Speech Writer Michael Cohen, writing in The Atlantic picks up on Blogger Tom Rick's list of the worst Presidents in the Twentieth Century and lays out the best and worst Presidents of the last 100 years, from a foreign policy point of view. Actually the Tom Ricks list was a set of votes (mine for was Woodrow Wilson, who I thought was wonderful when I was very young, but have come to see as very flawed).
But, back to Michael Cohen (who you can follow on twitter (twitter.com/speechboy71).
THE FIVE BEST PRESIDENTS:
#5 John F Kennedy (The Incomplete)
#4 Ronald Reagan (A Tale of Two Terms)
#3 George H W Bush (The Underrated)
#2 Dwight D Eisenhower (The Runner-Up)
#1 Franklin D Roosevelt (The Gold Standard)
THE FIVE WORST PRESIDENTS:
#5 Richard Nixon (When He Was Good, He Was Good; When He Was Bad, Whoa)
#4 Harry S Truman (The Overrated)
#3 Woodrow Wilson (Judge Me Not For What I Did; But What I Said)
#2 Jimmy Carter (Speaking of Hopeful Idealists)
#1 Lyndon Baines Johnson (The Worst)
A CATEGORY ALL OF HIS OWN:
George W Bush
Do you sense some animus toward President George W Bush?
As you think about this you may find that your mileage may vary. Mine did. But, thanks for playing.
Regards — Cliff
3 comments:
Friedman thinks it is all a matter of perspective: given the Republicans of today who are the running dogs of the Tea Party, he would like to "bring back Poppy."
I find Kennedy gets too much credit for his Berlin speech and not enough criticism for the Bay of Pigs, but his handling of the Cuban missile crisis makes his #5 showing on the Best list fair enough. But Vietnam was Kennedy's bungle, and I find it entirely disingenuous and profoundly unfair to tag LBJ with a second-worst rating in light of there being likely no way to un-do all that Kennedy had screwed up.
As for "animus", I still have a hard time understanding the partisanship that would feel any reflex to defend everything wrong that Dubya did overseas. (The "patriot" Act and all the domestic wrongs are arguably even worse, but I'll try to keep within the foreign policy topic, if only to save time and space). Obama, LBJ to Dubya's JFK, will likely bear the brunt of the criticism in the years to come, but the policy that handcuffs the successor is the real failure, and Dubya's series of debacles are hard to ignore, and in sheer number and cost, even if technology and better battlefield medicine has lessened the casualties, they far exceed the mess in Vietnam, and deserve the "worst" rating they have earned their author.
I thought the animus was that the original post (Tom Ricks) was for last century and this was the last 100 years. Thus, we don't have to deal with Teddy Roosevelt and The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War and other actions. TR is another one of those Presidents who was a hero in my youth, but who has not worn that well into adulthood. Sort of like Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes.
Regards — Cliff
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