We are now into the top twenty so let's look at a list of people who could have been a contender...
20. Richard Nixon (1969-74)
PROS – Environmental policy, Going to China
CONS – All the bits of Richard Nixon you actually remember (authoritarianism, Watergate, hiring Henry Kissinger etc etc)
“Love build around the sandy beaches, Love rains down like Vietnam's leeches, Richard the third in the White House, Cowering behind divided curtains.”
The Love of Richard Nixon, Manic Street Preachers
I bet you were wondering when old Tricky Dick was going to show up on this list, and to be honest, so was I. When I ran the rankings for the UK Prime Ministers, Margaret Thatcher finished just outside of the bottom ten, as despite ranking highly for the Montreal agreement, she publicly backed managed decline and was a big supporter of Section 28. As a result, she scored one of the highest pro-scores for a single policy outside of my top 10, but also one of the highest penalty scores for a single policy outside of Peterloo. Well, Richard Nixon saw this contradiction, and said “hold my beer”.
Richard Nixon IS American politics of the 20th Century and beyond. I mean that both as a guarded insult and slight compliment. In the five years he held office, before a major scandal called Watergate (you might have heard of this) made him the only President to resign in disgrace, his signature was all over some genuinely transformative legislation. That’s transformative in the good, bad and ugly sense. He was responsible for such a jambalaya dish of horrific decisions and amazing ones, that he was one of the hardest Presidents to rank. I believe his final score was around +40, which includes some insane levels of penalty points. In the end, I think I personally rank him as a disappointing President, because the evidence is clear that he was capable of great things, and not only that, but U-turning on his own biased philosophies when he realised they weren’t going to help the economy or people in need he *cared* about. If he’d been able to focus on that, he would have been a great President, instead of a by-word for a conniving, Machiavellian, conmen who got caught.
But then I guess, if he had been more of a sensible individual, he wouldn’t have been Richard Nixon.
Sigh.
I suppose we should start with the terrible and work our way up. The Vietnam War was already raging by the time Nixon took office (credible rumour still suggest he did backroom deals to keep it raging until he took office) and it was Nixon who brought in the draft. He also had anti-war protestors prosecuted, introducing no knock warrants in the act, and the Kent State Shootings happened under his watch. The Kissinger approach to the Vietnam War involved the bombing of Laos and Cambodia, which directly lead to the Khmer Rouge killing fields. Kissinger’s fingerprints, and therefore Nixons, were also all over the CIA sponsored coup in Chile, where the democratically elected leader Salvador Allende was assassinated, before the brutal dictatorship of General Pinochet came in. Pol Pot led to the murders of around 2 million people, Pinochet several thousand. The words horrific and horrible seem like gross understatements. He also vastly increased arms sales to the Middle East.
Nixon also slashed the NASA funding while smiling as the President under which man walked on the moon.
You have probably heard a lot about Watergate this year as we have been wall to wall 50th anniversary documentaries on the BBC and other broadcasters. None of which mentioned that time at WrestleMania II when a clearly pissed out her mind Joan Rivers introduced us to her “favourite of all the Watergate judges, G Gordon Liddy”. For those in the dark, the late Mr Liddy, owner of a fantastic moustache for the record, was the mastermind behind the DNC office break-in, and later spent 4 years in prison, before finding God, which is a common prognosis of political crooks. He eventually toured with Timothy Leary, which is as odd an outcome as the noughties when Howard Marks was suddenly on panel shows as a sixties icon. Anyhow, I digress. Watergate = terrible. Nixon might have got away with it if he’d come clean, but as usual, it’s the conspiracy to cover up your errors that does for you. (See Johnson, Boris for modern examples.)
I’ve skimmed over all that because Watergate is done to death, and invoking mass murdering dictators is really depressing.
Right, so now Nixon’s got a legacy around the Wilson* and Jackson levels, what actually raised him to the top twenty?
*Woodrow, not Harold
Nixon was one of the first Presidents to amplify the promotion of scientific evidence to push environmental policy. To this effect, Nixon’s administration founded EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency. This used Nixon’s Clean Air Act amendments to regulate sulphur oxides and ban the use of DDT pesticides. His administration brought in marine mammal protection and conservation zones, which preserved sea otters, walruses, dugongs, seals, sea lions, dolphins and whales. He also put in place the official classification of polar bears as a protected species, which given their population problems at the time, almost certainly saved these most wonderful apex predators from extinction threat. There was extreme regulation of dumping at sea, in line with what Harold Wilson had achieved in the UK. There was coastal preservation, and the endangered species act, which saved millions of wildlife which don’t have the PR of dolphins and otters, but which are as vital to the eco-system.
Despite all this, Nixon did try to veto the Clean Water Act. Congress overturned his veto. Even when he was doing good, he still managed to Richard Nixon it!
Domestically, Nixon was big on his War on Drugs. This led to the widespread banning of drugs which had hitherto been legal, as well as the regulation of steroids and narcotics, and pharmaceutical drug regulation. To this end, the Drug Enforcement Agency was created. I refer you back to my comments on Ronald Reagan and the whole “punishment vs rehabilitation” stance on drugs, which, like Ronnie, Richard Nixon pushed at from the completely wrong end, in my opinion. He also spent huge on infrastructure, with $11 billion towards airport finance, $12 billion toward public transport, and the creation of Amtrak and the Federal Aid Highway. He created the modern US postal service, witness protection programmes, and brought in laws against gambling syndicates and money laundering. (The latter helped catch some of the Watergate criminals, for the record. Nice of Nixon to set up his own downfall!)
For a man associated with his terrible foreign policy decisions, it would churlish not to mention the successes in this area. It was Nixon who settled ancient land claims with the Alaskan Natives. It was his administration who prohibited the use of detention camps, who brought in the Disaster Relief Act, and gave Congress power to check a President’s ability to declare war! There was détente with the USSR, and an arms limitation deal which both the US and USSR signed up to, thawing the Cold War. And of course, Richard Nixon went to China, to open trade and diplomatic relations, a decision which brought the Chinese in from the cold internationally and has nullified the threat of several wars in the past fifty years. It is true that had Bobby Kennedy or a less dead Democrat taken office, they would have attempted détente with the Communist countries, but it is also true that when a committed right wing war hawk like Richard Nixon does it, the rest of the world (and American Congress) takes more notice.
Other achievements of the Nixon Administration included the Coal Act, reforming the House Committees, banning the soring of horses, and the Federal Election Campaign Act. There was the Consumer Product Safety Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, which also directly banned sexual discrimination in institutions receiving federal financial aid, as well as legalising the need for equal pay for executives, sales people and administrators. There was legal aid, CETA (which provided apprenticeships for young workers), the right to vote for 18 year olds, the safeguarding of pensions and the suspension of the federal death penalty. With the latter, as with the desegregation of all schools, Nixon claimed this was the Supreme Court, not himself, though he did little to prevent it happening under his watch.
There was price controls on petrol after the 1973 oil crisis. The Toy Safety Act, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, sickle-cell research funding, but the defunding of the Job Corps. Disability Civil Rights and the Occupational Safety and Health Act, but also economic stagflation. Affirmative action but increased incarceration. Title X brought in family planning funding, and finances to create health care services, and while it was promoted by pro-lifers, it also funded birth control. It was also abused as pretext to sterilise Native American women, making it a law that was seen as too illiberal and was also hated by the MAGA lot as being too pro-abortion, despite providing no financial aid towards that. There was also the Title VII urban development act, which encouraged widespread infrastructure building.
Nixon increased food stamps with the requirement that recipients registered for employment. He came into power planning to cut back and reform Medicare, and wound up increasing Medicare and Medicaid spending. In fact, he wound up extending Medicare to including permanent disability coverage. He came into power determined to dismantle the Great Society which had been the Democrat (and Eisenhowers) stance on welfare and support since the 1930s, and but wound up spending even more on it than his predecessors. I feel like this sums up the inner contradiction that is President Richard Nixon, and why getting a grasp on where he ranks among Presidents is still a matter for future generations to work out.
The biggest surprise researching Richard Nixon came with the discovery of the Family Assistance Plan, a failed legislation that Nixon had tried to pass in 1969 and 1971. This aimed to provided a negative income tax rate for working class Americans, and Nixon had assumed the Democrats in Congress would support such a quasi-socialist move, only for them to side with the Republicans to water down all the positive elements and leave only the regressive bits, which then aided the anti-welfare stance of Reagan and his followers. The original plan for negative income tax rates would have led to the government paying federal money to the lowest income families, universally, without background checks, based on their registered income alone. Yes, Richard Nixon, the great authoritarian, the man who wanted to cut back the welfare state, actually supported an embryonic form of what campaigners would now call Universal Basic Income.
To sum up, Richard Nixon was, depending on his mood, one of the greatest and one of the worst Presidents in American history. Both sides seem to have facilitated the other. He produced great acts out of dodgy policy, and dodgy acts out of seemingly progressive policy. He is a complete headache in shades of grey, and a difficult man to call. Was Tuco the good, the bad or the ugly? I know what it says on the screen, I mean in the story itself.
As a humanist, I think of his two billion dollars on cancer research, which led to the slashing of cancer prognosis for the most common examples by the end of the 1970s. But as a humanist, I also think on those victims of the people he left in power elsewhere.
An impossible, infuriating man.
19. John Quincy Adams (1825-9)
PROS – Infrastructure spending
CONS – Shawnee tribe relocation
The thing about Presidents is that most of them, historically, are gits. Many of them achieve great things despite that handicap (or because of it), but the Presidents you could look back at in history and say “he was probably a good human being” could be counted on one hand. John Quincy Adams, a man who once responded to smear campaigns that he was too pro-abolitionism by instantly making a vast number of anti-slavery speeches, was probably one of the better humans to take the role.
John Quincy Adams was elected in a bitter election with Andrew Jackson, when he took office against allegations of a corrupt bargain. A pro-Jackson Senate thwarted much of his plans, such as bankruptcy laws and a National University. The Treaty of St Louis forcibly relocated the Shawnee tribe, however, Adams stood firm on Georgia over the rights of the Muscogee tribe. Quincy Adams signed trade deals with Denmark and Prussia, and financed the Erie Canal, part of a major infrastructure spending on improving American canals. There was also the first railways built in America. Slim pickings perhaps, but that and less direct penalties can secure someone a spot in the top twenty, where John Quincy Adams is lording it over his contemporary rival Andrew Jackson by a considerable distance.
After his defeat in the election of 1828, John Quincy Adams got himself re-elected to Congress, and until his death, was a loud voice for the abolition of slavery, the denouncement of imperialism, and the advocacy for scientific progress and acceptance. He said that slavery was as evil as war, fought the gag laws on abolitionists, and was also chief supporter of the Smithsonian Institution’s founding. He suffered a major stroke in 1846, but recovered to return to Congress to argue once more against slavery and the Mexican war. It was mid protest on the floor of the chamber against the Mexican-American war, in 1848, when John Quincy Adams suffered a final, fatal stroke, and died soon afterwards in a nearby office. One of those in the room with Adams as he died was a young Congressman inspired by the older man. His name? Abraham Lincoln.
A great man of his time, John Quincy Adams, like his father before him, had his least impressive years in an impressive life in the White House itself, but proved that even a ham strung President with a Senate blocking them can still often sneak more achievements out than an ideologically strung President with a supportive legislature.
18. James Garfield (1881)
PROS – Took on corruption
CONS – Announced lots of amazing plans then got bloody shot
The great lost American President.
James Garfield was shot by a mad man, months into his tenure, then killed by incompetent doctors who tried to find the bullet and instead gave him several fatal infections through improper sanitary care. Garfield, with his weeks of power, still found time to reduce the national debt by 10 million dollars, and actively took on corruption in the Post Office, a task Chester Arthur was to complete.
Garfield had also arranged a Pan-American Conference to sort out treaties and international co-operation between all the major American countries. He planned for a more hands on, positive approach to civil rights, having been a Civil War officer, and viewed the end of reconstruction as an error to be fixed.
His big dream on winning office was to bring in universal free education for all.
Peace treaties, civil rights, universality, James Garfield dreamed big, and had the popularity and support to aim for the moon.
That he was murdered instead, and all of this faded into the ether as unrealised daydreams, is one of the great tragedies in American politics. What we got was pretty good. What we were meant to have got would be an all timer.
17. William Howard Taft (1909-13)
PROS – Anti-trust actions
CONS – conceding to Southern States
William Howard Taft did not get stuck in a bath. That was a rumour put about to discredit him. He was elected as the protégé of Theodore Roosevelt, only for the two men to fall out spectacularly and let in Wilson in 1912. Taft attempted a trade deal with Canada, only for Canada to veto it. He sent the troops into Nicaragua, but managed to prevent the Americans getting involved in the Mexican Civil War. He vastly increased Roosevelt’s trust-busting, getting rid of more monopolies than Teddy, even, but to his predecessors chagrin, Taft also approved coal mining in Alaskan land previously protected. In further dark marks on his Presidency, the former Queen of Hawaii was denied compensation for the whole annexation thing, and most black office holders in the South were removed from office to appease the racists.
On the plus side, Taft brought in the eight hour day for workers, heavy pesticide regulations, and the Sherwood Act which guaranteed pensions to all American veterans. The Mann Act came into being, designed to protect women from predators, but loosely worded enough to be used against consenting citizens. Taft reformed the postal service (allowing parcels to be delivered by mail) and brought in the early Commerce Court. He was a great believer in Dollar Diplomacy, whereby investment in other countries gave America more influence than military force ever could. To that end, fishing disputes in the Bering Sea with Japan were sorted by diplomatic agreement rather than force. Under Taft’s tenure, the 16th Amendment (allowing Congress to pass income tax changes) and the 17th Amendment (detailing the election of US Senators) passed, and New Mexico and Arizona joined the States.
Taft, while not shifting the Chinese exclusionary policies of the previous thirty years, did veto attempts to use the literacy test to stamp down on immigration. He was also one of the signatories at the first International Opium Convention in The Hague, aiming to cut down on the opium trade. (And while your views on this may vary, it is worth noting that this cracked down on the export and racketeering of drugs, it did not criminalise individual usage – that came later.)
Taft spent much of his Presidency looking after his frail wife.
16. John Adams (1797-1801)
PROS – Avoided war with France
CONS – Aliens and Seditions Act
Another of the great Americans of history who didn’t have the best time in the highest Office in the land. John Adams has this century slowly transformed from the third man in the Founding Fathers Fab Four, to having a genuine claim to being the most popular. The George Harrison of the early Presidents? Much like his own son, Adams best roles came outside the Presidency. Before the Presidency, he was an active and respected American diplomat throughout Europe, and known for his dedication to the principle of innocent until proven guilty. He negotiated the Treaty of Paris, ending the revolutionary war, then as Ambassador to the UK, helped restore diplomatic links with the old country. He wrote Thoughts on Government, a textbook on democracy which is still studied today, and, alone of all the Founding Fathers, never owned a single slave. He was George Washington’s Vice President, and in 1797, the obvious and deserving successor as President.
A natural diplomat, John Adams kept the Cabinet of George Washington intact, despite its outspoken loyalty to Alexander Hamilton. He built up the American Navy, created the Library of Congress, and was the first President to move into the White House. Adams government opened the first hospitals directly for use for Naval sailors. Against criticism, he officially recognised Haiti as an independent nation.
Unusually for a President of this time, not only did John Adams personally abhor slavery, but he actually attempted to do something about it, with the Slave Trade Act in 1800 banning the American export of slaves to other countries. This was the law Jefferson built (slightly) on, and was used as a precedent in Europe to go after the international slave trade. It was a small stepping stone, and Adams didn’t live long enough to see it lead to abolition, but it was a notable first step in an era when politicians were “hearing no evil seeing no evil” on slavery. Adams was a supporter of direct taxation. However, when John Fries, who had led a rebellion against land tax in 1799, was sentenced to death by the courts, John Adams immediately pardoned him, as well as everyone else involved in the incident.
The Logan Act (named after George Logan) prohibited individuals from negotiating on behalf of the American government unofficially. The Marine Corps were founded. Adams himself declared his promotion of John Marshall to the US Supreme Court as one of his proudest decisions in office, with Marshall becoming synonymous with the protection of the judicial system in the early 19th Century. Adams also signed the Treaty of Tripoli, protecting American ships in the Mediterranean Sea.
It is impossible to look at John Adams Presidency without noting the Aliens and Seditions Acts, one of the most disastrous decisions taken by any President. Facing criticism over his handling of international relations, the combined laws allowed Adams to deport any non-citizen he deemed dangerous to the country, and the Sedition Act gave 5 year prison sentences for criticising the government. A vast overreach of power from a man who had spent his life arguing for liberty! That there were only ten convictions due to it is ten too many, as it made the enemy of the state… prosecuted newspaper editors.
Adams positive reputation hangs on two major events. Firstly, the XYZ affair. In the late 1790s, disputes with France had expanded to the point of French attacks on American shipping then refusing to talk diplomacy. Congress and the Cabinet wanted war, and Adams built up the war fleet… only to wrong foot everyone by sending a peace emissary to Paris, pointing to the warships as backup. France and America signed a peace convention, preventing the state of war turning into a full actual war (which would almost certainly have badly wrecked the newly won American nation state). The full announcement of the peace arrived only after the 1800 election.
And the second of those great achievements was his defeat. In 1800, John Adams became the first sitting President to lose his bid for re-election. The election had been bitter, as former best friends John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had badly fallen out (they made up in later life, however). Faced with democratic defeat, and the election of a man he then hated, John Adams conceded the defeat, wished the incoming government well, and left the stage. It’s easy to think of too many Presidents who would have fought on, wrecking the country for their own hubris, hanging on to the bitter end. Arguably in a life full of positive changes to the country, John Adams greatest legacy was the peaceful transition of powers between opposing parties at the ballot box. By showing everyone how to be a graceful loser, he remained one of history's great winners.
A democrat who supported the law of the land, an abolitionist who tried to abolish, a believer in independence and the rights of man, John Adams was unquestionably one of the great Americans in history. Which makes the Aliens and Seditions Acts coming from this President, of all people, all the more jarring. Historians have struggled with that for centuries and will for centuries more. However, despite those black marks, its fair to say that John Adams was an important and great President who left the country, mostly, in a better place than he found it.
15. James Monroe (1817-25)
PRO – The Monroe Doctrine
CON – The Monroe Doctrine
James Monroe was another of the Presidents who believed that the President didn’t have the right to order infrastructure spending, much like Thomas Jefferson before him. Much like Thomas Jefferson before him, his belief in small government often carried the caveat “except when I am in charge”. The Doctrine for which he is still best remembered effects foreign policy to this day, for good and bad.
In 1823, James Monroe (aided by John Quincy Adams) made the following declaration on foreign policy: that the US would remain neutral in inter-European wars and rows, and not seek to further interfere in other Western countries colonial territory (as they had done in Haiti), but in doing so, they would regard any attempt for further colonialization of North, South or Central America as a direct act of war against the United States. To this end, Monroe officially recognised independence of all the South American countries which had broken away from Spain. The Monroe Doctrine did not protect these countries from interference from the United States themselves, however, and would find themselves open to problems regarding that for the next two centuries. It did however shape an entire two continents ever since.
Elsewhere, the Rush-Bagot Treaty reduced the navy numbers between the US and Britain on the Great Lakes, post the War of 1812. Florida was ceded to the US, and Mississippi and Illinois became States. War pensions were introduced for veterans of the Revolutionary War, and a treaty with Russia in 1824 cemented (for now) the border between Russia and the US in Alaska. Meanwhile, relations with the Native Americans can be summed up by the Arikara War in North Dakota, and the first of the Seminole Wars in Florida, the latter of which gave even more public momentum to one Andrew Jackson.
James Monroe also brought in the Missouri Compromise in 1820, whereby Missouri was introduced as a slave state, but everything above it on the map would now be a free state if it became a state, and everything below the line was a possible…confederacy of slave states. This obvious fudge clearly settled the entire abolition argument ever after…
There was also the Panic of 1819, the first major US economic depression, which had its links to the collapse of the export market after a massive volcanic eruption destroyed much of the worlds trade and weather in the 1810s. Typical volcano behaviour, really…
14. Barack Obama (2009-17)
PROS - Obama-care
CONS - Drone-war-fare
Remember when the world was so delighted that Sarah Palin didn’t become Vice President, they gave Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize? The pre-David Cameron in power days, those halcyon days when Europe was mostly a social democracy, and Putin was… actually he’d just invaded Georgia.
It feels a bit strange to have some so recent ranked so highly, when the full historical impact of their legacy is yet to be determined, and when successes of their reign may linger higher in the spotlight than they might deserve. Indeed, one could call it a flaw in the system. However, its amazing how high certain recent Presidents fall by default, once you remove all the Presidents who have to go first. If a President did achieve a number of things, and scored fewer penalty points, then a spot in the top 20 was almost guaranteed. The next four Presidents were all men who, when you look at their legacies over all, did far more to improve the country than harm it, and as such, that takes them to within shouting distance of the top ten.
Anyhow, Barack Obama achieved a lot in office. There was the Fair Pay Act, which took out the statue of limitations on suing against discriminatory pay for current employees. There was the ban on new mining on protected land, increased regulation of the tobacco industry, the SPEECH Act (designed to deal with libel tourism by the rich), and the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The Zadroga Act gave compensation to the emergency workers who risked their lives on 9-11, many of whom to this day suffer critical illnesses from the toxins released into the air in New York City and elsewhere that horrible day. (Obama also went to bat to keep the Act going when the Republicans tried to axe it several times since.) There was also trade deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, and the passing of the Magnitsky Act, which allows the US to seize the assets of human rights offenders with money in America, and ban said people from travelling to the US.
Obama’s biggest changes came financially. The Recovery Act was a massive $831 billion stimulus package designed to deal with the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis. (The quick version – Bush era tax cuts led to American banks giving out mortgages at low interest rates they never expected to get paid, gambled internationally with these portfolios so all the major European and Asian banks had collateral in them, then when a recession came in, realised they had mortgaged their own futures on non-existent payments, creating an instant financial black hole which would have taken out the entire Western system of civilisation if not for a few good people who, realising the danger, bailed out their local banks at the risk of their own political reputations, and then convinced the American government to do the same. Strangely, none of the rich people who caused this insane disaster have ever gone to jail, though most of the rest of us plebs continue to suffer the financial shortcomings from this. Yes, this IS the quick version.)
So, yes, sorry, the Recovery Act pushed through bank bailouts, community support, infrastructure spending and a whole bunch of stuff that seemed to sneak by the Obama detractors in the Senate. Anti-fraud enforcement, an extra 13 weeks of unemployment benefit guaranteed in the States most hit by the disaster, and reform of Wall Street for example. There was a $30 billion lending programme to set up community banks, and tax cuts to small businesses mingled next to free school lunches. Mortgage protections were brought in, so that families who were sold toxic mortgage deals by the banks (see above) were not made homeless because of the short comings of the banks, and harsher credit card legislation was brought in to try and prevent the credit black hole returning, as well as hiring incentives. Obama also brought in increased benefits, not only for veterans, but the surviving families of veterans, and in time, extended further unemployment benefits.
However, lets talk about Obamacare! The Affordable Care Act, that day dream of Roosevelt and Kennedy, was back on the table in 2009, as Barack Obama genuinely wanted the health care system in America overhauled entirely. We know this didn’t happen, as Obama was perhaps overwhelmed by the hostile opposition to this from members of his own party. Despite this, the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, when the Democrats had a filibuster proof Senate majority (aided by the defection of Arlen Specter). Despite opposition from Mitch McConnell, FOX News and the Teamsters. At the time, even this Act was seen as highly controversial (and worse, socalist!) and at time of passing, the Affordable Care Act had a less than 20% approval rating in polling, which gave the Republicans ammunition to claim they would repeal the Act when they were in power, only to find that the more citizens affected by the Care Act, the fewer people hated it. In fact, during the Trump Administration (Part 1?), FOX found a majority of voters supported the Act for the first time.
And why not? After all, under the first six years of the Act, the number of uninsured people in the US who were ineligible for basic health care much of the rest of the world takes for granted… fell by half. Now, that’s still over 20 million people out in the cold too many (at least), and the entire insurance scheme backdrop of American health is frankly criminal neglect, and it is true that Barack Obama didn’t achieve what he wanted, which was universality. But too many old sods like myself have been comparing this to Europe or South Korea unfairly. You have to instead compare Obamacare to what came before it, and in America, it was the single largest progressive health care improvement since Medicare, and one of the two or three biggest in American history. Under the programme, health insurance was brought in for children, medicare payments to Doctors were heavily extended, and there was the introduction of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The full impact of the Affordable Care Act is yet to be properly assessed, and it is curious to see what future generations will think of it. Obamacare, a name invented as an insult by opponents, may yet go down in history like the Square Deal and New Deal before it.
Internationally, the Iraq War ended, drone warfare extended considerably (a dark mark on the Presidency), and Iran proved but an illusion, sanctions at the start of the Obama tenure leading to a breakthrough treaty with the Iranians….which Donald Trump immediately binned. Look at the Middle East now. Obama also terminated the NASA Constellation programme, brought in FDA expansion and stolen valor laws. There was the founding of the National Landscape Conservation System, the expansion of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the funding of pandemic preparedness systems, just in case America was to suffer a major international pandemic one day…
Obama’s government also brought in laws to protect sexual assault survivors and the victims of trafficking, investigate deaths in police custody, and boosted investment to the green hydropower industry. There was Global Food Security, Every Students Succeeds, and other laws we can’t fully judge yet. Regulations on drug quality.
As we speak, the legacy of Barack Obama is hard to quantify, as there is a lot of loud shouting about it from his detractors. He was no socialist, but neither was any of the thirteen men ranked above him here, and that’s not a slight against them either. You need to take Obama away from the immediate internet response, and that includes from people like me who are forever judging him on the things he never managed to do. Only time, and history, and context, and results allow us slowly to judge people on the things they did do, instead. And it could well be that the future takes one look at the headline achievements of Barack Obama (stopped a financial depression, health care reform) and decides that, far from recency bias, this writer here has in fact grossly undervalued his Presidency.
13. Gerald Ford (1974-77)
PROS – Safe drinking water
CON – Pardoning Nixon
“My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”
Gerald Ford, 9 August 1974
Gerald Ford is apparently proof that if you only last two years in the Presidency, and don’t veto a bunch of policies that are going through under your name, then you two may stand a chance of a top fifteen spot on the Presidents ranking. Homer Simpsons favourite American President, Ford is the only man to become President having been elected neither as President or as Vice President. He got this because of the corruption of Spiro Agnew, and then later because of the corruption of Richard Nixon. He immediately pardoned Richard Nixon, meaning he could never be prosecuted, which remains part of the Ford public legacy in the war that his pardoning of Vietnam draft dodgers never did. Ford prohibited discrimination against Vietnam War veteran. Financially, tax cuts in a recession were unwise, and he refused to bail out New York City from bankruptcy. He also was opposed to Roe v Wade, although it should be stated that Betty Ford publicly supported it from the start, and in later life, Gerald Ford, aided by the support of his underrated trailblazing wife, changed his mind on the matter. He also believed in population control, which they never told us on The Simpsons. So why is he here?
A quick bullet point run through the successes of the Gerald Ford Administration.
- Safe drinking water legislation.
- 25.2 billion dollars for education support
- The right for parents to see their own child's records.
- The introduction of Section 8 Housing, which we know in the UK better as housing benefit, or social housing.
- Banning the jailing of runaway children.
- Banning the jailing of children next to adult offenders (it took this long?) – this including banning the placing of young offenders in adult prisons.
- Federal money to operating costs of public transport
- Securing Nixon’s audio recordings for the national archives
- The Privacy Act
- The introduction of 15 new wilderness areas to the protected list
- Regulation of the transport of hazardous materials
- Indian Self-Determination/Education Assistance
- Speed limits (55mph) for the Highway System
- 13, 000 refugees taken in from Laos and Cambodia.
- The peace time alliance with Japan founded
- The right to equal education for disabled children.
- The Energy Conservation Act
- The building of the national oil storage reserves
- Regulation of foreign arms sales on the notion of “self defence”
- The Freedom of Information Act
- Regulation of Corporate mergers
- Toxic Substance Regulations
- The National Forest Management Act
- Mass vaccination against swine flu
- Continuing détente with the USSR and China
Clearly more Presidents need a two year only tenure…
12. Bill Clinton (1993-2001)
PROS - Good Friday Agreement, some of the crime bill
CONS - The rest of the crime bill
If you are of my age when it came to learning about American Presidents, you may be surprised to know that Billy Clinton had a legacy beyond the ability to sleep with every woman in America, or so it seemed from the evening daily news!
We can in fact split Clinton’s legacy along the lines of a Sergio Leone Classic. There’s the good, which is hopeful self-explanatory. There’s the bad, when he tried to act like a good Reaganite. And there’s the ugly, which is where stuff which was meant to be good turned out to have dodgy side effects.
The good included family medical leave, increased voter registration, the right to religious freedom and the FRIENDSHIP act, which set up diplomatic deals with the former USSR countries and Russia. Unusual for an American President, Bill Clinton passed a law on gun control, with the Federal Assault Weapons Ban coming into effect, as well as federal background checks on all firearms purchases, and banning convicted domestic abusers from buying guns. There was the freedom of access to clinics, the regulation of dietary supplements, Healthy Start and the regulation of lobbyists. His government also had the eccentric idea to increase taxes on the wealthiest citizens who could afford it.
The bad included increasing taxes on benefits recipients, harsher time limits for welfare claimants, changes to habeas corpus laws, illegal immigration crackdowns to appease the press, Medicare cutbacks, and the copyright extension act was created, seemingly to help Disney, who were clearly short of a shilling.
The ugly? Well, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was charitably intended to act as a loophole against prejudices in the army. Unfortunately, it cemented them by making open homosexuality an immediate expulsion offence. It went within fifteen years from being “the absolute most a President could do” to needing repealed for its obvious unfair prejudices. However, the swiftness of LGBT rights gains from the early 90s to the last decade took nearly everyone alive at the earlier time by surprise. The big legacy of the Clinton era is that the tolerance and acceptance the nineties demanded for LGBT rights turned a glacial movement for legality into a revolutionary tidal wave. Joe Biden’s legacy today isn’t that time he went on live American TV and said he was pro gay marriage, because its so far down the list of achievements its sort of forgotten, but at the time he said this, it was seen as so risky as to be job (or even life) threatening, and Joe Biden is as non-threatening straight white guy American as you can get to middle America. DADT is rightly seen as regressive today, but the fact that it is shows how much progress has been achieved in so little time. It is also true that, even though he felt it unnecessary, Bill Clinton signed into law the Defence of Marriage Act (which banned federal recognition of same sex marriage). Genuinely, the speed of action against these small minded people was a… pride tsunami.
And then there was the crime bill. 100, 000 new police officers! Yay. Nine billion in new prisons building. Yay? Sixty new death penalty offences! Ya….oh. Those included terrorism, drive by shootings and narcotics offences, incidentally. The crime bill removed the right to education for inmates, because we don’t want them trying to improve their lives and avoid being stuck in a poverty crime cycle. It included guidelines to nationally track sex offenders, which is good, and boot camps for minors, which is bad. It introduced the National Domestic Violence Hotline, which is good, and brought in mandatory drug testing and the terrible three strikes provision which led to the jails being full of low priority crimes. I dunno, pickpockets are a nuisance, but when your jails are full of petty criminals faster than your actual rapists and other violent lawbreakers, something is screwed up.
Speaking of screwed up, the crime bill focused on drug users, who wound up filling those new jail cells. The huge crime bill, which has been apologised for since, is a difficult one, because for every good bit of the act, there’s something horrible, and that’s what happens when you have to chuck everything in one big omnibus bill as it’s the only way to get anything passed a divisive and argumentative Senate. The Violence Against Women Act was included in this. It should be a major piece of legislation, but its forever mentioned in a crime bill with its prejudiced neighbours. As I said, Clinton achieved great things, bad things and things which had unforeseen consequences. Somehow, his mega crime bill achieved all of these at once.
As for other unforeseen consequences, what about the Commodity Futures Modernisation Act of 2000? Why have you all fallen asleep? That was the law that set about the whole banks/mortgages/gambling which led to the 2008 financial collapse. D’oh, as a wise philosopher of the Clinton Era once said.
Technologically, the Clinton Administration (or to be precise, Al Gore) saw the new millennia coming. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, internet tax freedom, online protections for children, Digital Millenium Copyright Act… all laws passed by the Clinton Administration with great foresight, as they took on challenges people hadn’t even realised at the time were going to be challenges.
Internationally, Clinton aided China’s entry into the WTO, was behind the movement to ban the finning of sharks, and supplied economic aid to sub-Saharan Africa. There were the usual Iran and Libya sanctions, increased economic espionage crackdowns, the Oceans Act (environmental protection) and the trade deal with the Caribbean nations. There was international involvement in Iraq (the mini-war in 1998 everyone forgets in between the two major ones), and Kosovo (to block an attempted ethnic cleansing). Both of these had international support, with the British Foreign Secretary (and famous anti-war protestor) Robin Cook pleading with Clinton to act on behalf of the Kosovan people, in a war which had been a lingering part of the horrific Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. (In which many leaders were still haunted by their failure to act ahead of Srebrenica.) The actions directly led to the US supporting the War Crimes Act, used against Serbian heavyweight/brutal leader Milosevic after the war. (Incidentally, one of the reasons why so many of the Serbian leaders behind the 90s atrocities are now in jail is because they openly discussed what they did in a TV documentary series by Norma Pearcy for the BBC, which was later used as evidence in their own war crimes trials.)
But Bill Clinton’s greatest achievement by far was his involvement in the Good Friday Agreement. The background to this peace deal, which ended The Troubles, stretched throughout the nineties and included many people, without whom it could not have been achieved – David Trimble, Gerry Adams, Tony Blair, John Major, Mo Mowlam. Especially not the late great John Hume. However, the real turning point was the energy and money and support given to all parties by the Clinton Administration, which acted as agony aunt to all involved (even when people were shot in response), and which actively sent allies to chair crucial talks between aggrieved parties. He appointed a US envoy to Northern Ireland, against Senate advice. The weight of the Presidency can be harsh or fair in its immovability and here it pushed intractable differences into an on-going peace deal. It is one of the landmark deals of the past century, and Bill Clinton’s involvement in it his finest legacy.
We’ve not mentioned any of Billy Boy’s mad shagging, because unlike Newt Gringrich, I don’t think that really counts as a Presidential achievement or lack there of!
11. Jimmy Carter (1977-81)
PROS - Being Jimmy Carter, Camp David
CONS - deregulation.
“He’s history’s GREATEST monster!”
Iconic 90s Simpsons joke
“Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.”
Jimmy Carter, at a White House meeting commemorating the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (6 December 1978), Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Jimmy Carter, 1978 Book 1: January 1 to June 30, 1978, p. 2164
As I write this, Jimmy Carter is still alive. He is 100 years old, and he has been in palliative care for most of the last two years. Carter’s reputation as somewhat of a secular saint is built on an insanely positive post-Presidency, where he has travelled the world preaching the cause of peace (earning a Nobel Peace Prize in the process), and committed to charitable projects, even beating away Stage IV cancer in his early nineties like a minor inconvenience to carry on helping those less fortunate. If we were judging this list on strength of character, Carter would be at the top. But we’re not. We’re judging on their achievements in office.
And I’m here to suggest that the actual Presidency of Jimmy Carter, often called the least impressive bit of his lengthy career, is sorely underrated. Jimmy Carter was a quiet revolutionary, because he changed America and the world, and yet never seemed to look like he was doing it at the time.
For example, do you know who the first sitting American president to speak in favour of gay rights was? Who started the deregulation of the 1980s, with the beer industry and aviation companies? Who bailed out Chrysler? Who reformed the army? Who banned sexual discrimination at work on pregnancy grounds? All of this, Jimmy Carter.
Carter’s administration regulated coal mining, created the Department of Energy and the grain reserve. Yes, this did protect peanut farmers. If you need something protected, elect your own, clearly! Loans were regulated to protect people, and the Federal Reserve was reformed.
Carter increased food stamps, increased veteran pensions (by 50%), gave veteran pensions to widows of veterans, and brought all foreign banks operating in America under the jurisdiction of US banking regulations. There was the nuclear non-proliferation act. Forest fire protections and grants for reforestation. The Clean Water Act. The removal of federal control over airline fares and routes (which indirectly led to the end of Pan Am).
A believer in the Keynesian employment theory, he introduced public jobs to reduce unemployment. There was an encourage use of hydro power, the Indian Child Welfare Act, the conservation of natural gas and the recognition of Taiwan. The Office of Government Ethics was founded, the control of the Panama Control ceded to Panama, and the Creation of the Department of Education. Carter implemented a windfall profit tax on crude oil, and brought in stricter Alaskan land conservation. The Superfund environmental programme was designed to get polluters to clean up waste sites. Under Carter, there was the right to financial privacy, and the right to have your electronic money transfers protected.
The Refugee Act increased the number of refugees the US took thrice over, and also gave them the ability to become permanent residents. The Mental Health Systems Act was, until it was destroyed by Ronald Reagan, a landmark piece of legislation which gave grants to mental health treatment centres, and widely expanded federal aid to those with long term or permanent mental problems and the elderly. Asbestos was detected and removed from schools. There was $285 billion for technology and research. Internationally, Carter and the USSR agreed to further arms limitations and, while the Congress refused to sign SALT II into law, both the USSR and US stood by the limits agreed until further talks between Gorbachev and Reagan in 1986. There was also the Iran hostage crisis, which Carter was unable to solve, primarily because he refused to send the troops into a situation which could be seen as an act of war, primarily because he refused to countenance actions that would risk the lives of any of the hostages, and primarily because the Iranians had allegedly done a backroom deal with his election opponents! On hearing the hostages were released after his election hopes were ended, Carter stated he was just happy none of them had died. There was also the energy crisis, which readers of my similar list on UK Prime Ministers will remember was an international situation caused by war in the Middle East. Jimmy Carter went on national TV and said this, it didn’t go down well.
However, what goes down as Jimmy Carter’s shining achievement as President is the Camp David Accords, the peace treaty between long time enemies and war-torn neighbours Israel and Egypt. A treaty which holds to this day. No one but Jimmy Carter thought a treaty possible. It was Carter who invited Sadat and Begin to Camp David to discuss their grievances. It was Carter who refused to let either of them walk out on the meetings, stating they were there until they agreed a deal. (When Jimmy Carter is threatening to beat the shit out of you for the sake of world peace, you want to think twice.) After several days of rows, and yells, and stern Paddington Bear stares, Jimmy Carter announced that both sides had agreed a peace treaty. If you want to consider how incredible this, imagine a peace treaty in that region today between any of the regular combatants.
Oh and while being personally pro-life (he is a Christian after all), Jimmy Carter signed abortion legislation, stating it was a personal decision of the individual and not the governments choice. Carter took a public stance against Proposition 6 in 1978, which proposed to ban the employment of all LGBT people from California schools, and helped defeat the bill. He also invited gay people to a White House conference on family matters. In later years, he openly said, in his view, “Jesus would support gay marriage”.
In short, Jimmy Carter was ahead of the game on LGBT rights and the environment. He was ahead of the eighties on regulation. He remains ahead of the game on his approach to peace in the Middle East. His Presidency took the view that no vulnerable people should suffer under his watch, just because of who they were. He didn’t achieve everything he wanted to achieve in power, but he set the path for most of it, and continues to leave a changed, better American in his wake.
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