06-30-2022, 06:47 PM
Washington, Lincoln, FDR -- the man who defined the Presidency, the one who saved the Union, and the one who saved Western Christian civilization (if with the aid of his good buddy Sir Winston Churchill): A+. Washington may have lacked the expertise, but other than that, (consider the times) the more that one diverges from Washington's practice, the more trouble one gets into.
Jefferson and TR get solid A's.
Truman, Eisenhower, Obama A-, All three fit my description of the "mature Reactive". one of the strongest styles of President possible. Obama was caught in an awkward time. These are the pick-up-the-pieces Presidents, the ones who do the unglamorous task of putting together the loose ends of history. They do the best with what they have, and do better than expected. Truman resolved the Second World War once and for all. used the Marshall Plan to salvage such democracy as there was in Europe. and managed the Korean War as well as the American psyche would allow. Ike got us out of the war with South Korea in a better geographic position than that with which it started. Ike made the right decisions on the Suez Crisis abd chose to stay clear of the Joe McCarthy bandwagon... and did right on the desegregation of Little Rock Central. Obama followed the book in backing the banks in 2009 and stopped the meltdown before it got to the stage of dangerous bank runs. He had Osama bin Laden whacked in something of the style of an underworld hit with no diplomatic repercussions. Obama was clearly on the right side on LGBT rights, but did not grandstand. Like Ike with civil rights, Obama made clear that same-sex marriage is the law of the land. All three get credit for sane, scandal-free administrations. Marshall Plan, Interstate Highway System, or Obamacare -- take your pick.
I consider Eisenhower to be the most similar President to Obama (someone has to be), at the least for competence and temperament. Just look at the overlay map for Eisenhower and Obama elections. Obama did not get the rural vote as Ike did; the agribusiness vote is far more right-wing in recent years than it was in the 1950's. But it is safe to assume that the political cultures of states changed much less between Eisenhower and Obama (I'm guessing that Ike also did better with the African-American vote than any Republican after FDR stripped most blacks from the Party of Lincoln -- someone has to be most like Lincoln, and that is FDR) Both Eisenhower and Obama wiped out the other Party with the votes of the well-educated. I trust college graduates more with political wisdom with political astuteness than I trust high-school drop-outs. Sure, I'm an intellectual snob, and I would have more trust in any trait that serves as a proxy for political astuteness (like not marrying before age 25, having a college degree, listening to classical music or NPR, watching little TV (but what little one watches might be golf and tennis with an occasional news feed) -- anything other than ethnicity. Smart people better understand political discourse and are less amenable to demagogues. Well-educated people are less fickle in their political beliefs.
You may be surprised that I rate the elder Bush so high (B) for a one-term President, but here he is. I'm rating the elder Bush for winding down the Cold War and thwarting Satan Hussein in his attempt to fill the role of "Evil Empire" as the Soviet Union became benign, but doing little else as president. Still, winding down one Cold War and preventing another while having a nearly scandal-free Administration is enough to be a good President.
i see Kennedy and Clinton similar in personality and political skill. I also see their alley-cat sexuality which I treat as pulling them down toward mediocrity. If I tear Harding and Trump down for this. then I must do so with these two. B-. The sex scandals were huge risks not worth taking. Morality matters, and if I am knocking down Reagan I must knock these two down.
A. Jackson, L. Johnson, Very mixed reviews. I give Jackson credit for reshaping American politics to make it more vibrant... but there is the shameful Trail of Tears and the expansion of slavery into the Southwest. LBJ may get more credit than he deserves for civil rights legislation, but he did complete the task that Kennedy started. He also got us into the War in Vietnam. C+
Reagan. I dislike most of his policies. I note that he was effective, which is good for some credit. He knew
enough to back down when necessary. If I think Trump was the worst for taking Reagan-era trends to their most destructive conclusion. then I cannot rate him at all high. he had big scandals that seem to be forgotten now ; if he could not gut an institution that he disliked he could corrupt it, as with the EPA. Of course, much of his Presidency is what others did, with Reagan being relegated to a ceremonial role as Alzheimer's
Ford C-. He should never have been President, but that said, he did little harm and did what had to be done. Otherwise, few achievements. He shows why one needs to have been a Senator, Governor, or war hero
Carter D+. he meant well, but you can't argue with the results.
A. Johnson, Coolidge, Hoover, G W Bush -- D. Both rode speculative booms until they crashed, and failed to solve the resulting economic meltdowns. Speculative booms invariably lead to panics and deep meltdowns. To be sure, the corrupt boom was already approaching an end when Hoover took office, and Bush sponsored one from its start.
I describe Dubya's Presidency as telescoping the twelve disastrous years of the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover Presidencies into eight years instead of twelve. That's Harding corruption, Coolidge inattention, and Hoover failure. Dubya infamously botched the response to Hurricane Katrina and got America into a war that may have been unjustified -- on lies. Both presided over economic meltdowns that for a year and a half looked much the same; Dubya's meltdown ended more rapidly, and under Hoover the economy went into three years of more of the same.
Now why do I put Coolidge in the same category? He did things that would prove disastrous after his Administration was over. He brought a rigid end to an era of immigration. Such would damn many Jews to death in Nazi murder camps. he supported high tariffs, which I find one of the worst forms of taxation. High tariffs raise the cost of exports, which is the other side of foreign exchange. The dangerous Second Klan flourished while he was President -- we are just lucky that the Second Klan was in no position in which to exploit the Great Depression. He enforced the reparations upon the shaky Weimar Republic, facilitating the rise of you-know-who in Germany. Coolidge fostered the speculative boom that led to the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. He pushed racist eugenics
Johnson threw away Lincoln's agenda for nothing. Still, he did annex Alaska for America.
Buchanan, Harding, Nixon -- D- Buchanan was way over his head, far past his peak as a leader, well prepared for everything but the Crisis forming under his watch. He appeased the slave-owning interests, stoking their arrogance. Harding was monstrously corrupt, but America got away with it. Nixon could have been great, except... well, violating some legal decencies that underpin our Republic.
Donald Trump -- a big fat F. He put our democratic order in grave peril for nothing nobler than his self image. He politicized the US Supreme Court on behalf of an agenda that was grossly unpopular and is in the rear-guard of politics. He may have done irreversible damage to the Republican Party in an effort to entrench it as a totalitarian-style movement. The Trump Presidency was all about him and nothing imaginative. America (and, yes, the Republican party) would be far better off had Republicans concurred that the attempt to blackmail the President of Ukraine was a "high crime or misdemeanor" suitable for impeachment and removal. Sure, Pence would likely be an egregious ideologue, but he would have at worst been in the C- or D+ zone. Our Republic is strong enough to survive a man like Pence. Trump put everything that distinguishes our system from brutal tyrannies of all kinds at grave risk.
This man violated most canons of Christian morality as a corrupt businessman and whoremonger even before he was elected. He showed contempt for anyone having misfortune not of one's own making. He warmed up to murderous dictators and to figures of organized crime. He sponsored a vile, dangerous personality cult around himself that will be available for some other right-wing populist demagogue.
He may yet shape shape the American political future. If he does, then it will be more like Rafael Trujillo, "Papa Doc" Duvalier, or a right-wing version of Hugo Chavez. To say that he will have been successful will be like saying that Osama bin Laden was successful in making changes in the NYC skyline.
Biden: incomplete. His Presidency operates in the shadow of Trump, and it may take a score or so years to undo Trump damage. Be gets an I for incomplete. He is not Obama -- that is certain -- in his political skills. He seems to not be making huge mistakes as President. I consider COVID-19 an Enemy of the People, as dangerous as a military foe. The political polarization that began with Ronald Reagan and became the center of political life with Trump will need to break if America is to go back to some normal in which most politicians deal instead of trying to punish The Enemy. It may be true, according to the Skowronek cycle, that a President is no better than what is possible in his term in office. The shadow of Donald Trump still infects America. The GOp should have cut loose from Trump; six years after Nixon resigned, it was able to elect Ronald Reagan because Nixon was no longer relevant to contemporary politics.
I'm rating all of the Presidents of the last century, but few from more than a century ago. The Presidency has changed greatly in the age of electronic media, and the office is very different from what it was in the Goilded Age because it has so much more responsibility attached.
Jefferson and TR get solid A's.
Truman, Eisenhower, Obama A-, All three fit my description of the "mature Reactive". one of the strongest styles of President possible. Obama was caught in an awkward time. These are the pick-up-the-pieces Presidents, the ones who do the unglamorous task of putting together the loose ends of history. They do the best with what they have, and do better than expected. Truman resolved the Second World War once and for all. used the Marshall Plan to salvage such democracy as there was in Europe. and managed the Korean War as well as the American psyche would allow. Ike got us out of the war with South Korea in a better geographic position than that with which it started. Ike made the right decisions on the Suez Crisis abd chose to stay clear of the Joe McCarthy bandwagon... and did right on the desegregation of Little Rock Central. Obama followed the book in backing the banks in 2009 and stopped the meltdown before it got to the stage of dangerous bank runs. He had Osama bin Laden whacked in something of the style of an underworld hit with no diplomatic repercussions. Obama was clearly on the right side on LGBT rights, but did not grandstand. Like Ike with civil rights, Obama made clear that same-sex marriage is the law of the land. All three get credit for sane, scandal-free administrations. Marshall Plan, Interstate Highway System, or Obamacare -- take your pick.
I consider Eisenhower to be the most similar President to Obama (someone has to be), at the least for competence and temperament. Just look at the overlay map for Eisenhower and Obama elections. Obama did not get the rural vote as Ike did; the agribusiness vote is far more right-wing in recent years than it was in the 1950's. But it is safe to assume that the political cultures of states changed much less between Eisenhower and Obama (I'm guessing that Ike also did better with the African-American vote than any Republican after FDR stripped most blacks from the Party of Lincoln -- someone has to be most like Lincoln, and that is FDR) Both Eisenhower and Obama wiped out the other Party with the votes of the well-educated. I trust college graduates more with political wisdom with political astuteness than I trust high-school drop-outs. Sure, I'm an intellectual snob, and I would have more trust in any trait that serves as a proxy for political astuteness (like not marrying before age 25, having a college degree, listening to classical music or NPR, watching little TV (but what little one watches might be golf and tennis with an occasional news feed) -- anything other than ethnicity. Smart people better understand political discourse and are less amenable to demagogues. Well-educated people are less fickle in their political beliefs.
You may be surprised that I rate the elder Bush so high (B) for a one-term President, but here he is. I'm rating the elder Bush for winding down the Cold War and thwarting Satan Hussein in his attempt to fill the role of "Evil Empire" as the Soviet Union became benign, but doing little else as president. Still, winding down one Cold War and preventing another while having a nearly scandal-free Administration is enough to be a good President.
i see Kennedy and Clinton similar in personality and political skill. I also see their alley-cat sexuality which I treat as pulling them down toward mediocrity. If I tear Harding and Trump down for this. then I must do so with these two. B-. The sex scandals were huge risks not worth taking. Morality matters, and if I am knocking down Reagan I must knock these two down.
A. Jackson, L. Johnson, Very mixed reviews. I give Jackson credit for reshaping American politics to make it more vibrant... but there is the shameful Trail of Tears and the expansion of slavery into the Southwest. LBJ may get more credit than he deserves for civil rights legislation, but he did complete the task that Kennedy started. He also got us into the War in Vietnam. C+
Reagan. I dislike most of his policies. I note that he was effective, which is good for some credit. He knew
enough to back down when necessary. If I think Trump was the worst for taking Reagan-era trends to their most destructive conclusion. then I cannot rate him at all high. he had big scandals that seem to be forgotten now ; if he could not gut an institution that he disliked he could corrupt it, as with the EPA. Of course, much of his Presidency is what others did, with Reagan being relegated to a ceremonial role as Alzheimer's
Ford C-. He should never have been President, but that said, he did little harm and did what had to be done. Otherwise, few achievements. He shows why one needs to have been a Senator, Governor, or war hero
Carter D+. he meant well, but you can't argue with the results.
A. Johnson, Coolidge, Hoover, G W Bush -- D. Both rode speculative booms until they crashed, and failed to solve the resulting economic meltdowns. Speculative booms invariably lead to panics and deep meltdowns. To be sure, the corrupt boom was already approaching an end when Hoover took office, and Bush sponsored one from its start.
I describe Dubya's Presidency as telescoping the twelve disastrous years of the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover Presidencies into eight years instead of twelve. That's Harding corruption, Coolidge inattention, and Hoover failure. Dubya infamously botched the response to Hurricane Katrina and got America into a war that may have been unjustified -- on lies. Both presided over economic meltdowns that for a year and a half looked much the same; Dubya's meltdown ended more rapidly, and under Hoover the economy went into three years of more of the same.
Now why do I put Coolidge in the same category? He did things that would prove disastrous after his Administration was over. He brought a rigid end to an era of immigration. Such would damn many Jews to death in Nazi murder camps. he supported high tariffs, which I find one of the worst forms of taxation. High tariffs raise the cost of exports, which is the other side of foreign exchange. The dangerous Second Klan flourished while he was President -- we are just lucky that the Second Klan was in no position in which to exploit the Great Depression. He enforced the reparations upon the shaky Weimar Republic, facilitating the rise of you-know-who in Germany. Coolidge fostered the speculative boom that led to the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. He pushed racist eugenics
Johnson threw away Lincoln's agenda for nothing. Still, he did annex Alaska for America.
Buchanan, Harding, Nixon -- D- Buchanan was way over his head, far past his peak as a leader, well prepared for everything but the Crisis forming under his watch. He appeased the slave-owning interests, stoking their arrogance. Harding was monstrously corrupt, but America got away with it. Nixon could have been great, except... well, violating some legal decencies that underpin our Republic.
Donald Trump -- a big fat F. He put our democratic order in grave peril for nothing nobler than his self image. He politicized the US Supreme Court on behalf of an agenda that was grossly unpopular and is in the rear-guard of politics. He may have done irreversible damage to the Republican Party in an effort to entrench it as a totalitarian-style movement. The Trump Presidency was all about him and nothing imaginative. America (and, yes, the Republican party) would be far better off had Republicans concurred that the attempt to blackmail the President of Ukraine was a "high crime or misdemeanor" suitable for impeachment and removal. Sure, Pence would likely be an egregious ideologue, but he would have at worst been in the C- or D+ zone. Our Republic is strong enough to survive a man like Pence. Trump put everything that distinguishes our system from brutal tyrannies of all kinds at grave risk.
This man violated most canons of Christian morality as a corrupt businessman and whoremonger even before he was elected. He showed contempt for anyone having misfortune not of one's own making. He warmed up to murderous dictators and to figures of organized crime. He sponsored a vile, dangerous personality cult around himself that will be available for some other right-wing populist demagogue.
He may yet shape shape the American political future. If he does, then it will be more like Rafael Trujillo, "Papa Doc" Duvalier, or a right-wing version of Hugo Chavez. To say that he will have been successful will be like saying that Osama bin Laden was successful in making changes in the NYC skyline.
Biden: incomplete. His Presidency operates in the shadow of Trump, and it may take a score or so years to undo Trump damage. Be gets an I for incomplete. He is not Obama -- that is certain -- in his political skills. He seems to not be making huge mistakes as President. I consider COVID-19 an Enemy of the People, as dangerous as a military foe. The political polarization that began with Ronald Reagan and became the center of political life with Trump will need to break if America is to go back to some normal in which most politicians deal instead of trying to punish The Enemy. It may be true, according to the Skowronek cycle, that a President is no better than what is possible in his term in office. The shadow of Donald Trump still infects America. The GOp should have cut loose from Trump; six years after Nixon resigned, it was able to elect Ronald Reagan because Nixon was no longer relevant to contemporary politics.
I'm rating all of the Presidents of the last century, but few from more than a century ago. The Presidency has changed greatly in the age of electronic media, and the office is very different from what it was in the Goilded Age because it has so much more responsibility attached.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.