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

Whoops – should've included a Morbs option like "Fuck the lot of them."

Ha! What a rogue's gallery. I'll have to think about this...

Ike = best Republican

truman

Ike = best Republican

Maybe the best Democrat too. Apparently the right wing so disgusted him that he tried unsuccessfully to forge a new coalition in 1958 and '60, but it died for want of ideas.

LBJ

if it was fave person i would vote carter though <3

kinda torn between Ike and LBJ

but yeah would have appreciated "fuck 'em all" option

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

LBJ presents a real problem. Contra Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the collapse of the Imperial Presidency happened under LBJ, when he thought he could run a war, the Great Society, and fulminate against RFK at the same time.

I guess the country fluorished most under Eisenhower (unless you were black) and Clinton. Nixon fascinates me the most personally, followed by Johnson. (Clinton and Carter, too; the more neurotic and more prone to the siege mentality some presidents fall into, the more interesting they are as people.) There are major and minor red flags for all of them. Truman is probably viewed as the most down-to-earth and decent of this group, but you immediately have to grapple with Hiroshima. Landmark legislation from Johnson, plus Vietnam. I honestly wouldn't know who to vote for, and with so much of what presidents do shrouded (I believe) in secrecy that takes years and decades to shake loose, it's hard for me to move much beyond the very sophisticated metric of likeability. I may voter later.

agree that Nixon is easily the most fascinating.

Putting Hiroshima aside, I've a lot of problems with Truman. I'm inclined to be merciful because, frankly, FDR's disinclination to keep his third VP fully updated on the subtleties of relations with Stalin and Churchill, or indeed on anything else, strikes me as criminally negligent, especially when I remember that the man knew he was dying. But even assigning Stalin his considerable portion of blame for the collapse of the postwar order, I can't understand Truman, Acheson, et al's obsession with loyalty oaths and building a national security state. We were the most powerful country on earth and we were this paranoid? (this foreshadows Nixon's paranoia after a commanding landslide..sit in your office, depressed, writing grotesque notes on yellow legal pads).

I'd have to brush up on Truman's relationship to the Hiss case, Nixon, and McCarthy. The famous story where he wrote a letter (while in office) to the reviewer who attacked his daughter's singing...a loyal father, probably, but it also sounds like the kind of thing Nixon would have done. I always tell my grade 6 students that Hiroshima was probably the toughest decision any human being has ever had to make. It's the kind of large question I shrink from.

I'd have to brush up on Truman's relationship to the Hiss case, Nixon, and McCarthy. The famous story where he wrote a letter (while in office) to the reviewer who attacked his daughter's singing...a loyal father, probably, but it also sounds like the kind of thing Nixon would have done. I always tell my grade 6 students that Hiroshima was probably the toughest decision any human being has ever had to make. It's the kind of large question I shrink from.

― clemenza, Wednesday, 4 August 2010 18:47 (3 hours ago)

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."

posts totally in character, but I actually think I'd vote obama if he were on the list?

I'll go w/ lbj

putting my realist hat on, i think nixon in china might be the most significant presidential action of any of the dudes listed. i'm tempted to vote for him just for that, all other bullshit considered.

are you fucking kidding me

;)

I dunno, I think you have to do counterfactuals with that one - like, had nixon not done that, not entirely unlikely that someone else does?

My favorite part about Nixon visiting China was Mao and Nixon's mutual admiration for each other's writings.

My problem with honoring Nixon's China move: it's such a who-cares moment. Welcoming a country exiled from the "community of nations" since '49 so that it inevitably/eventually becomes a real market force is not something about which I can get too excited.

I mean, unless you work for Bank of America it's like, "What's it to me?"

billions lifted from poverty, better record on that than LBJ if u ask me. but that credit probably goes to tankdriver Deng and not Nixon anyway...

alfred as a miami thug i thought you'd be cool with severing the communist world in half!! come on

what China gained from Nixon's visit:
- legitimized Mao, and by extension the Communist regime
- seat on the UN Security Council
- legitimization of their claim on Taiwan
- opening of trade, huge influx of cash/investment (that would come back to seriously haunt the US economy in decades to come)

what the US gained from Nixon's visit:
- apart from a huge turd for Nixon to publicly polish in his dotage, nothing

the accounts I've read of Nixon's visit to China paint a seriously laughable picture of the Chinese regime plotting to squeeze everything out of a drunk/out-of-it Nixon and a distracted Kissinger, who were more interested in sampling Chinese hospitality.

x-posts

alfred as a miami thug i thought you'd be cool with severing the communist world in half!! come on

it was already severed in half - Mao and the Soviets hated/distrusted each other

on another note, listen to LBJ flirt with Jackie O:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuq_Z831uk4

billions lifted from poverty, better record on that than LBJ if u ask me

lol have you been to China lately? and yeah would credit this more to post-Mao regimes realizing they had to actually MANAGE the economy rather than routinely starve/massacre the populace, has next to nothing to do with Nixon.

god I forget that she sounded like a ditz.

just like Marilyn eh

Detente is nothing to sneer at

- opening of trade, huge influx of cash/investment (that would come back to seriously haunt the US economy in decades to come)

no way, this is all positive. ok, the coal plants are a problem, but "haunt the US economy" is bs

and no i haven't 'been to china' recently. what are you talking about, year-over-year GDP and living standards climbing like nowhere else on earth, ever? how awful!

My rankings:

LBJ (with considerable unease)
Eisenhower
Bush I
Clinton (really a better Reagan than Reagan)
Reagan
fuck the rest

a country drowning in pollution, people with no political rights to speak of, near slave-labor wages, mass forced migrations = yeah sounds awesome sign me up

but "haunt the US economy" is bs

dude they're propping up our economy by owning all our debt? you think that's a positive economic development?

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

Reagan was in most senses a better president than Carter or Ford, even though he did far more things I disagree with.

That's how I come down too. And I do accept the argument that, the reality to the contrary, Reagan was the most "transformational" prez since FDR. His continued popularity is not something anyone can sneeze at; it reminds me of the love some people's grandparents felt for FDR. And, of course, conservatives (and liberals) have real problems with FDR too.

Not much talk about JFK here, and deservedly, I suppose.

The thing about judging Truman for the atomic bombs is a red herring: after tests in the US, he had been briefed on the likely destruction. He knew it wouldn't be any greater than the Tokyo firestorms that March, but he also knew that (as long as it worked) it would be certain. Tokyo, was a precedent that made Hiroshima and Nagasaki OK. It's only in hindsight (with many of us growing up during Cold War years) that we think that nuclear is substantively different.

eisenhower wins this pretty easily; even his flaws (nixon as VP, CIA coups) seem minor compared to what his successors got away with. of the rest, johnson stands out for his domestic record -- as flawed as the great society was (robert sherrill's "the accidental president," from 1968, is eye-opening on this), it's still a more ambitious set of policies than any other president in history, even FDR, ever tried. on the other hand, he was a lying warmonger and a pretty repellent human being on a personal level. par for the course with presidents, i guess.

i'd rather hang out with truman than most of these guys, but he rates low in my book for illegally waging a war in korea (a pretty unnecessary one in my view, though i'm sure there're plenty of "global strategy" types who disagree), setting the stage for too many of his successors.

what did all those mao-loving students think of nixon/china? funny that nixon didn't seem to see any contradiction in sitting around swapping jokes and compliments with the world's most prominent communist leader whilst accelerating a vicious war allegedly started in order to contain "world communism."

Yeah, I mentioned the Nixon-Mao shit-talking sessions above because it's obvious each found a kindred spirit.

Funny how Ike was for thirty years dismissed as the Reagan of his time, until Stephen Ambrose's (excellent) bio. Dude was the most preternaturally self-possessed prez of the last fifty years.

I agree: Ike, followed, I guess, by WJC. But I can't tell if my dislike of LBJ (as a person) is unfair: his social programs form so much good stuff now taken for granted (esp. Medicaid & Medicare, Higher Ed Act, PBS, NEH, NEA, Wilderness Acts).

Ike:

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

Prescient, eh?

I can't believe it--when in office, I was fixated on many of the same things that drove his enemies round the bend--and I still haven't made up my mind about how he conducted himself in 2008, but I'm going to vote for Clinton. I only feel comfortable voting for someone who was at least in office during my lifetime, and that eliminates Truman and Eisenhower. I'm basically a wishy-washy left/left-centre guy, so that eliminates Ford, Reagan, and Bush I right off the bat; part of my job is to teach kids that it's a good thing to be smart, so that eliminates Bush II. Nixon and Johnson, are, to resort to a cliche, tragically flawed. Carter presided over (very) interesting times, but he just hunkered down and lost control. Kennedy...I have no strong feelings about him one way or the other; my loss, and I think I experienced some of what I missed with Obama in 2008. I think Clinton was in some ways the luckiest guy in the world to see the internet economy take root during his presidency, but the fact is, he left the country in good shape (longer view, hard to say; I've seen some of what led to the recent financial collapse laid at his doorstep, and conservatives will have you believe that 9/11 was all his fault). And I've come full circle on his personal escapades, or, more accurately, how he handled the fallout. I think he was 100% correct to resort to lies and legalisms over something so utterly irrelevant to his job performance, and I can't believe I ever believed otherwise.

and conservatives will have you believe that 9/11 was all his fault).

some liberals will hold him partly accountable, too

My problem with Clinton's lies is how little he offered in recompense. Even though I was eighteen, I was struck by the callousness with which then Gov. Clinton flew back to Arkansas to sign and oversee the death of Ricky Ray Rector just so he could prove he was Tough on Crime. I never fully gave him the benefit of the doubt subsequently.

I only defend him when Republicans bash him. As I hinted upthread, he was a better Reagan than Reagan -- he represented the apotheosis and triumph of Reaganism. Like Nixon and China, 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.

Polls of Americans and non-Americans would be interesting. Don't think the result would be that different 'cept non-Americans wouldn't know much about Truman and Eisenhower and boring guys like Ford

This is true. They're the ones I find hardest to assess.

We were a bit preoccupied with our own problems when Truman was Pres.

Also I suspect Carter presidency seems a bit dull to non-Americans. Even LBJ, who along with Nixon is the most interesting Pres. on the list imo, at the time I doubt he made much impression outside the US except as the guy who took over from JFK (who everyone was in love with)

Even though I was eighteen, I was struck by the callousness with which then Gov. Clinton flew back to Arkansas to sign and oversee the death of Ricky Ray Rector just so he could prove he was Tough on Crime.

But that's the thing--they've all got problems. You just don't escape the presidency without a laundry list of unseemly stuff. You rank LBJ and Eisenhower ahead of Clinton. Did Clinton engage in anything as catastrophic as Vietnam? Or Eisenhower's relucatance to do anything more than the bare minimum on civil rights? (My understanding, anyway, which is why I didn't want to vote for anyone from before I was born--that may be an unfair characterization.) The fact that Clinton's shortcomings are so manifest and so fresh in everyone's memory, yet his presidency is still viewed as largely successful by a majority of Americans, is no small achievement, I think. On the other hand, a) (to repeat) I'm not sure if he was just lucky in terms of the economy, and b) preceding Bush II is a gift in terms of how your own presidency is remembered.

We were a bit preoccupied with our own problems when Truman was Pres.

Marshall Plan and Berlin airlift, yo.

Or Eisenhower's relucatance to do anything more than the bare minimum on civil rights?

Not quite true! His administration lent LBJ considerable assistance in helping pass the Civil Rights Act of 1958, which no one remembers now because subsequent legislation overshadowed it but was the first to break the Solid South's filibuster.

not enough talk about reagan w/r/t economics, more important than anything else he did other than, I guess, his noble decision not to nuke russia. tax cuts were one of the greatest poor->rich wealth transfers in history, fucked the deficit in the long-term, created millions of mini-reagans - like, his effect on the GOP and american economic-thinking is probably as bad the actual things he did.

war on drugs, war on unions, so many ways he fucked millions and millions of people the middle and lower classes in ways that are easily felt ~3 decades later.

carter/ford/jfk types might have been worthless, but impossible to say that they damaged the country like he did in the long-term - even nixon didn't come close. don't care about the history professor 'but did he accomplish his goals?' perspective - other than dubya, he's the worst one here, absoultely, no question imo. could argue he was worse than dubya too.

people *in* the middle and lower classes

This is why ranking them is basically impossible. I was trying to combine objective "effectiveness" with policies I agreed with, when really you'd need two different lists. Putting Reagan in the middle, as I did last night, is a botched compromise really.

It's worthwhile to clarify what you mean "tax cuts" since the history of Reagan's economic policy is tangled and confusing. From what I've read the revisions to the tax code in 1986 were necessary (Clinton then adjusted them so that there was more parity). He also raised taxes twice, in part to cover his ass after the damage wrought in '81. But I agree with you in principle: Cheney's line ("Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter") is the animating principle of the current GOP, despite the fact that Reagan's myth didn't measure up to the reality.

alfred I gotta say you're the most interesting of the ilx grummy old politics dudes. yeah 'tax cuts' was too broad - and while there were some reasonable changes to the tax code (and the inevitable tax hikes) I don't think that there's conclusive evidence that lowering the top rate from 50% was necessary! there are countries operating fine w/ top rates much higher than that.

haha thanks! I'm not that old, although I wanna be.

and I mean, the idea that there even *is* an appropriate tax bracket structure, or system of taxation even, only makes sense if we're all going to agree on a lot of macroeconomics...

haha sorry for calling you old, I suppose you are the youngin among jd and morbs

but back to my overall idea - there isn't a president on that list who has affected american political/economic thinking in the same manner as reagan. we're still playing a game with his rules - and they're awful rules.

maybe nixon and the southern strategy could be arguably up there? but he added fuel to a fire, he didn't create the situation. I don't think a reagan-type politician was inevitable in the 80s. I don't think a dubya-type politician was inevitable in the 00s. but if nixon hadn't been born, the south would still be republican.

No, I agree with Reagan's preeminence – your comments echo what I wrote upthread.

where would you place 2010 obama?

If it sounds like I'm ducking the question, I am! His term hasn't ended yet.

but if nixon hadn't been born, the south would still be republican.

do you think so? nixon picked up the pieces LBJ broke apart, arguably. is it possible the dixiecrats/wallace could have made an enduring though regional political party? maybe all nixon did was save the two party system

put in this sorta perspective he's like a mini-lbj right now...successes aren't as epic, failures aren't either. I think his margin looks better than lbj's though. xp

Afghanistan and Iraq still major, volatile problems.

absent of race issues disappearing, I can't see any way that democrats don't abandon civil rights issues in the 20th century and keep the south.

seems to be that the dixiecrats just needed to realize they were republicans - you can't be pro-welfare state without ending up helping black people, so, - just as the rockefeller republicans just needed to realize that they were democrats.

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.

panderer to the american people

x-post: yeah, the thing is that (understandably enough) historians tend to rate presidents based on how "effective" they are, so they rate someone like james k. polk highly regardless of what one might think of polk's imperialism, etc. on the other hand, when it comes to domestic stuff presidential effectiveness depends largely on how willing congress is to work with them -- congress caved in to reagan repeatedly, whereas they were tough on clinton.

alfred: i'd never argue that carter was anything special as a leader, but judging him against these other characters, he seemed like the 'least bad' option. for all his incompetence, i sometimes wonder what his legacy would've been if the hostages had been released a little earlier in 1980 and allowed him to squeak through; i think we tend to automatically see one-term presidents as "failures" and two-termers as "successes" regardless of what they actually did. (surely the same thing would have happened to reagan if he'd been kicked out in 1984.) speaking of one-termers, i was actually tempted to rate bush I higher, since i can't think of any specific reason not to, but tbh i'm probably less informed on the nuts and bolts of his administration than any of these guys so i just left him in the middle.

first Gulf War basically gave us Gulf War II so he can fuck right off imho

"he tried to kill my dad!" etc

Polk's considered the most effective one-term president of all.

yeah, it's often forgotten that until the week before the election Reagan and Carter were neck and neck. It might've sprung the other way had the hostages been released. Not to mention considerable evidence suggests that Bill Casey, Richard Allen, and Poppy Bush reached a deal with the Iranians to refrain from releasing them until after the inauguration, in exchange for weapons.

Morbs likes Bush I best, right? I can't think of another president w ho did less an office. Let's see what I remember: Bush holding up a bag of cocaine warning kids to stay away, he hated broccoli, signed the American Disabilities Act, hated by George Will and religio-cons, first Gulf War, raised taxes, and, uh, what else?

puking in Japan

*who did less in office

puking in Japan

Graham Parker?

feud with homer simpson

^^literally the first thing that came to mind

at the very least, he's the worst parent on the list

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWJHCRVs4AY

Doh! I should've voted JFK.

He was a weasally evil man and he has just caused me to calumniate weasels.

I've read and thought about Nixon a fair amount. One of the most perceptive things I've heard anybody say about him was something from Carl Bernstein (around the time of Mark Felt's coming out, I think): that of anyone who was ever president, Nixon was in a universe all his own as far as being the most temperamentally unsuited person ever to hold the job, and that instead of beginning each day by saying "What problem should we focus on today?", he would literally begin by saying "What score can I settle today?" But--and here's where my fascination comes in--there was also this deeply sentimental side to him (inexorably bound up with his endless self-pity) that would see him call up some reporter after 25 years to express sympathy over the death of his wife.

yeah it's sorta astounding that the most powerful human being on the planet could still have that big a chip on his shoulder.

Dubya had even bigger chips

at least Nixon didn't just bomb cambodia cuz he hated his dad, knowhutimean

Ike is probably the least hate-able, would have voted for "Fuck The Lot Of Them."

Carter's probably the most frustrating, for the way 'progressives' have whitewashed his foreign policy - just as brutal and inhumane as Reagan was.

huh? nobody likes carter

"if it was fave person i would vote carter though <3"
"probably the most 'decent' dude on this list outside of Carter maybe."
"An immensely decent man imho."
"i'd never argue that carter was anything special as a leader, but judging him against these other characters, he seemed like the 'least bad' option."

That's just in this thread!

I guess it helps when he's put in a list with dubya and nixon

but I don't think progressives in general embrace him

"An immensely decent man imho."

I don't necessarily mean just as President.

Can anyone recommend a good solid account of the Carter presidency, or a biography that focusses on his time in office? Something along the lines of Maraniss's book on Clinton, or (though obviously shorter) Ambrose's on Nixon. I bought Douglas Brinkley's book, not realizing it documented Carter's time out of office. That was such a wild four years--I was in high school--but my sense of Carter as a person is hazy. I see him as a very morose character, with a dark side not nearly as pronounced as Nixon's but there nonetheless, and I'm not sure why.

(inexorably bound up with his endless self-pity)

Don't know what if it's significant tbh, but his eldest and youngest brothers both died of tuberculosis. Might have been his father's love of raw milk, too.

I can't help you with Carter, but I can recommend other Nixon bios besides the Ambrose.

Those booklength interviews with courtier Monica Crowley published in the mid nineties are fascinating. In the first one, Nixon fulminates against Poppy Bush for never having the statesmanship to call him for advice about Russia, then lavishes praise on Clinton because Clinton actually returned his phone calls, after which he turns on him as soon as the prez is distracted by Whitewater. The guy was such a sucker for praise -- it's embarrassing.

The second volume, meanwhile, is Nixon Reads The Classics. To read this man's thoughts on Hegel, de Toqueville, Rousseau, Marx, and Tolstoy must be seen to be believed. Nothing particularly original -- he draws the sorts of conclusions that a clever undergrad might make in an A paper -- but it shows the truth in Garry Wills' conclusion about Nixon: no man ever did more to undermine his own considerable intelligence.

Thanks--I've got Nixon books enough for a lifetime; I wrote about them on my page last year. Ambrose's trilogy is one of the best things I've ever read. It was disappointing to see him mixed up in some plagarism scandal not too long before his death.

Are people ranking Eisenhower over LBJ because he had greater accomplishments or because he didn't do anything as bad as LBJ's actions in Vietnam? (The latter would be a good reason. I'm just curious and interested.)

jonathan schell's 'the time of illusion' is a great book that focuses just on nixon's presidency, mostly first-term. some of the best political writing i've ever read, brilliantly and hilariously dissecting the nixon/agnew rhetoric and comparing it to what was actually happening. the section where he shows how nixon went back and forth from virtually announcing the end of the vietnam war to calling for all-out war on a weekly basis is almost laugh-out-loud funny.

I don't have that, but I've got Schell's Observing the Nixon Years. Haven't read it--I'm wondering if it's the same book retitled.

Are people ranking Eisenhower over LBJ because he had greater accomplishments or because he didn't do anything as bad as LBJ's actions in Vietnam?

the latter mostly (altho I ranked them as tied)

LBJ is still my first pick, but Eisenhower had the best temperament for the job (even if personally he's a nullity).

Also, let's remember the heaps of assistance Ike gave Nixon in '60.

I don't want to sidetrack this into an Obama discussion, but whatever you think of his job performance, I think he'll be up near the very top of the temperament list when he leaves office. Beyond the standard carping about the press that's part of a president's DNA, he seems to be largely without neuroses or vindictiveness.

sometimes I think it's his biggest flaw

I deduct points from Obama for the "beer summit" and his occasional prickliness about criticism. If we're grading temperament, it'd be:

Eisenhower
Bush I
Reagan
Obama
JFK
fuck the rest

sometimes I think it's his biggest flaw

Interesting...I hear you.

I always thought Bush I was an asshole but I was heavily influenced by music and the music press at the time. Why so high up in terms of temperament? I found him deeply creepy.

i have a hard time getting what motivates obama. unlike all the haters i don't think it's narcissism. but, what? i'm disinclined to believe its love of country or commitment to ideals or anything like that (lol cynic). frustration with bullshit? can frustration be an epic quality?

My response to Bush I in high school and early college mirrored Nixon's: a colorless bureaucrat, the CEO of a reasonably successful company resisting a merger, but he looked like a "leader."

can't believe you left off jailing Noriega from his list of accomplishments *tsk* *tsk*

Whatever the black helicopters/anti-UN crew thinks now, Bush Sr., and Baker were magisterial in putting together the Gulf War UN coalition, suppressing the Israeli (Shamir's) determination to always repond to attacks and defending limited goals in that war (contra Shakey, I still think he was right and that it didn't necessarily lead to the 2003 confrontation).

PS., I almost just called Shakey a Contra. Funding (and arms) are in the mail, dude.

viva la revolucion, comrade

I think Shakey's a Contra

I'd add Truman to your list for sure, maybe also Ford; the doddering aside (exaggerated thanks to Chevy Chase), he seemed to be fairly comfortable with who he was.(I still remember getting my issue of Sports Illustrated with him on the cover--Jerry the college football star--right after he took office.) Psychologists might point to JFK's obsessive womanizing as betraying some deeper issues, but I look at Marilyn Monroe and I say count me in. I think we'd all agree that Nixon's way at the bottom; I don't think I'd want to cross LBJ, Carter, or Clinton, either. Bush II...beats me. Palin would be off the charts; she'd be Nixon all over again. I thought Hillary had lots of Nixon in her during the campaign, but she seems to have settled down.

I approve of this colloquial usage of the term "Nixon" ("he's okay, he's just got a little nixon in him")

HRC does have some Nixon in her, actually.

Absolutely agree--it spilled out all over the place during the campaign. (One of many examples: her own mini-version of the Southern Strategy, in her case more of a White Working Class America Beer-Drinking Strategy.) But she's stayed surprisingly low-key in her current post--I thought for sure she'd start making mischief from within, but nothing of the sort yet.

McCain had, and continues to have, a lot of Nixon in him. By all accounts, he's still really bitter about losing, and doing whatever he can to gum things up for Obama.

her presidency would have been even more nixon than her campaign, I think

McCain is a cretin.

HRC seems genuinely interested in doing something w/her job, learning, moving on. I think her cynicism was ill placed compared to the groundswell of idealism Obama's campaign generated but I wouldn't rule out her using it again. That kind of cynicism worked well for her husband.

Though I think Bill isn't as mean as she can be.

her presidency would have been even more nixon than her campaign, I think

I think you're probably right. She's acquitted herself well as SOS, but I'm still inclined to go with my initial sense of her as a president: disaster. I'm sure that's not fair, but it's a gut instinct.

HRC seems genuinely interested in doing something w/her job, learning, moving on.

This too. She really is fascinating; she was like fingernails on a blackboard to me at the start of the '08 campaign, now I'm of two minds on her.

i believe that her failures and betrayals would be roughly similiar to the ones we've seen from obama anyway... the only wildcard for me is whether she would be as adroit or standoffish (or manic in wanting to appear adroit and standoffish, if you like) in dealing with the right-wing freakout.

I think it's easy to forget how much the right-wing hated her before she temporarily became the one they hated less. she was the most evil woman in the world! and that was before there was even the idea of her maybe becoming president.

I think it would be much nastier, much more personal

it would be so much worse. right-wing more comfortable with being sexist than racist

I wonder if the right-wing freakout would have been as severe. I really don't know--would Republicans have reverted to their visceral Clinton loathing of the '90s, or would Hannity and Limbaugh and the like have been so relieved that the terrorist-loving black guy didn't win that they would have taken a step back. She seemed to earn some of their approval during the campaign, but I don't know if that was just smoke and mirrors.

average americans are too xp

absolutely smoke and mirrors. these people didn't just suddenly forget about a decade of their lives.

yup, that was one of my primary reasons for supporting obama -- the right wing has been practicing for 20 years on how to take down HRC. i really didn't want to live through that, and i doubted her administration's ability to govern through it. my reasoning seems a little pallid now, considering what we're dealing with vis a vis "the one" etc.

the tea party and birther jamboree has retained a kind of madcap incompetent quality that allows me to laugh at it enough to retain hope, if that makes sense. i still believe the psychotic reaction to a President Hillary would have been much more focused and lethal. it's shitty to think that way i guess, but there it is.

xp he seemed to earn some of their approval during the campaign, but I don't know if that was just smoke and mirrors

these people have the memory of a goldfish and motivation of a venus flytrap. they'll turn on a dime as soon as they have to, and the primaries would be forgotten instantly.

There is no reason to believe Limbaugh and what is now the tea party would have given HRC a break. None.

and considering how she responded to attacks when she was First Lady and during the campaign, I'm sure we would've been in for an ugly four years.

I basically agree with all that you say--just thinking aloud. I'd listen to Hannity during the campaign, and it was insanely funny. He started with the "Stop Hillary Express," smoothly transitioned to the "Stop Obama Express," took credit for the first working, tried at the same time to prop up her candicacy so that the second would work...it all got very confusing. Trains were pulling in and out the station left and right.

amazed me was how quickly her 'down to earth folksy moderate' character was bought by the public. I guess because you had her campaign + the right wing machine going at the same time.

jesus 08 was tiring. washington media bods who wish it was election year every year need to check theirselfs.

"You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught be how to shoot when I was a little girl," she said. "You know, some people now continue to teach their children and their grandchildren. It's part of culture. It's part of a way of life. People enjoy hunting and shooting because it's an important part of who they are. Not because they are bitter."

Who can forget that? Priceless!

Nixon?

jesus 08 was tiring.

Was it ever, even for someone in Canada. But you know what? If Palin ever did get the nomination, I think '08 would be barely a ripple.

I would buy tickets to that event

not enough talk about reagan w/r/t economics, more important than anything else he did other than, I guess, his noble decision not to nuke russia. tax cuts were one of the greatest poor->rich wealth transfers in history, fucked the deficit in the long-term, created millions of mini-reagans - like, his effect on the GOP and american economic-thinking is probably as bad the actual things he did.

war on drugs, war on unions, so many ways he fucked millions and millions of people the middle and lower classes in ways that are easily felt ~3 decades later.

carter/ford/jfk types might have been worthless, but impossible to say that they damaged the country like he did in the long-term - even nixon didn't come close. don't care about the history professor 'but did he accomplish his goals?' perspective - other than dubya, he's the worst one here, absoultely, no question imo. could argue he was worse than dubya too.

― iatee, Thursday, August 5, 2010 9:37 AM Bookmark

Cannot OTM this enough. Anyone with even slight progressive sympathies getting misty-eyed over Reagan needs a reality check - guy gutted progressive programs going back to the New Deal which everybody here, I think, is fairly giving Eisenhower, Johnson, and even Nixon credit for preserving and in the latter two cases aggressively expanding. Even setting aside the tax cuts, just the savage assault on the EPA and the SEC in the Reagan years has wound us up with things like the 2008 crash and the Deepwater Horizon spill. I'm an amateur in these matters but my sense is that neither of those things would have been possible in the regulatory environment under Nixon. We can blame Bush II more immediately but the map was redrawn by Reagan in a way that nobody has been able to reverse.

Picking a winner is pretty hard though. Shrewd move to begin right after FDR who would probably win handily if given the chance to compete. Even his most heinous negatives (Japanese internment I think is the worst thing that can be confirmed as a policy of his administration) go nowhere near the stuff Truman and Johnson have against them. Johnson without Vietnam would win this bracket easily. Clinton probably "least bad," although it's hard to work up a lot of enthusiasm given free trade, DOMA, "welfare reform" and all the other capitulations to Reaganism.

Whatever the black helicopters/anti-UN crew thinks now, Bush Sr., and Baker were magisterial in putting together the Gulf War UN coalition, suppressing the Israeli (Shamir's) determination to always repond to attacks and defending limited goals in that war (contra Shakey, I still think he was right and that it didn't necessarily lead to the 2003 confrontation).

while the gulf war didn't make the iraq war inevitable by any means, it's hard to imagine the later war happening without the example of the first one. americans hadn't been that enthusiastic about foreign meddling since the fall of saigon (leaving aside a few isolated moments like granada), and the gulf intervention -- a seemingly easy, straightforward, morally unambiguous affair -- gave them a reason to feel good about the whole war thing again. (as poppy put it himself, "we've kicked the vietnam syndrome once and for all.") even if you think the intervention was justified, it's hard to ignore the bad effect it's had.

plus, it gave us "voices that care," still my vote for the single worst record of all time.

as far as military types go, this dude seems allright

whoops wrong thread

plus, it gave us "voices that care," still my vote for the single worst record of all time.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, August 6, 2010 4:40 PM Bookmark

I always associated it with "God Bless the USA" but it turns out that was an '84 campaign song that just got a renewed boost from Desert Storm. Huh.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

hrm. was about to stress the importance of JFK and Reagan slashing the top federal income tax bracket but, apparently, it doesn't matter much.

LBJ yall

yeahh I don't think that Hauser's Law thing is taken very seriously

"Fuck the lot of them."

plz do a Mafia don poll next

:D

i think that i voted for LBJ (very reluctantly as did Alfred) largely b/c IMHO the good that he had a hand in (Civil Rights and Voting Acts, the War on Poverty, his genuine commitment to making America more tolerable for the less fortunate, and his relentless sticking-it to his opponents) was so strong that i am almost willing to forgive Vietnam (and his relentless sticking-it to his opponents and corruption). then again, i live in NJ so my toleration of corruption may be higher than others.

i mean, Vietnam was a tar-baby that would have brought just about any President down. i am not one of those who believed that JFK would've ended it, or even avoided LBJ's mistakes.

right, not sure any of these dudes would have, if they were then and there

But Oliver Stone said Kennedy was just about to get out in JFK. Oliver Stone never embellishes!

back in the day, they used to call Reagan and Reaganism "friendly fascism" for a reason. i see it as a lesson that just because a politician is "likeable" as an individual (and Reagan WAS kind of likeable in a doddering grandpa sort of way) doesn't mean that you should vote for him/her or support what he/she would do if elected.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

George W. Bush 3

joek? weird lurkers?

surprised HW didn't get anything too

not surprised that LBJ and Ike did as well as they did. i would've thought that Truman and Papa Bush would've gotten more votes, though.

Nixon would be thrilled that he pulled off a tie with the great bete noire of his life, JFK. As to how, I have no idea--"wow" to both totals.

LOL at Reagan getting no votes after all the discussion.

I'm almost as shocked by Carter's eight votes. I thought even Democrats were more or less in agreement that his term was a debacle; he's been basically trotted out by the opposition as the Democrats' version of Herbert Hoover (or, projecting forward, W.) every election from '84 on.

he's led a very admirable life since his Presidency. so maybe that good will rubbed off in terms of the votes.

0 reagan votes is sorta interesting though - are there really 0 republicans on ilx or did they non-jokingly vote w?

dan weiner didn't contribute, so I'm the closest thing to a non-dem.

Besides Habitat for Humanity, wat's so admirable about Carter's post-presidency? Genuinely curious. I haven't found any of his post-presidential statements particularly eloquent or original.

No question, although I don't think you'd get much love from recent presidents of both parties--he's had more than a couple of rogue diva episodes. Anway, I took the vote as meaning time-in-office; casting the net wider would certainly help explain the eight votes. (I think Clinton's post-presidency, notwithstanding the '08 campaign, has arguably been even more admirable.)

perhaps his apartheid-it's back! campaign (for some people)?

There's another thread idea: best post-presidential career. I suppose Carter, Hoover, and William Howard Taft would make the final cut.

WHT a frightfully conservative chief justice though.

pre-presidency maybe more interesting imo

As always, Nixon has the most fascinating post-presidency; even as he sits there with David Frost in '77 saying "My political life is over," his mind is feverishly working out scenarios whereby he can effectuate the elder statesman role he feels is rightfully his. And he never stops till the day he dies.

I couldn't find one of the 34 "Nixon's BACK" cover stories commissioned by TIME and Newsweek.

Eisenhower voters - - - I sorta get what the appeal must be here but I have a hard time getting past the foreign policy precedent of "let's topple any vaguely-leftie regime anywhere in the developing world and install thugs" - I mean, Iran, Guatemala, Zaire... aside from directly causing immense suffering in these places, Ike sort of opened up the field for these kinds of tactics under his successors - - Kennedy in Vietnam, Nixon/Kissinger in god knows how many places. Pretty unforgivable IMO.

He probably wins best pre-presidency though.

pre-presidency:

eisenhower vs. ulysses s grant vs. 'bedtime for bonzo'

I give Ike a modicum of credit for never supporting total war. I'm not sure what any president would have done with the superpowers bequeathed to him by FDR and Truman short of abdicating. OF all the Cold War presidents he understood the executive branch's limits.

interstate highway system was the real total war! okay not gonna drag that one out again...

I find interesting is how much historians seem to love to do this presidential ranking thing, cause you'd think they would consider the idea of ranking presidents even more absurd than non-historians?

lol really? you ever talk to a bunch of music critics around december?

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.)

(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.

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."

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/.)