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

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.)

(and yeah, i know lyndon was basically a shit to lady bird as well)

also: the Kennedy people (including Bobby) treated LBJ like shit while he was VP – saw him as a brontosaurus politician out of step with the New Frontier.

George W. Bush 3

joek? weird lurkers?

― iatee, Sunday, August 8, 2010 6:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

^^^

i didn't end up voting. i just felt there was too much i'm not familiar enough with.

like this:

View of Jimmy Carter and his Presidency

That was a reader request. Matt Yglesias offers some background, as does Kevin Drum. On the plus side there was airline deregulation, support for Volcker and disinflation (later), willingness to lose the Presidency to see disinflation through, and he didn't push for a large number of Democratic ideas that I would disagree with, though he did create the Department of Education. Recall that he came from a party of McGovern and Kennedy and you can think of him as a precursor of the better side of the Clinton administration. Price controls on energy were a big mistake and that idea is hard to justify.

I'll call his support for the Afghan rebels a plus, because it helped down the Soviet Union, but I can see how you could argue that one either way. His conservation efforts could be called mamby-pamby but still they were a step in the right direction. He gave amnesty to Vietnam draft dodgers, a plus in my book, as was giving away the Panama Canal and bribing Egypt into better behavior.

At the time I thought Carter was a reasonably good President and it was far from obvious to me that the election of Reagan would in net terms boost liberty or prosperity.

I do understand that he was a public relations disaster and he shouldn't have fired his entire Cabinet and that he botched the Iran invasion.

Still, I think of Carter as a President with some major pluses and overall I view his term as a step in the right direction. He also seems to have been non-corrupt -- important so soon after Watergate -- and since leaving office he has behaved honorably and intelligently, for the most part.

Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 8, 2010 at 09:29 PM

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/08/view-of-jimmy-carter-and-his-presidency.html

He also seems to have been non-corrupt -- important so soon after Watergate

haha kinda sad to actually have to list this

That the people who voted LBJ weighed his overall achievements against Vietnam is, I should point out, a good thing. Very different from the way he's treated by people in his party running for office today, where he's still mostly relegated to the margins. During the '08 convention, I remember them talking on CNN about how strange it was that there was no acknowledgement on the floor of LBJ's birthday.

20th century major progressive achievements are basically taken for granted - the narrative of social security isn't really 'yay FDR' it's 'oh shit this is an expensive beast how are we gonna pay for it, deficits, deficits' - same w/ the great society stuff and LBJ.

100th birthday, I should have said--that's why the omission was so bizarre.

Yeah, Dems really should hit that stuff harder IMO - "imagine a world before these things...", I mean it's meat-and-potatoes base-rallying stuff but if you go through the poll options here just in terms of "great, enduring achievements in domestic policy that we can't imagine not having today, or wish to god we had back again," the Dem record looks pretty good.

see, this is why i didn't vote. i feel like i didn't know enough past the very basics on all of these individuals. this is super interesting to me, and potentially hugely important

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/08/somewhere_mitch_mcconnell_is_s.html

Coincidentally, I've been reading Nelson Polsby's "How Congress Evolves," which focuses on changes in the House of Representatives during the '40s and '50s and '60s. People forget this, but back then it was the House, rather than the Senate, that was the primary impediment to liberal legislation. The Rules Committee, which was led by an arch-segregationist, could kill legislation on its own and did so regularly.

This led to the predictable circular firing squad, as everyone spent a lot of time arguing over who deserved the blame for the failure of these bills. But it wasn't until John F. Kennedy came into office and partnered with Speaker Sam Rayburn to reform the Rules Committee that the underlying situation changed (and I'll note that you never hear people demanding that the Rules Committee regain its power to hold legislation).

Oh yeah, that was a big deal, and even then JFK's entire legislative agenda stalled.

Did you study post-war US politics Alfred or are you just very, very interested? Because I'm slightly in awe of the detail of your responses itt.

thank you! Naw, I study this stuff on my own: I'm a history and lit guy.

yeah impressively knowledgable, but then 'literate' americans should be at least fairly well read re their imperial apogee

might have voted truman here but don't know enough about his domestic work

Terrible at dusting, average at sweeping/vacuuming, pretty handy with laundry and ironing, tended to break dishes when cleaning up after dinner.

I will at least give JFK credit for not incinerating a third of the human race in Oct '62, which I feel confident Nixon and Gen. LeMay would've managed.

Le May did want to attack Cuba during the CMC.

and Dick would've said Go!

Probably. The Russian field commanders had been given authority to launch, too.

today is 50th anniv of Ike's "military industrial complex" warning.

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-military-expansion-50-years-later

I find it curious that Eisenhower is not more widely lionized in the modern day GOP. Democrats are more than happy to cite FDR, so I don't think it's strictly a "too long ago" thing.

like, Ike presided over the golden era of white male Xtian privilege, battled communists, um liked playing golf...

no major scandals or disasters on his watch (unless you count ignoring civil rights, which is entirely legit)

doesn't morbs' revive show how eisenhower's reputation is more complicated than fdr's?

Ike presided over the golden era of white male Xtian privilege, battled communists, um liked playing golf... = any of the presidents itt, not really buying the mendesite clichés of the fifties as some singularly untroubled age

A complicated legacy.

A first-rate, brief account of a forgotten episode in Cold War geopolitics: the Suez crisis. Eisenhower emerges as a master strategist and politician. The book takes advantage of thousands of pages of declassified meeting minutes, notes, diplomatic memoranda, etc. It's fascinating to think that even the CIA thought that the Dulles bros -- Allen at CIA, John Foster at State -- positioned Ike as a smiling figurehead while they ran foreign policy, when actually Ike wrote every memo and delivered every order. After reading this, I'm almost tempted to toss my vote for LBJ aside.

That looks really good...will have to check it out!

Quite good:

http://img2.imagesbn.com/images/144490000/144498918.JPG

http://img2.imagesbn.com/images/144490000/144498918.JPG

so nice you posted it twice, huh

once for each american!

yes

Mo Dowd, waxing nostalgic over Poppy.

some kind of dimwit convergence going on when liberals are starting to love bush pere and conservatives, clinton.