Whenever we have a How will history judge Bush? thread, it’s pointed out that Truman was wildly unpopular in his time but is now seen as a successful president. I can’t recall too many examples of the opposite, so - which US presidents were very popular at the time (“the time” is their leaving office, otherwise Bush already qualifies) and are now seen as bad presidents by historians or the public at large?
Isn’t it generally believed (by historians, anyway) that Kennedy doesn’t really deserve the rosy gloss that the “Camelot” mythology gives his administration?
The obvious case is Warren G. Harding, who was very popular while in office (perhaps partly because he was quite handsome, and partly because he didn’t do much to offend anyone: his keyword was “normalcy”). However, scandals about others in his administration broke after he died in office, and he’s now regarded as one of the worse presidents. (Except in his home town of Marion, Ohio, of course!)
Reagan ran up record budget deficits and quadrupled the national debt despite being elected on a balanced-budget platform, and damaged American credibility with the Iran-Contra affair, and a case could be made that his economic policies were mostly failures. Nevertheless, he was very popular during his presidency – so popular every Pub running since seems to feel obliged to try to be him.
I’ve always wondered about that. It seems to me that Kennedy wasn’t as great a president as everyone seems to think. I think his greatest moment was the handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Beyond that, I haven’t read that much to say otherwise. As for the civil rights campaign, didn’t he just hoist that off on Johnson?
But this isn’t a case of Reagan being re-assessed hore harshly after he left office. The same sorts of people who thought he sucked back in the 80s still think he sucks today. The same sorts of people who loved Reagan back in the 80s still love him today. He was pretty popular back in the 80s and he’s still pretty popular now.
If anything, Reagan is judged a bit better by liberals nowadays, because in the 80s his heatup of the Cold War was seen as insanely risky. Now with hindsight that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse his confrontational policy towards the Russkis doesn’t seem so bad.
Now with hindsight that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse his confrontational police seems unnecessary. And risky. They still retained the capacity to nuke us if provoked, and the Strategic Defense Initiative would never have deprived them of that option.
My problem with some of the “confrontational policy” criticism is that it is based on the foolish idea that since the other guy is dangerous, one must appease them at all costs. We see much the same in society (See the Pit thread on the teacher being assaulted).
Take for example, upgrading theater missiles in Europe. Huge “confrontational” controversy at the time. Soviets making all sorts of threats and saber rattling over it, Euros shaking in their boots. But at the same time, the Soviets seemed to be able to add missile after missile, tank, bomber and what have you to their arsenal aimed at Europe, with hardly a peep out of the Europeans. These are Bully Tactics, people. “I can do whatever I want, but if you blink at me, I’ll kill you.” The worst thing in the world you can do is knuckle under and allow it to happen.
So while I have a lot of criticism of Reagan for a lot of other reasons, I’m not particularly bothered by the “We know the Soviet economy is crap and they can’t afford a technological race with us, so let’s push the envelope a little and see what happens” tactics. The Russians were not idiots. They knew as well as we did that no one was going to win a nuclear confrontation.
Andrew Jackson and William McKinley, popular while in office, have fallen out of favor. In McKinley’s case, it’s because his signature accomplishment, the Spanish-American War, has long since looked like a pointless exercise in imperialism.
Jackson coasted for a long time on his “man of the people” image and his stand against nullification, which appealed to the Civil War generation. Nowadays Indian Removal and his pro-slavery orientation are obvious black marks against him. Historians taking a closer look at his economic policies have mocked his hostility to banking and paper money, and condemned his conversion of the civil service into a partisan patronage army. Then, too, there was his odd penchant for summary capital punishment while in the army . . .
Does anyone have a good grasp as to Ulysses S. Grant’s popularity when he left office? He was still popular enough in some sections of the Republican Party to be a very serious contender for the 1880 Republican Presidential nomination, but I’m not certain about the public at large.
If he was, then I assume it is a case of the problems within his presidency (in particular, the problems, such as corruption, caused by his style of management) being ones that didn’t fully sink in until after the fact.
No, his “greatest moment” was his assassination. If it weren’t for that, people would be much more critical of his presidency. I remember a great deal of criticism at the time, not all of which was from Republicans.
JF Kennedy was one of the worst-he was personally attractive, but a total disaster as president. His biggest failing: his inability to understand the weakness of the USSR. Instead, he got the US involved in war (Vietnam) that ultimately cost 60,000 American lives, 800 billion $, and resulted in disaster. Other than that, he didn’t do much (he made good speeches).
Wasn’t the U.S. already in Vietnam by the time Kennedy was elected?
“I almost destroyed the world but managed not to” never seemed like such a great resume item to me, especiial considering that the Bay of Pigs cockup led to the Cuban Missile Crisis in the first place. Plus, I think McNamara saved his bacon.
…pork reference threshold approaching upper limit…
Are you f-ing kidding me? While Khrushchev ran circles around Kennedy at their first summit, the whole Cuban Missile Crisis thing was the beginning of the end of Khrushchev. There isn’t even any historical debate about the importance of his folding in Cuba leading to his ouster. Kennedy was more responsible for the end of Khrushchev than Reagan was for the end of the Soviet Union, period.
Nobody cares about deficits when we only read about them in history books. To illustrate my point, which five Presidents do you think had the worst deficits, and how does “history” view them? Iran-Contra was indeed a horrible black eye for our Constitution, but I think the average American Joe probably still supports Oliver North on that one, much as I hate to say it. Face it, rightly or wrongly, Reagan will be remembered as the guy who ended the Cold War. I accept that in the same way I accept that Carter was weak on defense, even though he was responsible for starting the Reagan defense buildup. And historians, so far, generally judge Reagan to be in the top quartile of presidents, so saying that he has since office been judged harshly just doesn’t hold water.
If there is any one recent President whom I think history has judged too harshly, it is Carter. But then, people weren’t judging him all that well when he left office, so it doesn’t exactly fit the OP’s question.
I think past presidents have a tendency only to rise in esteem. With the exception of Bill Clinton’s recent shenanigans on the campaign trail, which I think are causing some people to rethink how much they want to return to the Clinton years, I think Americans tend to think of former presidents as they do high school girlfriends: the problems may be summarily acknowledged, but the subject is so idealized as to massage one’s fantasies of the good ol’ days and to help forget how they really screwed you over.
I thought about naming Grant. Given that his party got reamed in the off-year elections of 1874, though, I don’t think he was all that popular when he left office. The attempt to renominate him in 1880 strikes me more as an inside play within a party grown fat after five straight election wins, as opposed to a popular groundswell. If only there had been public opinion polling . . .
Sorry, ralph. You can’t blame that one on Kennedy. Eisenhower got us involved in the war in Vietnam itself and it was Johnson that was famous for escalating our involvement to extremes.
The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 had the country believing that we might be nuked at any moment. It was a serious and present danger that we lived with for three days. Kennedy will forever be a hero in the minds of many who lived through those days because of it. It made it possible for us to overlook the fiasco that was the Bay of Pigs.
I admit that I will never be able to look at his administration with unbiased eyes. I will just have to leave that to historians. Mostly I remember the culture that he brought to the White House, the establishment of the Peace Corps, the encouragement of physical fitness programs, his heroism in the Navy, his wit and intellect, and the esteem with which other countries greeted him. It was a good time. It could have been better.
Excuse my ignorance–I had a decade yet to be born–but how did the Bay of Pigs lead up to the Cuban Missile Crisis? I don’t see the connection, other than that they occurred on the same island. (Me pone la cabeza mala.)
Under Eisenhower, US involvement in Vietnam was limited to some (limited0 material aid, and some advisers. Kennedy sent actual combatant units to Vietnam. he also allowed the Vietnamese generals to plot the murder of President diem. Plus 9sorry i don’t have a link) Kennedy made a (shocking) statement in a cabinet meeting “We need to make our power credible, and Vietnam looks like the place…”
Which shows how ignorant he was (about the true state of Soviet power). While Kruschev was blustering food riots were taking place outside Moscow-and the USSR began importing massive amounts of grain 9from Australia, Argentina, etc.) The giant had feet of clay!
Not everyone will agree with my interpretation, but I think we caused a lot of our own problems with Cuba. After Castro took over the country, the US was concerned that Castro was a communist and would ally Cuba with the Soviets. Castro himself denied being a communist and tried to set up a meeting with President Eisenhower but was refused. US – Cuban relations declined and a few years later a group of CIA armed and trained Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Castro. Early plans for the invasion involved direct US military involvement, but ultimately the Kennedy administration decided against that route ostensibly so they would have ‘plausible deniability’. The invasion was a complete failure, and shortly after Castro declared Cuba a socialist state and formally allied with Russia. Not only was there no plausible deniability after the fact, it turned out Castro knew about the invasion and who was behind it before it happened. A year or so later the Soviets moved nuclear missiles into Cuba, and the Cuban Missile Crisis ensued.
I wasn’t alive during the Cold War so it’s hard to appreciate the tensions of the period, and it’s easy to second guess after the fact, but it seems to me that we cornered Castro into our worst case scenario in Cuba. While Eisenhower and Kennedy bear some responsibility for creating the relationship with Cuba that brought on the missile crisis, I do think that Kennedy handled it better than some administrations (rhymes with Smush/Freney) would have. His military advisors were advocating a full-scale invasion of Cuba, and when Castro was asked later if he would have recommended launching the missiles at the US in the event of an invasion, he responded that he did recommend launching the missiles at the US. So it seems that a global nuclear catastrophe was a very real possibility, and Kennedy was instrumental in averting it.