Both two term Democrat presidents. Both suffered major defeats in their last midterm. Both have low approval ratings late in their presidency. Both end their terms with turmoil overseas, Korea and Isis. Both known for their advocacy of civil rights.
Is it a specious comparison? Truman went from being poorly regarded late in his presidency and immediately thereafter. Now he’s consider a near great president, and some list him as a great president. I have a feeling some on the left will start making the comparison.
It is a specious comparison, or, at least it will be in the short term. Obama’s future reputation as a President will rest largely upon the events of the next decade or so. A United States economy that is booming and fiscally solvent will help cement Obama’s legacy. However, a United States with growth rates averaging 2%, continued structural deficit, structural unemployment and a worryingly large national debt will be problematic. Even worse, if the United States is viewed as being in long term decline and on the verge of going bankrupt his legacy will be viewed as a mediocre one.
Leaving aside foreign and social policy(these can always be argued about endlessly) his reputation greatly depends upon future US economic performance. The economic performance of many Western leaders was seen as competent between 2000-2008 until events kicked them all in the guts(US, UK, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal etc).
I think this is probably always the case with presidencies. On the other hand, there might be some comparison regarding popularity, because presidential popularity–more often than not–whether it’s positive or negative, is based upon the superficial perceptions of a fickle and largely ignorant citizenry.
In the long run, I suppose there might be some parallels drawn between Truman and Obama. Overall, though, I think they are more dissimilar than similar. Truman had a more outsize personality, and his brisk honesty contrasted well with several of his successors (most importantly Nixon), which I think are the biggest reasons his reputation improved over time.
He was President when it ended, and I believe his decision to drop the A-bombs was correct, but FDR should get the lion’s share of the credit for the U.S. victory. He made the key decisions and picked the right people to wage and win the war. Truman did not significantly change his predecessor’s military strategy.
I remember the same argument being made for Bush eight years ago. Every President who’s currently unpopular likes to think that history will vindicate them.
But Truman’s historical turnaround was based on three factors:
He was unpopular in his time because he was unfavorably compared to his predecessor. History later adopted a more realistic appraisal of Roosevelt and this raised Truman’s comparative reputation.
His administration was filled with corruption scandals, albeit ones which he was not personally touched by. With the passage of time, these scandals seemed less relevant.
This is the key one. Truman made decisions that caused controversy and generated opposition in the short term. But after a few years, it became apparent that they had been the right decisions. Truman got credit not only for having made them but also for having been willing to make them in the face of opposition.
I don’t see Obama following this pattern. He’s been compared very favorably to his predecessor and came into office on a high note. While there have been the usual political accusations, there haven’t been any major scandals during his Presidency - no Watergates or Iran-Contras or Monica Lewinskys. And with the possible exception of his rather tepid health care program, it’s hard to see anything that’s going to grow in reputation over the years. Obama seems to have tried to avoid controversies during his administration.
I think the comparison history will make with Obama will be Carter. They’ll be remembered as decent men who didn’t really accomplish a lot during their Presidencies.
I agree as to those factors in Truman’s reputation turnaround, but I think you’re a little harsh on Obama. Healthcare reform had been proposed since T.R.'s time, and only Obama got it passed. He saved the auto industry, and has presided over a considerable improvement in the economy since he first took office. He ended the direct U.S. combat role in Iraq and is doing the same in Afghanistan. He appointed the first Latina to the Supreme Court. He signed the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He approved the mission that killed OBL, who was responsible for the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. His historical reputation will be considerably better than Carter’s, I think.
Truman had SOME great accomplishments, mostly in the foreign policy arena.
On the other hand, on the domestic front, he was extremely unpopular and deservedly so. When it came to economics, he was an ignoramus and sometimes a demagogue.
This is the fulcrum around which much of his historical impact will revolve decades from now. If repealed or judged a failure, so then will Obama’s reputation suffer. If it survives as a “meh, better than nothing” sort of system he’ll get a MOR stamp. If it evolves into something successful and far-reaching he’ll get a fair bit of retroactive vindication.
All of the other events of his presidency will play into his future reputation and he’ll always have the race footnote ( which IMHO was important for the country, if irrelevant to Obama’s performance in office ). But how the health care situation resolves will be the big one and we won’t know the outcome for some time.
I take issue with this point. I wouldn’t go so far as to say his administration has been scandal ridden, but he’s had his fair share. It’s just that some make too much of it, and others not enough.
Thing is, politics tends to be an all or nothing thing in America, at least in my experience. I know few people who give much of a damn. Those who do, tend to be partisian.
Obama doesn’t have a “The buck stops here” sign on his desk.
The claim “Truman lost China” was made.
I can see the claim “Obama lost Iraq” being made.
Could/Should the US response have been more robust in both situations? We now have a fuller understanding of the political environment Truman made his decisions in, in the future we’ll have a fuller understanding of the political environment Obama made/is making his decisions in.
I agree that nobody can predict the future with absolute certainty. But I have a hard time seeing how the ACA will stand the test of time. If the conservatives are right, it’ll be judged a failure for trying to socialize health care. My prediction is the opposite; that the ACA will be judged a failure because it only put a band-aid on a serious problem and did very little to address the real issues. Some future president is going to have to enact real health care reform and the only thing the ACA will be remembered for is showing that half-way attempts at reform weren’t enough.
And, yes, Obama has done other things while in office. Nobody can be President without accomplishing something. But I don’t see his accomplishments in office rising above the average for presidents.
IMO the president Obama will most likely be compared to is Jimmy Carter.
Both were elected because of what they represented rather than because of their qualifications for office. Both were naive, weak, insular, inept negotiators (domestically and on the world stage), and rode into office high on a wave of public adulation for what supposedly wonderful people they were only to skulk away later as a huge disappointment to everyone.
Had the Republicans been able to field a candidate as charismatic and capable as Ronald Reagan, and/or had Obama been honest about the realities of the clusterfuck that is the ACA, he too would have been a one term president.
I think the idea of a President not well liked in his time but regarded much better by history is a pretty rare event. I think it’s more likely that Obama will have a strong finish to his Presidency and we’ll know as soon as he leaves office that he was pretty decent. It’s also possible that he’ll fail to learn from his previous mistakes and leave office with a 30% approval rating.
Obama’s political challenge now is that no one really has a stake in his Presidency being successful anymore. Democratic supporters are going to be looking ahead to the next President and his relationships with Congressional Democrats, never good to begin with, are unlikely to improve. He’s going to have no real allies and no grassroots movement to back him up. He’s on his own now. Which still leaves him plenty of tools to be successful. He still runs our country’s foreign policy and he can still institute government reforms pertaining to the executive branch to fulfill his promises to change the way Washington works.
I don’t think it’s that rare – in addition to Truman, Bush I is pretty well regarded now, while having pretty low approval ratings at the end of his term. LBJ is lauded for his domestic accomplishments, while strongly criticized for Vietnam. And Truman, of course. Even Nixon is well thought of in some areas.
I was thinking along the same lines as you, which is why I added the word “much”. Carter would be in that category as well. His domestic accomplishments were actually quite impressive.
But Truman stands above all of them as a President who was deeply unpopular but is now considered among the greats. While those others were in some cases less unpopular than him and their reputations rose, but not as much as his.
My impression as a non-American is that Obama will be remembered as a mediocre “caretaker” president, mostly notable for who he was (that is, the race thing and the seemingly-irrational hatred he has stirred in some quarters) than for what he did (a halfway-house on healthcare reform that will likely satisfy nobody, a rather mixed bag of foreign policy accomplishments - neither particularly good nor particularly bad).
The way things seem to work though is that there will be countless revisions to the ACA until it gets to be the all encompassing health plan that most liberals want to see (though not the single payer system that those farther left want). Big, novel reforms are usually pretty difficult to actually get through, and it is much easier to tweak a program already in place.
For that reason (and because I think the ACA will be remembered as a very good step to universal health care), I think the ACA will be fondly remembered by the left.