President's Day - Who Are These Guys?

 

As we celebrate President’s Day, I will take this opportunity to make some of my observations of these men, and their humanity and how it has played a vital role in their performance in office. I am no historian, I am just a guy who has had a lifelong fascination with the office and the men who have occupied it. There is no perfect President. Every one of these guys was corrupt in some manner or another. Some much more so than others. But what makes a good President to me is one who gets the big things right. The number on big thing is the economy, the second is foreign policy and advancing American interests worldwide. Regarding the economy, I do not want a President that seeks to micromanage the economy, but one that creates favorable conditions for economic prosperity for now and after he leaves office.

I will keep my observations to the Presidents who have occupied the office during my lifetime. I was born during the Lyndon Johnson Presidency. We have seen the whole gamut of humanity from happy and optimistic to paranoid and prickly. I do not attempt to rank these men from best to worst. Just to comment on their humanity, their strengths and weaknesses and how that affected the mindset that they brought to the office.  Without further ado, let’s get started.

The Paranoid President – Richard Nixon Nixon is quite possibly the most intellectually gifted man to occupy the Presidency during my lifetime. I will watch YouTube interviews that he did back in the 1980s and be mesmerized by his thoughtfulness and his overall intelligence. Yet he thought the world was out to get him. He was not altogether wrong, as it is well known that the Washington press hated him. But it led him to do things like put together an enemies list, raid journalists offices, and ultimately try to bug the phones at the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate office complex. It was that last act that ultimately brought down his Presidency. I know it is hard to believe but some historians have speculated that Nixon might have gone down as a great President if it were not for Watergate. I do not completely agree with this analysis. While he was the best at foreign policy, his domestic policies leave a lot of room for doubt.  His appointment of Arthur Burns as Federal Reserve chairman – and Burns’s easy money policies – led to the record high inflation that we would see in the late 1970’s.

The “Do Nothing” President – Bill Clinton Obviously, those of us who remember the 1990’s would see the “do nothing” label as a misnomer. We all remember that there was a lot of “doing” going on the White House during those days, mostly between the President and any female not named his wife. And this cost him a lot of political capital with the American people. Clinton came to Washington with an ambitious agenda, but when the Republicans took both houses of Congress in 1994, that put it all on hold. The overall lack of legislative accomplishment actually helped his Presidency. He inherited a strong economy, and it remained strong all throughout his Presidency. Clinton deserves credit here because – and this is saying a mouthful – he did not screw it up. Clinton was a great politician. He knew how to read a room. He was great at both speaking to a large audience and one-on-one. He was the master at finding a long line and getting in front of it. Because he didn’t screw it up, I ultimately rate him as an above average President.

The Underrated President – Jimmy Carter  Jimmy Carter is widely viewed as having a failed Presidency. Most notably, Carter took the blame for the inflation of the late 1970’s, which topped out at about 12.5% in 1980. However, Carter took the single most significant step to beating back that inflation by appointing Paul Volcker as Federal Reserve Chairman in 1979. Carter was clearly the most good and decent man to occupy the office during my lifetime and perhaps of all time. He did some remarkably good things as President. First on the list was the peace agreement that he brokered between Egypt and Israel. A peace agreement that undoubtedly went a long way towards costing Egyptian President Anwar Sadat his life. The Carter Administration was also responsible for deregulating the airline, trucking and brewery industries. Funny that Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, was seen the Great Deregulator, yet that title belongs to Carter. I view all these moves as being positive overall. Carter had his downside, as he was prickly and difficult to deal with, even with his fellow Democrats in Congress. He also made some notable mistakes at the beginning of the Iranian Hostage Crisis that prolonged that crisis far beyond what was needed (although he deserves credit for getting the hostages home alive). Finally, his overall leadership skills left something to be desired.

The Happy President – Ronald Reagan A few years ago my Dad took a trip to California to visit my sisters living out there and a trip to the Reagan Presidential Library was part of that trip. The overwhelming observation that my Dad had of Reagan after visiting the library was that Reagan was a genuinely happy man. That was not the type of observation that came naturally to my Dad, so this struck me. We do remember Reagan being endlessly optimistic. This upbeat, optimistic outlook undoubtedly served him and this country well during the early days of his Presidency as the country went through a horrifying recession in 1980-82. Actually, a double dip recession as a result of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker’s fight against inflation. The recession would have happened whether Reagan won in 1980 or Carter was re-elected. I do not think that Jimmy Carter could have effectively led the US through that recession. Reagan did. By 1982, inflation was down to 4%, which is about where it would remain throughout the 1980’s. Of course, we really saw Reagan’s good humor in the immediate aftermath of a failed assassination attempt in 1981, an attempt that left 4 wounded including the President. His relentless belief in America, and in the American free enterprise system bordered on complete idealism. It was this idealism that led to the United States winning the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and led to the INF treaty in 1987 that would eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons. Reagan deservingly gets a lot of credit for winning the Cold War, but not nearly enough. He saw to it that it was won relatively peacefully, as we never engaged the Soviet Union in a direct confrontation, and the regional spats never spread into a large global conflict. Finally, Reagan was never seen as an intellectual of any kind, but he had the best leadership skills of any President of my lifetime. What I will most remember about Reagan was that in 1980 and throughout his Presidency he told us that America’s best days were ahead of it, not behind it. In 1980 that was a very difficult thing to say. From 1973-1980, America lost a war in Southeast Asia, saw a Presidency brought down in utter disgrace, endured record breaking inflation (and loss of tons of purchasing power in spite of record income gains), an embarrassing hostage situation in Iran and so-called “intellectual elites” saying that our children and all future generations of Americans would have to get used to lower living standards, and that Communism was a competing, but equal, economic system to American free enterprise. History has been kind to Reagan, not so kind to the so-called “smart people” Obviously, I rate Reagan an above average President.

The Childish President – Donald Trump  No matter what you may think of a President’s policies or his overall demeanor, the very minimal expectation that we should have of any officeholder is that they act like an adult. Instead, we elected this man who disrespected the military service of John McCain, who spent 5 ½  years as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton, one of the world’s most horrifying POW camps. He mocked the disability of a handicapped reporter, in an utterly gross display. Trump has no governing center. He is a narcissistic authoritarian. He is not a conservative, not a liberal, not really an anything. He will do what is best for Trump. He will sell his supporters down the river in a heartbeat if he has to. And they think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread? He said we would get sick of all the winning? I am still wondering where it all is. A great leader brings out the best in all of us. He brings out the worst in all of us, both his supporters and his opponents. I never admired him as a businessman, he has zero leadership skills. Quite honestly, his Administration probably did some good things, but it all got lost in his inflammatory and damaging rhetoric. Needless to say, I rate him a below average President.