Gerald R. Ford (1974-1977)
I feel more empathy if not
outright sympathy for Gerald Ford than few other Presidents in American
history. All he ever wanted to be was Speaker of The House an ambition that not
even Nixon’s landslide of 1972 could accomplish. He was planning to step down
in 1974 and then the roof began to fall in on Nixon’s administration. First
Agnew was forced to resign and Nixon, who was facing his own constitutional
crisis, needed a Vice President. He chose Gerald Ford in large part because he
could easily get confirmed in the Democratic Congress – and because he thought
Ford was protection against his own impeachment. Ford was considered a nice guy
but an intellectual lightweight.
Then things got to the
point where Nixon had no choice but to resign and Ford, a man who had not been
elected to either Vice President or President, found himself in a job he had
never expected. He struck the right note in his address to the nation saying,
“Our long national nightmare is over.” Then three weeks later he decided to
pardon Nixon.
This was viewed as the
wrong decision at the time, the right decision over the next forty years and
now – because of the situation we are facing – the wrong decision again. It
overshadowed every aspect of his Presidency for the next two years and was one
of the major factors when he chose to stand for election in his own right. Despite
his best efforts to put the Vietnam War behind us, Vietnam collapsed on his
watch which made him the final goat to the increasingly neo-con wing of the GOP
as did his policies towards the Panama Canal and his offering of clemency to
those who evade the draft and deserters. His decision to appoint Rockefeller
Vice President further infuriated the right and eventually he had to force him
out and he became the first President to suffer a major primary challenge.
Despite his narrow win, the heart of the
Republican base was with Ronald Reagan and Ford eventually suffered a narrow
defeat.
Ford has always been ranked
as one of the average Presidents, which honestly is fitting. Ford was a good
man, just trying to do his best in a job he never campaigned for and never
really wanted. He also represented one of the last gasps of the moderate wing
of the GOP which was about to steamrolled by Ronald Reagan. And now, we view
him badly because the decision he made for the good of the nation in 1974 was
the wrong one for 2024. What kind of logic is that?
I don’t think Gerald Ford
would have been great or even a very good President under most circumstances
and I doubt had he won election in his own right he would have been able to
improve his legacy. But we haven’t had a lot of nice guys in the office since
then and that’s the legacy I wish we had.
My Assessment: Good Man,
Average President.
Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)
When Carter was landslide
by Reagan in 1981, he became a pariah in the Democratic Party and many
Americans viewed hm as a disaster for decades afterwards. In his years of good
work and public service he has done much to become America greatest ex-President.
And as a result, there has been much done to look at his Presidency in a better
light as well.
And I do grant his
administration accomplished many great things. The pardon of thousands of
draft-evaders, his role in the Camp David Accords, putting human rights front
and center as foreign policy, the signing of SALT II, the creation of the
Department of Energy, returning the Panama Canal. And he also was responsible
for beginning the policy of rising defense spending to a level the Soviet
government couldn’t match – something that Reagan took credit for and got the
benefit of. As for the Iran Hostage crisis which ultimately cost him his
reelection, it’s hard to know if there was a better way to handle it. When you
throw in the fact that he was the last President to public argue against
American exceptionalism, then it seems we’ve been underestimating him for years
and that he should be ranked among the above average at least.
Here’s why I can’t go along
with that. Carter was a terrible politician. I will grant you that the media
never warmed to him and that the liberal wing of the Democratic Party never
considered them one of their own. I’m also willing to admit Carter was the
first victim of the post-Watergate media’s determination to treat every
President harshly. But the fact remains that Carter campaigned as an outsider
but then tried to govern as one. And that was a critical error.
He had the kind of
majorities in Congress that seem impossible to manage these days and the
willingness of a party to move forward. But he spent his entire administration
far too often refusing to even engage with Congressional leaders or even bother
to talk with key members of his own party. As far as he was concerned Congress
was supposed to follow his agenda because it was the right thing to do and not
expect anything in return. If they lost their seats in Congress – as many did
following the 1978 midterms in which they had to defend several controversial
actions – well, they had sacrificed their office for the greater good and that
was the right thing.
There was also a meanness
factor behind that hundred-watt grin that was clear whenever Carter was on the
campaign trail. It was clear in his primary run in 1976 and it was more than
evident when Ted Kennedy challenged him. He dealt with Kennedy’s challenge by
not campaigning against him (and his opponent’s inadequacy). But he had no
ability to unite the party behind him and he handled the fall campaign horribly
in every way.
Now I acknowledge that he
inherited the failings of the economy, that he did his best to handle it with
what was known at the time and that no President could have done a better job
with it then he did. But it does little to change the fact that when he was
running for reelection, he had no real reason to vote for him, and only argued
that Reagan’s election would destroy America, if not the world.
Carter was a good man and
his foreign policy should be remembered. But no matter all the redemption we
get (and the effort will become more obvious as his death approaches) he was
nothing more than an average President.
My Analysis: Great
Ex-President, Average President.
Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)
From the moment Reagan left
office conservatives and Republicans have called him the greatest President in
history to the point of canonization and wanting his face on the $10 bill. That
reputation lasted well past his Presidency – he was until recently listed among
the top ten Presidents of all time. In the most recent poll, he has dropped
quite a bit, all the way down to sixteenth place. (Oddly enough, he’s now ahead
of Grant, which really shows how badly our perceptions have changed.)
Leftists and Democrats will
now doubt argue that this is because we have now begun to learn just how much
of our society Reagan ‘ruined’ in his administration, the consequences that it
led with the Republican Party going forward, and the wreckage of today. They’ll
also argue that since the image of Reagan now no longer matters to today’s
Republicans the Republicans no longer idolize him either.
The truth is probably
simpler. I believe that so much of the aura of Reagan was wrapped up in the
nostalgia factor. Because he left such an impression in the memories of so many
people when they were younger, they thought of him with fondness the way you
remember a sepia photograph or an old home movie. Because Reagan’s cabinet and
followers were much younger than him, they’ve also been able to push his legacy
for much longer than it actually was. (You’d think that it would have passed
with JFK by now, but I guess getting assassinated has a different kind of halo
effect.)
Now we have to look at
Reagan’s legacy from a historic standpoint and at best, it’s middling. Most of
his record when it comes to foreign policy is based more on rhetoric than
actual accomplishment: so much of what happened that ended the Cold War was more
the actions of Mikhail Gorbachev then anything else. Now that it looks like
Russia has reverted back to a totalitarian state, the shine might have come off
that as well.
The Iran-Contra Scandal has
now fully come to light and in the context of later events and everything that
happened, Reagan looks worse by comparison. It’s clear that his administration
was guilty of abuses of power and that by all rights, he should have been
impeached.
And of course everything
else about him: the factoids, the subtle and overt racism, the way that he
deconstructed the liberal order, that his economic expansion is dealing with
the world we deal with today – including a stock market crash – he never looked
that good to Democrats then or now. The massive landslides he managed in both
his wins are the most impressive in electoral history – but they also came at a
time when voter indifference was reaching the level it would maintain for more
than thirty years.
I don’t think the ‘aura’ of
Reagan is going to last much longer, considering the current ranking has him
below John Admas and James Madison and not much higher than Monroe. I think in
another decade he will be regulated to the middle of the pack. That’s probably
right for a President who was primarily a performer. Once you’ve been off-stage
long enough, they stop remember how good you were and remember what kind of
person you were.
My Ranking: History
Starting to Get Reagan Right.
George H.W. Bush
(1989-1993)
Even before Bush became
President he was a pariah. He was always a party loyalist, always willing to
difficult jobs such as head of the RNC, Ambassador to China and head of the CIA.
And none of his predecessor – not Nixon after Agnew resigned, not Ford either
when he became President or clinched the Republican nomination in his own
right, thought he was worthy to be Vice President. When he ran for the
Republican nomination in 1980 many of the candidates who had no chance for the
nomination were willing to work with Reagan to make sure he could not get the
nomination. Reagan wanted Gerald Ford as his Vice President before making the
inevitable choice of Bush as his Vice President and its never clear how well
the two got along.
That he and his family were
ruthless campaigners for power is unpleasant but even by 1988 it was hardly
uncommon for so many political candidates to run uglier campaigns both for the
nomination and the Presidency. And really his time in office witnessed many
major foreign policy achievements including the collapse of first the Berlin
Wall and then the Soviet Union – something Reagan got the credit for. His
victory in the Persian Gulf gave him enormous popularity but the recession –
and the fact he raised taxes – caused Pat Buchanan to run a doomed primary
challenge against him that hit his reputation had. Before he left office he
signed a sweeping nuclear arms deal with Russia.
Of course when he left
office we blamed him for his son’s political careers but I’m not here to cover
that; I’m just going to rank him on his own merits. He is currently ranked at
19th, which is a slight drop he was at seventeenth a few years ago.
Part of this may be due to the fact that the kind of Republican he represented
is all but extinct in the modern GOP but I think its actually a fair
assessment. For all Bush’s flaws – and I don’t pretend they weren’t substantial
– I think he spent too much of his career suffering from the shift of the party
to a more conservative wing even while he was leading it and his qualities of
being far too detached from what seemed to be important. I think he did the
best he could under the circumstances. Perhaps he is ranked too high – I think
being ahead of Andrew Jackson is a stretch -
but he deserves to be considered a very good average President.
My rankings: History is Getting Him Right.
Bill Clinton (1993-2001)
As I end this series with
Bill Clinton, he currently ranked as twelfth all time. At one point he was as
high as eighth, at one point as low as fourteenth.
I believe that in large
part his ranking among the near great or above average is in large part due to
the ‘nostalgia factor’ that kept Reagan immensely overrated over the past
twenty years and is part of the reason Obama and Biden are so high up now. I
would like to believe that within the next decade, the same principles that
have led to Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson’s reputation among historians
dropping so drastically over the past decade will have the same drag on Clinton
as we come to terms with his legacy. Not his accomplishments – the Oslo
Accords, the numerous accomplishments involving diplomacy in Bosnia and
Northern Ireland, the fact that he was the last President to date to have the
budget at surplus. Not his approach to governing – trying to find a ‘Third
Way’, welfare reform, NAFTA. Not even
his impeachment. His legacy.
In my opinion the legacy of
Bill Clinton is two-fold. His Presidency led to what I consider the formation
of the current political landscape and the Democratic party permanently
abandoning any moral high ground it had in regard to character. I don’t consider
the two exclusive. I am familiar with the bullet points Democrats and
progressives love to quote – the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine leading to
Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, combined with the Gingrich revolution in 1994 – but
I don’t believe either would have the force they had if say Paul Tsongas or Bob
Kerrey had been President instead.
Because even before he
became the Democratic nominee, we knew the kind of man Bill Clinton was. We
knew he was capable of being smooth with words to coverup his flaws and that he
was a philanderer at least once. The public knew all this and made him
President. And the Democratic establishment spent his term – and really ever
since – basically defending his moral turpitude in the White House because if
we admitted the kind of man we’d elected, the Republicans would have won. Yes I
know the hypocrisy of the Republicans; it doesn’t make the Democrats own
hypocrisy any less blatant.
Yes Bill Clinton should not
have been impeached for his extra-marital affair. But did anybody even look in
the mirror about the defense the Clintons used? Clinton’s defenders
basically set over and over that the victims of a man who was, at best, guilty
of sexual misconduct and harassment was – the leader of the free world. When he
said under oath that oral sex wasn’t sex and that he didn’t know what the
definition of ‘is’ was, they decided to take this Rhodes Scholar at his word. The
media basically decided in no uncertain terms that what the Republicans were
doing was a ‘witch hunt’. And the American public seemed okay with blaming all
of his victims and giving Clinton enormous popularity.
And for the last quarter of
a century the Democratic party has engaged in whataboutism for literally
everything Democrats do. George W. Bush shouldn’t be President because the only
reason anyone voted for him was because of who his father. But Hilary Clinton
is more than qualified to be President in 2008 on her own merits. Any
criticisms that Republicans make of the Obama Presidency are entirely about
their own racism, there is no merit to them at all. If a Republican lawmaker
engages in infidelity and his wife stands by him, that woman is a hypocrite.
Hilary Clinton was somehow a hero for doing the same thing.
Hell I’d argue the biggest problem the
Democrats have had for the last twenty years is that they refuse to let the
Clintons go. You can make all the arguments about Trump’s behavior before he
became President being disqualifying. But he learned all too well from the way
the Democrats never broke ranks behind Bill Clinton no matter how horrible his
behavior was – just as Clinton learned that he could get away with everything
considering how much America lionized JFK despite his prurient behavior.
I admit my personal
feelings on Clinton may have come into play a bit – readers of this blog know I
have publicly written how little respect I have for the Clintons overall. But
it has been nearly a quarter of a century since he left office and I think that’s
enough time to make a fair assessment. Even in the most recent poll I don’t
think it’s a coincidence that the most recent Democratic President rank
far higher than the most recent Republican ones. Even the poll
acknowledges partisan polarization is evident here. They say it isn’t for
Clinton yet. If history is to be fair, we need to acknowledge the flaws on
nostalgia swing both ways.
My Assessment: Eventually History Will
Judge Clinton Far More Harshly.
It Should.
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