I don’t want to hijack this thread which is discussing (among other things) which politician is the best at physical fighting or turning a democracy into an authoritarian state.
Charles DeGaulle managed to outlast the Nazis, chaired the postwar French provisional government, helped rewrite the French Constitution, retired, came back in 1958 and was elected in his own right in 1959. He finally retired in 1969. He rebuilt relations with West Germany, established France as a nuclear power, and escaped several assassination attempts. (He said of one attempt, “They shoot like pigs.”) He finally retired in 1969.
That depends on how liberal you are with the use of “democracy.” Strictly speaking, the United States was designed not to be one, and yet it’s counted as one. On the flip side, virtually nobody considers the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to be a democracy, and yet it claims to be. Without a real definition, we’re all just grasping at straws.
Still, Hitler is probably the winner though. Wiemar Germany was as much a Democracy then as the United States is now, it just happened to be failing when Hitler ax-murdered what remnants were left. Naturally, his exploits would make even the Cocaine Turtle blush.
Hamilton did pretty good. I couldn’t say whether he was the best but, purportedly, he was pretty hardcore about going direct to Congress and selling them on all of his ideas. The central bank, in particular, was a hard sell as I understand it.
And, obviously, there was that whole Federalist thing.
If near-literal axe-murder is part of your arsenal, I don’t think that counts. Simply murdering everyone who disagrees with you isn’t what one would generally call the finest technique of a master manipulator.
The night of the long knives wasn’t preamble, it was a culmination of all his earlier political mechanitions. It was the purge one generally performs after assuming power and achieving near total political control.
Before that, though his early political career certainly involved a lot of ahem less than democractic methods, he was undoubtedly the underdog who outplayed and outmaneuvered aged, experienced politicians who thought to use him as their yapping puppet. He got himself voted into power, and effectively built the NSDAP from scratch. He was a political monster that simply evolved into an even greater monster once he’d won at playing Democracy.
Thing is, democracies are no less the Game of Thrones than that played in ASOIAF, it’s just by civil agreement that the strategies are limited. The most effective politicians are always those who are willing to play closer to the original rules rather than keep to the gentleman’s agreement. Consider the Cocaine Turtle and Garland. Consider Trump and attacking NATO. These things were unthinkable under the “gentlemen’s rules” set out by historical precedent and Congressional/American tradition. But there are no fouls in the Game of Thrones, only those too hesitant to play to the fullest of their abilities.
The most “competent” politician will always be the one that “cheats.” History just rewrites said “cheating” as competence - unless said cheater ultimately loses.
Apparently his more specific agenda is stay out of prison, and he can only do so by staying PM. There’s a corresponding situation over here, too. It does seem that he’s held on mainly by encouraging fault lines in his opposition.
Woops. Misread the OP (I hadn’t participated in the other thread). Obviously Hitler fights the question more than answer it. My mistake - allow me to give a more productive answer:
Reagan should definitely come to mind. I don’t like or agree with most of his domestic policy, and much of his foreign policy successes merely fell into his lap (right place, right time), but one cannot argue he didn’t achieve his goals - no matter how impossible at the time they may have seemed - with seemingly ruthless efficacy. And he did it without bloodying his hands (too much).
He won governorship of California, which I understand was a deeply purple state at the time, then won the presidency and managed to form a bipartisan coalition at home. He revolutionized the economy - yeah, it sucked, but it was a revolution - and rewrote the nature of American politics to this day. Arguably, he still continues to be an effective influencer of policy, and he’s dead!
Yeah, McConnell plays small ball, but he’s effective at it. Name the major legislation he has gotten through: some tax cuts? Is that about it? I mean, passing tax cuts through a Republican-controlled chamber isn’t exactly the stuff of legends. Sure, he’s loading the judiciary with right-wing judges, but that doesn’t go in the history books. He will be better known as an obstructionist, which he has been quite good at.
Compare that to LBJ, with civil rights and the Great Society. Agree or disagree, those were “big fucking deals” in Joe Biden-speak.
More recently, I think Ted Kennedy is probably the most capable legislator in the last couple of decades. He had his hands in a lot of pots. On the R side, Newt Gingrich was quite capable, too… until that coup sneaked up on him.
Where’s the line between a hard-man authoritarian and an effective visionary? Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore could fit either category. He was Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990, leading the country out of British colonialism, and turning it into an economic hub.
Probably because the OP referred to two politicians, LBJ and Mitch McConnell, with authoritarian tendencies who valued their agendas more than egalitarianism.
LBJ was effective, but he had a very peculiar set of circumstances to work with, coming right at the end of an era in which ideological polarization was unusually low, he got to take credit for the work of the most effective popular movement of the twentieth century, and he got to ride the groundswell of the assassination of an extremely popular president. There are headwinds too, of course. War, to name one. But he found himself in pretty favorable conditions. Plop him down in 1997 or 2011 and I’m not sure he acquits himself better than the people in power in those years.
I considered this. This is one reason I didn’t include FDR. Democrats had a congressional supermajority when the new deal was passed. FDR was brave and willing to stand up for his agenda, but he had a congress willing to work with him.
But LBJ managed to pass civil rights legislation when the south was almost purely democrat. That took a lot of competence and strategic thinking. Some of LBJs policies like medicare and medicaid, or the great society had a lot of support from southern democrats. But southern dems almost universally opposed civil rights for black people But LBJ still got it passed.
He also blocked a lot of judges, and is now packing the courts. He also kept the appellate court empty (the appellate court is where the real power is, not the district or the supreme court) and is now stacking that court.
