(Note: these learning modules encompass the actual class lectures, and are designed for those students who have to miss class through no fault of their own, and also as a refresher for all students. Bold print in the notes are what the professor writes on the board.)

LEARNING MODULE: WEEKS 7-8, The Presidency

Academically, we talk about six roles that the American President performs. Three are grounded in the federal constitution, and three have grown up over time. As we already talked about, the constitution makes the President the Chief Executive, and head of the executive branch. The constitution also specifies that he is Commander in Chief of the armed forces (when called into service of the U.S., which with our standing army is always). The constitution makes him Head of State, our foreign policy leader, as he receives ambassadors from other countries, nominates our ambassadors to other countries, and negotiates treaties. Informally over time, the President has become the leader of his political party- Jefferson was the leader of the old Republicans, and Jackson was the leader of the Democrats. Jackson started the informal Chief Legislator power, as he exercised the veto to kill the national bank; progressive Presidents and FDR expanded that legislative power; the constitutional ability to deliver a State of the Union address and recommend legislation to Congress provides some constitutional grounding for this power. The President over time has become the Public Leader, which especially was evident with Andrew Jackson, his belief in the common man, the expansion of democracy during that period; FDR was elected four times as President, so he also obviously embodied the public leader role. A very recent seventh role might be called Mourner-in-Chief, comforting Americans who are hurting; Biden kept talking about understanding the “empty chair at the dinner table” as he recounted his dead son Beau to Covid family victims; Trump has publicly met with the families of murder victims of illegal immigrants, Fentanyl victims, and the 13 Marines killed in the Afghanistan withdrawal. An eighth role is Campaigner-in-Chief, as Biden’s last State of the Union address was basically a re-election campaign rally with members of his party taking selfies with him, and Trump has acted like a presidential campaigner throughout his second term (he always stressed how popular he was among Republican party identifiers, ignoring other partisan groups).

Top 10 Great Presidents, who had a major impact on the presidency as an office and on American society, as rated by historians. We don’t have time for this, it’s covered in American history classes, and some of you are reporting on these presidents. Obviously, some of them are Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, and FDR. Jackson used to be listed, but due to his racial and native American insensitivity/bigotry he’s been dropped from recent lists. Polk was listed at one time, due to territorial expansion and acquiring the southwest after the Mexican-American war, but he lost popularity in the anti-colonial world era. We will talk in greater depths about three post-World War 2 Great Presidents: Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan.

Presidential Popularity. Scholars have found that statistically, presidential job performance ratings are hurt by: bad economy, especially high unemployment (though inflation hurt the Democrats in 2024); prolonged war with mounting casualties (Korea, Vietnam); coalition of political minorities, as time passes, the President makes decisions that anger people, his popularity drops; a major scandal, such as Watergate (hurt Nixon). Only one thing statistically helps a President, Rally Round the Flag- an international crisis, but its positive effect is only temporary. So with so many things hurting a President, why do most of them win re-election. Well, the other party nominates a human, voters see that the alternative is even worse.

Presidential Legislative Success. It is helped by: a President’s party controlling Congress, especially by a wide margin (thus, FDR and Johnson were very successful with the New Deal and Great Society); a popular President, such as Eisenhower and FDR; a President having legislative skills (Johnson had previously been Senate Majority Leader).

Imperial Presidency. Academically, these two Presidencies were seen as becoming too powerful- Johnson and Nixon. Johnson got us into Vietnam, Nixon kept us there for 4 years, 58,000 young Americans died. Both Presidents used impoundment practice, refusing to spend money legally appropriated by Congress; Congress took Nixon to court over that issue. Two laws were enacted to deal with those perceived presidential abuses of power: 1973 War Power Act passed over Nixon’s veto; the 1974 Budget and Impoundment Control Act.

It’s very important for Americans to understand their recent history over the past 80 years (since World War 2), so the following notes are very important, and will be on the test. Indeed, this is so much material that it is likely to take up two questions with the Presidents divided up into two groups chronologically. We now discuss the important domestic and foreign policies of each Presidency, starting with Truman.

Harry Truman. Vice President Truman becomes President after the “giant” FDR dies. He makes tough decisions, has “the Buck Stops Here” sign on his desk, and drops two atomic bombs on Japan to end World War 2. He pushes civil rights programs and wants to start a federal role in health care, but is not successful legislatively (due to the conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats). He was very successful in his Containment foreign policy, which was to halt the spread of communism. After being dragged into two world wars, Americans realized that they could not pursue their historic Isolationist foreign policy. The communist Soviet Union (the USSR, Russia and its republics like Ukraine and Georgia) had occupied eastern European countries (their troops refused to leave after defeating Hitler), and in 1949 mainland China fell to Chinese communists fighting the non-communist government (which fled to the island of Taiwan). Truman worked with congressional Republicans, and strengthened western European countries both economically and militarily. The Marshall Plan (named after his popular Secretary of State, a former general) provided billions of dollars in foreign economic aid to western Europe (they were so devastated as the war had been fought on their soil that France and Italy both had large communist parties feeding on public desperation). We also created a military defense pact, NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, between the U.S., Canada, and the western European countries; we sent a couple of hundred thousand U.S. troops to West Germany, warning the Soviets that if they invaded western Europe, they would be at war with the U.S. Defeated Germany was divided into USSR dominated East Germany, and free West Germany. The pre-war capital of Berlin was located in East Germany, but all four Allied nations occupied it, so East Berlin was run by the USSR, and West Berlin administered by the non-communist allied powers (U.S., Great Britain, France). Since West Berlin was geographically located within the East German communist zone, the communists cut off the allied land transportation to West Berlin, so Truman conducted a Berlin Airlift to keep West Berlin supplied. The U.S. also provided hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Greece and Turkey, both of which were threatened by communist insurgents. In Asia, communist North Korea invaded free South Korea, so Truman under a United Nations resolution sent U.S. troops, which freed South Korea; however, when UN troops invaded North Korea and approached the border of China, Chinese communist troops kicked the U.S. back to the DMZ and a stalemate occurred. This was the Korean War. He also diplomatically recognized the new state of Israel, largely because of his Christian beliefs.

Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower had been a great general, commander of allied forces in Europe during the world war. When he left office, initially scholars thought of him as a do-nothing president who played golf a lot, but after the problems we had with his successors, we now look back at his presidency during the 1950s as a time of Peace and Prosperity. Regarding peace, he ended the Korean War by threatening to drop an atomic bomb on North Korea. He kept us out of Vietnam, refusing to help France maintain its colony in Vietnam, since he maintained that the U.S. was not a colonial nation, and that as a general he didn’t think that we could win a land war in Asia. He opposed the colonial powers’ of Great Britain and France (allied with Israel) attack against Egypt (1956 Mideast war), which had taken over the British-French owned Suez Canal located in that country. The U.S. also started the nuclear triad, which was not just our strategic bombers that could drop nuclear bombs on Russia (the largest republic of the USSR), but also U.S. land-based nuclear missiles that could hit Russia, plus our nuclear-missile carrying submarines. The U.S. nuclear policy under Eisenhower was massive retaliation- any nuclear first-strike by the Soviet Union against the U.S. (or its allies) would result in the full use of all of our nuclear forces. This was called deterrence- it did indeed prevent Russia from launching an attack against us, and prevented them from invading western Europe. Domestically, we had a balanced federal budget, strong economic growth, and a rising middle class, though we did have three economic recessions. Eisenhower was so non-partisan a leader that both parties had wanted to nominate him as President, and he refused to repeal the liberal New Deal. That’s when we started the Interstate Highway system, not just for transportation but to facilitate the evacuation of our cities during the nuclear age. Finally, the red (communist) scare was so great in the U.S. that some conservative Americans saw communists everywhere, and Republican U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy accused some State Department employees (why did they lose China?), Defense Department employees, and private citizens of being communists. Eisenhower gave the go-ahead to senate Republicans, and they censured (condemned) McCarthy. This was a time of McCarthyism, when liberals fully supported the free speech and freedom of association of Americans.

John F. Kennedy was young (43, youngest elected President), charismatic, progressive, with idealistic advisors, so his presidency was called Camelot (after a play based on King Arthur’s court) and his programs were called the New Frontier. He established the Peace Corps, whereby young Americans could volunteer to help people in Third World (developing) countries. He supported foreign economic aid to the third world, such as neutral India, and was loved by the people there. After Russia launched the satellite Sputnik into orbit before we did, Kennedy announced a space race whereby we’d place men on the moon before the decade ended (we did, in 1969). He appointed his brother, Bobby Kennedy, Attorney General, and Bobby Kennedy aggressively enforced university desegregation (in Alabama, Mississippi) and tried to enforce the weak federal voting rights bill that existed. John Kennedy got a key congressional committee packed with liberals so that a federal health care bill at least got out of the committee. This time of idealism was countered by rising Cold War tensions. Angered by the east Europeans who were fleeing communism by traveling to East Berlin and then attaining freedom by entering West Berlin, the communists proceeded to build the Berlin Wall (completely encircling West Berlin, complete with machine gun nests). After the communist Castro conquered Cuba in the late 1950s, Eisenhower advisors came up with a plan for anti-communists who had fled that island to go back and overthrow the communist government. The new President, Kennedy, unwisely followed his advisors’ advice, so we had the Bay of Pigs invasion. Castro was stronger than we had thought, and Kennedy decided to deny U.S. air support to the anti-communist invaders (to conceal the U.S. role), so Castro crushed the invasion, and we had to pay ransom to get the anti-communists out of jail. Well, the U.S.S.R. started sending short-range nuclear missiles to Cuba (as a deterrent to another invasion, but also to counter the U.S. advantage over the USSR in long-range strategic nuclear missiles). In this Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy wisely grilled his advisors to find out that we could not take out all of the existing short-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, so we instituted a naval blockade of Cuba, and Russia backed down and stopped sending more missiles. However, when the U.S. heard that the existing short-range missiles were being readied for possible firing, President Kennedy made a nationwide address, saying “We will regard the firing of any nuclear missile from Cuba directed against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union against the United States, thereby requiring a full nuclear strike by the United States against the Soviet Union” (paraphrase). That’s how close we were to nuclear extinction! Behind the scenes, Kennedy promised that we would withdraw some of our obsolete short-range nuclear missiles from Europe, and that we would promise that we would never again support an invasion of Cuba. The USSR withdrew their nuclear missiles from Cuba, and we haven’t had such problems since then. As the U.S. government today deals with an emerging nuclear missile power of communist North Korea, my suggestion is to just make a similar pledge as we did with Cuba.

And then, our national nightmare began, as Kennedy was assassinated (and before the 1960s ended, so too were Bobby Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King). Lyndon Johnson became President, and he was successful in his domestic policy, which was called the Great Society. After brave human rights champions in the South like Mississippi NAACP activist Medgar Evers publicly fought against racial segregation, Johnson successfully got Congress to enact the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed racial discrimination in public accommodations (businesses, like hotels, restaurants, movie theaters, stores, gas stations). After he won election in his own right and his party won a landslide in Congress, he also got passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed racially discriminatory voting procedures like the literacy test (this Act had a huge impact on the South, as 60% of African Americans in Mississippi were now able to register to vote, compared to only 7% before the Act). Johnson had also declared a War on Poverty, and enacted anti-poverty programs. He got Congress to pass Medicaid (federal health insurance for the poor) and Medicare (federal health insurance for the elderly). But Johnson also got us involved in the Vietnam War in a big way, sending half a million young Americans to fight in that southeast Asia country to prevent communist North Vietnam from conquering non-communist South Vietnam. His presidency ended in massive student protests against the military draft and this war, demonstrations and riots in many American cities over police brutality and poverty, a rising crime rate, and rising inflation; Johnson decided not to seek re-election, and Republican Richard Nixon (Eisenhower’s Vice President) attacked the protesters and got elected.

Richard Nixon, despite being very anti-communist (as a congressman he became famous for exposing FDR assistant Alger Hiss as a Soviet agent) pursued a foreign policy of détente, improving relations with the Soviet Union and China. Working with his National Security Advisor (a top White House staff position) and later Secretary of State, German born professor Henry Kissinger, Nixon realized that Russia and China were no longer monolithic communist powers, but had become rivals, so he played them off against each other and tried to reduce their support of communist North Vietnam. Nixon improved our relations with communist China by visiting that country and walking on the Great Wall (though he didn’t establish diplomatic relations with them). He also agreed that there was “one China”, and that Taiwan was a part of China (but warned mainland China against invading Taiwan). When communist North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam in his re-election year of 1972, Nixon mined the harbors of North Vietnam, preventing Soviet ships from delivering war supplies; yet the Soviet Union permitted Nixon to visit Moscow that same year, and we signed the first SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) with them, limiting defensive nuclear systems. By pursuing Vietnamization (training South Vietnamese to do the fighting), the U.S. had withdrawn the great bulk of their forces, and just before the election a peace treaty was signed between the two Vietnams and the U.S. Nixon also improved our relations with the Arab countries. When Israel was beating Egypt badly in the 1973 Mideast War, Nixon prevented Israel from destroying the Egyptian army; Egypt ended up expelling their Soviet advisors, and tilting towards the U.S. But then Nixon tried to cover up the Watergate break in, and his presidency ended. (Note, we have no time for his domestic policies, but he put 4 conservatives on the Supreme Court; he and Congress established new federal regulatory agencies like the EPA and OSHA; he defended having unbalanced federal budgets in weak economic times).

So poor Jerry Ford became President. He was so decent, humble, honest, he just wanted to some day become Speaker of the House but his party hadn’t controlled the House in twenty years. When becoming president, the former Michigan congressman quipped, “I’m a Ford, not a Lincoln.” Trying to bring our divided country back together, he pardoned Nixon for any federal crime he may have committed as President (he felt that Americans didn’t want to see any President in jail; the special prosecutor including his staff member Hillary Clinton felt that Nixon couldn’t get a fair trial because of pre-trial publicity and strong public opinions), and his popularity dropped. Communist North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam, and Congress reflected how tired the American people were of the war by cutting Ford’s first request for military aid to South Vietnam in half, and then cut off all aid. South Vietnam fell to the communists, and so too did the neighboring nations of Laos and Cambodia fall to their own communist insurgents. The new communist government of Cambodia seized an American merchant ship, the Mayaguez and Ford promptly sent in our military and they freed the ship. (A victory for détente, though, monolithic communism no longer existed; in the late 1970s, communist Vietnam invaded communist Cambodia!) In the Cold War in Africa, Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique became free, and the communist insurgents there beat the pro-western anti-colonial forces. The economy went into a recession, Democrats gained more seats in Congress, and Ford was so politically weak that all he could do was veto expensive Democratic spending bills. So Ford only served as President for a little over 2 years, losing to Democrat Jimmy Carter, and was seen as a Caretaker President.

Born-again, southern Baptist, former Georgia governor (one term) Jimmy Carter became President, and he was a real Peacemaker. He invited the leaders of Israel and Egypt to Camp David (presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains); their hostility was so great that they had to be housed in separate buildings and Carter kept going back and forth between the buildings as they didn’t want to physically meet each other, yet a peace agreement was signed. Israel would withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula (Egyptian land conquered in 1973), and Egypt would diplomatically recognize Israel (admitting that the Jews had a right to their own country in the Mideast). They both credited Carter with this Mideast peace agreement by calling it the Jimmy Carter Summit. Carter improved U.S. relations in Latin America by signing a treaty with Panama that gave the U.S. built Panama Canal to the country of Panama by the year 2000 (patriotic Latin Americans hated that America controlled this land and sea area located in the middle of the nation of Panama). Carter extended diplomatic relations to China and accepted their communist ambassador, broke formal relations with non-communist China (Taiwan), but established unofficial relations with Taiwan, and provided Taiwan with military aid to defend itself against any possible invasion. Carter promoted human rights abroad, warning our authoritarian allies in the fight against communism to not unfairly arrest or kill their political opponents; a weakened authoritarian Shah of Iran lost power, and Islamic religious militants took over the Iranian government and held 52 American diplomats as hostages (they tried to get the U.S. to extradite the Shah to Iran so he could be tried and executed for his crimes against the Iranian people). Carter negotiated a SALT 2 treaty with Russia, but the Senate refused to ratify it after Russia invaded the weak pro-communist nation of Afghanistan (in Asia). Also facing the double disasters of high unemployment and 13% annual inflation, Carter lost re-election to Ronald Reagan. (Domestically, Carter created a federal Department of Education, deregulated many industries in transportation, banking, telecommunications, made many minority appointments in the executive and judicial branches, and promoted an energy program of conservation and synthetic fuel).

Well, so we get an actor, Ronald Reagan, as President. But critics neglected the fact that he had been a two-term governor of the largest state in the nation, California. He was also a strong conservative, having backed conservative Republican Barry Goldwater for president in 1964, and being tough on radical protesters as governor. His first major challenge is that he was shot near the heart by some guy who wanted to impress the actress Jodie Foster (who had played a prostitute rescued by a Taxi Driver in a movie). The broad-shouldered tall Reagan walked into the hospital, joked with his wife Nancy (Golly, honey, I guess I forgot to duck.), and when laying on the operating table in a room full of doctors, quipped: “Golly, I hope you are all Republicans!” The head doctor assured him, “Today, Mr. President, we are all Republicans.” Reagan recovered, and concluded that: “Whatever time I have left, it’s thanks to the man upstairs (God)!” When the Democratic-controlled House didn’t want to pass his tax cut (Republicans had gained the Senate in his election), he went on television, and got people to call their congress member and implore, “Give Reagan’s program a chance.” His 25% cut in federal income tax rates over 3 years passed. Reagan also greatly increased defense spending. His effort to significantly cut domestic spending did not succeed, so these programs combined created a large federal budget deficit. Reagan was very anti-communist, calling the Soviet Union the “evil empire,” visiting the Berlin Wall and challenging the new reformer Soviet leader Gorbachev to, “if you really believe in openness and reform, I say, Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall!” One time, in testing his microphone before a Saturday radio address, he even joked: “Testing, one, two, three. I have just signed legislation outlawing Russia forever. We begin bombing in one hour!” Woops, you mean the mike is on?? When the Marxist government of the Caribbean island of Grenada threatened American medical students there, Reagan sent in our military and overthrew that government. He started a Star Wars anti-nuclear missile defense technology investment, and refused to give it up in negotiations with the Soviet Union. Russia meanwhile had gotten involved in their own Vietnam, a costly war against the rural population in Afghanistan, who opposed the Russian-backed communist government there. Both programs seemed to bleed Russia dry financially, so Gorbachev let the east European countries become free and independent nations in 1989 (the year Reagan left the presidency) and was shocked by each of the Soviet republics also declaring their independence in 1991 (even Russia itself, led by Boris Yeltsin). So, many credit Reagan with the fall of the Soviet communist empire. He was supported by conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II (who had been born in Soviet occupied Poland).

George Herbert Walker Bush, Reagan’s Vice President, became President in 1989. He was most known for having held many public-spirited appointed positions, such as CIA chief, first envoy to China, and UN ambassador, and was very knowledgeable about foreign policy. As communism fell in Eastern Europe, and as the Soviet Union itself disintegrated, Bush wisely said nothing. He was guided by the Russian expert on the National Security Council staff, Condi Rice (an Alabama African American, and later Secretary of State under Bush’s son), who didn’t want to give the Soviet communists an external threat to unite their people against (Russian generals had unsuccessfully tried to overthrow Gorbachev). An anti-American, drug running dictator of Panama ended up threatening a U.S. military couple stationed there, so Bush sent our military in and overthrew that government. When the anti-American dictator of the Middle East country of Iraq Saddam Hussein invaded the small country of Kuwait, Bush 1 (the father) created a world-wide coalition against Hussein. When he refused to leave Kuwait, we invaded and kicked him back to Baghdad, Iraq’s capital (this was the first Gulf War). We achieved our objectives of preventing an Iraqi invasion of the large, U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, freeing Kuwait (we feared Hussein was like another Hitler, picking on weak neighbors), but we did not seek his overthrow. We did encourage his own people (ethnic Kurds) to overthrow him, and when they made the attempt and he bombed them and used poison gas, we got a UN resolution establishing a No-Fly zone that our planes patrolled. The absence of the old Soviet empire but the rise of regional conflicts was dubbed the New World Order. A recession caused increased federal domestic spending and an increased budget deficit, so Bush raised taxes, but that angered conservatives and he served only one term.

Bill Clinton wins the presidency, as a long-time Arkansas governor who was a more moderate liberal than most national Democrats, who backed the death penalty and who felt that abortion should be “legal and safe, but rare.” He was therefore regarded as a New Democrat. Clinton’s wife Hillary (who had successfully championed education reform as First Lady of Arkansas) got Bill to support a national health insurance program, and Clinton also supported letting gays into the military. The health care industry killed this “socialized medicine proposal,” and conservatives in Congress forced Clinton to accept a watered down “Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue” policy for gays in the military. With our own Yazoo City Republican Haley Barbour as chair of the RNC (Republican National Committee) and a very visible campaigner, Republicans gained control of both chambers of Congress in 1994. Clinton quickly moved towards the center politically, backing welfare reform (workfare), more police on the streets, and harsher criminal penalties, and working with the conservative Congress was able to balance the federal budget by the turn of the century. Saddam Hussein continued to be a bad actor, even attempting to assassinate former President Bush when Bush visited Kuwait, and continuing to gas and bomb his own people and to fire at patrolling U.S. planes. As such, we bombed them back. Clinton also tried to help people in other countries by nation-building, creating governments for failed states, but that effort generally failed in Haiti and Somalia (but succeeded in Bosnia). Despite the sex scandal and impeachment, Clinton left office pretty high in popularity, largely because of a good economy.

George Walker Bush became the next President. Again, he was underrated as a mere President’s son. His opponents forgot that he was a two-term governor of Texas, and he had knocked off the powerful Democratic governor and won a 2-1 landslide reelection. His presidency was shaped by the 9-11 (September 11) terrorist attack. He was reading to school kids in Florida while promoting his No Child Left Behind education plan (which focused on raising minority test scores), and viewers could see an aide whispering in his ear. A second large plane had hit the World Trade Center towers, so we all now knew that it wasn’t an accident, it was a coordinated terrorist attack. Next thing you know, Air Force One is flying from one undisclosed military base to another, a third plane hits the Pentagon itself, and a fourth hijacked plane is brought down over Pennsylvania by the passengers fighting back. The U.S. immediately grounded all air travel in the United States for three days, and planes flying to our mainland were forced to land in Canada. Bush went back to the White House that night, and in a nationally televised address told governments around the world that, “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.” Afghanistan’s Islamic Taliban government was giving sanctuary to the Al Qaeda terrorist camps of Osama Bin Laden who had masterminded the attacks, so we backed the Northern Alliance opponents of that government and overthrew that government. Bin Laden escaped capture and fled to neighboring Pakistan. Then Bush turned his attention to Iraq, which concerned us because intelligence agencies thought that Saddam had chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Bush got impatient when Saddam refused to fully comply with UN inspectors searching for WMDs (weapons of mass destruction), didn’t want to take any chances in the age of terrorism (9-11 had cost 3,000 American lives, about as many as in the Pearl Harbor attack), so we invaded Iraq. Hussein was dragged out of his rat hole, and his people executed him for his crimes. Meanwhile, as U.S. troops got closer to Baghdad, the anti-American Libyan dictator Gaddafi came clean, and gave up his WMDs. Unfortunately, our military involvement in peacekeeping and “nation-building” in Afghanistan and Iraq continued for two decades. (Other policies are that Bush successfully fought AIDS in Africa, provided prescription drugs for the elderly, and made conservative judicial appointments.) Bush’s party lost control of Congress in 2006 after voters got tired of these two wars, and the Republicans even lost the presidency in 2008 after the financial community nearly collapsed and required two massive bailouts.

Barack Obama, a U.S. senator for only four years but former President of the Harvard Law Review, becomes the first African American President. He was probably the most liberal President in modern history. Obama had done his homework, first making sure that he contested for convention delegates in every state of the nation (front runner for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, was overconfident and didn’t organize in western caucus states), and then learning about the financial crisis from Bush’s Treasury Secretary while his general election opponent John McCain lacked economic knowledge. As President, Obama doubled Bush’s stimulus package, which helped prevent another Great Depression in terms of unemployment. He also got the Affordable Care Act passed, also known as Obamacare, so federal health care assistance was now expanded to the working poor. He also backed LGBTQ rights, allowing gays in the military. Obama made many minority appointments in the executive and judicial branches. The world community was so tired of Bush’s wars that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize just for his promises of non-aggression and working with other governments. He continued working with nations around the world to fight terrorism and prevent terrorist attacks. He launched numerous drone strikes (assassinations) of foreign terrorists. Indeed, Obama made the gutsy call (against his advisors’ advice) for a U.S. military special forces strike into a Pakistani compound that was thought to maybe shelter Bin Laden, so Bin Laden was brought to justice (killed). The White House was surrounded by cheering college students, whose lives had been dominated by the 9-11 attack. Obama pulled U.S. troops out of Iraq after their government refused to guarantee immunity from prosecution to our troops, and a new terrorist group ISIS arose, eventually taking over nearly half of the territory of the nations of Iraq and Syria.

Well, we’re out of time, plus it’s too soon to properly evaluate the first Trump administration. What do you all think??? Some accomplishments were: improved economy until the coronavirus epidemic, reflecting his tax cuts and cuts of regulations, as well as his promotion of American jobs; a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico; peace agreements between Israel and several Mideast Arab nations (the Abraham accords); criminal justice reform start (these last 2 accomplishments were led by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner); paid family leave for many federal employees (daughter Ivanka’s accomplishment); Veterans Administration reform helping veterans’ health care; Warp Speed vaccine for coronavirus developed quicker than any other vaccine in history; he gave voice to the voiceless blue collar workers in our modern society. Some failures were: he made America even more divided by dumping on previous Presidents at his inauguration address, calling undocumented/illegal Mexican immigrants “rapists, murderers, and some I assume are decent human beings,” being insensitive to minority claims of police brutality, and bragging about his high popularity ratings among Republicans (ignoring everyone else); he undermined the American democratic experience by refusing to accept his re-election defeat despite losing over sixty lawsuits, and by then encouraging his supporters to protest at the nation’s Capital while Congress counted the electoral votes which led to rioters breaching the Capital and delaying the vote count for hours; he made history by being impeached twice by the U.S. House, but was twice acquitted by the Senate (he was even indicted in four separate jurisdictions for alleged felonies, and convicted in one of them).

We also cannot fully evaluate the Biden administration. Biden promised to unite our country, but he dumped on Republican public officials and bragged about his popularity "among Democrats." He wanted to fight climate change, but over regulating the American oil and gas industry as well as the raging Ukraine war stimulated gas prices and inflation. His showing of greater compassion for migrants led to GOP claims of an open and lawless borders. Biden's spending programs for infrastructure and fighting climate change also contributed to high federal deficits (which Trump also had) and inflation. Biden was most successful at promoting diversity in his executive and judicial branch appointments (the first black female Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson), though the stress on diversity in the Secret Service may have contributed to Trump’s near assassination. His party did surprisingly well in the 2022 midterm elections, as he stressed his support for democracy in the U.S., and Republicans nominated some weak and ideologically extreme candidates. The Russian invasion of Ukraine may have been encouraged by the controversial U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, while the Iran-backed terrorist attacks against Israel (from Gaza and other areas) also occurred under his presidency. Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump in 2024 led to concerns over his aging mental state and his resignation from the ticket.

It is way too early to assess Trump’s second term. He has successfully closed the border in a few months, but his mass deportation effort that goes beyond violent criminals is less popular. Inflation has remained low, but his tariff threats may raise prices. Trump’s attacks against transexuals in women’s sports are popular, but his obsession with anti-DEI (diversity) policies has resulted in a nearly all white administration and the elimination of even privately-funded minority scholarships. Trump is working hard on promoting peace in Ukraine and the Mideast, but progress has not been as rapid as promised. But Democrats are also unpopular, and are viewed as too left-wing and too radical. So, stay tuned!!