Favorite Presidents and Favorite Failed Candidates?
Feb 22, 2019 2:20:49 GMT -5
lizzielooziani and jk like this
Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2019 2:20:49 GMT -5
I could probably say a lot more about this, and I might add on to this later, but just to get the conversation going...
First of all, every President worth their salt (and many who aren't) have done shitty things. Off the top of my head: Jefferson had sex slaves, Jackson was genocidal and ignored Supreme Court rulings, John Q Adams was an unusually terrible father, Polk stole half a country's territory, Lincoln suspended habeus corpus, Teddy was an imperialist war hawk, Wilson was a racist, FDR interned Japanese Americans, LBJ ramped up the Vietnam war, Nixon has watergate and the war on drugs, Reagan has Iran Contra, Bill Clinton was a rapist, Obama droned a US citizen without due process...
^I'm bringing this up because I want it clear upfront I know about the shitty things these men have done. It's factored into my opinions.
Personally, I think society is flawed, and we not only can but should do a lot to fix it. On its face that doesn't seem to be a controversial statement, but the point is I like progressive Presidents who took proactive measures to make society improve. Therefore, my criteria for what makes a good and bad President will probably be different than other people's.
So, all that said, my favorites include LBJ and the two Roosevelts. It's one thing to be a visionary and it's another to be a born leader that can make deals and get stuff done. We've had a fair amount of each, but rarely both qualities in one single person. These, in my opinion, are the most clear cut examples of this rare combination.
LBJ is probably the single most effective President we ever had in terms of wheeling and dealing the legislature to get things done. The two biggest examples of this are the Great Society programs and Civil Rights Act. If you know anything about the latter, getting it passed was an absolutely herculean feat and I honestly don't think anyone else could have done it in the 1960s. If not for Vietnam I have no doubt he'd be universally ranked among the top 5 US presidents.
FDR too, though his methods bordered on being too authoritarian for my tastes (4 terms, stacking the court, etc). Still, he completely redefined how the American system works and in my opinion for the better. After suffering through the Gilded Age, unrestrained 20s and fallout depression of the 30s our country NEEDED the New Deal in my opinion. His policies weren't radical, they were Centrist when looking at the entire political spectrum as opposed to just the narrow set of ideas in our current Overton Window.
Teddy was the first real progressive president who fought back against the rampant greed and carelessness of big business which had pervaded the 1880s-1890s Gilded Age. His Progressive Party platform is one of the boldest, most forward-thinking I've ever seen, especially considering the time it was proposed. As an individual, TR is just such an inspiration as well--the guy who got shot in the chest and went on to give a speech anyway, war hero, outdoorsman, etc. The vast majority of Presidents in the 1800s were very hands-off and pro-status quo. Teddy is perhaps the first who had a vision for a new, fairer world and the will to make it happen.
^That's my top tier of Presidents. But here's some I don't think get the credit they deserve...
I really like Woodrow Wilson though I don't think he accomplished as much. His 14 Point plan and League of Nations were beautiful ideas and completely ahead of their time. He was also one of the few Presidents who was a political scientist and thoughtful about government processes and how to frame his actions as a result. I really respect that--I think ideally every President should have a sufficient understanding of these concepts. Wilson actually wrote an essay about how the US should switch to a Parliamentary system (with the Speaker of the House as Head of Government and President as Head of State.) I personally think we should use a semi-presidential system like France, but even if I didn't agree with Wilson, the fact that he actually analyzed our current system and thought of how we could make it better is really commendable. You really don't see too many Presidents who care about things like that, even though it's their job.
Chester A Arthur is probably the most overlooked President in our history. He reformed the civil service and ended the spoils system, reformed how Native Americans were treated under the law, rebuilt the navy and presided over not only a surplus but also a clean administration. There were no great scandals or missteps while he was in office and by all contemporary accounts he did a fantastic job. Yet, for some reason, people today don't remember him.
Perhaps it's a glaring omission but I no longer place Abraham Lincoln among my top favorites. He held the Union together, but had to suspend habeus corpus in order to do so. He freed the slaves, but after the Civil War such an act was perhaps inevitable anyway. I don't mean to belittle him but I wonder sometimes if he were just at the right place at the right time--we treat the 4 Presidents who came before him as among the worst for not dealing with the slavery/division crisis. Well, by his own admission Lincoln would not have addressed slavery or pulled the South kicking and screaming into the 19th Century either if it meant avoiding the war. So, would we still revere Lincoln the way we do if war happened to break out in 1864 or '68? Also...and this may be an unpopular opinion...but with how fundamentally, and irrevocably divided America is today I sometimes wonder if maybe it would've been better if the South had just left. Let them do things their way while the rest of us progress and strive for equality. I guess when it comes to politics, that's my "hot take."
As far as favorite failed candidates, I thought I'd open it up for other people who might want to answer the question. You all know for me it's McGovern. After him I'd say Robert F Kennedy. It's very possible RFK if he'd been nominated in '68 would have offered McGovern the VP considering they were friends, ideologically compatible and from different regions of the country (following the conventional wisdom of balancing a ticket.) Considering how badly McGovern wanted Ted Kennedy to be his running mate in '72, it stands to reason he would have been bending over backwards to get RFK had he been alive. RFK, unlike Ted, had Presidential ambitions at the time and almost certainly would have accepted. Under that scenario, the star power of the Kennedy name means McGovern stands an excellent chance to win, and barring that would only suffer a narrow loss as opposed to the blowout which drastically shifted American politics to the right. A McGovern/RFK pairing is far and away my dream ticket regardless of which one happened to be at the top spot.
I could go on to talk about a lot more failed candidates whom I believe would have made great Presidents, but that's an essay for another day
First of all, every President worth their salt (and many who aren't) have done shitty things. Off the top of my head: Jefferson had sex slaves, Jackson was genocidal and ignored Supreme Court rulings, John Q Adams was an unusually terrible father, Polk stole half a country's territory, Lincoln suspended habeus corpus, Teddy was an imperialist war hawk, Wilson was a racist, FDR interned Japanese Americans, LBJ ramped up the Vietnam war, Nixon has watergate and the war on drugs, Reagan has Iran Contra, Bill Clinton was a rapist, Obama droned a US citizen without due process...
^I'm bringing this up because I want it clear upfront I know about the shitty things these men have done. It's factored into my opinions.
Personally, I think society is flawed, and we not only can but should do a lot to fix it. On its face that doesn't seem to be a controversial statement, but the point is I like progressive Presidents who took proactive measures to make society improve. Therefore, my criteria for what makes a good and bad President will probably be different than other people's.
So, all that said, my favorites include LBJ and the two Roosevelts. It's one thing to be a visionary and it's another to be a born leader that can make deals and get stuff done. We've had a fair amount of each, but rarely both qualities in one single person. These, in my opinion, are the most clear cut examples of this rare combination.
LBJ is probably the single most effective President we ever had in terms of wheeling and dealing the legislature to get things done. The two biggest examples of this are the Great Society programs and Civil Rights Act. If you know anything about the latter, getting it passed was an absolutely herculean feat and I honestly don't think anyone else could have done it in the 1960s. If not for Vietnam I have no doubt he'd be universally ranked among the top 5 US presidents.
FDR too, though his methods bordered on being too authoritarian for my tastes (4 terms, stacking the court, etc). Still, he completely redefined how the American system works and in my opinion for the better. After suffering through the Gilded Age, unrestrained 20s and fallout depression of the 30s our country NEEDED the New Deal in my opinion. His policies weren't radical, they were Centrist when looking at the entire political spectrum as opposed to just the narrow set of ideas in our current Overton Window.
Teddy was the first real progressive president who fought back against the rampant greed and carelessness of big business which had pervaded the 1880s-1890s Gilded Age. His Progressive Party platform is one of the boldest, most forward-thinking I've ever seen, especially considering the time it was proposed. As an individual, TR is just such an inspiration as well--the guy who got shot in the chest and went on to give a speech anyway, war hero, outdoorsman, etc. The vast majority of Presidents in the 1800s were very hands-off and pro-status quo. Teddy is perhaps the first who had a vision for a new, fairer world and the will to make it happen.
^That's my top tier of Presidents. But here's some I don't think get the credit they deserve...
I really like Woodrow Wilson though I don't think he accomplished as much. His 14 Point plan and League of Nations were beautiful ideas and completely ahead of their time. He was also one of the few Presidents who was a political scientist and thoughtful about government processes and how to frame his actions as a result. I really respect that--I think ideally every President should have a sufficient understanding of these concepts. Wilson actually wrote an essay about how the US should switch to a Parliamentary system (with the Speaker of the House as Head of Government and President as Head of State.) I personally think we should use a semi-presidential system like France, but even if I didn't agree with Wilson, the fact that he actually analyzed our current system and thought of how we could make it better is really commendable. You really don't see too many Presidents who care about things like that, even though it's their job.
Chester A Arthur is probably the most overlooked President in our history. He reformed the civil service and ended the spoils system, reformed how Native Americans were treated under the law, rebuilt the navy and presided over not only a surplus but also a clean administration. There were no great scandals or missteps while he was in office and by all contemporary accounts he did a fantastic job. Yet, for some reason, people today don't remember him.
Perhaps it's a glaring omission but I no longer place Abraham Lincoln among my top favorites. He held the Union together, but had to suspend habeus corpus in order to do so. He freed the slaves, but after the Civil War such an act was perhaps inevitable anyway. I don't mean to belittle him but I wonder sometimes if he were just at the right place at the right time--we treat the 4 Presidents who came before him as among the worst for not dealing with the slavery/division crisis. Well, by his own admission Lincoln would not have addressed slavery or pulled the South kicking and screaming into the 19th Century either if it meant avoiding the war. So, would we still revere Lincoln the way we do if war happened to break out in 1864 or '68? Also...and this may be an unpopular opinion...but with how fundamentally, and irrevocably divided America is today I sometimes wonder if maybe it would've been better if the South had just left. Let them do things their way while the rest of us progress and strive for equality. I guess when it comes to politics, that's my "hot take."
As far as favorite failed candidates, I thought I'd open it up for other people who might want to answer the question. You all know for me it's McGovern. After him I'd say Robert F Kennedy. It's very possible RFK if he'd been nominated in '68 would have offered McGovern the VP considering they were friends, ideologically compatible and from different regions of the country (following the conventional wisdom of balancing a ticket.) Considering how badly McGovern wanted Ted Kennedy to be his running mate in '72, it stands to reason he would have been bending over backwards to get RFK had he been alive. RFK, unlike Ted, had Presidential ambitions at the time and almost certainly would have accepted. Under that scenario, the star power of the Kennedy name means McGovern stands an excellent chance to win, and barring that would only suffer a narrow loss as opposed to the blowout which drastically shifted American politics to the right. A McGovern/RFK pairing is far and away my dream ticket regardless of which one happened to be at the top spot.
I could go on to talk about a lot more failed candidates whom I believe would have made great Presidents, but that's an essay for another day
I've been laughing ever since. 
I really enjoyed reading your reviews of the Nixon-JFK and Bush-Clinton-Perot debates and watching the two videos you linked. Incidentally, later this week I'm attending an interview at the local university with the Dutch author Auke Hulst. Hulst has written a psychological portrait of Richard Nixon whose title translates as "Searchlight is on the lawn".