Obama said he would put his legislative and foreign policy accomplishments up against any other president except LBJ, FDR, and Abraham Lincoln. Is that a way of calling himself the fourth-best president of all-time? I suppose you can construe it that way. There’s more to being president than legislation and foreign policy. There’s executive action and governance. There’s moral leadership. But, it’s hard to argue that Obama is wrong in putting his accomplishments in the top four. If we limit ourselves to the 20th-Century, we can compare him to Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. If we look at just the first three years of each of these administrations, who can make a claim to bigger achievements than Obama?
It’s a serious question.
I’d prefer to wait before making such pronouncements…
I’ll just defer to Tom Hilton as far as the shrieks of horror are concerned, though:
Posturing Left, Working for the Right
There is another dimension to consider besides accomplishments: failures.
JFK and LBJ and Nixon judgments need to take into account Vietnam. FDr, the internment of the Japanese. Nixon, Watergate.
I can’t think of a single major failure or a single screw-up to lay at Obama’s feet. I can’t think of a single example of him getting what he wanted and the situation going to hell. Certainly, nothing to compare with arms-for-hostages-for-Contras, or the Vietnam War, or the Iraq War, or the failure to properly regulate the derivatives market.
As for judging Obama, it’s way too early. We’re only just now in a position to begin judging Clinton’s presidency. (Dubya, I’ll make an exception for. We can go ahead and draw some conclusions already, but that’s not normally a good idea).
Yet Nixon is arguably the god-father of the environmental movement.
Uh no, the liberal congresses of the late 60s and early 70s are the founders of the environmental movement. Nixon was just the guy who shrugged and signed the damn thing. He had little agency on the matter.
More to the point, to the extent anyone in Washington is “godfather” to the environmental movement, it’s Senate Democrats like Gaylord Nelson and Ed Muskie.
JFK had very good judgment re VN — draw the line against sending in combat troops then get all of our military advisors out of there by the end of 1965. That’s what the documented record shows.
Also his outstanding level headed decision making during the Missile Crisis — saving hundreds of millions of lives in the doing — should count for something, no?
The Peace Corps and his Alliance for Progress pro-democracy pro-local self determination (once he’d gotten past the BoP blunder). His beginning the detente process with Khrushchev while also seeking a quiet rapprochement with Castro. His nearly pulling off the joint venture to the Moon with the Soviets — nearly all these things plus VN would undergo a 180 or be scuttled by JFKs hawkish yahoo Texan successor.
Obama? Far less of a bold and courageous FP compared to JFK and there remain the lingering issues and potential disasters of Iraq, Iran and Pakistan and generally the continuation of American
military ventures abroad not to mention what I perceive as unnecessarily frosty relations with China and Russia.
And on the matter of reality meeting expectations in overall governance, O is well behind Kennedy who was the most consistently popular president polled and who enjoyed the respect of all the world’s great leaders.
Get back to me on Obama when he does something truly courageous and progressive in FP, a major, consequential decision which really upsets the national security establishment as Kennedy did repeatedly.
If Obama had the same media environment that JFK had, he’d be polling a whole lot better than he is now.
Re: Obama doing something “truly courageous and progessive” in foreign policy/national security
Am I correct you mean in addition to:
*Obama’s June 2009 speech at Al-Azhar;
*withdrawing from Iraq as promised;
*extracting public support for his Afghanistan “surge” timeline from the Pentagon in December 2009, and then beginning the withdrawal of troops as scheduled;
*the repeal of DADT;
*agreeing to a summer 2011 debt reduction deal with House Republicans that, as it currently stands, protects Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and requires 50% of budget cuts to come from the Defense Department?
That’s what the documented record shows.
No, not really. He discussed his desire to do so, but as we well know, that doesn’t always translate into getting the troops out on the off-chance that everything doesn’t go perfectly. What we know for certain is the actions he actually took on the record – beginning our military involvement, and the business with the coup.
should count for something, no?
As I said, successes are one measure, but failures are another. I’m talking about their failures.
Get back to me on Obama when he does something truly courageous and progressive in FP, a major, consequential decision which really upsets the national security establishment
I daresay you don’t know much about the desires of the national security establishment, if you don’t recognize how unhappy they were about his abandonment of the missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic; his abandonment of the bases in Iraq; his abandonment of our allies in Cairo and Tunis in the face of public protests; his decision to get involved in Libya; and his decision to limit the scope of our involvement in Libya once we were in. These were all very unpopular with the MIC, sometimes including his own Secretary of Defense.
I think JFK’s overall record is quite respectable, but I’ll note that you couldn’t come up with any examples to contradict my thesis: Obama hasn’t had any major screw-ups.
I don’t want to nitpick, but
“forth-best”
U of course meant “fourth best”
I completely agree that Obama is one of the greatest and most progressive leaders in our country’s history, but I’m not actually clear on what’s so special about his foreign policy record?
It’s largely identical to like Clinton’s or whatever. First Bush, Clinton, Obama, they’re all basically part of an evolving, coherent, post-cold war, globalist trajectory.
Am I supposed to be pleasantly surprised that he didn’t ask the Egyptian army to wipe out Tahrir Square while he shot down Aljazeera’s broadcasting satellites? Put it another way, what’s the difference between Obama’s foreign policy record and Nicolas Sarkozy’s? Is Sarkozy one of the greatest foreign policy presidents in the history of modern France? If not, why?
There are some wins here and there, but ultimately it comes down to bin Laden’s head on a stick – the GOP always campaigns on a testosterone-laden foreign policy versus an effete Democratic policy of engagement and mutual understanding. They can’t do that now – any attempt at painting Obama as weak leads Obama to drag up Osama’s corpse and display that disembodied head on a pike.
Metaphorically, of course.
Well, he managed to kill Osama Bin Laden, which was something Clinton and W couldn’t do. He also helped get rid of Quadaffi who has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. for decades.
He also helped get rid of Quadaffi who has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. for decades.
The same guy that Cranky McSame was doing bunga-bunga parties with two years ago(so famously documented on Cranky McSame’s Twitter machine)?
So, in the context of the entire history of the country, one in which we expanded from Atlantic to Pacific, put down an armed insurrection and ended slavery, won two world wars and a handful of smaller ones, rebuilt an entire continent, and beat some of the most fearsome military machines in the entirety of our species, you guys are going with…defeating al Qaeda. A stateless terrorist group of a couple hundred people who have successfully orchestrated a single attack against the United States proper(13 casualties in Texas, with the help of a military traitor) in ten years after 9/11. Shit, in the scope of our entire history, they rank somewhere below the Apaches as a threat to national security. This is the equivalent historical achievement I’m supposed to take seriously? We’re supposed to be looking at 250 years of history here.
I think you guys are a little too close to the situation to offer needed perspective. Next thing you’re going to tell me is that withdrawing (i.e. losing gracefully) from Iraq is pretty much just like the Marshall Plan. Or that rebalancing diplomatic and military attention towards southeast Asia is just like the Louisiana purchase if you think about it. And sanctioning Iran is like defeating Hitler…
I think the Obama administration domestic record is pretty much exemplary, but I’m totally not getting what is so transformational or special about anything going on in foreign policy.
It’s largely identical to like Clinton’s or whatever. First Bush, Clinton, Obama, they’re all basically part of an evolving, coherent, post-cold war, globalist trajectory…Put it another way, what’s the difference between Obama’s foreign policy record and Nicolas Sarkozy’s?
Nichalos Sarkozy didn’t have to wrench American foreign policy back from four years of Bush-Cheney.
If there had been eight years of Al Gore, Barack Obama holding nuclear arms negotiations with the Russians doesn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, because those negotiations would have been no big deal.
As I heard what he said on 60 minutes, it included only the “modern era.” The arguments that Fox has made include G.Washington, Jefferson, etc. But they don’t care. It sounded kind of uppity to their ears. And they wanted to underline that.
I think that that group that you listed are valid bases for comparison.
But I think that Obama would be seriously challenged by the accomplishments of Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton in the first three years of their terms. Truman set in place the architecture of national security that guided the US through the Cold War and now saddles us with capabilities looking for uses. Nixon successfully shut down the antiwar movement through a combination of co-option (Paris Peace Talks) and repression–and then established a relationship with China. Everything positive that Bill Clinton accomplished occurred during his first two years; thereafter it was a holding action against Republicans in Congress. And the significant accomplishments were laying the foundation for a boom economy through his fiscal policy and the legal framework for the commercialization of the internet.
But making these sorts of historical judgments is premature. In 1948, the judgment of Harry Truman was that he was going to lose the election. He just was not the leader that FDR had been. In 1971, Richard Nixon was seen as potentially vulnerable on the Vietnam War. In 1995, Clinton was seen as losing the 1996 election.
And in 1966, Lyndon Johnson was seen as a lock for re-election in 1968. In 1863, Lincoln had not yet turned the corner on the Civil War and the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation were still in doubt. And in 1935, the Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional FDR’s capstone piece of the New Deal–the National Recovery Administration.
Obama’s got Clinton beat in domestic accomplishments so far:
Healthcare bill (Clinton failed miserably)
Repealed DADT (Clinton instituted it)
Financial Reform bill (cleaned-up a lot of Clinton’s messes)
Clinton’s only domestic accomplishments are pretty crappy – NAFTA, DADT, Welfare Reform. He does have the FMLA act I guess. On the economy, Clinton was smart enough to get out of the way of the .com bubble. That’s not something he can claim as an accomplishment though.
There is a much better argument to be made for Clinton on foreign policy – Bosnia and Ireland are his two greatest accomplishments. I’d say Libya = Bosnia for Obama. However, Obama has not done anything to match the Ireland Peace Accord.
The boom economy was a bubble economy created through Greenspan’s unprecedented Fed easing, a stock market bubble, and the cheapest oil in the last several decades delivered only via reckless overpumping of Alaska and the North Sea. And that growth proved unsustainable, and really counterproductive since it just contributed to an economy unable to cope with the challenges we face today. (It’s too bad Gore didn’t have more influence over energy policy when he was VP…)
Barack Obama has spent the better part of his Presidency cleaning up shyt that came from Bill Clinton.
You’re right placing it there.
Rikyrah writes:
And sweeping the shit that came from George Butch II into law.
National Defense Authorization Act
The assassinations of bin Laden and al Awlaki. What happened to due process? Remember the Nuremberg trials? Never again. Now we just off ’em.
Please.
Have you all been drinking the PermaGov Kool Aid?
LBJ!!!??? Without his strenuous efforts we would know the truth about JFK’s murder, and that successful whitewash was the foundation for most of the problems that we now face.
Please.
AG
I’ve always appreciated the fact that JFK ignored the Joint Chiefs who urged him toward all-out war in Cuba, and his efforts toward a nuke-free world.
It was an inspiring time to start president-watching.
Obama won my vote in 2010 by signing the START treaty.
Of course Obama is trying to put his accomplishments in the best light. I’ll settle for damning him with faint praise because he’s really the best out of a mediocre group of politicians from both sides of the aisle.
If he loses next year and the Republicans retain the House and win the Senate he will probably be viewed as an outright failure. I hope he brings his A game to 2012.
You’ve gone around the bend.
If you see some guys in white coats pull up in front of your house carrying a jacket with no holes in the sleeves, turn out your lights and pretend you’re not home.
Barack Obama has been a monumental disappointment. He’ll be reelected because he has the great good fortune to be opposed by the Keystone Kops – but most of those voting for him will be holding their noses.
You’re not looking at the competition. William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush.
He’s been a monumental disappointment for you and a whole lot of other people.
But so was Harry Truman reported to be in his day. It was only the hindsight of twenty years that took Truman out of the shadow of FDR and looked at him for his own accomplishments.
But Obama’s second term will determine how his first term is evaluated. Just like Jimmy Carter’s second term has affected how the accomplishments of his presidency have been evaluated.
Indeed. I don’t think people realize how mediocre our world leaders truly have been. Lucky for us, we always seem to have the right person at the right time for the right crisis. Let’s see if this trend continues post-2012…
So, I assume you can make a cogent argument that some president other than FDR, LBJ, and Lincoln has accomplished more in their first three years?
I think it’s fair to talk about George Washington or John Adams or Thomas Jefferson, but once you leave the founding era, it’s not too easy to find true rivals to Obama.
His record crushes Clinton’s. I believe it crushes Eisenhower’s, Reagan’s, and Nixon’s, too. Truman is iffy, since we’re technically arguing about 1945-47 instead of 1949-51. If we look at the latter period, Truman looks horrible.
You could take a look at Teddy and Woodrow and see what you get.
Maybe you liked James Polk’s brand of expansionism. Or McKinley’s?
I have no idea. Obama is a damn good president. Any president before or after from either party would be damned happy to have his record.