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

keep the south if they don't, I mean

Political parties reconstitute their DNA every fifty years or so. At the turn of the century Progressivism had homes in both parties (in the Dem' populist Bryanist wing and eventual exploitation by Wilson) but eventually joined the Republican party until its total collapse in 1920. If you wanted to be small p progressive before 1932 you were a Republican.

don't disagree with that, but by 'realize' I mean those people were a tad behind the times? like by lbj/goldwater they should have realized who was serving their...interests

I realize that a phenomenon as complex as Progressivism is impossible to compress.

I blame Taylor Branch for making me like Lyndon Johnson as much as I do. Hearing the tapes where Johnson and MacNamara and everyone else actively realize that escalating involvement in Vietnam would almost certainly end badly are really frustrating, though; I mean I guess it is good that they did not believe going into Vietnam was actually a good idea (whereas I would be legit shocked if there ever turn out to be tapes from 2002-03 where Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld actively doubt the Iraq war strategy), but still, hearing those is a pretty good way to kill whatever whatever tiny shred of faith you have remaining that the President isn't lying to you. But I seriously like reading about LBJ as much as any American leader ever; at some point if I ever have free time again, I am going to try and read all the Robert Caro books.

I respect Nixon's political skill immensely, maybe more than any other president, even, but he was a pretty awful person, and also there's the whole Cambodia thing.

back to the main subject, I think the best way to look at this is sorta counterfactually...'value over replacement president' sorta...

like, ike comes out on or near the top of most of our lists, but (as president) he didn't have to deal w/ the types of things many of these presidents did. how would have he been in a crisis presidency?

also - this might not be a huge surprise but I'm not a huge fan of the long-term effects of the interstate highway program

otoh despite clinton's failures, would, I dunno, jerry brown have done a better job in his place?

Looking at it that way Ford and Carter were dealt bad hands - could anyone have excelled in the late 70s? - and Clinton didn't do nearly enough with eight years of peace and prosperity.

depends on how much of the responsibility for the republican revolution you'd put on his back

only a Democrat could preside and approve of NAFTA, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, rampant deregulation, welfare reform, and the bombing of a Sudanese pill factory

I don't give a shit about blowjobs, but this is the kind of stuff I have a really hard time forgiving. otoh they are kinda less bad than the indiscriminate murder of tens of thousands of people so...

What was Ike doing during the McCarthy era?

like, ike comes out on or near the top of most of our lists, but (as president) he didn't have to deal w/ the types of things many of these presidents did. how would have he been in a crisis presidency?

He really did have a crisis presidency though: Korea was still going on at his inauguration, a stalemate into which we can collapse many of the elements of the national security state that Truman bequeathed to Ike and whose super executive powers no president had to deal with. Then there was Quemoy and Matsuo, a crisis over two islands off the Chinese coast over which most of the nat'l security establishment was prepared to go to war, and which Ike, to his credit, resisted.

On the domestic front, as the first GOP guy elected since 1928 he faced any number of temptations to dismantle the welfare state created by FDR, and didn't. I don't think this is something to sneeze at. He recognized its worth and collaborated with the Dems in Congress to preserve it.

I recognize that Ike's achievements are mostly negative in the sense that he rarely exerted naked authority, but he exploited his immense prestige to a greater degree than any president until Reagan.

I bought a Woodward book thinking it was the story of the Clinton years and turned out it was just a blow-by-blow account of year one. Having read that, I think Clinton blew it from the start.

What was Ike doing during the McCarthy era?

Hated his guts, actually, but he recognized the man's popularity and his stranglehold on the GOP, so he bided his time, which looked like waffling to liberals. This is where the famous "hidden hand" theory of Ike's presidency comes into play: he actually manipulated Nixon into eroding McCarthy's power base in the Senate, then as it started happening Ike's public statements got more and more critical.

looking at the list, I can think of a bigger 'crisis' for everyone but...clinton? xp

not saying he had it easy, no american president does or ever will, but compared to 9/11, cuban missile crisis, stagflation...

I like Ike's quip after McCarthy's fall from grace about McCarthyism becoming McCarthywasm. Not a fan then.

might be of interest to note that by all accounts Ike loathed Nixon - he used him as an attack dog (pretty much the only job for which Nixon was suited) and otherwise let him hang out to dry

Looking at it that way Ford and Carter were dealt bad hands - could anyone have excelled in the late 70s?

Carter's problem was his awful relationship with Congress – I mean, stuff as petty as not giving Tip O'Neill's family tickets to the inauguration. Then he would send a blizzard of legislation to the Hill without explaining what he wanted or working the phone to finesse this or that reluctant congressman. He was also by all accounts a micromanager and nasty to anyone not part of his Georgian inner circle.

It's quite possible that a Muskie, Mo Udall, or McGovern might have survived the post-Watergate years.

My reevaluation of Ike started to happen upon reading Garry Wills' Nixon Agonistes, which has a superb blow-by-blow account of how shittily Ike treated Nixon for eight years (and then refused until the last moment to endorse him for president!).

he still could have *actually* prevented him from having a political future though

though I dunno I'd probably put nixon in the upper half of this list?

Ike and LBJ:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlKu9t9Q9x8

If you hate Reagan that much, why so fond of Nixon?

cause he wasn't as damaging to the country as he was to the republicans (or as many of these people)

I suppose Reagan is the equivalent of Thatcher, tho no-one near as awful

I dunno – under Nixon we lost another 20,000 soldiers in Vietnam, more in Cambodia, and the gutting of the Justice Dept and FBI.

outside of letting "one nation 'under God'" slip in, I have very few problems with Eisenhower. probably the most 'decent' dude on this list outside of Carter maybe.

eh carter is 'decent' in the same way many religious leaders are

Carter has always seemed petty and mean in person, esp. when as president

huh. i'm admittedly pretty ignorant about him.

xpost, gotcha

like, honestly does care about poor people, I'm sure, but mentally stubborn and stuck in his ways to the extent that it doesn't and didn't really matter how much he 'cares'

okay so like I said, take these guys outside of history and just look at them purely on their decision making philosophy and abilities. how many of these guys would have made the right decisions in vietnam? I dunno.

who would you want in charge of a relatively easy and prosperous decade? some sort of 1950s/1990s hybrid.

who would you want in charge during the opposite? 9/11 + the current recession, let's say.

who would you want in charge of a relatively easy and prosperous decade? some sort of 1950s/1990s hybrid.
- lbj

who would you want in charge during the opposite? 9/11 + the current recession, let's say.
- clinton maybe

xpost. I'm influenced by Rick Perlstein's reading that Nixon introduced cancerous tendencies into US politics - the politics of resentment - and set about demonising and sabotaging his opponents like nobody before him (or at least nobody 20C) so I blame him for a lot of the bullshit conservative talking points that we still have to put up with. And his one big achievement, China, he largely owed to Kissinger.

Also the argument that he sabotaged the Paris peace talks in order to win in 68 and thus cost the US its best (though by no means guaranteed) chance to end the war early.

Harry S. Truman - I understand the ambivalence but he gets very high marks from me for not fucking up at one of the most important and decisive points in modern history. Also, going out on a limb alone and integrating the military is the beginning of the modern civil rights era and it won him almost nothing.

Lyndon B. Johnson - Dramatically failed presidency that also brought us, largely through his own scrotum crushing coarseness, Civil Rights bill, Medicare, etc...

Ronald Reagan - Whatever else can be said of the man (whom I always loathed), he was instrumental in ending the Cold War.

Dwight D. Eisenhower - A man of great decency

George H.W. Bush - The last "conservative" who had a somewhat sane view on the economy. His respect for and restraint wrt to UN mandate in Iraq always made me salute him.

John F. Kennedy - At the end of the day, his legacy is mostly Cuban Missile crisis and being an inspiration.

Jimmy Carter - Taught me back in the 70's to turn the light out when I left a room. An immensely decent man imho.

Bill Clinton - I'm not terribly fond of him or his legacy but he's not the worst.

Richard M. Nixon - Tricky Dick was always just that. I cannot think of many nice things to say about him and his affect on American politics has been largely disastrous.

George W. Bush - A shoot from the hip kind of guy who shot his own foot. From the perspective of his own stated goals or objectively, one of the most spectacularly failed presidents of the modern era.

Gerald R. Ford - This isn't a rating of Gerry; I'm just not rating him. When I was a child, he was just the butt of jokes about his clumsiness. He wasn't elected, did little in office and was an essentially decent man even if he didn't know shit about Poland.

ha i'm woefully ignorant of a lot of this... i was gonna suggest a parallel poll of house speakers for the same time period but i know even less about them

Pelosi by a huge, undisputed lead over Hastert, Gingrich, Wright, O'Neill, etc.

Also the argument that he sabotaged the Paris peace talks in order to win in 68 and thus cost the US its best (though by no means guaranteed) chance to end the war early.

I was hoping someone would allude to this – maybe the most barbaric action by a president this century. "Cynical" is too kind.

I guess the thing I see in my list is that Nixon and Shrub pandered so much to their constituencies that they lost control of them. They didn't lead much at all. Clinton is marginally better. Reagan, at least, mostly had the balls to do his thing and seduced a lot of Americans into thinking it was cool.

iatee is right about reagan's awful, awful economics (and as i mentioned somewhere else once, his administration's attitude toward civil liberties/surveillance state stuff is where bush and cheney took their cues), which has to be weighed against his relatively sane foreign policy.

the otherwise benign ford gets a low rating from me for pardoning nixon -- even though it's next to impossible to imagine any judge sending nixon to prison, would've been a pretty strong symbolic victory for the constitution and the rule of law if nothing else.

i guess i'd rate them like this:

eisenhower
carter
LBJ
clinton
JFK
bush I
reagan
ford
truman
nixon
bush II

Maybe it's a sign of my age, but I cannot think less of any major American politician w/as much scorn as I do of Nixon. He was a weasally evil man and he has just caused me to calumniate weasels.

Reagan, at least, mostly had the balls to do his thing and seduced a lot of Americans into thinking it was cool.

I don't consider this a virtue when the thing is a very bad thing!

it's weird I have an almost fondness for nixon, maybe because he's seriously the only person on this list who actually had to suffer for his sins

not in the hell sense, I mean clearly they're all going there

why do you rate Carter so high, J.D.?

(by the way I'm polling early 20th century prez'nits next)

I don't consider this a virtue when the thing is a very bad thing!

The only 'virtue' here is that at least he was more a leader than a panderer.

Pelosi by a huge, undisputed lead over Hastert, Gingrich, Wright, O'Neill, etc.

OTFM I am so proud of Nancy

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3579/3823648109_ae39805082_o.jpg

l-r

america, reagan

http://underwhelmedcomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/newnixon2.jpg

I mean this is very similar logic to why many people voted bush over kerry! I'm fine w/ a panderer, hell, that should probably be in the job description.