headphase wrote:
t's really hard to rate the presidents becuse some of them have been placed in bad situations and have been viewed as failures because of that.
This is true, circumstances are important. It's not an exact science and in many ways is unfair. Who knows what Franklin Pierce would have done if he hadn't watched his son get killed in front of his eyes by a train? I doubt he would be a great president, but he probably wouldn't have been a drunk either.
Herbert Hoover was a truly brilliant, generous hero of a man. It's too bad he ran for President though, it destroyed his reputation (although he is unfairly attacked for his handling of the "Bonus Marchers," he was left with little choice there). Hoover incidentally in the more traditional histories in the sort of Coolidge mold, but he was much more of a "progressive" type (time is causing a correction in this regard). Many of his policies, which FDR campaigned against, were then adapted by him in a supercharged way (Hoover always disliked FDR because of this).
I have sympathy for Nixon. His immediate predecessors (as well as the iconic FDR) did some of the very things that forced him out, yet they are not scolded over it. He was caught off guard, although someone of his intelligence should have been smarter to detect the change in media and political atmosphere. I rank Nixon lowly do to poor domestic, and economic policies that had harmful effects on the country. Had he been better at covering up his petty scandals or avoiding them all together, he may had done better in foreign policy. As it was instead of holding South Vietnam, he resigned, congress went overwhelmed to the Democrats, and South Vietnam was cut off and fell to the Communists (followed by Cambodia). Nixon did "go the China," although apparently the effects were less immediate then previously indicated (see
The Unknown Mao by Chang and Halliday. However, I am less pessimistic then they are. While his efforts to cut off funds in for the Vietnamese communists proved unable to prevent them from ultimately victory, he did in the long term (beyond his Presidency, and Mao's death) apparently help cement the continuing Sino-Soviet split by providing an clear outlet for trade for the Chinese in the West.
There is a new book out about Eisenhower entitled
Ike's Final Battle about Eisenhower and civil rights. I browsed some of it in a bookstore and it was fascinating. Eisenhower actually was rather conservative, more conservative then he is typically portrayed, but he was also pragmatic. You can see this in his failure to take on many New Deal policies, which he actually thought to be rather foolish.
Carter was a terrible manager. Reagan got along better with the Democratic congress then Carter did, and that says allot.
Quote:
“The Carter administration has managed the extraordinary feat of having, at one and the same time, the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War." -Henry Kissinger
15 Mar 2007, 8:40 pm
