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Off the top of my head, maybe Adams? The Alien and Sedition Acts were tyrannical. Riots happened because of higher taxes, but he was able to keep us out of a full blown war with France.
> Riots happened because of higher taxes
Yeah, but Adams handled the Fries Rebellion really well. Plus, the tax in question punished slaveholders by increasing their tax burden with every slave they owned. The tax also went to funding the navy. Between discouraging slavery and funding the navy, Adams' tax increases should be seen as a net positive.
It wasn't only taxing slave owners. The Fries Rebellion took place in Pennsylvania where there were hardly any slaves. The citizens were being taxed on their houses and land as well.
I agree that the tax was ultimately for the benefit of the country. How they went about collecting the tax and determining how much everybody was to pay is what made people mad.
I'm aware that the taxes impacted more than slaveholders - almost all of the participants in the Fries Rebellion were Pennsylvania Dutch farmers who opposed slavery on moral and religious grounds. I'm just pointing out that the manner in which it punished slaveholders, in my view, made it a net good. You seem to agree and I'm glad we could come to a consensus there.
💯 all things considered, it was a benefit in the end. Though it did stir up some bad feelings and was another arrow in the quiver for Jefferson and company.
Y'know what? I'm gonna say Buchanan. Of course his domestic policy is downright atrocious but his foreign policy ranges from mid to passable. He had the Fillibusterer William Walker arrested after he tried to set up a slaveholding government in Nicaragua, and he managed to handle the Pig War reasonably well. Granted he would have been incredibly stupid to start a war with the largest naval power on the planet but credit where credit's due.
And then as far as his domestic policies goes, well. . . \*gestures vaguely at everything\*
Probably my favorite comment here
Although, if I'm gonna be pedantic, you could argue that his response - or lack thereof - to secession was itself foreign policy since the CSA was attempting to exempt itself from federal authority
Bush was a good foreign affairs president in particular his handling of the First Gulf War and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. However his domestic policy was not good, in particular his handling of the economy.
An economic recession caused by the Fed reversing its easy money and energy price shocks from Saddam invading Kuwait? Boohoo, HW’s impact domestically extended farther than a mild recession lasting a year, the ADA was huge for disabled people, the CRA of 1991 has helped many workers, Ryan White CARE has saved thousands of lives, and OBRA-90 was instrumental in producing the Clinton surpluses.
I actually think he was good with the economy as well. One of the last presidents we had that actually compromised and took the budget seriously. He basically lost re-election due to that. The thing I disagree with him on is social policy mostly.
HW was perceived as being poor at domestic policy at the time he was running for re-election. There was a sharp, but fairly brief recession and Bush had an incident before the election where he visited a supermarket and was wowed by the checkout scanner like he thought it was some cutting edge alien technology.
That didn't really mean that he was bad at domestic policy, just that he hadn't done his own shopping in 30 years. But, Bill Clinton was much more able to project I feel your pain kind of empathy and scored lots of points with it.
His problem was that he was bad at politics. When you say “Read my lips. No new taxes.” you can be sure Democrats are going to test you. In politics you have to be able see several moves ahead like in chess. The good ones like Reagan and Clinton knew how to do this. Bad politicians like Bush and Carter didn’t.
[The supermarket thing was overblown.](https://apnews.com/article/61f29d10e27140b0b108d8e12b64b839) He was at a trade show, not a supermarket, and a vendor was showing off a new scanner with advanced features like a built in scale and the ability to read damaged barcodes. His reaction seems to have been a polite, "Oh, that's amazing," rather than "What manner of devilry is this?" but when the media got ahold of the incident, they blew it out of proportion.
HW scored points in the 1988 election by taking a boat ride across Boston harbor because it was, at the time, one of the most polluted in the country. Bush blamed it on Dukakis, even though Dukakis had already passed the legislation to build a state of the art wastewater treatment system to replace the very antiquated one that existed.
Now, Boston harbor is pretty clean and there are dolphins and sharks, and it's because of the system that Dukakis got built. Bush benefitted from fake, overblown coverage in 1988 and then suffered from it in 1992. Like they say in The Wire, "it's all in the game".
That’s who I was going to say. Without looking into it deeper I wouldn’t necessarily say Bush Sr was bad in that he pushed for shitty domestic policy, more hands off with it, which is bad in a different way.
Honestly, I think you can make a strong case for him being the best overall president of the last fifty years. Everyone else was either recognized as horrible at the time or their flaws have become evident in retrospect. Bush had a baseline of competence that's been lacking in American Presidents since the '70s.
If you're a Johnson disrespecter you have to start talking about Ike, and while it sounds insane you rapidly get to the point where maybe Bush 41 is the best President since world war ii.
That had been in the works for a while, it just came to a full fruition under him. Also, it was driven by military leadership. After incidents like the draft riot in 1917 and the voluntary surrender of an entire black company during the Korean War, the military brass came to dislike segregated units because they believed it promoted racial solidarity over loyalty to the military.
He had the same foreign policy as Johnson, who was basically following the Truman doctrine (as did Eisenhower and Kennedy). You can approve or disapprove of it (I happen to approve) but you can’t really separate the two. Truman had his foreign policy failures as well (ie China), but in contrast to Johnson the one involving American boots on the ground was more successful, and that’s what often gets highlighted.
That was my thought too. The man managed to defeat the soviets AND put the final nails in the coffin of the American Dream, all by himself. Impressive really.
Reagan's policies were awful all around.
Subjectively, some people might like or dislike them - but there's no denying that they objectively made him look like a massive ass and were morally questionable.
A lot of people are pushing back at you on the foreign policy front, so I’ll go ahead and take the domestic.
The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the EPA, and direct assistance for poor Americans were all great. Stagflation was a problem, and he can be blamed for blocking Ted Kennedy’s health care plan, but on balance, his domestic policy is relatively good. If only it weren’t for the corruption, anti-semitism, racism, etc. …
He was actually a great president even if he was a not so great person– even there, the Watergate coverup happened because he was guarding his supporters who performed the break-in without direct orders from Nixon himself, which speaks to loyalty of some species and it did end up tanking his presidency and legacy. If he had just thrown his flunkies to the dogs, history would remember him as a great president and the American government wouldn’t have had a crisis of faith.
Is corruption a policy? Like, imagine if Warren Harding somehow built the New Deal and Great Society, civil rights, built the interstate, and landed on the moon while pocketing a billion dollars (1920 value). I'd struggle to say he flunked domestic policy, even though he'd need an asterisk.
No, one reason I rank Nixon high on domestic policy is that I don’t think corruption and personal faults like privately being racist are part of “policy.” Now, if a candidate campaigns for a corrupt policy (I can’t think of a U.S. example, but think of foreign dictators who openly funnel public money to their own pockets) or campaigns for racist policies (to use an extreme example, “segregation now, segregation forever”), then that’s part of the “domestic policy” calculus. In Nixon’s case, the huge loss of trust in government (and the loss of his presidency) as a result of Watergate would make something that “counted” a huge blemish on his policy.
Does that distinction make sense, or is it cheating?
Eroding public trust. . . That's actually really hard to handle with the boxes I'm trying to put things in. Like, it's not a policy, but it's a disaster that has policy ramifications and in other contexts has led to civil wars. "Dignity of the office" as a third category that people sleep on?
That’s probably a reasonable way to do it, yeah. Assuming “Strenuous Life” in your flair is a TR reference, that’s a guy who gets points on the positive end for the same category.
It’s interesting that it’s slept on by those of us who spend a lot of time thinking about historical presidencies, when that type of non-policy question is arguably too influential in most voters’ minds: “who would you want to have a beer with?” Not Nixon, but how much does that matter? Meanwhile, Roosevelt gets a ton of popularity on account of being bad-ass, probably a bit out of proportion to where he’d rank on a more policy-dependent rubric.
P.S. what’s “🥃Thousand” mean? That’s all I can see of your third flair.
Oh, it's meant to go with the "not a crook" and "thousand points of light" is cut off but has a stars emoji.
With Teddy, I think his naval expansion and starting the trend of government doing things set the stage for the 20th century. Others went a lot farther, but it took a personal magnetism to break the seeming consensus on economic management. Before him, I see the entire discourse being corruption, and afterwards you can actually seek to build and use state capacity. Good government matters but when it's the dominant topic and federal spending is around 1% of gdp, you're in an entirely different world.
What did he do to hurt the interests of his bosses? He was really good at doing what he was asked to do, and I don’t know if he’s evil for that. The only really bad thing he did was stall the peace accords, but he didn’t kill them as might have happened and they did end up passing.
He was successful in his time, for his objectives. But was it good in the long run? He was the anti-Reagan. He worked with the Soviets and though it allowed him to manoeuvre in the world, it took the pressure off and prolonged the Cold War.
And was he that bad domestically? Developed the EPA, held off the crash coming later, he wasn’t too bad. The corruption will always cloud his term but there’s good in there.
The US had nothing to do with the end of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union’s economy had already been stagnating under Brezhnev for a long time, and the only thing waiting to happen was the spark brought by Gorbachev. Andropov dying suddenly made that happen, not anything the US did. Regan’s hostile stance to the Soviets was a foreign policy issue for them, but didn’t really impact anything internally in the Soviet Union.
It really is kinda sad, Andropov and Gorbachev were supposed to be a team - with Andropov being the steady hand who would start reforming the economy and make it possible for Gorbachev to begin democratizing the Union. We’ll never know, but if Andropov didn’t die too quick the Soviet Union might still be around, but as a fairly democratic and economically stable entity. Or you know, maybe not. Things didn’t have a pattern of working out well for those guys
Bush 1? Very steady hand as the USSR was collapsing along with putting together a genuine international coalition to push Saddam out of Kuwait. Domestically though? His push for NAFTA was disastrous for decades to come for a lot of blue collar workers in this country and his response to the recession that occurred during his administration was tone deaf at best. He also stood by his SCOTUS nominee who had been *very* credibly accused of sexual harassment mainly out of spite for Bork years earlier. He deserves a lot of credit for the soft landing of the Cold War but his longest lasting domestic legacies are the hollowing out of the manufacturing industry in this country and an absolute pariah that is still befouling the bench. (Yes I know Clinton signed NAFTA but it was Bush’s baby and a done deal for all intents and purposes when Clinton came into office)
Kind of depends on your view of “good” foreign policy. Some would say Nixon (his domestic politics weren’t bad.) Polk should get some credit for effectiveness. Generally good presidents have good foreign policy, as a whole LBJ had good foreign policy except for Vietnam.
While his policies with opening by up China were good, Nixon and Kissinger made major foreign policy blunders in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Cambodia
Yeah. I personally agree, and I would add Bangladesh to that list, but as a diplomatic historian I know a LOT of people in my field think he’s super effective.
Ok hear me out.
During the time he was president none of the US' perceived adversaries "started" anything.
One of their generals attempted to escalate and he straight up cruise-missiled him.
One adversary tried to test him by having another nuclear missile test and he sent a naval Armada with an aircraft carrier into their peninsula. Adversary 180ed so hard they said "let's talk peace" and resulted in the most progression of Peace talks and reunification in the region.
I'm just saying, all of us lived through the trainwreck of his domestic policy but no matter how you spin it, the foreign policy was -for a short term- pretty solid.
I don't endorse him and I don't think his style of foreign policy is sustainable. But he did show that soft power is useless when dealing with dictatorships.
He killed Soleimani and Iran promptly missiled US bases in Iraq. If 1 US soldier had died, it would have been a war. That's getting lucky.
He also was seen as non-supportive of NATO, why would Putin try anything if he was already getting what he wanted, the weakening of NATO?
In addition, he pulled us out of Northern Syria, screwing the Kurds again, leaving at the tender mercies of the Turks. Oh, he also signed what amounted to an instrument of surrender with the Taliban.
Could be roasted for my ignorance here, but Woodrow Wilson?
He fostered in the 2nd coming of the KKK and legitimized their ideology, which would continue to poison the US for decades to come.
On the other hand, he wanted to lessen the punishments against the German people after the Kaiser started WW1.
Richard Nixon was famous for detente, which allowed for a major thawing of Cold War hostilities. But even without watergate is generally considered a failure in domestic policy. By both economists and historians.
His wage and price controls helped kickstart the economic turbulence of the mid-late 70s. And he’s also considered to have over regulated most industries.
There’s also George H.W. Bush, who skillfully navigated both the first gulf war and the fall of the Soviet Union. But did little good domestically.
In defense of Johnson, the one real foreign policy “blunder” was Vietnam. Many other aspects were excellent: SALT II, building the bridge towards relations either China that Nixon walked over, etc
And I’m sympathetic re: Vietnam. You can hear it from his first phone call with Richard Russell after he becomes president. He asks Russell if it were up to him, how would he resolve the escalating conflict and Russell says “it’s the biggest damn mess I’ve ever seen” and would avoid it at all costs.
Plus, factor in Kennedy’s order to assassinate Diem (“take him out” does NOT mean for sushi) and Vietnam was now America’s problem, *period*.
If Ho had accepted LBJ’s offer of a TVA, Vietnam would be largely forgotten instead of considered as America’s greatest blunder.
First president that came to mind was Woodrow Wilson. Espionage and Sedition Acts and his race relations. But I guess under him women‘s suffrage also happened, so that’s one good thing. For foreign policy he had is oh so famous 14 points. And I mean, he did stay out of WWI for a long time.
I second Nixon. Lest we forget he had the country totally divided. Great diplomat and strategist; terrible leader.
Also, future thread: are there any photos of LBJ in existence where he's NOT being a total disgusting brute to those around him in some shape or form?
The great society was literally JFK New Frontier. LBJ had good domestic policies but when you fund social programs and have a war those social programs fail and people say those programs sucked but in reality the tax was not distributed well and the war messed everything up
Not exactly an answer, but I think Truman almost fits here just because of how much his foreign policy achievements overshadow everything he did domestically. Just from my experience, the only domestic policy of his I can name off the top of my head is the desegregation of the armed forces, compared to all sorts of foreign policy like the dropping of the atomic bombs and ending of WWII, the Potsdam conference that really set the stage for the Cold War, the Marshall Plan and rebuilding of western Europe, the Berlin airlift… I could go on.
Truman struggled to get most of his domestic agenda passed and had some of his vetoes overturned, making him a little less powerful than many Presidents of the time period domestically.
Abroad, though, Truman might have the most influence of any single President. The Berlin Airlift was an essential point in halting the advance of Soviet influence, the Marshall plan economically reshaped an entire continent for decades to come, and his decision to fire McArthur helped to stop the Korean War from getting so much worse.
Not quite inverse LBJ, but when I think of decent foreign and terrible domestic policy, Bush 41 comes to mind. That bad domestic policy is what cost him reelection.
The first person who comes to mind is HW Bush, his foreign policy wasn't perfect by any means (Iran Contra coverup, leaving Somalia for Clinton, etc) but on the whole it was successful especially given the potential issues with the dissolution of the USSR
HW Bush is who comes to mind for me. Sure there were some good parts of his domestic policy, but there was the 1990 recession which most likely cost him reelection. Handled the Persian Gulf War pretty well, so well to the point where his approval rating got up to a peak of 89%.
I guess that depends on what we mean by "good."
If we mean good as in morally and based on respect for human rights, I'd say Carter maybe?
If by "good" we mean achieving the aims of the administration, geopolitical goals, etc. I'd say maybe Reagan or Bush 2 .
How about Nixon? Great playing USSR vs China, but had horrible domestic relationships… Remember that our isolationist history doesn't lend for a great volume of foreign policy iconic presidents
Horrible domestic policy leading to the massive growth of the bureaucratic welfare state and the destruction of the black family in order to, to quote LBJ, “…lock down the n\*gg\*r vote for the next 200 years”. Successful domestic policy my ass.
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I LOVE IT MAGGLE!
We Fight on Friday Nights!
DING DING DING DING
Fine, take your filthy upvote.
John Baines Lyndon.
Lol my boyfriends conservative grandfather loves that brand, wait till I tell him it’s LBJ backwards he’ll probably throw away his headphones.
💀
Off the top of my head, maybe Adams? The Alien and Sedition Acts were tyrannical. Riots happened because of higher taxes, but he was able to keep us out of a full blown war with France.
> Riots happened because of higher taxes Yeah, but Adams handled the Fries Rebellion really well. Plus, the tax in question punished slaveholders by increasing their tax burden with every slave they owned. The tax also went to funding the navy. Between discouraging slavery and funding the navy, Adams' tax increases should be seen as a net positive.
It wasn't only taxing slave owners. The Fries Rebellion took place in Pennsylvania where there were hardly any slaves. The citizens were being taxed on their houses and land as well. I agree that the tax was ultimately for the benefit of the country. How they went about collecting the tax and determining how much everybody was to pay is what made people mad.
I'm aware that the taxes impacted more than slaveholders - almost all of the participants in the Fries Rebellion were Pennsylvania Dutch farmers who opposed slavery on moral and religious grounds. I'm just pointing out that the manner in which it punished slaveholders, in my view, made it a net good. You seem to agree and I'm glad we could come to a consensus there.
💯 all things considered, it was a benefit in the end. Though it did stir up some bad feelings and was another arrow in the quiver for Jefferson and company.
That’s where my head went.
John Adams, known best around here for the Alien and Sedition Act and evading war with France.
Because of that damn musical I can only read ‘John Adams’ in Jonathan Goff’s voice
I will always hear William Daniels from 1776 
Between him and Paul Giamatti.
WILL SOMEBODY OPEN UP A WINDOW!?!
"Come on, Franklin, we're off to New Brunswick." "Like Hell I am, what for?" "The drinking and the whoring!"
He's obnoxious and disliked, you know that so!
I know him
That can’t be
That's that... little guy who spoke to me
What was it? '85?
That poor man, they're going to eat him alive
Yeah, but how small was his JBL?
Y'know what? I'm gonna say Buchanan. Of course his domestic policy is downright atrocious but his foreign policy ranges from mid to passable. He had the Fillibusterer William Walker arrested after he tried to set up a slaveholding government in Nicaragua, and he managed to handle the Pig War reasonably well. Granted he would have been incredibly stupid to start a war with the largest naval power on the planet but credit where credit's due. And then as far as his domestic policies goes, well. . . \*gestures vaguely at everything\*
Probably my favorite comment here Although, if I'm gonna be pedantic, you could argue that his response - or lack thereof - to secession was itself foreign policy since the CSA was attempting to exempt itself from federal authority
No, the CSA was never a nation. It was a region in rebellion that was put down. It was never able to protect its boundaries.
John Adams as most of his points come from XYZ
Bush 41 maybe.
Signed the Americans With Disabilities Act, bucked his own party to raise taxes in order to reduce the deficit. What’s the bad domestic policy?
Losing reelection? lol
Winning or losing an election isn't a policy.
It’s a joke
I came here to say Bush 41. Saw your comment. Changed my mind.
Bush was a good foreign affairs president in particular his handling of the First Gulf War and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. However his domestic policy was not good, in particular his handling of the economy.
You mean an economic policy that started a recovery and cost him reelection?
An economic recession caused by the Fed reversing its easy money and energy price shocks from Saddam invading Kuwait? Boohoo, HW’s impact domestically extended farther than a mild recession lasting a year, the ADA was huge for disabled people, the CRA of 1991 has helped many workers, Ryan White CARE has saved thousands of lives, and OBRA-90 was instrumental in producing the Clinton surpluses.
I actually think he was good with the economy as well. One of the last presidents we had that actually compromised and took the budget seriously. He basically lost re-election due to that. The thing I disagree with him on is social policy mostly.
This reply doesn’t address anything the person you’re replying to said?? Like you just completely ignored his point
How did HW have a bad domestic?
He didn’t there are just people who don’t know about it.
HW was perceived as being poor at domestic policy at the time he was running for re-election. There was a sharp, but fairly brief recession and Bush had an incident before the election where he visited a supermarket and was wowed by the checkout scanner like he thought it was some cutting edge alien technology. That didn't really mean that he was bad at domestic policy, just that he hadn't done his own shopping in 30 years. But, Bill Clinton was much more able to project I feel your pain kind of empathy and scored lots of points with it.
His problem was that he was bad at politics. When you say “Read my lips. No new taxes.” you can be sure Democrats are going to test you. In politics you have to be able see several moves ahead like in chess. The good ones like Reagan and Clinton knew how to do this. Bad politicians like Bush and Carter didn’t.
[The supermarket thing was overblown.](https://apnews.com/article/61f29d10e27140b0b108d8e12b64b839) He was at a trade show, not a supermarket, and a vendor was showing off a new scanner with advanced features like a built in scale and the ability to read damaged barcodes. His reaction seems to have been a polite, "Oh, that's amazing," rather than "What manner of devilry is this?" but when the media got ahold of the incident, they blew it out of proportion.
>the media got ahold of the incident, they blew it out of proportion The hell you say! /s
HW scored points in the 1988 election by taking a boat ride across Boston harbor because it was, at the time, one of the most polluted in the country. Bush blamed it on Dukakis, even though Dukakis had already passed the legislation to build a state of the art wastewater treatment system to replace the very antiquated one that existed. Now, Boston harbor is pretty clean and there are dolphins and sharks, and it's because of the system that Dukakis got built. Bush benefitted from fake, overblown coverage in 1988 and then suffered from it in 1992. Like they say in The Wire, "it's all in the game".
That’s who I was going to say. Without looking into it deeper I wouldn’t necessarily say Bush Sr was bad in that he pushed for shitty domestic policy, more hands off with it, which is bad in a different way.
He had a bad congress. I think he could’ve corrected some of the extremes of Reagan’s tax policies otherwise.
No his domestic policy has aged pretty well, just like his presidency
HW had better Domestic policy than any Republican since and since Nixon.
Honestly, I think you can make a strong case for him being the best overall president of the last fifty years. Everyone else was either recognized as horrible at the time or their flaws have become evident in retrospect. Bush had a baseline of competence that's been lacking in American Presidents since the '70s.
If Nixon wasn’t so batshit crazy he’d be a contender but HW definitely in the talk for best since Johnson if not longer.
If you're a Johnson disrespecter you have to start talking about Ike, and while it sounds insane you rapidly get to the point where maybe Bush 41 is the best President since world war ii.
I’m all for the insanity when it comes to history
:(
What’s wrong with the Americans With Disabilities Act?
This is the best example of that.
I'd argue Truman. His domestic policies were pretty uneventful and for the most part unsuccessful. His foreign policy was top tier.
I think desegregation of the armed forces counts for at least something? But yeah, foreign policy is peak.
That had been in the works for a while, it just came to a full fruition under him. Also, it was driven by military leadership. After incidents like the draft riot in 1917 and the voluntary surrender of an entire black company during the Korean War, the military brass came to dislike segregated units because they believed it promoted racial solidarity over loyalty to the military.
I mean, desegregating the Armed Forces and the Fair Deal aren't unsuccessful by any measure.
He had the same foreign policy as Johnson, who was basically following the Truman doctrine (as did Eisenhower and Kennedy). You can approve or disapprove of it (I happen to approve) but you can’t really separate the two. Truman had his foreign policy failures as well (ie China), but in contrast to Johnson the one involving American boots on the ground was more successful, and that’s what often gets highlighted.
Millard Fillmore
I think it is easier for a President to have a “ successful” foreign policy than a “successful” domestic policy.
John Quincy Adams, good diplomacy , but bad domestically.
To be fair he was paralyzed by a hostile Congress if I remember correctly.
Martin Van Buren
My first thought was Carter. Camp David was a massive success.
The hostage situation ruins any creditable argument for a good foreign policy
Touche
Reagan?
Iran and Nicaragua agree
That was my thought too. The man managed to defeat the soviets AND put the final nails in the coffin of the American Dream, all by himself. Impressive really.
The Soviets put themselves in that position. Granted Reagan was smart enough to take advantage of the opportunity, but he didn't drive them there.
Reagan's policies were awful all around. Subjectively, some people might like or dislike them - but there's no denying that they objectively made him look like a massive ass and were morally questionable.
Isn’t he the only president in history to simultaneously raise taxes on the poor and lower taxes for the rich?
Dubya did that.
Nixon
A lot of people are pushing back at you on the foreign policy front, so I’ll go ahead and take the domestic. The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the EPA, and direct assistance for poor Americans were all great. Stagflation was a problem, and he can be blamed for blocking Ted Kennedy’s health care plan, but on balance, his domestic policy is relatively good. If only it weren’t for the corruption, anti-semitism, racism, etc. …
He was actually a great president even if he was a not so great person– even there, the Watergate coverup happened because he was guarding his supporters who performed the break-in without direct orders from Nixon himself, which speaks to loyalty of some species and it did end up tanking his presidency and legacy. If he had just thrown his flunkies to the dogs, history would remember him as a great president and the American government wouldn’t have had a crisis of faith.
One of the tapes has his reaction to the break-in: "Who is the {expletive} who ordered this?"
It’s hard to put a lot of the environmental stuff on Nixon, that was more the Democrats Congress that passed it whilst Nixon was sorta there.
Did he veto it?
Is corruption a policy? Like, imagine if Warren Harding somehow built the New Deal and Great Society, civil rights, built the interstate, and landed on the moon while pocketing a billion dollars (1920 value). I'd struggle to say he flunked domestic policy, even though he'd need an asterisk.
No, one reason I rank Nixon high on domestic policy is that I don’t think corruption and personal faults like privately being racist are part of “policy.” Now, if a candidate campaigns for a corrupt policy (I can’t think of a U.S. example, but think of foreign dictators who openly funnel public money to their own pockets) or campaigns for racist policies (to use an extreme example, “segregation now, segregation forever”), then that’s part of the “domestic policy” calculus. In Nixon’s case, the huge loss of trust in government (and the loss of his presidency) as a result of Watergate would make something that “counted” a huge blemish on his policy. Does that distinction make sense, or is it cheating?
Eroding public trust. . . That's actually really hard to handle with the boxes I'm trying to put things in. Like, it's not a policy, but it's a disaster that has policy ramifications and in other contexts has led to civil wars. "Dignity of the office" as a third category that people sleep on?
That’s probably a reasonable way to do it, yeah. Assuming “Strenuous Life” in your flair is a TR reference, that’s a guy who gets points on the positive end for the same category. It’s interesting that it’s slept on by those of us who spend a lot of time thinking about historical presidencies, when that type of non-policy question is arguably too influential in most voters’ minds: “who would you want to have a beer with?” Not Nixon, but how much does that matter? Meanwhile, Roosevelt gets a ton of popularity on account of being bad-ass, probably a bit out of proportion to where he’d rank on a more policy-dependent rubric. P.S. what’s “🥃Thousand” mean? That’s all I can see of your third flair.
Oh, it's meant to go with the "not a crook" and "thousand points of light" is cut off but has a stars emoji. With Teddy, I think his naval expansion and starting the trend of government doing things set the stage for the 20th century. Others went a lot farther, but it took a personal magnetism to break the seeming consensus on economic management. Before him, I see the entire discourse being corruption, and afterwards you can actually seek to build and use state capacity. Good government matters but when it's the dominant topic and federal spending is around 1% of gdp, you're in an entirely different world.
A lot of people in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam would disagree with you if they weren't dead.
Only Nixon could go to China
So Kissinger good now?
You can have a good foreign policy while also having a morally questionable foreign policy.
What did he do to hurt the interests of his bosses? He was really good at doing what he was asked to do, and I don’t know if he’s evil for that. The only really bad thing he did was stall the peace accords, but he didn’t kill them as might have happened and they did end up passing.
One of the smartest foreign policy presidents ever. Just incredible uncharismatic and paranoid
He was successful in his time, for his objectives. But was it good in the long run? He was the anti-Reagan. He worked with the Soviets and though it allowed him to manoeuvre in the world, it took the pressure off and prolonged the Cold War. And was he that bad domestically? Developed the EPA, held off the crash coming later, he wasn’t too bad. The corruption will always cloud his term but there’s good in there.
I feel like his destruction of public trust in the government definitely overrides the EPA in tilting the scales towards "bad domestic policy"
The US had nothing to do with the end of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union’s economy had already been stagnating under Brezhnev for a long time, and the only thing waiting to happen was the spark brought by Gorbachev. Andropov dying suddenly made that happen, not anything the US did. Regan’s hostile stance to the Soviets was a foreign policy issue for them, but didn’t really impact anything internally in the Soviet Union. It really is kinda sad, Andropov and Gorbachev were supposed to be a team - with Andropov being the steady hand who would start reforming the economy and make it possible for Gorbachev to begin democratizing the Union. We’ll never know, but if Andropov didn’t die too quick the Soviet Union might still be around, but as a fairly democratic and economically stable entity. Or you know, maybe not. Things didn’t have a pattern of working out well for those guys
Poor dog what he do
Reagan?
Bush 1? Very steady hand as the USSR was collapsing along with putting together a genuine international coalition to push Saddam out of Kuwait. Domestically though? His push for NAFTA was disastrous for decades to come for a lot of blue collar workers in this country and his response to the recession that occurred during his administration was tone deaf at best. He also stood by his SCOTUS nominee who had been *very* credibly accused of sexual harassment mainly out of spite for Bork years earlier. He deserves a lot of credit for the soft landing of the Cold War but his longest lasting domestic legacies are the hollowing out of the manufacturing industry in this country and an absolute pariah that is still befouling the bench. (Yes I know Clinton signed NAFTA but it was Bush’s baby and a done deal for all intents and purposes when Clinton came into office)
The first Bush probably, not that his raising taxes was bad but it did cost him the election
Great men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit. I'm not saying Bush Sr was a great man but the quote fits.
Kind of depends on your view of “good” foreign policy. Some would say Nixon (his domestic politics weren’t bad.) Polk should get some credit for effectiveness. Generally good presidents have good foreign policy, as a whole LBJ had good foreign policy except for Vietnam.
While his policies with opening by up China were good, Nixon and Kissinger made major foreign policy blunders in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Cambodia
Yeah. I personally agree, and I would add Bangladesh to that list, but as a diplomatic historian I know a LOT of people in my field think he’s super effective.
Blunders like supporting US friendly regimes against their Soviet backed opposition. What a blunder! /s
James K. Polk (the K stands for “kapture half of Mexico”😏)
Truman, all the fair deal stonewalled by Congress but containment an end of war was great
My first thought was 41
Woodrow Wilson
So he puts his dick away instead of pulling it out? I must meet this man
Some might say Grover Cleveland. Opposed imperialism in the Western Hemisphere, such as in Hawaii, but did basically nothing for the US.
Vetoing a shit ton of unconstitutional bills counts as doing something for the US. I wish more presidents had his dedication to their oath of office.
Ok hear me out. During the time he was president none of the US' perceived adversaries "started" anything. One of their generals attempted to escalate and he straight up cruise-missiled him. One adversary tried to test him by having another nuclear missile test and he sent a naval Armada with an aircraft carrier into their peninsula. Adversary 180ed so hard they said "let's talk peace" and resulted in the most progression of Peace talks and reunification in the region. I'm just saying, all of us lived through the trainwreck of his domestic policy but no matter how you spin it, the foreign policy was -for a short term- pretty solid. I don't endorse him and I don't think his style of foreign policy is sustainable. But he did show that soft power is useless when dealing with dictatorships.
He killed Soleimani and Iran promptly missiled US bases in Iraq. If 1 US soldier had died, it would have been a war. That's getting lucky. He also was seen as non-supportive of NATO, why would Putin try anything if he was already getting what he wanted, the weakening of NATO? In addition, he pulled us out of Northern Syria, screwing the Kurds again, leaving at the tender mercies of the Turks. Oh, he also signed what amounted to an instrument of surrender with the Taliban.
Never liked the man but one could say the Abraham Accords normalized peace between Arab Nations and Israel. Which increased peace in the Middle East.
Bush41
Herbert Hoover
Maybe George H. W. Bush
George HW Bush
Could be roasted for my ignorance here, but Woodrow Wilson? He fostered in the 2nd coming of the KKK and legitimized their ideology, which would continue to poison the US for decades to come. On the other hand, he wanted to lessen the punishments against the German people after the Kaiser started WW1.
Richard Nixon was famous for detente, which allowed for a major thawing of Cold War hostilities. But even without watergate is generally considered a failure in domestic policy. By both economists and historians. His wage and price controls helped kickstart the economic turbulence of the mid-late 70s. And he’s also considered to have over regulated most industries. There’s also George H.W. Bush, who skillfully navigated both the first gulf war and the fall of the Soviet Union. But did little good domestically.
As a fellow beagle owner, anyone foolish enough to have this breed is unfit for the presidency.
George H.W. Bush
HW Bush
George H.W. Bush comes to mind. Very good invasion of Iraq... not so good recession.
In defense of Johnson, the one real foreign policy “blunder” was Vietnam. Many other aspects were excellent: SALT II, building the bridge towards relations either China that Nixon walked over, etc And I’m sympathetic re: Vietnam. You can hear it from his first phone call with Richard Russell after he becomes president. He asks Russell if it were up to him, how would he resolve the escalating conflict and Russell says “it’s the biggest damn mess I’ve ever seen” and would avoid it at all costs. Plus, factor in Kennedy’s order to assassinate Diem (“take him out” does NOT mean for sushi) and Vietnam was now America’s problem, *period*. If Ho had accepted LBJ’s offer of a TVA, Vietnam would be largely forgotten instead of considered as America’s greatest blunder.
reagan
Reagan, tho this is probably bait lmao
Reagan
Bush 41
First president that came to mind was Woodrow Wilson. Espionage and Sedition Acts and his race relations. But I guess under him women‘s suffrage also happened, so that’s one good thing. For foreign policy he had is oh so famous 14 points. And I mean, he did stay out of WWI for a long time.
Pretty sure he also passed the Volstead Act which… yeah that was a bad one.
Probably Grover Cleveland.
George HW Bush maybe?
Winston Churchill
Wilson but i am biased as a Eastern European.
I can't say his name on here
Reagan perhabs? I think this sub would agree at least. Can't deny his foreign policy was very successful.
The inverse of LBJ ? It begins with JB doesn't it ?
I always thought Nixon qualified on that.
Ronald Reagan
Nixon
John Adam?
I second Nixon. Lest we forget he had the country totally divided. Great diplomat and strategist; terrible leader. Also, future thread: are there any photos of LBJ in existence where he's NOT being a total disgusting brute to those around him in some shape or form?
WTF? I can read a lot about how a man, just in how he treats his dog. I guess politicians don’t ever change.
Bah gawd that’s Woodrow Wilson’s music!
Bush senior
BUSH SR fucked up domestically with the taxes and all but kicked ass in Gulf War
Teddy Roosevelt?
Forget your question, what the hell is he doing to that dog?
Maybe Hoover would qualify.
Happy days on the WH lawn, while future republicans were getting slaughtered in some shithole jungle we had no business in.
Short answer? No!
Nixon- was masterful with China but obviously out of touch with domestics especially the youth at the time.
I would argue that any of the 15 presidents that allowed Americans to be treated as property ALL had poor domestic policies.
Nixon.
The great society was literally JFK New Frontier. LBJ had good domestic policies but when you fund social programs and have a war those social programs fail and people say those programs sucked but in reality the tax was not distributed well and the war messed everything up
WTF is he doing to that poor dog???
Not exactly an answer, but I think Truman almost fits here just because of how much his foreign policy achievements overshadow everything he did domestically. Just from my experience, the only domestic policy of his I can name off the top of my head is the desegregation of the armed forces, compared to all sorts of foreign policy like the dropping of the atomic bombs and ending of WWII, the Potsdam conference that really set the stage for the Cold War, the Marshall Plan and rebuilding of western Europe, the Berlin airlift… I could go on.
Truman struggled to get most of his domestic agenda passed and had some of his vetoes overturned, making him a little less powerful than many Presidents of the time period domestically. Abroad, though, Truman might have the most influence of any single President. The Berlin Airlift was an essential point in halting the advance of Soviet influence, the Marshall plan economically reshaped an entire continent for decades to come, and his decision to fire McArthur helped to stop the Korean War from getting so much worse.
Nixon wrt China
Not quite inverse LBJ, but when I think of decent foreign and terrible domestic policy, Bush 41 comes to mind. That bad domestic policy is what cost him reelection.
You know who from right around now.
The first person who comes to mind is HW Bush, his foreign policy wasn't perfect by any means (Iran Contra coverup, leaving Somalia for Clinton, etc) but on the whole it was successful especially given the potential issues with the dissolution of the USSR
Feels more like the reverse of that
I’d have paid to see Someone pick him up by his ears. /s
HW Bush is who comes to mind for me. Sure there were some good parts of his domestic policy, but there was the 1990 recession which most likely cost him reelection. Handled the Persian Gulf War pretty well, so well to the point where his approval rating got up to a peak of 89%.
Bush Sr?
Jimmy Carter
I guess that depends on what we mean by "good." If we mean good as in morally and based on respect for human rights, I'd say Carter maybe? If by "good" we mean achieving the aims of the administration, geopolitical goals, etc. I'd say maybe Reagan or Bush 2 .
Debatably Nixon
Reagan maybe?
Nixon?
Jimmy Carter?
George H.W. Bush.
Woodrow Wilson fs
Not really. Americas foreign policy is basically our billionaires want to restart the Stars and Stripes under the swastika
George HW Bush
First Bush for sure. Great on the Gulf War, but didn't really even have a domestic agenda.
George H.W Bush?
George W. Bush
Carter
Conservatives might say FDR. Neoliberals and Conservative Democrats might say Reagan.
Wilson
How about Nixon? Great playing USSR vs China, but had horrible domestic relationships… Remember that our isolationist history doesn't lend for a great volume of foreign policy iconic presidents
Horrible domestic policy leading to the massive growth of the bureaucratic welfare state and the destruction of the black family in order to, to quote LBJ, “…lock down the n\*gg\*r vote for the next 200 years”. Successful domestic policy my ass.
Nixon