LBJ, and make my case for pre-stroke Wilson (acknowledging that he was super-racist), and then I can make snarky comments about all the 1850s Presidents being terrible and Grant being drunk and Harding being stupid, but what can you even do with the middle?

Also whenever you rank Presidents you end up having a couple of inevitable arguments about whether you punish the older dudes for being obscenely but appropriate-for-the-time racist, and whether it matters more whether a guy did what he set out to accomplish or whether the things he accomplished were actually good things. Like I think James K Polk may be the most successful President of all time at having a plan and achieving it, but that plan involved taking a whole shitload of land from Mexico; if a President pulled that kind of crap today they would be pilloried. But I like reading about James K Polk and am very happy that California ended up in the United States. Plus it is impossible to measure the added degree of difficulty of being a post-WWII President compared to being a 19th century President.

otm

looking at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States

truman and jfk get more love from historians than they do here

oh and reagan, which I always found o_O

but I guess they're all trying to be the 'did he accomplish his goals' historians. also strange how his ranking seems to be improving over time.

ages ago, i would've been a Woodrow Wilson stan too (kinda hard not to be if you grow up around Princeton and are reminded almost daily of the fact that he was the President of the university and shit). even then, i knew he was kinda racist but i wrote that off to his being a man of his times. it was only later that i found out just how over-the-top his racism was even for his times -- and then there was his self-destructive streak regarding the League of Nations.

also, i don't think that people here were simply voting on the basis of "did he accomplish his goals." no-one would deny that Reagan was very damn effective at getting shit done -- it's just that no-one here seemed to LIKE the shit that he did (and rightly so from my point-of-view anyway).

Right, but the racism is the fourth or fifth most offensive thing about him, far behind manipulating public opinion into a senseless war, another quasi one in Mexico, and signing the Espionage Act. We owe him for the FTC, the Federal Reserve, minimum wage legislation, and a couple of other bones tossed at liberals, but he was a self-righteous prig too.

what was the senseless war woodrow wilson manipulated the public into supporting?

put differently: do you mean ww1?

World War I!

On this day...

1974 – The Watergate scandal: Richard Nixon became the first (and to date only) President of the United States to resign from office.

Surprised that LBJ outshines JFK so thoroughly here compared to what the historians tend to say. Is the backlash so well-established that the former most overrated president is now seriously underrated (at least itt)?

Historians seem to rate Bush Sr, too - still not sure why.

That Wikipedia page makes me want to read a lot more about US history.

JFK's accomplishments are minor and almost entirely cosmetic.

I agree, but what do you think is at the root of his support on those lists? must be his 'image'?

He was expert at stroking the egos of journalists.

Write-up for his number 11 placing in the London Times poll doesn't seem v persuasive:

Kennedy had a troubling and not entirely successful foreign policy record that included the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the escalation of the Vietnam War.

His radical domestic reputation was built on intervention in Alabama to uphold desegregation, his civil rights speeches and rhetorical support for the space programme. He had actually passed very little in the way of funding or legislation when he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, leaving him just shy of our top ten.

"Restored the romance." Ben Macintyre, writer-at-large.

"Restored the romance." Ben Macintyre, writer-at-large.

^^ says it all, doesn't it.

He looked real purdy.

Part of a leader's job is to inspire, right? So if Kennedy inspired a generation to the degree that they still swoon over him 50 years later--rightly or wrongly--I wouldn't just discount that as cosmetic. To me, that's a real achievement.

And, to be fair, I have to cross my fingers, hold my breath, and give Reagan credit for the same thing.

So if Kennedy Reagan inspired a generation to the degree that they still swoon over him 50 years later--rightly or wrongly--I wouldn't just discount that as cosmetic

haha -- yeah. Didn't see your post.

a lot of this inspiration comes from the fact that he was assassinated / died young, but that really isn't an achievement. if he had a 2nd term + vietnam fully on his back I can't imagine he'd be any more of an 'inspiration to a generation' than lbj was

JFK inspired people all over the world, Reagan inspired no-one outside of the US - apart maybe form the occasional Central American death squed. And please don't try to tell he inspired anyone in Eastern Europe.

yeah but tupac and jim morrison and james dean also inspire people all over the world, for essentially the same reasons

I beg to differ, Tom. In my neck of the woods I've met a few dissidents (Poles, one Ukrainian) who've explicitly praised Reagan's Evil Empire speech because, according to them, it was a shock to hear the decadence of their regimes described without equivocation.

a lot of this inspiration comes from the fact that he was assassinated / died young, but that really isn't an achievement.

I'd have to brush up on Kennedy's time in office, but my sense is that this isn't true--that he was already deeply revered by the 40 or 50% of the country that was with him before he was killed. That the assassination deepened the reverence (and that he was deeply hated by a lot of people), yes.

yeah but like I said, that reveration was partly due to him not living long enough to deal w/ a lot of things.

http://dailybail.com/storage/Bill%20Clinton%20Kennedy%20Arnie%20Sachs.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1248332643819

He looks awestruck. Mind you, it's possibile he's just spotted a nice-looking redhead off in the distance.

yeah but like I said, that reveration was partly due to him not living long enough to deal w/ a lot of things.

Will agree with that. More generally, I wonder how much Johnson and Eisenhower finishing on top of this poll is a function of how far gone they are. Seeing presidents up close and day-by-day--which in terms of the people who voted, probably mostly amounted to Reagan forward--just isn't pretty.

how hard would it be to find a picture of some young conservative awestuck w/ dubya? let's say dubya gets assassinated a month after 9/11 - he goes down as a more popular president than jfk and potentially lives on as an inspiring figure to a very large group of people.

yeah but tupac and jim morrison and james dean also inspire people all over the world, for essentially the same reasons

Yes, but he inspired people before he died (a bit like those other fine fellows you mentioned perhaps!)

Trying not to make comparisons with Obama here...

Thank god I was born late enough to dismiss JFK's douchebaggery.

That Clinton pic reminded me of:

http://graphics.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/images/day1/top.jpg

I have decided that jfk is the jim morrison of presidents

I posted the picture for the sake of the joke; I think the evidence of Kennedy's effect on under-25s when he came into to office is all over the place. But sure, timing is everything; you could probably find a cut-off point for every presidency where you could say, if he left office today he'd be looked back upon as a success. The worse the presidency, the earlier the cut-off.

c'mon c'mon shoot me baby, can't you see that I am not afraid

It's a function of age, I suppose, but a boring Midwesterner like Ike with no angst, animated by a belief in competence and a genuine lack of ego fascinates me a lot more than JFK's canned charisma.

I have decided that jfk is the jim morrison of presidents

Undoubtedly but then I like Jim Morrison (the rock singer, not the "poet" or shaman or human being for that matter)

Canned? Really? I was born in '61, so have no first-hand memory of Kennedy, but he seems very charismatic to me in footage.

I dunno this is like sportswriters arguing about 'intangibles' - maybe he absolutely did inspire a generation pre-death - but I don't think it's a stretch to say that he would be losing a lot of that inspiration within a few years.

I'm almost finished with The Time of Illusions, the first-rate book on Nixon recommended by J.D. upthread, and its epilogue constructs a narrative of executive expansion; JFK's speeches – reminding people how dangerous the times were and we must always be on our guard, etc – just seem heinous to me. "Inspiring," I suppose, but it's a siren's call. How many men would he send to their deaths in Southeast Asia swollen with a belief in American exceptionalism and our ability to Fix Every Problem?

obama is probably the best comparison - and I mean he still *is* inspiring to millions of people in america and across the world - but it's also pretty clear that he was even more of an inspiring figure before he was the guy who had to start making decisions and taking responsibility.

That's what I mean about the up-close and day-by-day swamp of any presidency...I hesitate to bring this up, because we'll end up going around in circles, but pinning Vietnam on Kennedy while (if I'm remembering correctly) voting LBJ second or third seems unfair. According to Wikipedia (sorry, lazy), Kennedy left office with 16,300 troops in Vietnam, with a draw-down of 1,000 by December on the table. By '68, Johnson had upped that to 550,000. I don't want to argue the ins and outs of the war, not sitting in Toronto in 2010. I just think your words are better directed at Johnson than Kennedy.

I think the LBJ voters here - or at least, speaking for myself - were going on a 'highest high' basis more than anything else. eisenhower voters prolly more of a 'overall presidency' and carter voters...I dunno, 'nicest democrat'.

And please don't try to tell he inspired anyone in Eastern Europe.

his influence gets overstated by Republican flunkies, who subsequently downplay Eastern Europeans' own efforts (and at least as far as my Polish relatives are concerned they hold Bush Sr. in higher regard than Reagan), and i'm no Reagan apologist ... but Reagan kind of did inspire some Eastern Europeans.

there's an argument that the kennedy-approved coup that led to diem's assassination was the rubicon for america in vietnam. hard to say, though.

xpost

I think the LBJ voters here - or at least, speaking for myself - were going on a 'highest high' basis more than anything else. eisenhower voters prolly more of a 'overall presidency'

otm

and yeah, i voted for LBJ: he was committed to social justice in a way that reads to me as more true and earnest than anyone else: was working on civil rights in the senate in the 50s before jfk was even a thing, and got through jfk's rights bill (which jfk would have been harder pressed to do, i think.)

there is also the fact that i find his species of interpersonal aggression and douchebaggery massively impressive, though i possibly shouldn't.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/18/Lbj-green.jpg

whereas jfk's brand of douchebaggery i find overpriveleged and frattish and kind of shitty. (guy was basically a complete cunt to women his entire life; for this reason i kind of have trouble with claims for his charm & capacity to inspire.) (should post the clinton photo again here.)