How Unpatriotic Are U.S. Presidents?
by Mike Kimel
In my lifetime, the following Presidents have run for re-election: Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton, GW Bush, and now, Obama. What is striking about this list is that of this crowd, only three: Nixon, Reagan and Clinton appeared to be at all successful by the time they started running for re-election from any objective point of view.
Nixon may have been the most successful of the three by the end of his first term. Inflation was still a year away, as was the collapse of Bretton Woods and the Oil Embargo. On the foreign policy front, Vietnam… well, that wasn’t pretty, but there was the trip to China, and there were a couple missile & nuke treaties with the USSR. On his signature New Federalism policy, the Post Office lost its cabinet level status and he created the EPA (while, at roughly the same time, killing the Clean Water Act). Of course, it was all downhill from his re-election.
As to Reagan and Clinton, neither was a complete success by the time they ran for re-election. Reagan had reintroduced us to the era of deficits as high as far as the eye could see, but inflation was finally tamed (whether you give credit to Volcker or Reagan is immaterial – the average voter knew Reagan but not Volcker) and Reagan had definitely convinced us it was morning in America, though many felt the Rising Sun was eclipsing the United States. Clinton had failed to get his signature health care plan across, and he had even lost Congress to the opposition Republicans, but by 1996 we were in the middle of our fourth year of deficit reduction, and the fears that Japan was about to overtake America had receded into the distant past.
As to the failures… Ford didn’t have a long first term, but he certainly didn’t Whip Inflation Now. Carter’s first two and a half years looked good, and then… we had the Iran hostage affair, the oil crisis, the tanking economy and rising inflation, the botched response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (boycotting the Olympics).
Bush I – well, it wasn’t for nothing that Clinton ran on “it’s the economy, stupid.” On the foreign policy side, the war in the Persian Gulf went well, and made for good TV, but everyone knew stopping after 100 hours was a bad idea and price would be paid eventually.
Bush II – by 2004, he had disappeared the surpluses, tanked the economy, and was mismanaging two wars. (Remember the old: “you don’t change horses midstream” nonsense? The fact that the horse was rolling around in the sewer should have been a tip-off it was long past time to get as far away from that particular horse as possible.)
And now we have Obama. Yes, he inherited an economic disaster, but he hasn’t successfully executed the policies needed to make things better in a reasonable amount of time. (That is true regardless of what policies you think are necessary – the evidence is that the economy, while better than they were in November 2008 or January 2009, is still a turkey.)
Which brings up a point. I remember thinking to myself, at this point in 2004 that if GW Bush was as patriotic as he kept telling us, and he believed in what he was doing, he’d have been honest and concluded the exigencies of the office were too much for him. He could still have advanced his policies by resigning and letting his VP, Dick Cheney run for President as an incumbent. Or, if he felt Cheney wasn’t the best candidate to push forth the agenda in which he believed, GW could have fired Mr. Cheney, replaced him with that ideal candidate, and then resigned. Instead, GW, with evidence of his failures all around him, decided to double down… and as we all have seen, make things worse.
Its an option most of these failed first terms could easily have followed. Its one that Obama could follow (but won’t). You have to go back as far as Lyndon Johnson to hear this being stated:
I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.
It speaks poorly of our Presidents that we hear that phrase so rarely when the job of the President is so important. And it speaks poorly of the American public, that we collectively continue to elect and re-elect people who are so unpatriotic and uncaring that they cannot do the right thing.
Mike,
I think your blurring the Bush II years. By summer of 2004 things actually were looking fairly well. A huge bi-partisan bill had passed (NCLB) with broad Democrat support. Both tax cuts went through (with huge bi-partisan support) and the economy had recovered from the Clinton Dot-com bomb. Unemployment was still low at 5.5% (especially compared to today and it would steadily drop until 2008). In hugely bi-partisan supported wars, support was getting 85-90+% support in Congress during every vote (and would to this day BTW). In Afghanistan we had overrun the Taliban and the country basically was quiet with minimum of fighting and rebuilding had started. In Iraq, Hussein was captured in Dec ’03 and both his sons were killed. You also had a series of very bad press actions – Abu Garib came out in the spring as did a resurgence in guerrilla activity, including the actions in Fallujah were 4 US contractors were draped from lampposts (celebrated by the hate-site DKos). Fighting was heavy in Iraq but losses were by any historical ruler low. (and we would eventually win and have the victory consolidated by Obama).
Then you had the Fake-but-accurate Dan rather fiasco which really hurt, if not crippled, the ability of the MSM to be ever again considered neutral. Add to that the poor choice of candidate in Kerry – who could not decide what his position on the war was – and Bush was an easy choice.
The idea that Bush was unpatriotic or uncaring is laughable when he looked across the way to Kerry. We also know today (that we did not know in 2004) that the anti-war left was really not anti-war. Just anti-Bush or Republican. As long as a Democrat is President the wars are quite acceptable, including surges that ramped up US losses. We saw this in the actions of Congress after the 2006 election were Pelosi and Reid punted on stopping the war (well within there power ) and continued to vote Pres. Bush unwavering bi-partisan support for the war. Obama just signed a treaty to keep us in Afghanistan until 2024. Nary a peep from the anti-war left…
You are too close to look at it without emotion (so am I also). Your complaint with Bush comes down to the invasion of Iraq, tax-cuts (based on your work), and the melt-down in the housing and stock markets in 2008. A lot of which can be laid at the feet of deregulation spearheaded by Democrat congress critters in the 90s and signed into law by Clinton.(Barney Frank being particularly guilty here)
In 2004 most of the heavy fighting in Iraq was still to come. Things looked fairly good at that time. And not unemployment was 5.5% and the economy was getting noticeably better….unlike today.
By the time LBJ dropped out of the race we had lost far more troops in Vietnam than all US losses since 2001 to date plus more. With no end in site (even though the Viet Cong had been decimated by Tet, the NVA won a huge propaganda victory, that would eventually win the war were it had to be won – in US public support).
Islam will change
I think this is unfair to Obama, implying that the patriotic thing for him to do would be resign and let Hillary take over, or something. While I won’t vigorously defend Obama’s record in absolute terms, I think he accomplished about as much as he could given the state of the Republican opposition and the fact that he never had a cooperative Congress, with right-leaning Democrats aiding the Republicans when they could have pushed through a strong agenda.
Obama deserves reelection, but to be effective in a second term he needs both a Democratic Cpongress and a public that will hold him accountable and pull him in a progressive direction and away from his deference to financial interests.
Buff,
Your recollections don’t match mine, particularly with respect to the war in Iraq. I remember a drumbeat of “if the MSM would just report on the painted schoolhouses instead of the suicide bombings, everyone would realize that all is well.” Yes, Saddam had been caught, but several towns had been ethnically cleansed. Even Baghdad had essentially been split into sectors, with each one controlled by a different sect.
As to the economy – Greenspan’s money pumping R us operation (which had miraculously restarted the moment Clinton left office) had stabilized the economy (though it was creating a monster bubble), and yes, it wasn’t as bad as it wuld become, but considering where it had been not long before, it was awful. For a guy who campaigned on: “We’ll cut taxes, increase the surplus, pay down the debt and make the economy boom even more” and who started where GW started in Jan 2001, that has to be a failure. (You don’t judge a guy by the current state of the economy, you judge a guy by whether things got better or worse on his watch.) Are you better off now than four years ago was definitely no for most people under GW.
As to Vietnam and Iraq… diferent war. Vietnam was a war against Soviet and kinda sorta Chinese proxies. Iraq was a war against who? Who was the superpower arming and training and advising the other side? Iraq was closer to, well, Persian Gulf War 1 or Grenada than to Vietnam.
As to the “anti-war” crowd. I agree. But that has nothing to do with this post.
All the years the economy was a floating hot air balloon, the American people are on course of austerity since Reagan, tax cuts and welfare queens, high interest rates and high unemployment at least at the beginning of Reagans term, tax increases with Bush senior, Clinton had welfare reform, the tech bubble and job creation most of the jobs low wage service jobs, Bush two cut taxes and we had the housing bubble, low interest rates and standards of living were kept up with credit cards and the government hired lots of people, now we need to tighten our belts to make up for the bills we accumulated. The austerity is meant for the middle class and the low income people and the poor, austerity is not for people like Romney, he wants another tax cut for himself and his sons.
The American Left is really good at being disappointed. I’m not a fan of this art form, it seems dreary and lacking in moral basis or entertainment value, but it seems to suffice for a number of you.
Cascadian,
I’m not implying. I am pointing out – like many of his predecessors, Obama arrives at the end of his first term not looking at all like a success. That he didn’t have Congress behind simply says he couldn’t handle that particular situation. Clinton did very well (relative to other Presidents) facing an opposition Congress for 6 years. I don’t think Reagan ever had both houses of Congress controlled by Republicans either.
You might say the curent Congress is more vicious, or whatnot, but imagine what, say LBJ (who did have the decency to resign) would have done with John Boehner or Paul Ryan in the same situation. Frankly, I’m not calling for Hillary or Biden or anyone else since there’s no point… Obama isn’t going to resign, which makes him no different from Bush II, Bush I, Carter & Ford. Just like all of them, he didn’t exactly need the job by his second term, so what exactly is his motivation. And that’s the whole point of this post – we elect people to this office who are supposedly patriotic, but they aren’t patriotic enough to walk away when the evidence is there that they are hurting the country… and its not like by this time any of them need the money.
Lys,
This post is not an endorsement of Romney. Anyone who takes advice from Hubbard and Mankiw is, in my opinon, heading the wrong way to start with. This post is also not an endorsement of Clinton or Reagan or anyone else. Its clear that the bar for President has hung pretty low in recent decades when it comes to ability to deliver prosperity. This post is merely pointing out that if our Presidents were the people they claim to be, we’d see a lot more resignations in year 3.
But your theory that Obama is hurting the country is far from objective. In fact it seems unhinged.
I am not sure FDR would have had multiple terms if the Kimel yardstick for presidential re-election is applied.
Nixon the success. The mind boggles.
Mike,
In January 2001, let alone the campaign, the Clinton Dot-Com bubble had not exploded nor had 9/11 occurred. The first tax cut went through with very little D opposition and was part of his campaign promise. Then the crap hit the fan when the dot-com bubble burst and we got hit by 9/11. The idea that the world had not changed abruptly at this point is nonsense.
Now you want to argue the second tax cuts was a bad idea – you won’t get any argument from me (I have said this before). At that point we had got hit by both crises and should have been raising money to pay for it.
As for Iraq, we disagree why we went in there from a basic level. When I was sitting bombing Afghanistan from Diego after 9/11, it was the consenses of the senior officers that after the Taliban collapsed in early December that we could kiss goodbye our chances of going home soon. Everyone expected for the rest of the Wing to show up and to swing into Iraq in the spring of ’02. We were fighting an ideology (and still are). Killing OBL and AQ was just a sympton of the desease. The US had an oppurtunity to re-arrange the islamic world. Its still in flux, but the invasion into Iraq started the ball rolling that is still knocking down dictators today. (I know we disagree here).
Bottom line the economy was recovering in 2004 from those shocks and things were going well in both Iraq and Afghanistan, ethnic lceansing not with-standing. The heavy fighting would not start until after Nov 04. Things were looking up, even with the negative MSM war coverage.
As for better off after 4 years? Considering the shocks and we were at war. Yes. If we had not been hit by 9/11 and the dot-com bubble hadn’t imploded – no we were not. Are we better NOW than anytime before Oct 2008 – definitely not. Obama has bungled the recovery by even your own measures. By your definition Obama should step aside and let someone else run for President on the Democrat ticket.
Lastly, the anti-war crowd were a huge player in the news and trying everyway in their power to bring down the President. The drumbeat that everything R was aweful was incessant. And stopped instantly when a Dem entered the White House. It is part of the post since it colored a lot of what people saw and believed in, especially the left. To this day I’m amazed the Dem party picked such a wimp of a candidate that Kerry was. But that’s another discussion.
And no matter what you thought about Bush II decisions, he managed to get huge bi-partisan support on almost every single one of his initiatives during his 8 years. About the only thing that he got burned on was the half-hearted attempted at SS reform. You can’t say the same thing about Obama. (And LBJ would have crushed Boener IMHO). the Dems got an empty suit into the White House who can’t handle it even when his party had total control of Congress! Bush never had that and Reagan faced a Dem Congress his entire time in Office (Clinton did just as well during the 6 years with an R Congress BTW). So in the last 32 years only Obama seems to have the inability to lead….
Your milage may vary obviously. But if you feel Bush II should have stepped down, then you should definitely be calling for Obama to step aside.
Islam will change
Lys,
How you got this post as an endosement of Romney, I will never know. Its mostly a gripe that we haven’t had many all-stars at the top recently. Which I agree with.
The system of how we elect people is deefnitely part of the problem. FDR would not get elected today in thes emedia satuarted days – cripples need not apply. Can you see Truman, with only a HS education surviving one minute? Ike had a mistress supposidly, but still nothing like JFKs roving conquests. Could you see JFK ever being elected once all the women came to light? Part of the reason we got Obama was he was a squeky clean politician with almost zero record. How many great politicians are out there right now, from both parties, who will never ever have a chance at the Presidency due to past or current ‘issues’.
And its not getting any better. People were crawling through Palin’s trash during the last election.
And austerity isn’t for people like Obama either. He’s just as much the 1% as Romney is.
Islam will change
You can’t fire a VP. It is an elected position. Civics classes not doing so well in schools today I guess. What a shame
You can’t fire a VP. It is an elected position. Civics classes not doing so well in schools today I guess. What a shame
You can’t fire a VP. It is an elected position. Civics classes not doing so well in schools today I guess. What a shame
Buff,
I’m not going to respond point by point as I’m in a bit of a hurry… but as to this:
“Your milage may vary obviously. But if you feel Bush II should have stepped down, then you should definitely be calling for Obama to step aside. “
I thought I had made my feelings clear over a year ago… http://www.angrybearblog.com/2011/04/why-i-will-not-be-voting-for-obama-in.html
little john,
Why is there such a big misconception about FDR? I’ve had post after post about how, from 1933 to 1940 we had some of the fastest growth this country ever experienced. Real GDP grew by 10.9%, 8.9% and 13.1% in 1934, 1935, and 1936. In 1936 you bet I’d vote for him. That’s the kind of failure I would walk a mile each way to vote for any day of the week, and twice on Tuesdays. Name me any other President who produced even a single year with 8.9% real. One single year, let alone double digit.
rootless_e,
This isn’t an endorsement of Nixon/Reagan/Clinton or their policies. Merely a note that by the time each ran for re-election, things were looking up from the point when they had taken office.
lark williams,
You are correct, in theory. I tend to work better with empirical data. I’ve noticed that a number of issues relating to the Presidency in the Constitution seem to no longer be operable, and haven’t been operable in a while. For example, somewhere along the line, the President has acquired the ability to wage war without a declaration by Congress. Off the top of my head, I believe the last President to ask Congress for a declaration of war was FDR, but the US has fought in a number of wars since then, including at least two that can be considered major. In fact, I could name a few wars that happened before WW2 which didn’t, er, enjoy a declaration by the Congress, come to think of it.
But even without simply “firing” the VP, the VP could be removed. Remember Spiro Agnew? He (or rather, his lawyers) and the Justice Department cut a deal, agreed to by a Federal Judge, which included a requirement that he resign. Sure, there was lots of wrong-doing being investigated, but the Constitution also doesn’t say you could push for leniency if a guy resigns from office. It seems the Constitution has been interpreted in very versatile ways.
All that said, what you’re saying is that the problem of unpatriotic people holding offices they shouldn’t extends to the office of the VP. I agree with you fully.
That’s what I took it for.
Here’s a tip on stats: a big percentage of a small number may not be as impressive as it looks.
18% unemployment after 4 years.
“It speaks poorly of our Presidents that we hear [the phrase “I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term”] so rarely when the job of the President is so important. And it speaks poorly of the American public, that we collectively continue to elect and re-elect people who are so unpatriotic and uncaring that they cannot do the right thing.”
You’re begging the questions.
What should the American electorate have done differently to more perfectly satisfy your expectations of them?
What should Obama have done differently to more perfectly attain your approval of him?
Enquiring minds want to know.
And why are your criteria for perfection more perfect than other people’s?
rootless_e,
You may have noticed that this post mentions 4 Democrats by name. Two are mentioned as having done something for which we shouldn’t be disappointed. I’m not sure what your beef is.
rootless_e,
I’ve been pointing out for years, you don’t measure anyone with an absolute number – else, Obama looks much better than, say, FDR on the basis of GDP alone. You measure them based on how things changed since they took office. And if you’re referring to unemployment rates in 1936 – nobody knows quite what the unemployment rate was in 1936. I’ve posted on Lebergott’s figures before. But even if you take his figures, unemployment was down quite a bit between 1932, right before FDR took office, and 1936, when he was running for re-election.
Your tipoff should have been that though Nixon was looking good at the end of four years, as the post notes, things went downhill thereafter. The point was… it wasn’t necesarilly obvious (if you liked Nixon’s policies) that he was a failure by 1972, as, say, it was that Ford wasn’t living up to expectations by 1976 or Carter by 1980.
Cameron,
I’ll answer in reverse order.
“And why are your criteria for perfection more perfect than other people’s?”
I wasn’t talking about perfection, only about whether things generally looked up after four years.
“What should Obama have done differently to more perfectly attain your approval of him? “
I’ve had several posts on that since his assorted pronouncements on the campaign trail in 2008. But that has nothing to do with my post. My post is on whether you could get a bunch of people to agree things are clearly better than four years ago. When Clinton ran for re-election, it was on the notion that things were definitely better than four years before.. and Dole campaigned against him generally in agreement on that point. The disagreement was only on whether Dole’s policies were better than Clinton’s. When GW ran for re-election (and now, as Obama is doing it) it wasn’t on “things are clearly better than four years ago.” I want a President who makes most of us clealry better off.
“What should the American electorate have done differently to more perfectly satisfy your expectations of them? “
That should be clear from the post – elect someone who, if it turned out he/she wasn’t up to the job, would state:
“I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”
Nixon set up wage and price controls in the summer of ’71, because inflation was perceived to be running out of control. He also ended the convertibility of the dollar into gold around the same time. The stock market was tanking, a sure vote of confidence. (I remember my dad taking a big hit, then getting all philosophical about it. Then he foamed at the mouth – like father, like son – at the swine at the Burger King for not honoring a coupon for 50 cents off because it had expired a day earlier. You learn to have persepective if you are going to be a good investor, and my dad was a good investor.) The election was in ’72. Yes, Nixon had a secret plan to end the war. The slogan was “peace with almonds”, though I may be a bit off on that. The War in Vietnam was not going particularly well what with all the bombing and Ho Chi Minh getting all Churchill and North Vietnam Can Take it. There was a lot of anger about the draft, and the race riots, and a bunch of other things, all before the 1972 election.
Nixon won reelection because of the culture war, not because he was delivering the goods for the working man or the middle class soccer mom, if they had those back then. Most Americans would rather take a big wage cut rather than put up with abortion or gay marriage or men with long hair or women with short skirts. (I suppose I can understand some of that, though I never got the skirts are too short thing.) People just don’t vote with their pocketbooks, at least they haven’t since the generation that pulled out of the Great Depression. We’ll see if we ever get another generation like them.
So we would have been better off with McCain and Phil Graham at the helm? Bottom line, no one can control this unhinged mess we call an economic system.
kaleberg,
Inflation had peaked (for the time being) in 1969 or 1970 and by 1972 was down in the 3.2% range (ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt). Whether Nixon’s price controls were a good idea or not (and I’ve had my posts on price controls) is immaterial – what many voters would have seen was “well, we’ve had a few bumps on the road in some areas, but Mr. Nixon seems to have caught his stride in those areas.”
As I said, Vietnam was a mess. No question. And yes, you are correct about the riots and draft issue. But you don’t get over 60% of the popular vote on culture wars alone. Yes, some people saw Nixon for who he really was, but in November of 1972 Nixon seemed to be delivering for most people.
Jude,
The post said nothing about McCain or (may your favorite deity forbid) Phil Graham. My guess is that if either of them had ever ended up in the White House, the post would have mentioned them as among the group of folks who failed to deliver the goods after four years in office, and yet who nevertheless didn’t have the decency to walk away.
And no, you’re wrong… there have been some presidents who have managed to control this unhinged mess we call an economic system better than most. To paraphrase buffpilot upthread, we haven’t exactly had a team of all stars in office… but that doesn’t mean every person who held that office has been out of his league. There have even been a few who qualify as great… just not in my lifetime.
Presidents aren’t supposed to do much of anything, as I read the Constitution. They have no particular duties but to carry out the laws Congress enacts and show up on ceremonial occasions. It’s a do-nothing position under the best conditions and a mixed bag under the worst. Some Presidents actually have to do something above and beyond what the Congress wants them to do. Wars make Presidents look important so most of the “great” Presidents were in office during big, terrible wars, if you think about it. But, I don’t see “function as national economist and director of the economy” in their job description.
I worked for every President from Nixon (very effective domestically in administering existing domestic programs) to Bush II (very effective in damaging a number of key executive agencies responsible for important programs. Thinking here of FEMA, USPS and SS/Medicare/SSA but there are other agencies that were also run into the ground on purpose.) I wasn’t impressed with the lot of them.
The view most of us have of our recent history came to us on TV and in movies. Did you watch The Ballad of the Green Berets or Apocalypse Now? Which version of that war did you pay to see? And, did you follow up in a VA hospital reception area on the details of various engagements? Talk to a guy with a pocket full of polaroids he brought back from Da Nang? He left his leg back there but managed to salvage pictures of a lot of dead VC with missing ears and noses. Those polaroids give you a good grasp of the whole concept of body counts. Great idea, Mr. MThanks
I learned a lot just by talking to people under each administration. The world hasn’t been all that kind to a lot of Americans for the past 40 years. Some Presidents made it worse. Some made it a little better while they were there and all of them together with their Cabinets put us right where we are today. Thanks, Rummy, wherever you are. NancyO
Correction–“Great idea Mr. McNamara. Thanks.” NMO
Mike,
I still remember that one…
This was hilarious…
“WV Democratic Primary result: Barack Obama 58%, Keith Judd 42%. Who is Keith Judd? Inmate #11593-051 at a Federal prison in Texas. That’s the level of Democratic enthusiasm for President Obama….”
Islam will change
We’re not working off of an absolute number are we?
While there is a huge market for punditry, high on personal opinion and light on objectivity, it’s not the sort of thing anybody needs to be proud of. You deserved the response from Buffy, because Buffy writes exactly that sort of stuff. He is more calculating, always managing to work the nasty implication into the hart of the statement, so good luck engaging at that level.
I can’t identify a standard according to which you are judging presidents. I can’t see a calculation of costs and benefits that show the country would be better off if some presidents had quit when they could win re-election. I’m quite convinced that a number of presidents on the list should never have been elected, but that doesn’t mean there was an obvious alternative that would have been better.
Calling presidential patriotism into question sounds a lot like the kind of crap that the GOP has used against Obama, and used to force complicity in wars of choice. It belongs on a drug-store check-out line tabloid.
So my question is, whatever made you think this was worth writing?
“…he hasn’t successfully executed the policies needed to make things better in a reasonable amount of time….” Update: the US does not have a unitary form of government.
” He could still have advanced his policies by resigning and letting his VP, Dick Cheney run for President as an incumbent. “
But Cheney was effectively the president. Bush was the guy you might have a beer with and maybe could even vote for. Not even his relatives would vote for Cheney.
Hang on – but however bad the President of the day may be, he has learned something during his time in office. And he has seen just how bad the electorate is at picking people to do the job. Who is to say he wouldn’t be better than any viable alternative.