My father recently said that Obama was the worst president of his lifetime. I wanted to answer back and say, no he's not. But then again, now that he is retired, he has a lot of time to watch his Fox News and be told that everyday. Combined with the common sense of historical lack of perspective we all have that leads us to hyperbole (e.g. "This is the BEST movie I've ever seen!" "I've never had a worse experience in my life"), I can see how he thinks that. But he's wrong.
And so, who are the best and worst presidents of my lifetime? Let's see.
-Richard Nixon. This is a tough one, because I was just a baby. His Presidency was overshadowed by Watergate, but it's interesting that he was overwhelmingly elected both times, beating Humphrey big and then absolutely crushing McGovern in 1972. So until Watergate, people liked him and must have thought he was doing a good job. He was getting out of Vietnam, the economy wasn't in terrible shape yet (though the recessions that followed into the early 80s were probably his fault, at least somewhat), and we didn't get involved in more foreign excursions. He's all over the place...had he not been so thin-skinned and paranoid, he might have been a great president. Let's give him a C.
-Gerald Ford. A good man who should have stayed in Congress. Rightly pardoned Nixon, was never seen as legitimate since he only became VP when Agnew had to resign, and the economy started to tank during his Presidency. Probably ought to give him an incomplete, but 2 1/2 years was long enough for America. C-
-Jimmy Carter. A great man who was in way over his head. Recently in watching The Seventies miniseries I got the impression that he had high ideals that were incompatible with a man who must exercise that kind of power. If I were president, I probably could do no better than him...you need to get along with Congress, and he was clueless about that. He had problems to fix, and seemed incapable of doing anything. The Iranian revolution is on his watch, and he was impotent to do anything about it. The economy tanked, and Reagan became President and looked great by comparison. A D+ is as high as I can go, and likely that includes points for the good things he has done after his presidency.
-Ronald Reagan. Now we start coming to people I can remember well. He was the president when I left elementary school and when I began college. Most people would give him a solid A, but many of the things he did have started to look worse in hindsight and led to many problems we have today. He lowered taxes, but the debt began to balloon. He helped bring back American pride after the 60s and 70s, but it has led many to believe in American Exceptionalism. He got us involved in many foreign policy adventures, all in the name of freedom (Panama, Grenada, Lebanon), and this has led to many intractable problems today. He took on communism, leading to the fall of the USSR, but this change the geo-political landscape, in that instead of a few large problems, we have many more small problems today. He began in earnest the drug war, imprisoning millions of Americans. He was likely the most transformative president of my lifetime, for good and for bad. I still feel fondly about him, even as I know his many failures. I'll give him a B.
-George Bush. We forget about him, but he was likely underrated. He pulled back on some of the excesses of Reagan's conservative revolution, but in doing so he alienated conservatives ("Read my lips, no new taxes") and did not go far enough for liberals. It's hard to really judge what he did, because Reagan's effects dominated his presidency. B-.
-Bill Clinton. Like Nixon, a scandal (Monica Lewinsky/Whitewater) overwhelmed good policy actions. Clinton was the last president to lead us to a balanced government budget and he mastered the ideology of centrism. But because he could not keep his pants up, and because enough of the scandals people accused him of had some basis in fact, he was not who he could have been. B
-George W Bush. Here was a man who was the conservative Jimmy Carter in his incompetency but allowed himself into so many disastrous policies by his advisers that America is still reeling. After 9/11, he looked good standing on a pile of rubble, but it all went downhill from there. The War on Terror went out of control on his watch, and we will be suffering its effects the rest of my lifetime. One wonders about how his presidency would have gone had he not had people like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney by his side. I can't give him any better than a D-.
-Barack Obama. The black president with the Muslim-sounding name. He is the coolest president of my lifetime, and he could have been transformative. Remember those 'change' and 'hope' signs? But a combination of a hostile Congress and screaming conservative element gave him little hope to really get a lot done. He should have taken on the bankers and the huge corporations some more, but they had bought too many representatives and senators to make this possible. I sometimes feel he should have been more ambitious, but perhaps he did the best he could with what he had. The economy has stayed OK, we've not been involved in a lot more foreign wars (though we've been drone-striking terrorists), and social change has continued to progress. He's not the best president, but he's not the worst, either. B-.
