Reelected Presidents: which of them deserved it?

Great Debates
1

We are about to have a Presidential election this year, and a certain GWB is running for reelection. Does he deserve it? Which Presidents in the past deserved it who actually achieved it? Let’s take a look a those Presidents that either won reelection or finished the term of the previous president and were then elected. All links are to www.americanpresident.org.

George Washington (1789 – 1797: two terms)
Here’s a man who truly lived up to his legend. A great military leader and the man who put our country on the right track toward its republican form of government. He had many chances to grab extra power, but he never did. In fact, he ran for only two terms as President on purpose, so as to establish a precedent for orderly succession. One of my personal heroes, and I have read several books on the Revolution to back up this opinion. His main flaw? He owned slaves. Yes, that’s an unfortunate fact about him.

Thomas Jefferson (1801 – 1809: two terms)
I know less about Jefferson, but all in all he seems to have been a great leader. His flaw, like that of Washington, was his owning slaves: a glaring contradiction with the democratic ideals he fostered.

James Madison (1809 – 1817: two terms)
I do not really know enough about him to judge. Does not seem bad.

James Monroe (1817 – 1825: two terms)
The link says he ran unopposed his second election, so popular was he. Does not seem awful.

Andrew Jackson (1829 – 1837: two terms)
To me, Jackson seems “great” in same way that Napolean was great: popular, effective in many ways, but basically selfish, semi-evil and in it for his personal benefit. His treatment of the Indians alone has earned him a kind of infamy, and his politics as President seemed to produce much heat but little light. He is the first President I will designate undeserving of reelection.

Abraham Lincoln (1861 – 1865: assassinated during second term).

I am not a revisionist when it comes to Lincoln and the Civil War: no, I don’t see him as an evil tyrant waging a cruel war against a just South. But neither do I see him in the rosy tones of his portrayal in grade-school curricula. I see the Civil War mainly an unnecessary blunder, much like WWI, and a tremendous tragedy for the country (over 500,000 soldiers died, and several Southern cities were blown to kingdom come). Lincoln did his job well of “preserving the union,” but was it worth the cost? In any case, I am ambivalent as to whether Lincoln deserved reelection or election in the first place. Maybe I’m a revisionist after all.

Ulysses S. Grant 1869 – 1877 (two terms)
Grant is pretty much universally considered a completely incompetent President, something acknowledged in a poem by O. W. Holmes at the time of his death. Did not deserve reelection

Grover Cleveland (1885 – 1889; 1893 – 1897: two nonconsecutive terms)
In general Cleveland seems to have been a decent but unspectacular president. I’m ambivalent.

William McKinley (1897 – 1901: assassinated during his second term)
I am going to have to go with did not deserve. McKinley was a strong, in-control President, but he was the kind of uptight, rich bastard that got the country into trouble in the 19th century. The Spanish-American War, although not completely his fault, does not speak well of him.

Theodore Roosevelt (1901 – 1909: finished McKinley’s second term and was then elected)
Roosevelt was very progressive economically and did good things for the country. On the other hand, he was an imperialist in an unnecessary fashion (e.g., the Philippines). Weighing the good and bad, I would say that he deserved to be elected.

Woodrow Wilson (1913 – 1921)
The schoolbook version talks about the League of Nations, great President, blah blah, but opinion is sharply divided on Wilson. I myself am ambivalent.

Calvin Coolidge (1923 – 1929: finished Harding’s term then was elected)
Calvin Coolidge is now considered a weak President whose policies did nothing to stop, or perhaps encouraged, the Great Depression. Did not deserve election

Franklin Roosevelt (1933 – 1945: died during his fourth term)
FDR was the greatest President of the 20th century, although his four terms had many failures (political and moral) as well as successes. He was also a great leader during WWII, although he gets points taken off for not doing more to prevent or prepare for the Pacific War. He deserved reelection all three times.

Harry Truman (1945 – 1953: finished Roosevelt’s second term and was then elected)
I’m going to have to say NO to Truman, although it’s a tough call. His dropping the atomic bomb on Japanese civilians verges on a “crime against humanity,” and he personally made the decision to do so. On the other hand, he had the guts to fire MacArthur. On the other hand, he created one of the worst precedents in 20th century, which plagues us yet: managing the Korean War without a declaration from Congress.

Dwight Eisenhower (1953 – 1961: two terms)
I’m ambivalent.

Lyndon Johnson (1963 – 1969: finished Kennedy’s term and was then elected)
He could have been great, but Vietnam disqualifies him. NO.

Richard Nixon (1969 – 1974: resigned during second term)
A true tragic hero like Macbeth, Nixon had what it took to be great, and he did make several advances for civil rights and foreign policy. But he started out on the wrong foot by escalating Vietnam even further, bombing both North Vietnam and even neutral countries in the region. This alone makes him a kind of war criminal, and he certainly didn’t deserve reelection.

Ronald Reagan (1981 – 1989: two terms)
Reagan was a fairly good leader but an incompetent administrator. His handling of foreign policy, however, was good, and he supplied just the right kind of rhetoric America needed after the demoralizing 1970s (which is not to say that I thought Carter was bad). Although I personally feel that Mondale would have been the better man for the job in 1984 (especially considering how rough Reagan’s second term went), I would not say he was undeserving of reelection.

Bill Clinton (1993 – 2001: two terms)
Unlike Reagan, Clinton was an excellent administrator but a sub-par leader. His foreign and domestic policies were fine, but he put the country through the wringer with completely avoidable personal scandals and foibles. I would say he just barely deserved reelection.

George W. Bush (2001 - ?)—DOES NOT DESERVE REELECTION

So, our Presidents undeserving of reelection (election after partial term) are as follows:

  1. Jackson
  2. Grant
  3. McKinley
  4. Coolidge
  5. Truman
  6. Johnson
  7. Nixon
  8. Shrub

But what do you think?

2

To help you get responses I’ll ask the obvious question of whether people should consider A) the alternatives presented (I’m taking it you went for Goldwater in '64?) and B) the perspective of history ( TR and WW’s drive to make the US global power is gonna tend to look better or worse depending how people view the current state of the world.

3

People can answer as they wish, but I’m most curious about the following: Which Presidents, like the current officeholder, were so egregiously bad that they didn’t deserve reelection no matter who their opponent was?

4

I think Lincoln certainly deserved reelection, although this is just gonna reopen a long-running debate here.

Lincoln could not have done anything to prevent the South from seceeding in my opinion. (Nor could he have stopped them from firing on Fort Sumter, but let’s not go there…) Thus I can’t pin the war on him, it was the result of decades of problems.

If preserving the union isn’t part of the job of President, what is?

5

As I said, I’m ambivalent about Lincoln. At the time, half the country thought he was great, half the country didn’t.

I’m glad the US is now a unified country, and nowadays we don’t suffer directly from the cost paid to keep it that way. So it’s easy to say, Oh sure, the Civil War was worth it.

But what if the war had so weakened the country that it was recolonized by Great Britain? Then it would now be a no-brainer that the war was stupid, because we might be paying those costs today, in the shame of having lost or being disunified under different circumstances.

6

McKinley was never particularly rich (although he was never particularly poor, either). He had to drop out of college because his parents couldn’t afford it, and until the Civil War broke out, made his living as a postal clerk and a teacher. After the war, he studied law and was admitted to the bar, and then was pretty exclusively in elected office after that (County Prosecuting Attorney, U.S Representative, Governor, then President)

And I’m sort of of the position that you deserve reelection if you get more votes than the other guy. :slight_smile:

7

Wouldn’t that mean that history has borne out that he did the right thing? :dubious:

That’s so completely implausible it doesn’t deserve discussion. You can make up adverse hypothetical consequences if you want to. I think what’s actually happened in the last 140 years says that Lincoln did right with the circumstances he found himself in.

8

If there’s one man on the OP’s list who didn’t deserve re-election, it’s James Madison. A great man, yes. A brilliant man who wrote our Constitution, and made a great republic possible, yes. But a terrible President. The War of 1812 was stupid, unnecessary, and nearly disastrous.

There were several reasons for the War of 1812, but none of them was compelling. Some “war hawks” saw a chance to grab control of territory in what’s now Canada, but there was never any real chance of happening. Some Americans were outraged by Britain’s hiugh-handed tactics on the seas, but the answer to that wasn’t to start an unwinnable war- it was to recognize that, for the time being, Britannia ruled the waves, and that the United States would have to start the long, slow, expensive process of building a Navy to protect her own interests.

As it was, the War of 1812 achieved none of the ends its supporters sought, and led to unnecessary destruction. James Madison did NOT deserve re-election.

It DID yield a pretty good national anthem, though.

9

I’d just like to argue that I think LBJ was deserving of reelection. If you put Vietnam aside, LBJ did everything everyone thought JFK did! The Great Society truly was great. LBJ’s domestic policy was outstanding.

10

Truman was definitely worthy of reelection. I disagree with the revisionist condemnation of the atomic bombs; any nation in that position would and should have used at least one (though the timing and target of the second is certainly debatable.) And in retrospect, this direct display provided the advantage of preventing anyone from using one in warfare again to this day, though it would be equally revisionist to give him credit for this.

11

You totally missed the point–was the Civil War and its (to us) beneficial effects WORTH the cost in lives and property damage?

Of course it’s implausible. The point is that “preserving the Union” seems good to us today because there were no aftereffects that cause us to suffer, whereas there were plenty that caused the people of the time to suffer. IF those afftereffects DID cause us to suffer instead of the people of the past, I doubt we would think of Lincoln as a great president.

Of course, those negative effects lasted much longer on the South, and Lincoln was certainly not thought of as “great” there until, well, maybe not even today.

12

Unless we look back on the past and say “no,” how can we progress? 500 years ago any nation would have used torture, and 100 years ago any nation would have utilized capital punishment.

Washington should not have had slaves; Truman should not have dropped the atom bomb on civilians.

13

Well, the Japanese shouldn’t have attacked Pearl Harbor.

Your disregarding of possible opponents (i.e. Goldwater) doesn’t help your premise. It reduces it to “which two-term Presidents did you like or dislike?” as if judging them in a vaccuum had any merit.

14

I didn’t miss the point at all. I’m saying yes, and I’m saying that most people would probably agree.

Maybe so, but that’s exactly why we talk about having a better perspective on a President when we’re further removed from their time and actions historically.

15

Yeah… and what if Joe Montana had thrown an interception, instead of hitting Dwight Clark for a game-winning touchdown? Nobody would be saying he was a great quarterback THEN, would they?

Your formula for leadership seems to be “Never do anything, because if you do, you might turn out to be wrong.”

16

“Historical perspective” is mostly bullshit because in a strange way historians are like followers of biblical prophecy. Just as there are millenniallist types dumb enough to go on generation after generation assuming that THEIR TIME must be the time of prophesy and interpreting events around them with relation to the auguries of the bible so too does the historian go on interpreting the past to fit the present. Many white Americans will never admit that slavery was the most important factor in the secession of Southern states that led to the Civil War. They don’t want to see the Confederacy as an enemy of liberty and so they can’t face the fact that the enslavement of African-Americans was its central organizing principle. Sure you need some years to go by to see long term trends but while you can put some distance between you and the ideology of yesterday you can’t escape the ideological needs of today.
People talk about “historical perspective” as if the farther from an event we get the better we understand it. That’s not always how it works. The pose of the objective arbiter of exactly what came before is just that: a pose. The only people objective about any historical event are those who are ignorant of it. Nor is history written in stone. As the world changes around us history must also change because the job of the historian is to teach the past to people living in the present. Reagan is an important historical figure to America right now because we are living with the consequences of his conservative vision. If, as some of us fervently hope, we move away from that vision and in a hundred years we have a federal government that obeys the law, pays its bills, takes its regulating duties seriously, and preserves the environment then Reagan’s legacy will mostly be gone and historically he won’t be much more important than a Warren Harding.

17

I’ll hold my tongue on Bush for now. That’s been debated way too much for my tastes in the past four years, and further discussing it can only devolve into the same old stuff that keeps getting repeated ad nauseum.

However, I’d say that both Truman and Eisenhower handily deserved re-election. Truman, because 1) I don’t see his dropping the bomb as having been morally wrong. War with Japan was a brutal thing, and anything that brought a victorious end to it sooner was a net good, and 2) The Marshall Plan. By endorsing this, Truman saved Western Europe from traveling down the road of Germany in the 20’s and 30’s, as well as from being overrun, either militarily or philosophically by the Soviet Union. Eisenhower, because he presided over a period of peace and prosperity, and one of his legacies that we take for granted is the vehicle for much of American prosperity: the Interstate system.

Much as I didn’t like Clinton after the scandals of his second term, I can’t say that, in 1996, I would have considered him unworthy of re-election. Dole certainly wasn’t offering anything to compete with him.