I recently saw a question on twitter that, although I answered it in the moment, the more I think about it, the more I think I need to expand on that response.
The question was: who was the best president in your lifetime?
That’s a good question, and not one easily answered for anyone who was not born during the current president’s term. Of course, if you’ve seen more than two presidents in your lifetime, then you need to have studied history about the presidencies that occurred during your early years, before you became aware of current events and the situation around you.
Before I get into my answer, I want to reiterate what I said in my old blog entry where I said that we really shouldn’t judge any president who served in the prior thirty years because we can’t know the long-term impact of any decisions that they made. Obviously, for the purposes of this essay, I have to set that rule aside and replace it with something akin to an asterisk, where I reserve the right to modify that opinion as things we can’t possibly know in the here and now, might cause what seemed like a good decision at the time, could prove to be a bad one, or vice versa.
So in order to get into my answer, I should start by pointing out that the first major news event of my life (I was about two months old) was what was referred to at the time as a “botched third-rate burglary attempt” at the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. Thus, the answer to the original question must be one of the following men (party affiliation in parentheses):
- Richard Nixon (R)
- Gerald Ford (R)
- Jimmy Carter (D)
- Ronald Reagan (R)
- George H W Bush (R)
- Bill Clinton (D)
- George W Bush (R)
- Barack Obama (D)
- Donald Trump (R)
- Joe Biden (D)
I would also like to note that, if anything has changed about my opinion of Donald Trump from the essay I wrote on the eve of his departure from the White House a little over two years ago, it’s that I might have been too generous to him, especially with regard to his role in the January 6 insurrection.
I have often opined that I was born when Richard Nixon was president, and that every successive Republican president was worse than the previous Republican president. (Although there are two Republican presidents in that timeframe who might occasionally flip-flop in their positions in my opinion.) So let’s take them in order before we get to the democrats.
Richard Nixon. Easily the most Jeckyll-and-Hyde president in my lifetime. When you look at some of the things he did — opening up relations with China, creation of the EPA, the SALT treaties, at least a tacit recognition that our military presence in southeast Asia was a mistake — you can’t help but give him some kudos. Of course, when weighed against the paranoia and corruption, his legacy has to be at least a little bit complicated. But I can’t deny that, at least when you look at the actual accomplishments, Nixon actually wasn’t that bad a president.
Gerald Ford. The first real historical event that I actually remember, was the bicentennial, followed closely by the election that Ford lost that year. I have to give full credit to Gerald Ford for actually withdrawing us from Vietnam. One of the most complicated aspects of his legacy, is his decision to pardon Richard Nixon. (And this is a great example of why the thirty year rule I have set, is so important.) By all indications, he did that not for any corrupt reasons or party loyalty or anything like that. His reasoning was pretty straightforward: charging Nixon would have torn the country apart and he at least wanted to try something that would prevent that from happening. It cost him politically, to be sure. Before Donald Trump, I might have even said that it was the right thing to do. I’m not so sure anyymore (even though I can’t deny that an indictment of Trump could have a complicated ripple effect). Either way, Ford actually wasn’t all that bad, either as a person or in office. His loss in the election of 1976 was a combination of bad economic conditions and the pardon of Nixon.
Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan is the first president of my lifetime, where I can truly look at what he did, and say there was more bad than good. That’s not to say there weren’t positives of his tenure: the seeds of a lot of technology we take for granted today, were the result of his military spending (the internet and GPS are two biggies). He was a good talker and, especially after the economic hardships of the 70s, it was refreshing to hear him talk. And of course, his policies hastened the end of the Cold War. But all of that must be balanced against the fact that he invited a coursening of political discourse to start with. It was thanks to Reagan that the word “liberal” became an insult. It was Reagan who opened the door wide for the Republican Party to become overrun with Christian Nationalists who, in the 35 years since he left office, have made it abundantly clear that they don’t care about the principles upon which America was founded other than the right to stockpile weapons. (Note that that started with Eisenhower’s embrace of Billy Graham but Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford still kept him at arm’s length and all of the things that Graham pushed for were generally lip service, like “Under God” in the pledge of allegiance.) It was Reagan’s economic decisions that led to the income inequality under which we suffer today, and we can pin most of the blame on Reagan for the fact that abortion is the center of today’s culture wars (see above about Christian Nationalists). It’s not a coincidence that Pat Robertson sought the republican nomination in the year that Reagan was constrained by the 22nd Amendment from running again.
George H W Bush. I readily concede that there are times when, in my head, I might push Bush Senior higher than Reagan in my rankings, but he continued or advanced many of Reagan’s worst policies, without Reagan’s ability to give a good speech or show a sunny predisposition. Bush Senior deserves two major points of praise: first was how he helped to shape the new world following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and second for the way he handled the first Iraq war (even if the latter point deserves at least a little ding for creating the conditions in which Iraq would invade Kuwait in the first place). Whatever plaudits he might deserve should be tempered by the fact that (1) if Reagan cracked open the door for Christian nationalists to infiltrate the Republican Party, Bush swung it wide open, (2) beginning with the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, those same Christian nationalists decided that, when it comes to judicial nominees, competence and decency would take a backseat to ideology and adherence to the party line. The fadt that the present-day Supreme Court is so poorly regarded, can be traced back to Bush.
George W Bush. Now we’re getting into a truly awful presidency. By the time Bush Junior failed his way into the highest office in the land, the Repuiblican Party was completely in the thrall of the ignorant and the incompetent. He was handed a golden opportunity to unite the nation and lead it forward when terrorists attacked us on our shores, and, after a brief period of good will towards our neighbors, he essentially squandered it by invading a country that had nothing to do with the attack itself (and anyone who knew anything about the situation, knew it). His lies and recklessness cost thousands of lives both at home and abroad, all the while setting the groundwork for the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depressoin. I will give him credit for funding efforts to combat AIDS in Africa, and I will also acknowledge that he was very careful in all of his rhetoric not to conflate Islam with the Islamic terrorists who attacked us. Of course, that latter point of credit is only warranted because of …
Donald Trump. Two years ago on this blog, I made the argument that he was the worst president in American history. I linked back to it above. Go back and read it. I don’t have much more to say about him other than to say that he didn’t have what little care in his words that George W Bush had. And that’s pretty bad.
So with the republicans out of the way, and the best one being, hands down, Richard Nixon, surely the democrats must have at least one president who was better than him right?
Right.
In fact, all of the democrats were better than Nixon. So let’s take them in order…
Jimmy Carter. Let’s get one thing straight right up front: whatever you think of him politically and his legacy as president, he’s a genuinely good person. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily equate to being a good president, but it was refreshing to have a scandal-free presidency filled with decency and honesty, especially given his three immediate predecessors. Carter was an idealist, there’s no two ways around that. But unfortunately, his idealism wasn’t matched to the times in which he served. So for every good thing he did (like pardoning the Vietnam draft dodgers or actually sponsoring research into the problem of world hunger), there were times where he found himself in over his head and unable to do anything (the economy, the Iranian revolution). Carter’s presidency serves as a cautionary tale about the reality of leading a nation in a complex world.
Bill Clinton. Like Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton’s legacy is complicated, to say the least. I don’t want to focus on his impeachment because, although he did cheat on his wife, I’m not convinced that lying about it truly rises up to the level of an impeachable offense. That might make him a bad husband but not a bad president in and of itself. He did a lot of good in his tenure: balancing the budget, brokering peace in Northern Ireland and nearly doing the same in the Middle East, bringing about the end of Apartheid in South Africa, vigorously prosecuting Timothy McVeigh for his role in the Oklahoma City Bombing. But at the same time, we do have to temper that with some pretty major blunders: if Bush Sr left him with opportunities in post-Soviet Europe, Clinton squandered those opportunities. Not taking the threat of terrorism seriously enough to act on it, despite the bombings of the World Trade Center, or our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, or the USS Cole, I don’t think Clinton treated it as the threat it clearly was. Maybe I’m saying that knowing what would happen less than eight months after he left office, but the threat of terrorism had long been something known to Israel, Northern Ireland, and Spain long before Osama Bin Laden set his sights on us.
Barack Obama. The financial catastrophe that hit us just before the 2008 election is being called by most historians “The Great Recession”. I don’t think Obama gets enough credit for preventing it becoming “Great Depression 2.0”. His achievements are pretty impressive, actually. Between this and the Affordable Care Act, Obama presided over some generally good times. He took out Osama Bin Laden (which is definitely one of those events that we will want to examine closely after more time has passed. In the day, we could at least tacitly acknowledge that the war on terrorism would continue regardless of the status of the mastermind of the Al Qaida organization. Obama had a few missteps of varying degree of import: throwing ACORN under the bus, mismanaging the Arab Spring, going back on end-of-life care in the ACA because Sarah Palin called that provision “death panels”. In hindsight he was too eager to get a buy-in that realistically was never going to come, from the Republican Party, which by this time had truly become unhinged. I’ll also “ding” him for the water crisis in Flint, Michigan (even if that was more a local issue than a national one) and the way the Bundy klan took over the bird sanctuary.
Joe Biden. Like Obama, he inherited a complete and total mess from his predecessor who seemed to be trying to actively sabotage the incoming administration. The way he hit the ground running and rolled out COVID vaccinations with relatively few hiccups, can really only be considered a success story. The way he unified our allies after the fractuous tenure of Donald Trump, and the fact that Ukraine is still resisting the Russian invasion are absolutely good things. As I write this essay, no member of his cabinet has gotten embroiled in any real scandal, and no one has left for some private sector job. That’s really impressive to still be a single unit, especially compared with his immediate predecessor. Now I’ll grant you, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh has announced that he’s leaving to represent the NHL Players Union, but we’re still more than two years into Biden’s tenure and no one has left. His presidency hasn’t been without some drama, the most glaring being the pull-out from Afghanistan. But that pull-out was always going to be chaotic no matter who did it or when. (And, like COVID, Donald Trump left him with a mess.)
Most historians consider Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt to be among our best presidents (with only George Washington topping either one of them, because he set all of the precedents). Lincoln and FDR made their share of mistakes during their respective tenures, but they were also tested more harshly than any other president in US history. The situations of the day when they served, matter at least a little bit, and it’s not unfair to ask whether their greatness is at least partially function of the times in which they served; do presidents who weren’t as thoroughly tested simply not rise to that same level by virtue of having the luck of the timing of their service? (Ask the average citizen on the street about the presidents who served between Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt; it seems to me that too many people wouldn’t be able to name anyone between them, partially because, although there certainly were interesting events in that time period, they’re not really the kinds of events that help various presidents shine…)
By those standards, only two presidents were in office at times of extreme crisis: George W Bush and Joe Biden. I’ve already talked about how Bush wasted the opportunities he was given to shine. Biden has not.
I realize that Joe Biden has really only been in office for half of a term so far, but in response to the question of who the best president in my lifetime was, I’m going to say Biden.
Let’s go Brandon! Literally.
Ramblings and Rumblings 