(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.)
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,
and 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, and FDR. Jackson used to be listed, but due to his racial and native
American insensitivity/bigotry he’s been dropped from recent lists, though I
view him as still important and have listed him three times under presidential roles.
Wilson also has some problems, given his watching of the racist Birth of a
Nation film, but he enacted notable progressive legislation and was our World
War 1 leader. 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: a bad economy, especially high unemployment
(though inflation hurt the Democrats in 2024); a prolonged war with mounting
casualties (like 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
with their own flaws, and 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, and 58,000 fine young Americans died. Both Presidents used the 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 these
perceived presidential abuses of power: the 1973 War Power Act, passed over Nixon’s veto; the 1974 Budget and
Impoundment Control Act. We worry that the Imperial Presidency returned with
George Walker Bush, as the 9-11 terrorist attack increased presidential power
and led to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, though both wars were approved by
Congress. It seemed to reach a high point with Donald Trump, who was accused of
flouting Congress’ war powers in the Iranian conflict, of weaponizing the
Justice Department against his political enemies, and using executive agencies
to implement his campaign agenda regardless of the letter of federal laws.
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.
Vice President Truman
became President after the “giant” FDR dies. He made tough decisions, had “the
Buck Stops Here” sign on his desk, and dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to end
World War 2. He advocated civil rights programs and wanted to start a federal
role in health care, but was 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, consisting of Russia and its republics
like Ukraine and Georgia) had occupied the 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 since 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, the 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 was 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 route 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 in 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. Truman
also diplomatically recognized the new state of Israel, largely because of his
Christian beliefs.
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 (the 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. His term also saw the start of 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.
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 and 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 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 retaliatory 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.
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) verbally attacked the protesters and got elected.
Despite being very
anti-communist (as a congressman he became famous for exposing FDR assistant
Alger Hiss as a Soviet agent), Nixon 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 the 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. Domestically,
he put 4 conservatives on the Supreme Court, he and Congress established new
federal regulatory agencies like the EPA and OSHA, and 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 former President in jail; also, 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 once again, 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, was that 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). Both nations’ leaders 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 that 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, and 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 campus protesters
as governor. His first major challenge was 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 control of the Senate in his election), he
went on television, and got people to call their congress member with the
message, “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. The Star Wars and Afghanistan challenges 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, became
free to the USSR). 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, our 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 (as the USSR came
apart, 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 Saddam
Hussein 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 to protect his domestic opponents. 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. Like Reagan, he also
was underrated, in this case 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 American 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 these WMDs (weapons of
mass destruction), and he 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 North African 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 in federal regulations,
as well as his promotion of American jobs; a new trade deal with Canada and
Mexico, which is currently being renegotiated; 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’ receive
timely 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 Capitol while
Congress counted the electoral votes, which led to rioters breaching the Capitol
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 (after his term, he
was even indicted in four separate courts 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 resulted
in shorter agents who had trouble physically shielding candidate Trump. His
party did surprisingly well in the 2022 midterm elections, as Biden 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 and Iranian war actions raised 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 college 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!! Should be a fun midterm
election.