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

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.

era of bipartisan consensus iirc

luckily the Clinton years were devoid of partisan sniping

A review of the Poppy doc.

Bush I was "liberal" in some ways from today's perspective, Clinton conservative/corporatist from almost any.

LBJ. Did not expect that.

Fuck the lot of them but fuck Jimmy Carter most of all for the whitewashing of his record.

? why does alfred's link go to this thread?

it's self-referential!

http://tv.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/arts/television/41-george-h-w-bush-documentary-on-hbo.html?ref=arts

Jean Edward Smith's new Eisenhower: In War and Peace is so far the best definitive bio on Ike I've read. Thanks to his knowledge of U.S. Grant, Smith is able to compare and contrast the general's performance historically. He's also written the first thorough analysis of Ike's tenure as president of Columbia.

About to start the presidential years.

This looks like fun: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/books/review/ike-and-dick-by-jeffrey-frank.html?ref=review

read "this" a couple days ago: one of the best popular histories I've read (Frank is a novelist). I agree with Russell Baker's judgment: it's impossible to regard Ike's insistent contempt for the young Dick Nixon without feeling a wee bit sorry for the bastard.

IDK if there's a better thread to put this in, but I found this interview with the author of a new book on the Dulles Brothers fascinating:

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/16/234752747/meet-the-brothers-who-shaped-u-s-policy-inside-and-out

What really struck me was that you had a guy openly saying that the entire goal of US foreign policy at the time was to cynically further the interests of US corporations -- the kind of stuff you'd expect to hear on Pacifica but not on an NPR station.

^^^Yeah, the NYTBR piece on that Dulles book last week began "If you want to know why the US is hated across the globe," read it.

The critic also wrote that Truman abjured interfering in/toppling foreign govts, but Ike was gung ho -- I guess that's true. So fuck rehabilitating the general.

Ike in essence empowered the CIA. It got him out of invading Iran, Hungary, and so on.

some fairly harsh commentary on ike (and a p disturbing story in the initial post) in this LGM thread:

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/03/eisenhower-2

https://graphiq-stories.graphiq.com/stories/5037/ranking-presidents-least-most-conservative#13-Overall-Ideology-Comparison

that chart has some v strange results -- clinton and even carter as 'more liberal' than LBJ is hard to figure.

omigod I was just about to post this

re the Ike link.

I don't agree with this:

When you say you like Eisenhower, a lot of what you are saying is that you would have preferred to live in the 1950s, even if you are doing that unconsciously and only mean it in terms of the issues you are considering.

ha yeah as i think someone said in the comments, i like FDR but that doesn't mean i want to live during the depression.

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."