In fact, didn’t FDR run (and win) focusing on how Hoover ran a deficit during the depression? And you forgot the expansion of the Federal Farm Board under Hoover. In fact Rex Tugwell wrote a few times that everything FDR did had its basis in the Hoover administration.
Yeah, one of FDR’s campaign points was Hoover’s deficit. Ironically, FDR increased the deficit by approximately 60% (if I’m remembering correctly) by the end of his first term. I’ll have to read some of those articles by Tugwell. The only reason I know what I do about Hoover is because I just finished a lecture series on him. The lecturer actually said Hoover could arguably have ended the Great Depression sooner than FDR if he had been given a second term.
Your first sentence is correct, and is in a fight with your second sentence.
The fact is, by the time Clinton left office in 2001, FEMA had been reformed into a top-quality agency. Regardless of the shit-for-brains types Bush put in charge, a lot of those people were still there in November 2004. If Kerry gets elected then, there’s no further talent drain, and Kerry puts a competent person at the top to utilize their talents. It might not have been Kerry’s priority, but Kerry would have still filled the position, and FEMA would have been a priority for the person filling it.
Also, the leadership problem during Katrina wasn’t just Heckuva Job Brownie, it was very much Chertoff at DHS as well. And since DHS is a Cabinet position, that changeover would have happened pretty quickly.
The problem with this is that most of the positive accomplishments we associate with LBJ (Medicare, for one) were passed in 1965-66, in the wake of the Republican decimation in 1964. His legacy just wouldn’t have been that great if he’d not run for a term of his own in 1964.
This one’s even more true than you say. If Nixon doesn’t run for re-election, there is no Watergate break-in, nor any of the other 1972 ‘dirty tricks’ stuff. Maybe Hunt, Liddy, and the Cubans still break into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in September 1971, but in all likelihood nobody ever finds out who committed the burglary, since it wouldn’t have been the sort of crime a local police department would give a high priority to solving.
If Obama doesn’t have a second term and the GOP takes the White House in 2012, Obamacare gets killed before it takes effect. The Paris climate change accords don’t happen. On the whole, a one-term Obama’s legacy is a great deal smaller than that of the two-term Obama we had.
Of course, Nixon wasn’t a 2-term President anyway, more like a 1.4 term President. 
FEMA still would have taken at least 72 hours to get there in force, and the state and local governments there would still have turned it into a fiasco by then. And it’s not as if Kerry had a crack political team to make him look good. Karl Rove> Bob Shrum. And even Rove couldn’t polish that turd.
As I said, the only saving grace for Kerry would have been that the media would have defended the new President by throwing Blanco and Nagin under the bus.
Very nice. FEMA was not just the only agency which fucked up. The problem was a plan which had not been updated in years, lack of delineation between the various types of relief agencies. The Army Corps of Engineers misrepresented how long the levees would last. The Louisiana National Guard was in Baghdad. None of that would have changed had Kerry been incharge.
Yeah, there’s no way they could have had people ready and waiting to be helicoptered in from an AFB on Oklahoma, say.
Yeah, there’s no way they could have come up with a new plan on the fly after Katrina crossed Florida and was aiming for the Gulf Coast.
The levees would still have failed, yes. But the incredibly delayed Federal response to Katrina (including inattention to basic stuff like whether the levees had failed) made the disaster much worse than it was. Days upon days upon days when the Feds just plain didn’t show up, and a local sheriff wouldn’t even let people get out of New Orleans due to their skin color. This was all preventable just by having people in place who knew what they were doing and wanted to get it right.
Name me a President who HAS won a majority of votes from among all possible voters. That’s a ridiculous standard.
I disagree, and the nation saw a President taking sides prematurely. He should have let the facts come out. But he shot first, aimed later, Obama was 0-3.
This discussion of FEMA neglects a crucial point. Our nation’s emergency management system is set up to always deal with the last disaster. In 2005 it was ready for another 9/11, not a natural disaster.
This is one of the most absurd things I have ever read. Apologist nonsense.
FEMA was “set up” for another 9/11 because the U.S. never has floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural disasters? FEMA failed because of terrible management, both within, and above in the Bush administration.
You’ll hate to know that many in Emergency Management academia disagree with you and it’s a known problem in the EM field.
You’re joking, right? It’s widely accepted that the Massacre at Benghazi was one of the three biggest American tragedies of the past century. It cost at least 3000 milli-Americans their lives(), compared with only 2.4 kilo-Americans at Pearl Harbor and less than 3 kilo-Americans on 9/11. Congress certainly thought it more significant, spending more effort investigating Benghazi than it did Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined. ( 4000 milli-Americans if we include Antonin Scalia, his assassination part of the same crypto-jihadist plot.)
Yes, the Tragedy of Benghazi occurred during the 2nd-term election campaign rather than the 2nd term itself, but even the despicable Killary-Hussein team wouldn’t have stooped that low except as part of some heinous re-election strategy.
Americans will never forget the date September 11, 2012. (Schoolchildren don’t even learn December 7 anymore, and the date of 9/11 is remembered only because it happened coincidentally on Benghazi Day.)
So, say Lincoln loses re-election in 1865 to McClellan, who wanted to continue the war to restore the Union but was happy to let the South keep their slaves. Let’s say Booth gets antsy anyway, and shoots McClellan in the head.
How does George H. Pendleton do as president?