skeptic cat

US Presidents Part IV: 1933 - Present

2010-07-28T12:04:00.008-04:00

Franklin D. Roosevelt 1933 - 1945, Decmocrat from New York
We begin the fourth, and final, segment of this series with an examination of the administration of the greatest of all American statesmen in contrast to the second and third segments that began with the forgettable administrations of John Tyler and Chester Aurthur respectively who succeeded to the office via the death of the elected President and did nothing worthy of the office during their respective terms. For those who object to my ranking of Franklin Roosevelt as "great" owing to their philosophical opposition to to his statist economic policies, Ronald Reagan, whose conservative credential (I hope) remain intact despite the rapid rightward shift of the American body politic, considered Roosevelt to be his idol and even claimed to have pattered his administration after that of FDR, "great" in this context rarely translates as "I agree with every thing said person did."

During the 1932 Presidential Election Roosevelt had accused his opponent, President Herbert Hoover of "leading the country down the path of socialism" through his creation of agencies such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in response to the Great Depression, which had driven unemployment to over 20% and resulted in a 25% decrease in the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP, however, Roosevelt did more to impinge on the liberties of the private sector during his famous First One Hundred Days than Hoover had even suggested during his entire four year term. Roosevelt's first act as President was to declare a "Bank Holiday" closing all private banks in the country, pursuant to the Emergency Banking Act, in order to determine which banks were insolvent and needed to be dissolved with the deposits in the remaining banks that were reopened to be guaranteed by the Federal Government in order the ebb the stampede of Bank Runs.

The Bank Holiday was remarkably successful with 75% of the banks within the Federal Reserve system reopening and about 50% of funds that had been "squired under the mattress" during the the panic being redeposited with new Federal gauarnees under the newly created Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Of the remaining banks many were merged into larger, more stable banks, however, some deposits were lost though none in their entirety and the value of such lost deposits was to become wildly exaggerated in later years.

Roosevelt then suspended the Gold Standard for valuation of US Currency to stop the deflation which was driving down prices and wages which had been in a state of free-fall since the 1929 Stock Market Crash and passed the Economy Act which placed financing of the Federal Government's operations on a sound basis to buttress tough new financial regulations on private buisness that were being enforced through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Though practical, the purpose of these moves was largely to rebuild confidence in the economy which would stimulate markets who generally responded favorably to these moves assuring that prices would at least not continue to fall.

Roosevelt also took the step which Hoover had refused to take and began providing direct relief to unemployed workers and their families through the creation of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration as well as taking steps to rescue farmers from certain foreclosure using the Agricultural Adjustment Administration to keep crop prices reasonable, a move highly criticized at the time as the overall effect was to increase food prices at a time when many were starving for want of affordable food. Roosevelt's favorite program to come out of his First Hundred Days was the Civilian Conservation Corps which provided employment while at the same time helping to protect the environment.

Far and away the most popular legislation of the First Hundred Days would have to have been the Cullen-Harrison Act authorizing the sale of alcohol for the first time since ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 which would eventually lead to the Repeal of Prohibition six months later. There appears to have have been widespread optimism that Repeal of Prohibition alone would bring an end to the Great Depression but, as we all know, it didn't quite work out that way.

A second round of financial reforms was undertaken beginning with the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act which contained both stronger anti-trust legislation and created the Public Works Administration to expand employment opportunities. It was also during this early period that the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was created providing electrification of rural areas of the country particularly in the Mid-South.

Mind you, all of the past few paragraphs covered a period of 100 days from March 9 to June 16, 1933.

Following the success that accompanied the flurry of activity in his First Hundred Days Roosevelt won larger majorities in the 1934 Midterm Elections allowing him to undertake a much more aggressive agenda: creating his most ambitious angency yet the Works Progress Administration which hired millions of Americans and reduced unemployment but has been widely criticized as the projects undertaken were often of questionable necessity, passing the Social Security Act for the first time providing Federally administered old age pensions and disability insurance and the controversial National Labor Relations Act giving workers the right: to unionize, bargain collectively and strike. Roosevelt also created the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to to provide real-time regulation of equity markets.

In 1935 the Supreme Court found the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional significantly lessening Roosevelt's control over the economy. Roosevelt had been using the act to fix prices and wages in industry in addition to using it to prevent the formation of trusts and it is largely due to the courts action that the US never degenerated into a Planned Economy.

In 1936 Roosevelt was reelected in a landslide over Gov. Alf Landon who only manged to win two small New England states. Shortly after the election Roosevelt took on his most ambitious and controversial pursuit ever by introducing the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937 to prevent further judicial interference in the New Deal by have Congress grant him the ability to appoint up to six new Justices to the Supreme Court (the US Constitution did not specify how many justices were to serve) which he was not successful in getting passed but which did send a message to the court who never again overturned any provisions of the New Deal during Roosevelt's time in office.

Roosevelt was more successful in securing passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act establishing a minimum wage. However, his high-handed attempt to control the judiciary in the "Court Packing Scheme" cost him his Filibuster-Proof Majority in the Senate during the 1938 midterms with the result that FLSA would prove to be the last New Deal program Roosevelt would manage to get passed.

Roosevelt was reelected to a heretofore unthinkable third term in the 1940 Presidential Election over utility company executive Wendell Willkie who had never held public office, had been a friend and supporter of Roosevelt and had only come to oppose the New Deal when the Tennessee Vally Authority began to come into competition with his electric company. Willkie had some success running against Roosevelt's seeking of an unprecedented third term with his catchy slogan "if one man is indispensable, then none of us is free" but was unable to overcome the Democrats counter-slogan "Wendell Willkie you've gotta be fucking kidding me" or words to that effect.

Having promised during the 1940 campaign to do everything possible to keep the US out of World War II Roosevelt, nevertheless, began rearmament of the US in preparation of the inevitable conflict which became evitable with Japan's Surprise Attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941 "A Date Which Will Live in Infamy". Within only a few days of the attack Germany and Italy declared war on the US drawing them into the conflict both in Europe and in the Pacific, in February 1942 President Roosevelt ordered the establishment of Japanese-American Internment Camps perhaps the darkest stain on his administration and the Nation.

In 1943 Roosevelt met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference and the negotiations he undertook there have quite rightly subjected Roosevelt to much criticism. Stalin had already shown imperialist designs with his Annexation of Eastern Poland in 1939 which he had undertaken in circumstances of unusual cruelty and at Yalta Roosevelt and Churchill granted him control of most of what would become the Eastern Bloc setting the stage for the Cold War and essentially replacing one genocidal dictator in the region with another. It does need to be remembered that the overwhelming majority of fighting done up to that point in the War was on the Eastern Front and that, had the Soviet Union crumbled as Russia did in World War I, it was unlikely that the Allies would have prevailed as thoroughly as they did in the European theater.

As with the First World War twenty-five years before, by opening up another front in the conflict that diluted Axis-power resources, US participation in the Conflict proved decisive for the Allied forces culminating in the Allied Invasion of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. While the bloodiest fighting of the War was going on Roosevelt faced his toughest electoral opponent yet in the 1944 Presidential Election in Gov. Thomas E. Dewey who, in spite of being a horrible phony and a complete douchebag, manged to score 100 electoral votes (more than both of Roosevelt's previous opponents combined) in a campaign where he most just said the word "unity" over and over while stroking his cheesy mustache.

The last ditch efforts of the Nazis failed in the epic "Battle of the Bulge" where lager than life Gen. George S. Patton pulled off one of the most amazing maneuvers in military history detaching his Third Army from an engagement 100 miles away relieving a German siege and sending the Nazis into full retreat in subzero weather and with only twenty-four hours notice.

On March 22, 1945 American and British troops crossed the Siegfried Line into Germany which was completely conquered in a little less than six weeks.

Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945 less than one month before Victory in Europe Day. Historian polls always rank Roosevelt in the top three usually at or around number two above President George Washington but below President Abraham Lincoln making him one of the three "great" Presidents.

Harry S. Truman 1945 - 1953, Democrat from Missouri
Give 'em Hell Harry is viewed today as one of the strongest Presidents ever to grace the White House but he left office with the second lowest approval rating of any President in history (bet you can guess who had the lowest approval rating in history), why? No President since Andrew Jackson or perhaps since George Washington transformed the Executive Branch of Government as thoroughly as Truman did and many of the trappings of Truman's time in office: the National Security Agency (NSA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the US Air Force (USAF) and Department of Defense (DoD) remain with us today, however a lot of these initiatives took place in the culture of paranoia surrounding the Cold War and at a time when Americans trusted their Government to a degree subsequent history doesn't appear to justify.

When Truman succeed to the Oval Office, upon the death in office of Franklin Roosevelt, he had been Vice President for less than three months and his predecessor had done nothing to prepare him for the completion of World War II or the demobilization effort underway at home. Also the bureaucracy created by Roosevelt's ambitious New Deal legislative agenda was too young to run itself and thus a sturdy hand was still needed at the tiller to steer the ship of state safely to shore, Truman would prove up to the job.

Germany's surrender on V-E Day occurred less than a month after he took office but the Pacific Theater remained in doubt. In August 1945 Harry Truman became the only world leader in history to detonate a Nuclear Weapon as an act of War and he did it twice.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought a quick end to the the most destructive conflict in history and Truman's use of Nuclear Weapons upon civilian targets is widely defended to this day by persons who calculated that a full-scale invasion of Japan would have cost hundreds of thousands of more lives than were lost in the bombing. History is a bit of a fickle mistress at times, however, and, while these calculations may be accurate for all I know, it must be stressed that American participation in the Pacific Theater had peaked in 1942 with the Battle of Midway Island and Japan had seen tremendous setbacks in China in the intervening years with very limited American involvement due to Roosevelt's wish to concentrate on the European Theater. It is understandable why Americans would want to believe that the dropping of two nuclear bombs with no notice on densely populated civilian targets "actually saved lives" but history tells a different story and I'm afraid those bombs were dropped on an already defeated Japan.

With the War concluded the US had to contend with a painful period of demobilization where unemployment shot up to its' highest levels since the Great Depression and shortages of housing and consumer goods as well as inflation were becoming rampant owing to the return of several million US soldiers who had been serving overseas with only limited plans having been made to adjust the nation back to a peacetime economy. In perhaps his greatest blunder Truman responded to a railroad strike by nationalizing the railroad and threatening to draft striking workers into the armed forces an unpopular move that is widely blamed for the Republican's midterm election victories in which they took majorities in both houses of Congress beginning a two year long standoff between Truman and what he termed the "Do Nothing Congress".

Apart from passing the Taft-Hartley Act, severely reducing the influence and negotiating power of labor unions, over Truman's veto, the President's euphemism for the 80th Congress was largely accurate. Truman, however, faced an uphill battle in his reelection campaign where he ran on extending Roosevelt's New Deal legacy with a bevy of new social programs he termed the "Fair Deal" and to this end, in 1948, Truman signed an Executive Order desegregating the Armed Forces. This resulted in Gov. J. Strom Thurmond running against Truman in the 1948 Presidential election skimming off the States of the former Confederacy, an event which many thought spelled doom for Truman's reelection prospects.

The Election of 1948 has become legendary due to the upset, come-from-behind victory and in 1992, President George H.W. Bush emulated Truman's "Whistle stop train tour", even giving speeches off the back of trains although railroads had been largely abandoned for commuter use in the US decades before 1992 making the President look awkwardly out of touch and the Senior George Bush's reelection campaign was famously unsuccessful. Truman's opponent, Thomas E. Dewey was a major douchebag and had been nominated on a liberal platform that Truman knew the GOP had no intention of ever passing, a bluff he called by by calling Congress into special session and daring them to pass their party's platform to the sound of massive chirping in the hallowed halls of Congress, nevertheless polling was tight on election night prompting the Chicago Tribune to run with the headline DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN much to the delight of Truman who held the paper aloft in a photo op the next morning when results had been tallied giving Truman a two million popular vote and 114 electoral vote plurality and another term as President.

Truman's second term was primarily occupied with foreign affairs prompted by Soviet Union's acquisition of nuclear weapons setting off the Second Red Scare highlighted by the rise of Sen. Joseph McCarthy who would ruin the life of many innocent an person accused without cause of harboring Communist sympathies. To the end of containing real Communism Truman helped to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which would provide a military defense for Western Europe which was to serve as a counter to the Soviet Bloc that had come to dominate Eastern Europe and was beginning to threaten the West and undertook the Korean Conflict under the guise of a UN Peace-Keeping Mission without consulting Congress.

The object of Truman's Korea policy was the conquest of Communist North Korea but the conflict quickly became a stalemate causing Truman to bicker with his Generals and his popularity to sink. In 1951 Truman's popularity was further undermined by his unpopular decision to fire Gen. MacArthur for insubordination when it was revealed that MacArthur had been using his political connections to undermine Truman's containment policy and to promote the engagement of Communist China which had come under control of Mao Zedong in 1949.

In 1950 a congressional investigation led by Sen. Estes Kefauver brought to light a series of financial scandals in and around Truman's administration forcing the resignation of 166 IRS employees who had been accepting illegal gifts and Truman himself is known to have taken gifts though it is unclear that he actually used his influence to benefit any of his benefactors. Finally, Truman faced his most startling setback in the Supreme Court decision in the case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer which found that his taking control of the Nation's steel mills during the 1952 steel strike to have been both unconstitutional and unlawful.

Having left office the most unpopular President in history, Truman remained very active in Democratic Party politics until his death in 1972 at the Age of eighty-eight. Historian polls consistently rank Truman in the top ten but almost never in the top five which is sometimes called the "near-great" range with an overall raking of seventh just ahead of President James K. Polk and just behind President Andrew Jackson, not bad for a bankrupted haberdasher from Independence Missouri.

David D. Eisenhower 1953 - 1961, Republican from Pennsylvania
President Eisenhower's first name was David but he was known as Dwight from childhood so as not to be confused with his father who was also named David. Eisenhower owed his victory in the 1952 Presidential Election and his reelection in 1956 over "eggheaded" Gov. Adlai Stevenson far more to his defeat of Hitler a decade before than to any policy initiative articulated by him during the campaign.

Throughout his two terms Eisenhower primarily concerned himself with foreign affairs allowing domestic policy to be hashed out by his cabinet. The only serious legislative endeavor undertaken personally by the President was the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 which created the Interstate Highway System.

Eisenhower succeeded in bringing the Korean Conflict to a successful stalemate signing an Armistice Agreement in 1953 which left the border of North and South Korea mostly untouched from the start of American involvement in the conflict which, though America's goal had been conquest of North Korea, was not a complete loss since North Korea did not accomplish their objective of conquering the South. Eisenhower took a harder line on the containment of Communism than Truman had particularly in the Middle East and in 1953 a CIA backed Coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran and replaced it with a hereditary monarch, the Shah and in 1957 he articulated the Eisenhower Doctrine in which the US reserved the right to use military force to fend off any Communist aggression in the Middle East. Eisenhower also sent advisors and military aid to South Vietnam who were being invaded by Communist forces from North Vietnam but did not directly involve the US in the conflict.

Eisenhower also took an exceedingly hard line on Civil Rights in the south most famously sending Federal troops to enforce desegregation orders issued by the Federal Courts to public schools in the south, most dramatically when the Little Rock Nine were permitted to attend a public school in Arkansas after Eisenhower took control of the Arkansas National Guard and sent armed and uniformed army troops as escorts for the nine African-American students. In 1953 Eisenhower created the Cabinet-level Department of Health, Education and Welfare to administer the scattered array of social programs created by President Roosevelt's New Deal legislative agenda in the 1930s and showed no interest in dismantling the New Deal.

Eisenhower's administration is remembered as a time of peace and financial prosperity, however, while marked by low inflation Eisenhower also experienced three recessions on his watch. Also, it was during Eisenhower's term that American and Soviet Nuclear Proliferation began in what would become a three decade long Nuclear Arms Race consuming many of the resources of both nations and causing great political instability around the globe but which also, on the positive side, resulted in the creation of NASA.

Eisenhower died on March 28, 1969 at the age of Seventy-Eight. Historian polls are exceedingly kind to Eisenhower placing him in the top ten so-called "near-great" range ranking tenth overall just below President James Madison.

John F. Kennedy 1961 - 1963, Democrat from Massachusetts
Jack Kennedy is another one of those larger-than-life, iconic figures whose ghost would ride at the head of every political initiative undertaken for the next generation. Though Teddy Roosevelt was slightly younger and Franklin Pierce slightly more handsome, neither man had the advantage of living in the age of television and the Kennedy years are widely remembered as a golden age of Camelot.

With all the reverence given the martyred-savior-prince one might assume that Kennedy's administration was successful and that Kennedy was strong and effective President, but that's what happens when you assume. Kennedy's Inaugural Address set forth an ambitious program he called the "New Frontier" which included: education reforms, Medicare and Medicaid, an end to racial discrimination and putting a man on the moon, all to be paid for by cutting taxes. None of this passed Congress during Kennedy's term in office, however, as I said, the ghost of Kennedy rode shotgun as these and many more programs were passed by his successor Lyndon Johnson as part of the Great Society which would seek to eliminate poverty and racial injustice through a volume of legislation which would leave the New Deal in the dust.

Kennedy's foreign policy was a bit more successful than his domestic agenda but was still mixed. Early on he faced fierce criticism for the Bay of Pigs Fiasco, an Eisenhower era plan to provoke an uprising that was intended to topple the Communist regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba by arming and training 1,500 Cuban exiles and having them invade the Island and inciting a revolt but Kennedy failed to provide proper air-support for the ground forces who were quickly overwhelmed creating an international incident as Kennedy was forced to negotiate with Castro for the release of the surviving exiles that had been taken prisoner. Eighteen months after the Bay of Pig went sour Cuba showed up on Kennedy's plate again when aerial photography exposed Soviet missile silos being constructed on the Island only seventy miles off the coast of Florida prompting Kennedy to construct a Naval Blockade surrounding all of Cuba which was followed by a tense few days as both the US and the Soviet Union began considering going to war but which was settled cordiality thanks to a last minute, face-saving, diplomatic solution hatched by US Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson who suggested a deal whereby the Soviets would remove the missiles in exchange for the assurance that the US would never again invade Cuba in addition to the US removing some obsolete ballistic structures near the Turkish-Georgian border. This was a success for Kennedy but Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was not so lucky, clownish and bullying though he was Khrushchev was not a hard-line Stalinist and the weakness he exposed in settling the Cuban-Missile affair was soon used by harliners within the Kremlin to depose him in 1964 in favor of Leonid Brezhnev, a hardliner.

It was also during Kennedy's presidency that the Berlin Wall was constructed to stop the mass exodus of East German residents that were escaping Soviet oppression to West Berlin. This would become the most enduring symbol of the Cold War as well as a constant reminder of the prison-state that Eastern Europe would become and these sentiments were expressed very elegantly in Kennedy's famous I am a Jelly Doughnut Speech at the base of the Wall in June of 1963 to uproarious applause. And, yes, for the conspiracy minded among us, it was the Kennedy administration who oversaw the installation of the Ba'ath Party government of Iraq in 1963 who the US would have to expend considerable resources deposing forty years later. On the positive side, however, Kennedy also signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty prohibiting the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

As I said Kennedy's domestic agenda was not passed in his lifetime, however, he was a vocal supporter of expanded Civil Rights legislation both for African-Americans and for women and had asked Congress for $25 billion in funding for the Apollo Moon-Landing Project which would be accomplished in 1969.

According to the Warren Commission report Jack Kennedy was assassinated by gunfire at the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald, who acted alone, on at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on November 22, 1963, however, very few Americans find the Warren Commission credible though no two Americans can agree on any particular detail that contradicts the Report's findings and the much touted Deathbed Confession of E Howard Hunt (who also said that Watergate Scandal was set up by state-informant John Dean to cover-up a Washington DC prostitution ring run by Dean's wife) involving a mafia hit and a jealous husband remains uncorroborated. In Historian Polls Kennedy generally ranks well-above average with an overall ranking of about thirteenth tied with President John Quincy Adams of whom Kennedy is known to have been a great admirer.

Lyndon B. Johnson 1963 - 1969, Democrat from Texas
There's a great story about President Johnson, though it is undoubtedly fictional, when he was running for the US Senate in 1948 he and an assistant were filling out Voter Registration Cards from a list of names that had been copied of from headstones at a local graveyard when Johnson announced, "wait, isn't my grandpa buried in that graveyard?" The assistant explained to Johnson why his staff felt it would be inappropriate to which Johnson is said to have replied "bullshit, my granddaddy has the same right to vote as anyone else in that graveyard." Again, there are many apocryphal stories of President Johnson but I think that one gages the character of the man very well, he was an election thief and he did stuff ballot boxes to win his Senate seat in 1948 but he was also a very egalitarian election thief and there are a great many ways that all Americans are better off as a result of his having stolen that election.

Having been Inaugurated Under Unusual Circumstances aboard Air Force One Johnson's first undertaking was to push for and pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawing discrimination on the basis of race in: voting, government, employment and public accommodations, effectively ending legalized racial Segregation in the Nation, but mostly in the South. As I said in the blurb above this regarding President Kennedy, Johnson used the overwhelming national grief that Kennedy's assassination had caused to push all of Kennedy's ambitious agenda as well as an enormous agenda of his own which Kennedy probably had never dreamed of and it is doubtful that Kennedy would have approved of in its' entirety.

Kennedy's assassination took place less than one year before the 1964 Presidential Election so Johnson was already campaigning for reelection before his butt hit the chair in the Oval Office. His opponent in that election, Sen. Barry Goldwater was more than a little bit eccentric as well as a hard-line conservative activist that really never posed much a of threat to the seasoned political veteran, Johnson, but the President was from Texas where they like to things big and so by using a string of vicious campaign attack ads on television managed to convince the public that Goldwater was a trigger-happy-extremist in a nuclear age and that if he was to win: old people would be cut off from social security and every American of African decent would be lynched. Well that is, if they survived the nuclear war, Johnson's most controversial (read effective) ad was known as the "Daisy Ad" which showed a cute little girl being vaporized by a mushroom cloud as she whimsically plucked the pedals off from a daisy-flower and ending with a plea to vote for Lyndon Johnson because "the stakes are just too high." Goldwater's campaign never really got off the ground in spite of the the support of actor Ronald Reagan, Goldwater's slogan was "in your heart you know he's right" to which Johnson's people erected the powerful counter-slogan "in your guts you know he's nuts." Aside from his home state of Arizona, Goldwater took no states in the 1964 Election that segregationist Strom Thurmond didn't manage to take in his 1948 Third Party Bid and in the popular vote Johnson won the largest percentage landslide in history, a record that remains in tact to this day.

With a popular mandate and a filibuster-proof majority in Congress Johnson then undertook the most ambitious legislative agenda, perhaps of any head of state in world history, the Great Society. Now before I get into the details of the Great Society agenda and its many programs, as someone who has benefited greatly from the government funding for education and the sciences legislated during this period I would like to take a moment to thank the GOP for nominating Barry Goldwater in 1964 as I honestly do not think that an even slightly less eccentric nominee would have given Johnson enough momentum to achieve so much legislative success.

Of course many of the Great Society Programs continue to benefit Americans today: Medicare & Medicaid, Federal Guaranteed Student Loans & Financial Aid for Higher Education, The National Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The National Endowment for the Arts, Head Start, Food Stamps, etc, etc ... ad nauseum. The centerpiece of the Great Society was the War on Poverty which combined direct assistance to needy families with an aggressive effort to promote economic opportunity in distressed areas of the Nation and was a good deal more successful than has often been credited.

The great society was a warm fuzzy time but then there was the Vietnam War, having successfully painted his Opponent, Barry Goldwater, as a sadistic-war-mongering-suicidal-maniac in the 1964 Presidential Campaign, Johnson quickly amplified American involvement in the Vietnamese Civil War: securing passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (which Johnson himself later acknowledged was passed UNDER FALSE PRETENSES) giving him unlimited authority to commit troops to the region without Congressional oversight, instituting a Conscription Draft into the armed forces and began a series of destructive bombing raids in both North and South Vietnam which was followed by a massive ground invasion in South Vietnam (yes who were supposed to our allies).

The war quickly went sour and Johnson was caught making a large volume of misleading statements to the press causing Johnson to lose popularity and credibility. In addition to the War Protest Movement which was burgeoning on college campuses across the land there were Race Riots in nearly every large American city begining with the Watts Riots of 1965 in Los Angeles with the most damaging being in Newark and Detriot where parts of both cities were burned to the ground in 1967 never to be rebuilt, rioting peaked in 1968 following the Assassination of Martin Luther King which engulfed over 100 cities in a single day. Johnson called for more social programs to rebuild the inner cities but backlash to his Vietnam Policy had cost him his great majority in the Congress making any new Great Society programs implausible and Johnson's political capital was mostly spent.

On a personal note, I wasn't born yet so I don't know the exact circumstances in which all this took place, however, reading this era of history I cannot help but notice that the very people whom the Great Society most benefited, college students and impoverished inner-city residents, behaved rather badly during this period and, while do not agree with their sentiment, I do not blame members of Johnson's political who opposition looked at the Great Society programs and looked at the riots/peace protests and said: "you liberals got all of your reforms passed and this is the result." I simply cannot find it in my heart to condone or even understand those who chose to partake in civil unrest during this period as the result was not more liberty and not more economic opportunity but far less of both as the call went out for "Law and Order" in the wake of these activities. It was not the Great Society that failed to alleviate the nation's social problems but the people who failed to behave themselves and in the process ruining the career and reputation of a fine US President.

Okay, back to our story, the 1968 Presidential Election was to begin in an environment of riots and peace protests and with the War in Vietnam accelerated to its' bloodiest level yet with the enormous Tet Offenive undertaken in January of that year. Johnson had been seeking a third term (second elected term) but lost big in the all-important New Hampshire Primary to Sen. Eugene McCarthy, an outspoken critic of the War, prompting him to drop out of the race and announce that he was pulling out of Vietnam.

The 1968 Democratic National Convention was the scene of even more violence following the unexpected assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy Sr. at the hands of Palestinian Nationalist Sirhan Sirhan. Kennedy had come out against the War and was challenging the nomination of pro-war Vice President Hubert Humphrey and a contingent developed demanding Kennedy's delegates be given to fellow antiwar candidate Sen. Eugene McCarthy resulting in protesters outside the convention becoming involved in violent confrontations with police only months after Chicago, where the convention was being held, had been ripped apart by Race Riots Following the Assassination of Martin Luther King, this all was great fodder for Television News organizations but bad publicity for the Democratic Party who nominated Vice President Humphrey. Johnson's last act in office was to sign the Gun Control Act of 1968 outlawing the importation of fully-automatic weapons and the distribution and sale of the Saturday Night Special perhaps in anticipation of the civil unrest that plagued his last few years in office turning into a shootout.

President Lyndon Johnson died on January 22, 1973 at age 64. Historian Polls rank Johnson in the "well-above-average" range normally ranking about fifteenth in the same neighborhood as President William McKinley.

Richard M. Nixon 1969 - 1974, Republican from California
I have it on reasonably good authority from fully credentialed psychoanalytical practitioners that Richard Milhous Nixon, thirty-seventh President of the United States of America was, in fact, to use the term preferred by behavioral health professionals, a complete basket-case. But Nixon also had all the makings of a first-rate head of state being an exceedingly talented diplomat and an able administrator, there appear to be TWO Richard Nixons.

So which one shall we look at first? The man liberal pundit Noam Chomsky called "the last liberal president" who: Created the Environmental Protection Agency, signed the Clean Air Act, created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and put a man on the moon? Or perhaps the man widely toughted as greatest diplomat of the Twentieth Century and who: became the First President to visit Communist China, ended US participation in the Vietnam War and signed the first ever Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Or would you rather hear about Watergate and the illegal bombing of Cambodia? Yup that's what I thought.

Having won the 1968 Presidential Election on a Law and Order platform in the midst of Race Riots and Peace Protests that were tearing the Nation limb from limb Nixon undertook a crime wave in Washington DC breaking more laws than all of his predecessors combined (though the title of Most Corrupt Administration now belongs to Ronald Reagan). Nixon has always had his defenders and the most common line of thought goes that Nixon's only crime was to get caught, that all Presidents had their little bailiwicks and that Nixon's offenses were just par for the course. This is more than a little bit speculative and (though we must admit that Johnson, Eisenhower and Truman all had their kickbacks) the kinds of scandals we see in administrations, even in extreme cases such as Teapot Dome and Black Friday, were examples of Chief Executives who were corruptED whereas Nixon was very much a corruptER. Harding and Grant accepted bribes but Nixon actually PAID bribes. The annals of American Presidential History don't turn up anything like: Nixon's Enemies List, his dirty tricks campaign and certainly not burglary. As much as I would like to give the man benefit of the doubt given Nixon's fine legislative and diplomatic record an examination of the facts simply do not vindicate Nixon's actions in that way and it appears Nixon was unique in the abuses of power and criminal offenses committed under his direction during his administration.

In his First Inaugural Address Nixon set out the noble goal of being remembered as a "peacemaker" so, naturally, Nixon immediately began expanding the Vietnam War by bombing Cambodia and Laos, illegally as it turns out but that's not important. However, at the same time, Nixon articulated the Nixon Doctrine to scale down American participation in the conflict through a process of Vietnamization in which phased withdraws of US troops would be contingent upon Vietnamese troops readiness to take their place. This apparently constituted Nixon's Secret Plan to End the War which had been one of his campaign pledges the year before and nobody was buying it especially after Nixon announced a ground invasion of Cambodia in April of 1970 which prompted the Great Student Strike of 1970 shutting down all the major colleges and universities in the Country as well as many high schools in the first two weeks of May of that year.

I don't really care for hippies any more than the next skeptic but I must admit that the Student Strikes actually were quite effective. Perhaps having seen social unrest destroy the Presidency of his predecessor, Nixon announced plans to end the draft (by far the most contentious issue) and eventually signed the Paris Peace Accords ending American participation in the conflict but with the condition that the US could interfere again if North Vietnam broke the accord and undertook another invasion of the South, which they did in 1975 but Congress refused funds to reignite the war, North Vietnam won that war and the US lost there are no two ways around it.

Nixon's economic policy was nearly as controversial as the Cambodian campaign. Government spending on Vietnam and the Great Society had caused inflation to skyrocket forcing Nixon to take the US dollar off the Gold Standard due to a massive depletion of US Gold reserves to foreign speculators. He also instituted a system of Wage and Price Controls to force down inflation a practice that was completely abandoned in the US a few years later in favor of the less draconian use of Monetary Policy to control prices by adjusting interest rates. Nixon also presented a budget to Congress in 1971 which employed deficit financing of fiscal stimulus to drive down unemployment, apparently because everyone had become Keynesian at that point.

By far Nixon's finest achievement was his 1972 Visit to China which greatly improved relations between the US and the world's most populace nation. This prompted the Soviets to seek a better relationship with the US as well and Nixon visited the Kremlin in May of 1972 setting the stage for SALT I and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which had been touted as setting goals for Nuclear Arsenal Reductions in both Nations that never came to pass but did set the US and USSR on a path that would lead to the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s.

With so much in the way of domestic and foreign policy success in his first-term, Nixon seemed a shoe-in to be reelected in the 1972 Presidential Election particularly after the Democrats nominated the comparatively inexperienced and, frankly, weak candidate Sen. George McGovern but here is where the story gets crazy because, for some reason, Nixon decided to cheat. For a reason unknown, and perhaps unknowable, on June 17, 1972 five buglers directly tied to Nixon's Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CREEP) were arrested as they attempted to illegally break into Democratic Party Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington DC as well as having attempted to tap telephones in the Democratic party's headquarters.

Subsequent investigation of the five men's ties to the Nixon White House would uncover another of Nixon's bailiwicks known as the White House Plumbers who were tied to the Watergate Break-in through the persons of CIA Agent E Howard Hunt and former FBI Speical Agent G. Gordon Liddy who were both arrested on charges of: conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping. It turned out that Watergate was not Nixon's first black bag operation (gathering information on a political opponent and then making it look like a robbery) and that following the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 which exposed misconduct leading up to American involvement in the Vietnam War the office of the psychiatrist for Daniel Ellsberg, a state department official who had leaked the papers to the New York Times, had been burglarized as well.

Hunt and Liddy were facing serious time and so CREEP went into action raising half a million US dollars to buy the seven men's silence which was transfered by illegal means opening the President up to serious charges of: money laundering, obstructing justice, bribery and suborning perjury, all felonies punishable by imprisonment. In September reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered a laundered check linking Nixon to a secret slush fund controlled by Nixons campaign manager, former Attorney General John Mitchell which tied Mitchell (and therefore Nixon) to the Watergate burglary.

All these facts were known and well publicized on Election Day 1972 when Nixon won reelection by the largest popular vote margin in history over McGovern who won a paltry 37.5% only taking the state of Massachusetts and Washington DC making McGovern's name a byword for "loser" in the popular vernacular for decades to come.

On September 11, 1973 a CIA Backed Military Coup in Chile toppled the democratically elected (but avowedly Marxist) Presidential Administration of Salvador Allende resulting in the Chilean's president's death under highly suspicious circumstances. Perhaps fearing the rise of a second Marxist regime in the hemisphere Nixon backed the Government Junta of Chile led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet who, one year later, would have himself named President of Chile at the same time suspending democratic elections for the next fifteen years, a time in which Pinochet, an admirer of Mussolini, is known to have committed many human rights abuses and governed Chile with great cruelty whereby the Country was crawling with death squads, known as the Caravan of Death, that Pinochet sent out to roundup, torture and murder his political opponents or place them in concentration camps.

Less than one year after the 1972 Landslide Nixon's Vice President Sprio Agnew was forced to resign owing to charges of accepting bribes and embezzlement of state funds during his tenure as Governor of Maryland and Agnew replaced by Rep. Gerald Ford. That same month the OPEC Oil Cartel levied an enormous increase in the price of crude oil to punish the US for taking the side of Israel in the Yom Kippur War prompting the 1973 oil crisis officially bringing to an end almost three decades of consistent and unprecedented economic growth which had been fueled largely by cheep Middle-Eastern Oil Reserves.

On June 25, 1973 a bombshell hit when Senior White House Council John Dean testified before a Senate committee that Nixon had ordered a cover up of the Watergate affair and implicating John Mitchell in influence-pedaling, money-laundering and bribery in securing and distributing funds through CREEP. One month later it was revealed that Nixon had installed a secret taping-system in the White House the resulting tapes from which were subpoenaed by special prosecutor Archibald Cox who Nixon then fired in the infamous Saturday Night Massacre which also resulted in the top two members of the justice department putting in their resignations rather than obey Nixon's order to fire Cox. The Supreme Court would order Nixon to turn over the tapes to Cox's successor in July of 1974 in their landmark ruling in the case of United States v. Nixon in which, citing the Supreme Court's ruling in Marbury v. Madison where the court declared itself to have authority to strike down actions of the Legislative Branch of Government, the Court ruled itself to also have authority over the Executive Branch as well. It seems funny now but there were actually people at the time who thought there was a snowball's chance in hell of the Court deciding the case in some other way. Marbury and Nixon are the two most important cases in American Judicial history in that they grant the Supreme Court the authority to declare legislation and executive orders Unconstitutional, see you learned something today, go out and tell all your friends ... I actually don't agree with the decision in the Nixon case but I won't get into that.

The tapes were discovered to have contained an 18½ minute gap corresponding to three days after the Watergate Burglary corroborating John Dean's testimony though not conclusively as the content of the gap is still the subject of much speculation. On August 5, 1974 the Special Prosecutor's office revealed that one of the tapes contained a conversation in which Nixon conspired to obstruct justice by using the influence of the Presidency to convince the CIA Director Richard Helms to muscle the FBI out of the investigation on fictional National Security grounds. This was probably the least odious activity in the long list of what John Mitchell would describe as White House horrors but it was an impeachable offense and the House Judiciary Committee was already in the process of drawing up Articles of Impeachment when Nixon announced his resignation three days later. On August 9, 1974 at 12:00 PM Nixon bid farewell to the White House giving a odd little speech which ended with the catchy prose: "[a]lways remember others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them and then you destroy yourself."

On September 8, 1974 President Gerald Ford granted Nixon a full and absolute pardon and Nixon would, over the next two decades, regain much of his reputation as a fine statesman particularly in the Early 1990s when his advice on Foreign Affairs was frequently sought out by the fledgling Clinton Administration shortly before his death at the age of eighty-one on April 18, 1994. Historian Polls are unkind to Nixon ranking him in the below average to poor range with some polls even ranking him in the worst category, his overall ranking averages out to about thirtieth pretty much tied with President Herbert Hoover, a fellow Californian, Quaker and friend of Nixon's.

Gerald R. Ford 1974 - 1977, Republican from Michigan
Far and away the most athletic US President, nevertheless, comedian Chevy Chase was to make a career for himself parodying Ford's frequent slip and fall accidents on Saturday Night Live. Second to his Pardon of Richard Nixon, Ford (who was known to enjoy a cocktail or two in the early afternoon) is chiefly remembered for falling down a flight of stairs leading from Air Force One to the tarmac and losing his driver in a golf match, striking an unfortunate old women atop her head, both on national television.

But there is much more to President Ford's story than a few bumbled photo ops and the unpopular decision to pardon his predecessor to whom he owed his Presidency in spite of the fact that Nixon steadfastly refused to admit any wrongdoing. For President Ford also, almost certainly, authorized the near genocide of the citizens of East Timor at the hands of the Indonesian Army and initiated Operation Condor, a CIA directed program of: brutal oppression, torture and assassination undertaken in South America whereby in excess of 60,000 persons are known to have been killed, often for little more than their political views. Those two little tidbits of history tend to be overlooked with all too much attention going to the "stair-master" scene at the airport and the "gulf-swing from hell" when Ford's Presidency is recounted, in my ever so humble opinion.

Of course, Ford wasn't all bad, he was, in fact, a very moderate and conciliatory figure at a time when passions ran rather high in the US. Ford was: pro-choice on the abortion issue, was a vocal supporter of the ill-fated Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution (ERA), supported universal healthcare, granted amnesty to many who had dodged the draft in Vietnam by leaving the country and, most importantly in my opinion, established Special Education in America's Public Schools through passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act.

However, it was also Gerald Ford who happened to sit in the Oval Office when North Vietnamese forces broke the Peace Accords eventually capturing South Vietnam and uniting the entire region into a single Marxist country. Lacking support in Congress to fund military endeavors in the region, Ford was forced to oversee a hasty evacuation of US Personnel and Equipment from the region films of which have come to symbolize the humiliation at having to concede defeat in a conflict which American involvement had spanned the better part of two decades.

It would already of been apparent that President Gerald Ford stood little chance of being reelected in the 1976 Presidential Elections but political pundits assure me that Ford's loss to relative newcomer Gov. Jimmy Carter had little to do with: pardons, death-squads, hasty evacuations, lost wars or even slip-and-fall accidents. Rather there was a gaffe by Ford in one of his debates with Gov. Carter in which he claimed that Poland was "independent and autonomous" from the Soviet Union and which he repeated the next day saying "[t]here is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration." Of course he didn't really believe any such thing and was probably reviving an old game from the beginnings of the Cold War where more bellicose anticommunist elements tried to pressure the State Department not to recognize Soviet domination in Eastern Europe (Ronald Reagan gave a speech at the 1964 Republican Convention, for instance, demanding that government of the tiny Island of Taiwan be recognized as being the government of all of China) but the voting populace weren't in on the joke and went to the polls fully convinced that President For "couldn't find his ass with both hands, two hunting dogs and a can of chili" and Jimmy Carter (a political novice) defeated Ford, in a surprisingly close race remembered as the last time a Democratic canidate carried all of the States of the Southern US.

Ford led a very active and profitable retirement (the running joke was that it cost $50,000 to shake Gerald Ford's hand) right up until his death in 2006 at the age of ninety-three. At the 1980 Republican National Convention Ronald Reagan offered Ford the Vice Presidential slot on the ticket but Ford announced he would only accept the nomination with the, frankly, unreasonable and, undoubtedly, unconstitutional stipulation that he be granted equal power and influence with Reagan in the administration. This offer was, needless to say, rejected and former CIA Director George H. W. Bush was selected in his stead.

Historian Polls are about what one would expect in ranking Ford near the lower end of the bellow-average quartile averaging a rank of about twenty-eighth not as good as President Rutherford B. Hayes but ever-so-slightly better than President Zachary Taylor.

Jimmy Carter 1977 - 1981, Democrat from Georgia
By far the most scientifically litterate US President, having received training in nuclear engineering during service in the US Navy, Jimmy Carter is also the only world leader I am aware of to have taken a personal interest in the Skeptical Community having been a guest on the The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe Podcast episode 105 - July 25, 2007. So it's a little bit difficult for me to remain objective in evaluating the Presidency of Carter, whom I very much like as a person but whose administration as President is widely viewed as having been a failure. It is far easier to give particular attention the accomplishments of Presidents I personally dislike such as Nixon and Harding in the name of objectivity than it is to trash the Presidency of someone I admire and respect for the sake of something as intangible as fairness.

Although, his post-Presidential philanthropic enterprises were to win him much popularity in the decades following his Presidency, the categorization of Carter's Presidency as a failure is not completely unfair. This may sound a bit rough in consideration of how far I out of my way I went to point out the good qualities of the perniciously corrupt Nixon administration and there is success to be found among Carter's actions as President, most spectacularly in the Camp David Accords and the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty negotiated by Carter bringing an end to the Israeli-Egyptian wars, and Carter's efforts to end the practice which had become rampant in the administrations of his predicessors of using the CIA to harry most of South and Central America to prop up cryto-fascist military dictatorships have largely gone unapplauded, however, Carter's mismanagement of the economy would cause him to have to force the economy into recession to clear up the combination of: inflation, unemployment and shortages resulting from Carter's policy that heretofore economists had assumed was impossible and his weak and ineffective reaction to the Iranian Revolution would lead to the last one-year-two-months-and-eighteen-days of his administration being referred to colloquially as "America Held Hostage".

At first sight Carter would seem an unlikely choice to have become the Democratic Party standard-bearer having had only limited national exposure and having amassed less than sterling liberal credentials in his single term as Governor of Georgia however the experience of the 1972 Presidential Election where a candidate with solid gold liberal credentials had only been able to take the votes of single New England state at a time when his opponent had been implicated in the single worst scandal up to that point in American history led many Democratic Party types to seek a candidate with broader appeal nationally and Carter's Southern roots and self-identification as a Born Again Christian made him the ideal candidate for Democrats who had been hemorrhaging voters in the South and Midwest at an alarming rate at least since the passage of Civil Rights over a decade before (yes it was Civil Rights there was no other reason).

In truth at that time, in 1976 which was long before McMegachures began to blight the landscape, a majority of Americans (who at that time belonged to Catholic and Mainline Protestant denominations) probably didn't fully understand what Carter meant when he would identify himself as being "born-again" other than that it meant that he was very religious and therefore moral making it unlikely that he would be staging Black Bag Operations or toppling democratically elected governments, activities Americans had grown more than a little bit intolerant of and, for all the criticism that Carter has received, I am unaware of the slightest hint of Carter having even attempted anything of that kind. If Americans did understand the origins of Born-Again Christianity in the circus sideshow that was the Tent Revival Movement of the 1920s there is a good chance it would have cost Carter votes, quite frankly.

Its' important to note that Jimmy Carter is not a Creationist nor does he subscribe to a Literal Interpretation of the Holy Bible. However, in contrast to Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. Carter's faith is quite genuine and he was and remains very active in his church communities. Carter spoke very openly about his "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" during the campaign but: generally accepted the doctrine of Separation of Church and State, was moderate on the abortion issue, supported the Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution, opposed organized prayer in schools (though he made it clear that voluntary prayer should be allowed) and was the first US President to have voiced support for Gay Civil Rights.

In keeping with his kind of folksy, small-town image Carter did much to eliminate the pomp and circumstance that had come to surround the office of the Presidency: selling the Presidential Yacht, walking from the Capital building to the White House to stress the need to conserve gasoline, eliminating much of the wait-staff and cleaning-staff at the White House and generally adopting a far more informal demeanor than had been seen in the White House at least since before the Camelot days of the Kennedy. His first act as President was to declare a full and unconditional amnesty for persons who had evaded the draft during the Vietnam War.

There were many positive initiatives proposed by Congress but Carter's unfamiliarity with the ways of Washington DC led to a rift between Carter's administration and Congress. Few Presidents before or sense Carter have been as bold in using their veto power as he and his instincts were correct in that it was very much high time someone tried to clean up the corrupted "barter system" and "pork barrel" spending that had characterized American Domestic Policy at least since reconstruction but the immediate result was that Congress refused to pass much if any of Carter's own bills making his Presidency less effective and he was widely viewed in Washington DC as having taken upon himself duties traditionally in the purview of Congress.

Like most Americans President Jimmy Carter had a Ne'er Do Well Brother who was to cause Carter and the Democratic Party much embarrassment during Carter's term and make for the only scandal of an otherwise squeaky clean administration. Though Billy Carter's main claim to fame was his failed adult beverage venture known as Billy Beer, the President's brother's relationship with Libyan Dictator Muammar Qaddafi was to lead to Senate hearings known as "Billygate" when Billy registered as a foreign agent of the North African Oil-producer after having accepted a $220,000 loan from Libya. The influence-pedaling charges never led to any judicial action although it does appear that Billy Carter had access to some State Department materials not normally made available to international businessmen and that President Jimmy Carter attempted to use his brother's influence to help Americans held hostage in Iran. This was the first instance that the suffix "-gate" was attached to a Congressional Investigation since Watergate, a tradition that continues to this day.

In January of 1979 the American-installed Shah of Iran was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution which replaced the Monarch with Ayatollah Khomeini. The immediate result of this was a Second Energy Crisis which Carter responded to by giving his infamous "malaise" speech promoting conservation of energy and blaming the crisis on America's penchant for self-indulgence stating: "too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption, human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns."

The speech was not well received and many mark the "malaise" speech as the end of Jimmy Carter's political career as, by blaming the energy crisis upon the emerging consumerist-pseudo-yuppie-culture, Carter cost himself the douchebag vote and, needless to say, the 1980 American Presidential Election. Far be it for me to denounce anyone's attempt to stem the tide of douchebaggary which really did contribute to multiple credit crunches in later years, however, the 1979 Oil Crisis did not come about as a result of there being an actual shortage of resources, rather, as we shall see, there were specific economic and political events, unrelated to douchebaggary, which led to the energy market blow-up. Perhaps Carter wasn't really blaming douchebaggary for the Crisis but instead was attempting to "kill-two-birds-with-one-stone" offering a solution to the energy crisis that would both ease the demand for energy and prevent the coming consumer credit crisis which were inevitable so long as douchebaggary remained unchecked, I don't know. His instincts were certainly correct but there is a time and place.

The economy during Carter's administration was notoriously bad with both record inflation and high unemployment which is something they tell you in macroeconomics class isn't supposed to be possible leading to the creation of a new Economics term: Stagflation as measured by the so-called Misery Index (inflation plus unemployment) which reached its' historic high of 21.98% during Carter's Presidency. The oil shortages mostly resulted from foreign policy initiatives undertaken by previous administrations that had pissed off OPEC, the high rates of inflation primarily derived from the rapid increase in Government spending that had accompanied the Great Society and the Vietnam War both of which can similarly be cast off onto other administrations as well. However, the: slow economic growth, high interest rates and high unemployment which characterized the economy of the late 1970s were largely of Carter's own making and, moreover, he did it on purpose. Having been blocked from using wage and price controls by Congress Cater was forced to implement the ideas of Monetarism which had been tested in Chile under Pinochet whereby interest rates are raised to decrease the demand for money in the economy "burning off" inflation causing prices and wages to decrease to manageable levels. Its' not a magic pill however, as that Phillips Curve I linked to early which shows the trade-off between inflation and unemployment works both ways so while disinflation was taking hold unemployment skyrocketed and economic growth was slowed to a crawl. The Prime Rate was nearing 20% as Carter faced reelection in the midst of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.

International human rights was the centerpiece of Carter's foreign policy and the results were mixed. Early on he abandoned South Korea ordering a phased withdraw of missiles and men from the region and focused upon the Arab-Israeli Conflict with remarkable success in hamering out the 1978 Camp David Accords bringing peace between Egypt and Israel with the later only giving up the Golan Heights and being forced to recognize the autonomy of the Palestinian_Territories. Others have attempted to make peace in the region and no one has had anything close to the success attained by Carter.

More controversial were the Panama Canal Treaties giving back the Canal to Panama which was under the control of a corrupt military strongman the fear that the burgeoning Cocaine traffic from Columbia threatened to dominate traffic in the Canal didn't seem to play a role in the negotiations but to some extent that is what happened a decade later resulting in the US Invasion of Panama in 1989. Carter put a great deal of effort into the SALT II nuclear nonproliferation agreement but the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan caused Carter to withdraw the treaty as well as to force the US to
boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

The Iranian Revolution which had led to the Energy Crisis in 1979 would prove the biggest headache Carter would face as President. During the revolution fifty-two Americans were taken hostage during a siege of the American Embassy in Iran and they would be held from November 4 1979 until the very end of Carter's Presidency as Carter refused to return the exiled Shah or unfreeze Iranian assets in the United States. A failed attempt at rescuing the hostages called Operation Eagle Claw both further antagonized the militants and added considerably to Carter's unpopularity at home. There seems little doubt that Carter's landslide loss in the 1980 Presidential Election was significantly influenced by the fact that the election took place on the one-year anniversary of the taking of the Hostages who were still imprisoned as voters took to the polls.

Carter led a very active retirement following his loss in 1980 and still does to this day and has been called "the best ex-President this Country ever had" by many an American with his work with Habitat for Humanity promoting voluntarism in the area housing for the underprivileged being particularly subject to praise. Less praise-worthy would appear to be his continued public interest in the Arab-Israeli situation which has opened him up to charges of Antisemitism from both Jewish groups and pundits on the political Right. Historian Polls rank Carter's Presidency in the well-below-average-to-borderline-poor range with an average ranking of twenty-seventh just above President Benjamin Harrison and just below President Chester A. Arthur which is nothing to be proud of I will grant, again however, he has to be considered the greatest of all ex-Presidents.

Ronald Reagan 1981 - 1989, Republican from California
Reagan is another one of those larger-than-life, iconic figures whose Administration is remembered as time of financial prosperity and renewed optimism in the American Way of Life. There appears to be agreement that he personally brought down the entire Soviet Empire all by himself through pure force of will but his administration also left behind record trade and budget deficits transforming America from the largest exporter of products and lender of money into the world's largest importer and debtor nation. As I have mentioned before, the Reagan Administration also holds the record for being the most scandalous administration in History with the jewel in the tiarra being the Iran–Contra Affair in which weapons were covertly sold to America's enemies and the profits used to finance Death Squads in Central America, an act of treachery and cruelty which runs counter to the kindly image of the man which most of us have engraved in our memories.

Reagan's victory in the 1980 Presidential Election actually came as a surprise to many as his extreme Conservative views had long ago been rejected in the 1964 Goldwater Campaign and his economic policy, then derided as Voodoo Economics, bore a striking similarity to the policies that had precipitated the Great Depression with the notable exception that Reagan was vocal supporter of Free Trade.

And yet the former actor's magnificent stage presence and his campaign theme "government is not the solution to our problems government is the problem" appears to have struck a long-established anti-establishment cord that ran through the country propelling him to victory.

The failings of the previous administrations hung densely in the air on election day which marked the one year anniversary of the Iranian Hostage Crisis while interest rates, unemployment, inflation, etc were at historical zeniths. The so-called Reagan Revolution is better described as a counterrevolution, the New Deal/Great Society model of government was seen as broken beyond repair and Reagan wanted to take the nation back to the good old days.

It was during Reagan's inauguration speech that the Iranian Hostages were finally released. Reagan's first act as President was to abolish price controls on domestic oil.

On March 30, 1981 Reagan became the sixth US President to have been assaulted with a firearm while in office when a very disturbed young man John Warnock Hinckley, Jr. ambushed the Presidential entourage outside the Washington Hilton Hotel and a stray bullet bounced off the bullet-proof Presidential limousine peircing the Presidential lung causing it to collapse. Reagan was to survive the assassination attempt, however, the injuries he received were actually worse than the injuries which would take the lives of Presidents Garfield and McKinley whose respective attacks took place before modern emergency medical facilities and antiseptic surgical techniques.

Up to that point concerns about Reagan's hands-off management style and apparent disinterest in certain important affairs of state had been widely expressed in the media. Though widely hailed as "The Great Communicator" Reagan: often appeared befuddled in news conferences, was known to fall asleep during cabinet meetings, was often forgetful and generally showed signs of being in the early stages of the Alzheimer's Disease with which he would be diagnosed officially only five years after leaving office. Following the assassination attempt, however, a wave of national sympathy forced the press to go comparatively easy on Reagan and many of his "senior moments" went unreported.

Even more seriously injured in the attack was Reagan's Press Secretary James Brady who received a gunshot wound to the head that would permanently disable him inspiring passage of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act in 1993 provisions of which would make it more difficult for the mentally ill to acquire firearms. The bill was passed over the vocal opposition of mentally ill Americans ... Sorry I mean Republicans, who interpreted the Second Amendment to the US Constitution to guarantee the rights of citizens to keep and carry firearms without regard to their state of mental health. Supporters of the bill included the former First Lady Nancy Reagan.

Reagan's next big move as President came in August when he busted the Air Traffic Controllers Union, firing over 11,000 striking members. A lack of experienced Air Traffic Controllers combined with the continued Airline Deregulation begun under his predecessor made for an unusually high insidence of Major Commerical Airline Disasters during Reagan's term in office which hitherto and hithersince were generally considered comparatively rare.

In August of 1981 Congress passed Reagan's Economic Recovery Tax Act significantly lowering Income Tax Rates particularly in the wealthiest of Taxpayers. This act is widely remembered as having spurred the economic growth for which Reagan's Administration is so widely remember and Reagan is idolized as a great tax-cutter, however, concerns over the record level of Deficit Spending and an impending crisis in funding Social Security forced Reagan and Congress to Raise Taxes in 1982, statistically the overwhelming majority of Americans actually had their Income Taxes increased while Reagan was President.

Distressing to many Americans, including many devoted Christians and Republicans, was Reagan's association with less-than-reputable televangelists such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell to whom Reagan appears to have believed he owed his victory in the 1980 Presidential election. Poll after poll showed that the social issues promoted by organizations such as the Moral Majority were of minimal concern to a sizable majority of voters but Reagan, who seems to have been more superstitious than religious personally, appears to have taken the 1980 Election as a referendum on the Moral Majority's social agenda: declaring 1983 the "Year of the Bible", pursuing the War on Drugs with renewed vigor, taking every opportunity to limit access to abortion and contraception, pushing for the return of prayer in public schools and constantly invoking God and prayer in his speeches.

Of particular concern to many was the eschatalogical rhetoric which often accompanied the peculiar brand of Christianity who had attached themselves to Reagan's Presidency indicating that the Battle of Armageddon was not only eminent but desirable. The timing of statements to that effect by persons close to the President and even, occasionally, the President himself was unfortunate in that it coincided with An Escalation of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and an unprecedented peacetime Military Buildup and the breakdown of Nuclear Nonproliferation Negotiations.

Of course, I wouldn't be writing this if Reagan actually had destroyed the World as many seemed to think that he was bound to and, contrary to popular belief, the Military Buildup undertaken by Reagan was primarily focused upon conventional warfare. There was only a slight increase in America's Nuclear Stockpiles during Reagan's term though stockpiles in the USSR nearly doubled during that same time-period far surpassing the volume of Nuclear Arms held by the United States.

This new war machine was first tested by invading the tiny Island of Grenada to drive out a Communist Government that had taken hold there. Though a lopsided contest from the first to say the least Americans, still reeling from the humiliating defeat in Vietnam, celebrated the victory in Grenada as if it were Russia itself who had fallen to US Imperialist Aggression which must have been quite perplexing to the rest of the World.

Hitherto US policy toward the Soviet Union had rested on the principle of Containment first articulated by President Harry Truman whereby military action was only threatened if Communist nations sought to expand their empire, pretty much leaving the existing Communist Bloc alone. This actually hadn't worked very well as: China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc had all fallen to Communism despite the US' best efforts to prevent such and Afghanistan was now on the verge of being absorbed into the Soviet Bloc which would have given Russia a long sought after warm-water-port. The Reagan Doctrine set a new goal, instead of merely swatting the occasional mosquito (which usually flew away unharmed) Reagan pledged to "clear the swamp" pledging: "the forward march of freedom and democracy will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history".

Reagan was successful in securing funding for his defense buildup but was unable to convince Congress to fund a proposed missile shield known derisively as "Star Wars" which scientists said would never work and which Foreign Relations Experts said that even if it did work it would only escalate the Arms Race further. Though it was never developed fear that the US might be able to launch a Nuclear attack on the Soviet Union without fear of reciprocity eventually does seem to have brought the Soviets to the bargaining table during Reagan's second term.

In 1984 Reagan won the Presidential Election with the largest margin of victory in terms of Electoral Votes in history. His opponent, Former Vice President Walter Mondale took only his home State of Minnesota garnering three less electoral votes than Sen. George McGovern had in the 1972 Election, although Mondale did, in fact, take a larger percentage of the Popular Vote.

The beginning of Reagan's second term coincided with the rise to power of reformer Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union who would institute policies of Glasnost and Perestroika or "openness" in stark contrast to the Stalinist hardliners that preceded him. This was the beginning of the End of the Cold War as it was clear that the USSR could no longer compete financially with the US in terms of military budgets due to a drop in the price of oil which had caused the Soviet economy to become stagnant and eventually collapse.

Summit conferences between the two leaders resulted in series of Nuclear Nonproliferation agreements and, to the surprise of many, shortly after Reagan left office, the Soviet Union pulled out of Eastern Europe and two years after that collapsed entirely.

The only overt military venture undertaken in Reagan's second term was a single Bombing Raid of Libya in 1986 in response that nation's sponsorship of terrorism. Covert operations undertaken by the President, however, were to have devastating consequences for his legacy as a large part of his second term would be dominated by the Iran-Contra Affair one of the most explosive scandals in American Presidential History.

In 1982 and again in 1984 the Congress had attached riders to the Military Budget know as the Boland Amendment prohibiting the President from providing military or financial assistance to the Nicaraguan Contras, a counterrevolutionary outfit attempting to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua. This act of Congress may not have, in fact, been Constitutional owing to the President's position as Commander in Chief ... Not important, violation of that particular rider to a couple of Defense Appropriations bills is a minor part of the scandal that would erupt.

During negotiations for the release of several hostages held in Iran the Reagan Administration agreed to covertly sell arms to that nation's government and middlemen used in the process grossly overcharged the Iranian's for said weapons. When accused of sale of arms to Iran Reagan was indignant stating: "In spite of the wildly speculative and false stories of arms for hostages and alleged ransom payments, we did not, repeat did not,trade weapons or anything else for hostages nor will we."

Well actually, yes he did, hostages were freed but new hostages were quickly rounded up to take their place and the Iranians now had sparkley new machines guns and missiles with which to gather up even more hostages. While investigating the, clearly illegal, sale of arms to Iran the Senate Intelligence Committee uncovered the fact that said profits were diverted to the Nicaraguan Contras in violation of the aforementioned Boland Amendment.

During testimony before the Senate Reagan pulled the off a routine of "I'm an old man and I can't remember things too well any more," which was quite plausible as Reagan was clearly showing signs of some sort of neurological deterioration, as evidenced by the perplexing statement he made when he finally came clean "[a] few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages - my heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."

There was the usual routine of suppression of documents which continues to this day in the case and it is more than clear that conspirators had been embezzling from the operation for which there was absolutely no oversight. At one point Lt. Col. Oliver North was convicted of Obstruction of Justice and Destruction of Evidence, and given a small fine and some community service but the vast bulk of conspirators got off Scott-Free and even North's conviction was overturned on a technicality, apparently some of the evidence used against North was extracted under a promise of immunity which wasn't fully on the up and up.

Reagan was already seventy-seven years old when he left office in 1989 with the highest approval rating of any exiting President (64%). Though his Administration is still remembered as a time of financial prosperity in America this was largely cosmetic as evidenced by the Stock Market Crash known as Black Monday (1987) and the quadrupling of the National Debt that occurred during his time in office. Reagan also mishandled many reciprocal trade agreements causing the US to run an enormous Trade Deficit with the Pacific Rim putting many American manufacturers out of business as profits from the sale of consumer goods to Americans were quickly used by her international trade competitors to buy up American manufacturing resources setting into a motion an overall decline in American Industrial Output which continues to this day.

In his farewell address Reagan expressed regret over the budget and trade deficits run up during his two terms in office but placed the blame upon Congress and the Media. Reagan died in 2004 at the age of ninety-three following a very public battle with Alzheimer's Disease with much public mourning and fanfare (though not from Christopher Hitchens).

Historian Polls are quite mixed on Regan's Presidency ranking him as high as Sixth to as low as low as twenty-forth with the most recent polls averaging a ranking of about eighteenth in fairly close proximity to President Grover Cleveland.

George H.W. Bush1989 - 1993, Republican from Texas
George H.W. Bush was the President who would oversee the end of the Cold War and the Collapse of the Soviet Union, however, his administration has a tendency to be overlooked both by historians and contemporary political sources. In stark contrast to Reagan before him and Clinton after his term in office was largely free of scandal, he was an able administrator, a tough no-nonsense diplomat and a successful military commander, and yet our image of him, perhaps due to his unusual syntax and nasally voice, is that of a wimp who ruined the economy.

During the 1988 Presidential Campaign George Bush and his running mate Dan Quayle ran behind his Democratic opponent Gov. Michael Dukakis throughout the early polling but managed to stage a remarkable comeback waging a rather nasty campaign centering around a provocative attack ad exploiting the case of a Maryland women who had been raped an murdered by convicted murderer Willie Horton while out of prison as part of a furlough program that Dukakis had authorized as Massachusetts Governor.

In truth, many of Dukakis' positions were too center left for most American's to swallow but Bush's pledge at the 1988 Republican National Convention: "Read my lips -- No! New! Taxes!" appears to have been the most memorable moment of the contest and would come back to haunt him four years later due to his passage of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990. Bush Sr. was a conservative but he was not a hardliner.

Bush's single term was quite eventful beginning with the Dissolution of the Soviet Union beginning with the first free elections in Poland in June of 1989 and which has come to be symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of that same year. Also in 1989 Bush undertook an Invasion of Panama and would capture their nominal-President Col. Manuel Noriega who would be sentenced to forty years in prison on drug trafficking charges in 1992.

In August of 1990 Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein invaded the oil-rich Emirate of Kuwait, a British Protectorate, prompting President Bush to initiate the First Gulf War the fighting of which took place from about Jan. 17 to April 3, 1991. Due to pressure from international allies the Bush administration decided to stop short of a full-scale invasion of Iraq allowing the UN's UNSCOM commission undertake the disarming of Iraq with the coperation of Saddam Hussein who was allowed to remain in power, for now.

Bush was highly criticized during the 1992 Presidential Campaign for focusing too much energy on foreign policy and neglecting domestic affairs, however, there was a decent amount of legislation passed during Bush's term including significant addendum to the Clean Air Act and, by Bush's own initiative, the Americans with Disabilities Act. Republicans continue to blame Bush's loss in the 1992 Election on the presence of third party candidate Ross Perot, a colorful Texas businessman who spent many millions of his own savings on a platform of Deficit Reduction and isolationism.

This may or may not be true as it is difficult to know how much of the roughly 20% of the vote Perot won would have gone to Bush and the GOP did little to lure voters away from Perot, who was pro-choice and generally moderate on other social issues, putting on a virtual tent revival at the 1992 Republican National Convention which featured prime-time speeches from ultra-right-wing Journalist Pat Buchanan and televangelist Pat Robertson propping up Platform virtually promising a second Bush administration was to be a Fundamentalist Christian Theocracy.

Bush was quite magnanimous and humble in about leaving office in 1993 when compared to his successors and has generally been less active than most former Presidents perhaps not wishing to disrupt the political rise (and fall) of George W. Bush. In spite of his astounding diplomatic successes, Historian Polls rank the Senior George Bush squarely in the below-average category with an overall ranking of number twenty-two, between Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and Martin Van Buren.

Bill Clinton 1993 - 2001, Democrat from Arkansas
It may still be a bit early in the game to objectively judge the overall effectiveness of the Clinton Administration as most sources are forced to rely on popular media reports from the era when the institution of journalism was notoriously lax about fact-checking, reliable sources, etc. Former President Clinton is a highly gifted administrator and a very skilled politician, however, he was unable to subordinate his personal interests to the responsibilities of the great office he held so in spite of a a wide array of useful measure for which he can be given credit his legacy will always remain mixed at best.

This is not, of course, entirely President Clinton's fault as fully half of his time in office was dominated by a feud with House Speaker Newt Gingrich who, having never received a single vote outside of his suburban Atalanta Congressional District, established himself as virtual Viceroy of the Realm resulting in a battle of wills between himself and Clinton which Clinton did not lose. It would be Gingrich who would be forced to resign in disgrace, but, like all feuds among the over-mighty going all the way back to King Edward the Confessor vs Earl Godwin, the real losers coming out of the feud were the American people who would suffer a Shutdown of the Federal Government and a failed Impeachment Attempt ... Oh the drama!

Another rather unhelpful individual in analyzing the Clinton Presidency is publishing magnet Richard Scaife whose use of publications such as the The American Spectator
to promulgate nonsense such as the Clinton Body Count confound any attempt to do an objective or balancing accounting of Clinton's presidency. While a lot of the ill-reports about President Clinton, including the suggestion that he was involved in the death of Vince Foster, were just, quite simply made up, questions still remain in regards to Chinagate and other matters for which documents are being withheld. Based on whom is withholding said documents I have a strong suspicion what they might say ... Neither here nor there, a pox on both their houses.

Clinton had won the 1992 Presidential Campaign over incumbent George H.W. Bush and self-financed Independent Canidate H. Ross Perot promising: a tax cut for the middle class, universal healthcare and affordable college or vocational training for all Americans. However, the economy had experienced slow growth in the demobilization which had followed the First Gulf War and it was agreed that the enormous Federal Budget Deficit was the primary stumbling block to economic recovery forcing Clinton to go back on his pledge drafting the Revenue Reconciliation Act of 1993 which increased taxes slightly but to nowhere near pre-1983 levels as some had prophesied that he would.

The Clinton Health Care Plan was a disaster and would be defeated by the Senate in early 1994 expending much of Clinton's political capital and contributing to the landslide victory in the 1994 Congressional elections that would be called the Republican Revolution. However, Clinton did pass the Family and Medical Leave Act making it illegal to fire someone who was required to take an unpaid leave of absence from work due to pregnancy or to care for a sick relative, which had been vetoed by his predecessor and managed to aquire a partial lifting of the ban on homosexuals in the military known as "Don't ask, don't tell".

Clinton also submitted the North American Free Trade Agreement to the US Senate which had been completely negotiated by the George H.W. Bush administration and signed the Brady Bill restricting the sale of handguns to lunatics.

Scandals appeared in his first term including Travelgate where White House Travel Office employees were fired when it turned out the director, who would be acquitted of embezzlement charges, was mixing Travel Office funds with his own funds in his private bank account and Filegate in which First Lady Hillary Clinton was accused of having been granted improper access to FBI files for the purpose of gathering information to be used for political purposes. In neither case was there substantive evidence of wrongdoing but both cases smell a bit fishy and continue to be used against the Clintons today by their political opponents.

In 1994 Republicans won sweeping majorities in both the House and Senate forestalling any more of Clinton's domestic policy agenda from being passed for most of the rest of his term particularly after Democratic Senators Richard Shelby and Ben Nighthorse Campbell switched parties to become Republicans after the election but before the 104th Congress convened. The new House Speaker Newt Gingrich touted something he called the Contract with America which was an ambitious set of administrative, judicial and even Constitutional reforms, mainly benefiting Republicans that Gingrich pledged to pass during the 104th Congress.

In truth few voters could recall ever hearing about the "Contract" prior to the election and some items included in the document, such as the Congressional Accountability Act, had actually been sandbagged by Republicans when they were in the minority. However, the Clinton Administration had gotten off to rather a slow start and America was glad to see some legislation actually being passed so for a little while Gingrich's reputation for corruption and unscrupulousness appears to have been overlooked as Gingrich and his Freshman Class of Congressional Republicans got straight to work passing most of the Contract in record time.

Speaker Gingrich is a bit of an odd duck, he has a PhD in history and considers himself an intellectual but can always be counted on to take the most short-sighted and reactionary position on any issue laid before him and tends to rely on his personal emotional responses rather than facts when making decisions.

This political shortsightedness, lack of emotional restraint and neglectfulness of details was to cost Gingrich, who had never campaigned in a national election, dearly as he declared war on the President of the United States, a seasoned political veteran. Gingrich's philosophical viewpoint, if any, is hard to pin down but he appears to be something of a neo-Luddite aligning himself with futurist Alvin Toffler most famous for his 1970 book Future Shock which warned of a grim future where machines and people become indistinguishable should advances in technology remain unchecked.

Gingrich also set out to undo President Johnson's Great Society programs denouncing: Public Broadcasting, disability insurance and even Medicare with great vitriol as he took his message to the media.

The greatest symbol of the Luddite and reactionary nature of the so-called Republican Revolution was the use of the antiquated AM Radio band to get their message across. Shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage took to the airwaves trumpeting the Republican Revolution and inspiring their listeners to harangue their elected officials demanding fewer: freedoms and opportunities in the name of freedom and opportunity. It was a masterwork of Machiavellianism as the ideal of the free-thinking rebel was turned upon itself creating the oxymoronical mythological being "The Rebel Conservative."

It was complete and utter NONSENSE. It was also, as even the most strident Republican today would have to admit, a complete failure.

It is unusual in to go into this kind of detail over the petty infighting that occupied the Washington establishment during the 1990s in an historical overview of a US President, however, it was an article on Troopergate which led to the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit that would culminate in Clinton's Impeachment Trial on perjury charges for denying that he got a rimjob from Monica Lewinsky who was a student intern given access to the inner-circle of the White House due to the Government Shutdown initiated by Newt Gingrich's feud with Bill Clinton. So it's actually all interconnected.

In 1996 Clinton was reelected, defeating Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole in an election that would not be without controversy. The details are a little sketchy but there is evidence of the Democratic National Committee receiving illegal campaign contributions from agents working on behalf of the People's Republic of China and the resulting Justice Department action resulted in twenty-two fraud convictions and many others would leave the country or refuse to testify.

When secrets would turn up missing from Los Alamos National Laboratory attempts were made, most prominantly by Sen. James Inhofe, to link the missing secrets to the illegal campaign contributions but neither Congress nor the Justice Department suggested any such link. The Chinese Government flatly denies that they attempted to influence the 1996 Elections in any way, however, Clinton's decision to grant China Most Favored Nation Trading Status had been highly criticized owing to China's shoddy human rights record and remains a very sensitive both in terms of its economic impact and in terms of National Security.

Enter Special Prosecutor Ken Starr who had been brought in to conduct a, frankly politically motivated, investigation of the so-called Whitewater Controversy linking President Clinton and His Wife to the failure of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan. When Starr was brought in the case had been closed both by the Senate Banking Committee and the FBI but there were serious allegations being floated about by a man named David Hale, a convicted swindler, that Clinton had pressured him to provide an illegal $300,000 loan to Madison Guaranty, a charge that Ken Starr's own report would find insufficient evidence substantiate but which would lead Starr to expand his investigation to include the Paula Jones Lawsuit, Filegate, Travelgate, etc which would lead a White House employee named Linda Tripp to turn over tape recordings that she had made of phone conversations with Monika Lewinski in which Lewinski detailed sexual acts that she had performed on the President contrary to statements that Clinton had made in a deposition during the Clinton V Jones civil suit.

By the time the Starr Report was released in September 1998, the Paula Jones Civil Suit had already been dismissed for lack of evidence but there was still a perjury case to be made. The Report is memorable for it's passing on little tidbits such as a cigar being used as a sex-prop and Lewinsky's testimony to have engaged in "oral-anal contact." Like many Americans, prior to the Starr report had no idea that anyone enjoyed doing that second gratuitous inclusion in the Report, I was quite happy not knowing and, frankly, I don't know that I will ever find it in my heart to forgive: President Clinton, Monika Lewinsky and in particular Ken Starr for depriving me of my blissful ignorance on that account.

On December 19, 1998 the US House of Representatives voted to Impeach President Clinton on the grounds of perjury to a grand jury by a vote 228 to 206 but and on the grounds of obstruction of justice by a vote of 221 to 212. A trial then took place in the US Senate where a two-thirds "supermajority" was required to convict Clinton and remove him from office but both counts were voted down by 55 to 45 for the Perjury Charge and 50 to 50 for the obstruction Charge.

Allegations of marital infidelity which he had apparently been untruthful about in Divorce Court Proceedings caused Newt Gingrich to resign from Congress just before the Impeachment hearings were to begin. Clinton had won the battle of wills but it should have been no contest as Gingrich really wasn't in the same class as Clinton either intellectually or politically and ultimately Bill Clinton was the person Americans had voted into office.

Clinton's last two years in office were primarily consumed with the Kosovo-Albanian Conflict in seeming fulfillment of the 1997 comedy Wag the Dog about a President who invades Albania to distract attention from a sexual-abuse allegation, in the film Albania was chosen at random because it appeared first alphabetically. In 2000 Clinton's Justice Department was forced to interfere in the Elián González Child Custody Case who had survived a boat wreck that had killed his mother who was escaping Cuba to come to the US (the Carter Administration issued an executive order that anyone from Cuba who made it to US shores would be automatically granted asylum) but whose father remained in Cuba, Clinton sided with the boy's father and the child was returned to Cuba over the loud objections of talk-radio and the Cuban Community in Florida.

Clinton would leave office with a 65% job approval rating and has led as active and controversial a life in his post-Presidency as he did on the job. In 2008 his wife Hilary was the early favorite to win the Democratic nomination for President but she was ultimately defeated by relative political novice Sen. Barack Obama in a racially charged campaign which would inflict even more damage upon the former-Presidents already bruised reputation.

Historian Polls generally rank Clinton's Presidency in the average-range with an overall ranking of about seventeenth higher than President Ronald Reagan but lower than President William McKinley. It must be stressed, however, that at this point historians only have popular media reports to go on and a systematic evaluation of Clinton's presidency using source documents is yet to have been undertaken as of this posting.

George W. Bush 2001 - 2009, Republican from Texas
As with Clinton before him, it is probably a bit too soon to properly evaluate the Presidency of George W. Bush. As of this posting his Presidency is still considered to have been a disaster from which a long list of failings can be extracted, including but not limited to: Enron, 9/11, Space Shuttle Columbia, Adding $4 Trillion to the National Debt, Promoting Intelligent Design, the Valerie Plame Leak, the Voter Suppression Scandal, the U.S. Attorneys Firing Scandal, Hurricane Katrina, the Failure to Capture bin Laden, pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol, his attempt to privatize Social Security, the Housing Market Explosion, the Bank Bailout and the Invasion of Iraq.

I know, it looks like a lot when you just sort of list them off that way but the younger George Bush was successful in getting much of his agenda passed including: the USA PATRIOT Act, tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, No_Child Left Behind, Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, the Department of Homeland Security, Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, , Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and Medicare Part D. There are items listed as successes that I don't necessarily agree with and there may be items listed as failure that you may not agree with but lists of initiatives and whether or not they can be considered failed or successful is bound to be speculative less than two years after his leaving office.

Bush the Younger did not come into office under happy circumstances. Polling in the 2000 Presidential Election had been unusually tight and his Democratic opponent Vice President Al Gore had actually out-polled Bush in the Popular Vote but lost the Electoral Collage after a nasty and contentious Florida Ballot Recount Ordeal. As I said in the segment on the Elder George Bush, W.'s father's administrative and foreign policy successes had largely gone unappreciated by a fickle American Public, many of whom, perhaps even a majority, now viewed the Younger George Bush's Presidency as illegitimate and he had also walked in at the beginning of a recession not of his making as a result of the bursting of the Dot-com bubble.

Bush's first major initiative as President was the Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 which intended to stimulate the economy through tax cuts that are set to expire January 1, 2011 if not made permanent by an act of Congress before then. Bush famously "pulled a McGovern" making the tax cuts retroactive sending nearly every taxpayer in America $300+ checks on two occasions often irregardless of if their tax burden for the previous filing season was truly lowered by that amount or, sometimes, at all. When recessionary pressures continued in spite of the tax cuts Bush would pass an additional round of cuts in 2003.

As a devout Christian one of Bush's favorite endvors was creation of the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives which funneled Federal funds to religious charities and community organizations. Needless to say, this action was not without its' critics and myself being one of the most vocal of those. Granting that the Establishment Clause does not prohibit outright the granting of funds to religious organizations provided that they are used to to fulfill a strictly secular objective, one cannot see how playing favorites with charities receiving Federal moneys based on their spiritual outlook does not amount to the Government promoting religion. The office is still in use today and there is little I can do about it but I cannot help thinking that if a secular charity were to be denied funds it would be the makings of a landmark legal case.

Bush's religious perspective was also at the forefront of the Global Gag Rule blocking federal aid to foreign groups that offered counseling or any other assistance to women in obtaining abortions and in 2003 he would pass a Ban on Partial-Birth Abortions. He also supported a Justice Department lawsuit to overturn Oregon's Death with Dignity Act which legalized doctor assisted suicide and euthanasia and endorsed the Federal Marriage Amendment defining marriage as only valid between one man and one women.

Many of these ultra-conservative policies were unpopular and unemployment was on the rise. Also Bush's less than elegant speaking style and slightly goofy demeanor was the subject of much ridicule and even scorn, he looked like a sitting duck in the 2002 Midterm Congressional Elections but then 9/11 happened and it changed everything.

Having spent far too much time going out and debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories, which I don't recommend others do (once you find out about the Lizard People its' pretty much all downhill from there) I consider myself reasonably familiar with the events of 9/11 but I will not recount them here except to say that following 9/11 George Bush appeared to have found his stride. Bush became bolder and more energetic and on October 7, 2001 Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom undertaking a Full-Scale Invasion of Afghanistan in search of Osama bin Laden who was known to be behind the attacks.

The action in Afghanistan was universally popular and Bush's quick and decisive action following the 9/11 attacks was to give him a boost in popularity the likes of which no one would have imagined only months before when "George Bush is an Idiot" was pretty much accepted as an established truth. As for his being an "idiot," based on his SAT Scores his IQ is probably in the mid 120s which is well above the average of 100 overall and right about average for someone who has finished college.

Bush campaigned aggressively for Republican candidates in the 2002 Midterm Congressional elections winning small but unexpected majorities in both the Senate and House races. And, of course, when Republicans win a majority that can only mean one thing ... More War.

President Bush had been claiming throughout 2002 that Iraqi President Saddam Husein was in violation of UN Sanctions which had been placed upon him following the first Gulf War prohibiting him from possessing or manufacturing Weapons of Mass Destruction and that there was a connection between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda Terror Network who were responsible for 9/11. Late in the year UN Inspections were undertaken and no such weapons were found and Iraq was declared to be in full compliance with UN Resolutions but on March 20, 2003 the United States began a full-scale invasion of Iraq.

As with the first Gulf War, the initial goal of overthrowing the Husein regime was relatively easy causing Bush to give his bombastic Mission Accomplished Speech on May 1, 2003. But following the invasion sectarian violence broke out between Sunni and Shia and general attacks on US troops broke out making several months in 2003/04 as bloody or bloodier than the original invasion had been. In December Saddam Hussein was captured and he would be tried and hanged two years later.

In April of 2004 reports hit the press of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib Military Prison in Iraq complete with disturbing photographs. This was not the torture which would become such an emotional issue during Bush's second term such as the Waterboarding conducted at Guantanamo Bay, rather the photos bear a striking resemblance to some of the most extreme Fraternity Hazing that I have heard stories of but wouldn't know about because I wasn't cool enough to rush a frat in college.

Going into the 2004 Presidential Elections Bush had already conceded there to be no WMD in Iraq and the al-Quida connection had pretty much been debunked as well. Bush's opponent, Sen. John Kerry was a decorated hero of the Vietnam War in contrast there was much speculation that Bush may have deserted the Air National Guard and he had already walked over Sen. John McCain, a Congressional Metal of Honor winner to win the GOP nomination in the 2000 GOP Primaries.

Nevertheless, Bush won the election taking more that 50% of the vote meaning those who thought his first term was illegitimate were on less firm ground now. Exit polls from the 2004 campaign revealed that 50% of those who voted Republican believed that WMD had actually been found in Iraq and that Saddam Husein was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

To be fair, however, exit polls following the 2008 campaign found Democratic voters equally ill-informed on other issues. It is agreed that the ad campaign sponsored by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth calling into question Sen. Kerry's war record were fabricated as the individuals making the statements were not in a position to have any first-hand knowledge of the events they described.

Bush's second term in office has universally been categorized as a disaster. 2005 proved a volatile year and even the weather seemed to hate the Republicans. In addition to being unsuccessful in his attempt to privatize Social Security and to appoint Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, the slow response by FEMA to Hurricane Katrina was widely blamed on FEMA Dirctor Michael Brown, Bush's appointee and someone whose qualifications and work experience clearly weren't up to the job of managing such a potentially disaster-prone department.

In the 2006 Midterm Elections Democrats won small majorities in both Houses of Congress following allegations that the House leadership had helped to cover up Rep. Mark Foley's unrepentant sexual harassment of Congressional Pageboys. Bush was quickly forced to accept the resignation of his controversial Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who he had steadfastly defended as the Iraq War had gone sour saying "I'm the decider."

In 2006 Bush vetoed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act which would have authorized Federal funding for the creation of new stem cell lines for medical research. Bush also promoted the teaching of Intelligent Design in Public Schools denied that Global Warming was manmade but nearly doubled the budget of the National Science Foundation and took a very personal interest in Space Exploration creating an ambitious Vision for Space Exploration which would have created a moon base and financed a manned mission to Mars.

Bush's last two years in office were spent in a deep recession and Bush faced several Congressional inquiries most notably in the Attorney Firing Scandel where US attorneys were apparently fired for political reasons and often to be replaced with woefully under-qualified graduates of Pat Roberson's Regent University School of Law. Bush would leave office in January 2009 with the lowest job approval rating on record (21%).

It is too soon to judge overall, however, Bush's economic policies never really pulled the entire nation out of Recession and in his last year in office began the the Worst Financial Crisis since the Great Depression making it unlikely that his time in office will be remembered well in terms of financial prosperity. Bush's aggressive foreign policy, and in particular the Iraq War where there were famously "no Weapons of Mass Destruction" may still be vindicated should there be another 9/11 size attack on US soil during the term of his successor. At this point I think that short of another 9/11 it is unlikely that Bush's Foreign Policy will be viewed as successful anytime soon, history shows that leaving office with two unresolved conflicts leaves a rather messy stain on one's legacy unless you died in office.

George W. Bush is not the drooling moron Michael Moore makes him out to be nor the evil monster Alex Jones portrays him as rather, in the words of President Herbert Hoover when speaking of President Warren G. Harding: "[h]e was not a man with either the experience or the intellectual quality that the position needed."

To date Historian Polls have been unkind to Bush the Younger rating him firmly in the "failure" category with an average ranking of thirtieth tied with President Jimmy Carter.

Barack Obama 2009 - Present, Democrat from Illinois
At this posting Barack Obama has only held the office of President of the United States for eighteen months so it is, of course, far too early to assess the overall effectiveness of his Administration. Also, as of this posting President Obama has a 27% job approval rating and in his short time in office has already added an astounding $2 trillion to the national debt ... So its' not looking pretty from where I stand.

When then Senator Obama announced his candidacy for the Nation's Highest Office on February 10, 2007 he had been a US Senator for Illinois for barely two years having experience only in the Illinois State Senate prior to that and his defeat of Former Ambassador Alan Keyes, a fringe third party supporter hardly impressed anyone.

Sen. Obama did manage to impress a lot of people, however, as his Campaign got underway and he would manage to put down two seasoned political veterans, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination and Sen. John McCain for the US Presidency, in the 2008 Presidential Campaign, perhaps the longest Campaign season on record with the Primary season beginning almost a year ahead of schedule. During the Campaign Obama had been outspoken against: the Iraq War and the North American Free Trade Agreement, having been forced to settle for center-right "New Democrats" as canidates in previous elections many Liberal-Democrats got behind Obama propelling him to victory in the the Iowa Caucus and South Carolina primaries. Obama was on a roll, coming out on top in the massive one day delegate-a-thon known as Super Tuesday. The Clinton Campaign had not planned for continuing the Primary Campaign beyond Super Tuesday and was thus ill-prepared going into the later stages of the race having not set up organizations in States with Primaries scheduled later than Super-Tuesday.

The nomination remained in doubt until Early June and ultimately Obama would owe his nomination to a tactical error on the part of the State Legislatures of Michigan and Florida respectively who had moved up their Primary dates to before the South Carolina Primary in violation of Democratic Party rules thus invalidating their results. Obama's name did not appear on the Michigan ballot and Clinton won Florida handily so the Obama campaign, naturally, insisted that the delegates from those states not be seated but ultimately a compromise was reached whereby the delegations of each offending state were reduced by half which still gave Obama enough delegates to win the nomination but would not cost him those two large and important States in the Primary.

With an unpopular President of the opposition party still in office and in the midst of a Financial Crisis the likes of which had not been seen since the Great Depression winning the Democratic Nomination was tantamount to winning the 2008 Election. There was great optimism that the young, energetic and charismatic Sen. Obama was just the man to put the Nation back on track toward economic and political stability.

Nevertheless Obama's campaign was nearly derailed late in the Primary Season when YouTube videos came to light of the pastor of his Church, Jeremiah Wright making anti-American and Antisemitic statements, rather loudly for the taste of us white folks, from his pulpit. Obama initially was reluctant to disown the controversial pastor choosing instead to take the opportunity to engage the American Public in a "Thoughtful Discussion of Race in America" explaining that while he did not agree with Wright's comments, calling them "a profoundly distorted view of this country," he understood that Wright's generation of African-Americans grew up in an environment that cultured such extremist views and that he could "no more disown him than I can disown the black community." Obama's ethnic background is more accurately described as multiracial, however he identifies himself as black and, it seems unlikely that he would ever disown African-American culture, however, he wasted no time in disowning Jeremiah Wright following a series of public speaking engagements in which Wright praised the work of Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan and accused the US Government of "inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color".

In American Political Culture persons are generally not taken to task for statements made in ignorance that they have since retracted unconditionally unless such statements are part of a broader pattern of faulty judgment or, more often, dishonesty. American voters can be pragmatic at times and the Jeremiah Wright Controversy does not appear to have affected the outcome of the election as Obama's opponent in the General Election, Sen. John McCain is known to have adamantly refused to allow his supporters to run clips of Wright's sermons to discredit the Democratic Nominee, something to remember about McCain whose loss in the 2008 Presidential Election should take nothing away from his background or his character but seems to have.

Obama's choice of running mates, Sen. Joseph Biden perplexed a great many people, though six terms in the US Senate made him one of the more experienced members of the pool Biden had a reputation for drama and held positions most Liberal-Democrats found offensive. Biden had been an opponent of Obama early in the Democratic Nomination contests dropping out after the Iowa caucus. Biden's statement that Obama was the "first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy" had been viewed by many as racially insensitive and was undoubtedly the inspiration for the spoof website www.BlackPeopleLoveUs.com. Personally I understand Obama's decision to choose Biden and, as insults go, if someone called me: articulate, bright, clean and nice looking, I would probably take it as a compliment.

By contrast McCain's choice of running mate, relative political newcomer Gov. Sarah Palin sparked outrage due both to her extreme conservative political views and her apparent ignorance of National Affairs. Though Palin surprised many in her Vice Presidential debate with Biden subsequent one-on-one interviews with ABC's Charlie Gibson and CBS' Katie Couric exposed a lack of both experience and education which worried many as Sen. McCain was seventy-two years old and, should he have died in office, she would have succeeded him as President. In response to these concerns McCain pledged that he would not seek a second term if elected.

As election day drew near the Subprime Mortgage Crisis had reached a critical stage with the Bankruptcy of financial giants Lehman Brothers and Congress was forced to pass a Treasury Department initiative known popularly as the Bailout Bill creating the Troubled Asset Relief Program using hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to buy up worthless sub-prime mortgages to prevent any more huge bank failures. Both Obama and McCain voted for the act but it was extremely unpopular with many voters who saw moneys being taken from ther $13/hour paychecks and being given to international bankers, often in the form of bonuses. Though as much as $700 billion was made available for the bailout to date only $89 billion has been required to stabilized the Financial Markets, far less than the $160 billion needed to correct the Savings and Loan Crisis of two decades before.

When Obama did win the election on November 4 with 52.9% of the popular vote he became the first US President of African decent ( though rumors persist about Warren G. Harding) and the first Democratic Presidential Candidate to win a majority of the popular vote since 1976. Obama was also elected with large majorities in both houses of Congress though the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy would cost him a Filibuster-Proof Majority in the US Senate.

Obama's first day in office he ordered the closure of the controversial US Military Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay Cuba and signed into law funding for the SCHIP Children's Health Insurance Program which had been vetoed by his predecessor. His first major undertaking was an Economic Stimulus Bill to create government employment that would supplement the labor market and, he hoped, stimulate economic growth. Funds totally $787 billion in: tax cuts, infrastructure projects, unemployment benefits, etc were approved with particular attention to helping states with Medicaid payments and developing alternative sources of energy to oil and coal. As of this posting roughly 20% of the stimulus funds have been allocated and the unemployment rate has dropped roughly one-half-of-one-percent since the passage of this legislation.

The only major undertaking thus far in 2010 had been the long-awaited Health Care Reform Act which, although differing little from the plan he had offered up during the Presidential Campaign, disappointed many on the left who had hoped for a Single-Payer System and infuriated many on the right due to provisions mandating the purchase Health Insurance of Health Insurance by Individuals Uncovered by Their Employers and Ineligible for Medicare/Medicaid Coverage. There are also questions in regards to the administration's forthcomingness in regards to the fiduciary burden attached to the legislation. As of this posting the last major peice of legislation signed by President Obama was a Consumer Protection and Wall Street Reform Bill which he claims will insure there to be "no more taxpayer-funded bailouts, period."

In his brief tenure in office President Obama has already managed to provoke mass demonstrations, known as TEA Party Events (in honor of the Boston Tea Party of 1773 which sparked the American Revolution) over his use of Fiscal Policy to stimulate the economy and his expansion of Government Health Insurance agencies to cover more Americans. Actions many TEA Party Protesters describe as "Marxist." Obama has been criticized for referring to a white police officer as acting "stupidly" in what has become known as the Henry Louis Gates arrest controversy and has been the subject of many malicious slanders regarding his American Citizenship and his religious identification throughout his Presidency. The awarding of the Nobel Prize for Peace to President Obama very shortly after his Inauguration has also been questioned by many (kay I'll admit it myself included) however, his work with Republican Senator Dick Lugar in the area of Nuclear Non-Proliferation is often overlooked by haters on the Nobel Prize.

Only one Historian Poll has included Barack Obama, a 2010 Siena poll of 238 Presidential scholars, which ranked Obama at fifteenth out of forty-three just below President Andrew Jackson and just above President Lyndon Johnson.

US Presidents Part III: 1881 - 1933

2010-07-28T12:03:00.000-04:00

Chester A. Arthur 1881 - 1885, Republican from New York
The very words "President Chester Alan Aurthur" spoke to sheer volume of corruption at the highest levels of government that plagued the United States in the Late Nineteenth Century. The Spoils System which President Andrew Jackson had erected in the late 1820s had exploaded under President Ulysses S. Grant in the 1870s as the Civil Service had expanded into an empire that Jackson could never have imagined.

Many of the Grant Administration Scandals tied directly to abuses of Patronage leading to the rise of Senator Roscoe Conkling's impressive political machine in New York State.

In an attempt to reform the Civil Service one of President Rutherford B. Hayes' first acts was to remove the notoriously corrupt Collector of the Port of New York a man by the name of Chester Aurthur. Clearly Hayes' reform was little more than cosmetic as, only three years later, that notoriously corrupt collector was now in possession of the juiciest plum of patronage of them all, the Presidency of the United States.

The 1880 Republican National Convention had selected Aurthur as the running mate of James Garfield in order to pacify the Stalwart faction, led by Conkling, who had been seeking a third term for Ulysses S. Grant. Aurthur was only a political operative who had never held political office but an assassin's bullet (fired by one of Conkling's lieutenants) put Aurthur in the Oval Office.

Aurthur genuinely surprised most Americans with the efficiency of his administration. The saying goes that only Nixon could go to China, perhaps only Aurthur could have passed meaningful Civil Service Reform.

On January 16, 1883 the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act became law placing most Federal employees on the merit system and providing many government jobs be filled by competitive exams and Aurthur enforced this act in good faith to the astonishment of many.

It would now be "what you know and not who you know" when seeking government employment. It must be stressed that the act only applied to Federal government jobs and that State and local governments remained, largely, at the mercy of machine politics and the spoils system until those jurisdictions chose to take up reform of their own initiative.

Upon Aurthur's accession to the Presidency all of Garfield's cabinet resigned with the exception of Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the former President, who had been the lone Stalwart in Garfield's cabinet. In addition to the Pendleton Act notable legislation enacted under Aurthur include: the Tariff Act of 1883 which was supposed to lower tariffs but raised other tariffs to compensate making it a wash, Edmunds law prohibiting polygamy in the territories and the completion of three great transcontinental railways.

Aurthur died of Bright's disease in 1886 only six months after leaving office. Historian Polls are particularly uncharitable to placing him smack dab in the middle of the below-average quartile but rarely ranking him as poor, often he shares position number twenty-five out of forty-three with fellow "never-elected" President Gerald Ford.

Grover Cleveland 1885 - 1889, Democrat from New York
The term "waving the bloody shirt" dates to Benjamin Franklin Butler literally began waving the blood-soaked of a carpetbagger who'd been flogged during Andrew Johnson's Impeachment Hearings. It came to describe the Republican's preferred campaign technique of running on the Civil War in attempting to portray their Democratic opponents as Confederate sympathizers.

All of the points the Republicans made in regard to Civil Rights violations in the South were quite valid but, twenty years after the War had ended, the general public was exhausted from hearing about it. So it was that following the United States Presidential Election of 1884 a Democrat sat in the Oval Office for the first time in twenty-three years.

The 1884 Campaign was one of the nastiest on record and is most memorable for the revelation that Cleavland had fathered an illegitimate child inspiring the chant "ma ma where's pa gone to the White House ha ha ha" being shouted at rallies for Cleveland's opponent James G. Blaine. Cleavland's acknowledgement of having fornicated out of wedlock scandalized the nation, however, Cleavland had also amassed an impressive record as a reformer as New York Governor in stark contrast to the scandals that characterized the illustrious career of his opponent leading to the chant "Blaine Blaine James G. Blaine continental liar from the State of Maine" being heard at Cleveland's rallies.

Cleveland's skill at reform became apparent when he resisted the opportunity to continue the spoils system in making appointments at the same time taking the opportunity to streamline the administration abolishing many jobs and even entire departments that had clearly come into existence solely for the purpose of providing patronage. Cleveland is also remembered, like Grant, as a proponent of "sound money" and one of his earliest policy initiatives was an unsuccessful attempt to repeal the Bland-Allison Act which had debased the currency by requiring a certain amount of the coinage be backed in silver. Cleveland was similarly unsuccessful, in his first term, in his attempt to enact real reduction in overall tariffs, however, he was able to pursue a more isolationist foreign policy than any of his predecessors, wisely, preventing the US from becoming involved in colonial expansion.

In 1886 Cleavland became the only President to be married in the White House when he wed Frances Folsom. A women twenty-seven years his junior.

Early in his first term Cleveland won widespread praise from cartoonists and op ed columnists for vetoing pensions for Civil War Veterans at a time when a large portion of the Federal budget was already taken up with existing pensions. While this was a popular move at the time, widely viewed as blocking of a raid on the Treasury, it would come back to haunt him since Cleavland had avoided military service during the War having paid a substitute to go for him.

Certainly by modern standards and even by the standards of the day it would not be an exaggeration to describe Cleveland as racist. Cleveland, correctly, saw his election as a referendum on "waving the bloody shirt" thus he threatened no military operations in the South and did little to enforce Federal Civil Rights and, in particular, the Voting Rights Amendment as African-Americans were universally Republican at that time in history. Clevland also pushed for passage of the culturally insensitive Dawes Act which attempted to break up Native American Tribes as well as the Scott Act targeting immigrants from China.

In the 1888 Presidential Election Cleavland recieved 100 thousand more votes than his opponent Benjamin Harrison but lost the electoral collage. He would be back though and we'll pick up his story in just a little bit.

Benjamin Harrison 1889 - 1893, Republican from Indiana
Benjamin Harrison owed his Presidency to the name recognition he derived from beingthe grandson of President William Henry Harrison and to gross inaccuracies in the 1880 Census. Harrison was a very kindly man, on a personal level, but he was no reformer and was widely viewed as having abandoned Civil Service Reform.

Harrison had been a vocal critic of Cleavland's veto of additional pensions for Civil War Veterans and so, naturally, signed the Dependent and Disability Pension Act in 1890 making Civil War Pensions the single largest line item in the Federal Budget under Harrison. That same year Harrison also signed the McKinley Tariff, which seemed a rather odd move in light of the fact that tariffs were already at an all time high, the result was a marked increase in consumer prices causing many Republicans to be turned out of office in the next election cycle.

On the positive side, Harrison signed the Sherman Antitrust Act setting in motion a process that would lead to government regulation of large corporations. Though not a "trust-buster" himself, few if any antitrust cases were undertaken during Harrison's administration, the Sherman Antitrust Act would be the cornerstone of President Theodore Roosevelt's trust-busting administration a decade later.

Harrison was much more aggressive on the issue of Civil Rights than his predecessor speaking out against the frequent lynchings taking place in the South without consequences. However, the general public was pretty tired of military intervention in the South and so the Bill he supported authorizing force to back up voting rights for minorities in the South was voted down.

A committed expansionist, Harrison's last act as President was to submit a treaty annexing the Island of Hawaii following the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani in February 1893 after he had already lost reelection. His successor (who was one and the same as his predecessor) was a rabid anti-imperialist who quickly restored Liliuokalani and withdrew the treaty.

Harrison died in 1901 at the age of sixty-eight. Historian Polls rank Harrison firmly in the below-average qutril at or around number thirty-one out of forty-three along with Presidents Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter, Harrison was a good man but not a great man.

Grover Cleveland 1893 - 1897, Democrat from New York
Cleavland is chiefly remembered as the only President to have served two non-consecutive terms. Having lost the 1888 election largely on a technicality, Cleavland received 100 thousand more votes than his opponent but lost the Electoral Collage, the Election of 1892 was something of a walk-away for Cleavland.

The reckless: increases in tariffs, government spending and debasement of the currency that characterized the Harrison administration had resulted in smothering inflation throughout the land making the Republicans easy pickings in 1892. But Cleavland's second term in office was marked by deep economic recessions with the result that, after Cleavland, the Republicans found themselves out of the White House for the next four election cycles.

On July 1, 1893 Cleavland secretly underwent an operation whereby a large portion of his upper jaw and pallet was removed and replaced with a hard rubber prosthetic. The details of the surgery were kept secret for more than a decade after his death in 1907.

Early in his second term Cleavland found himself in the midst of the worst economic depression up to that point in America's history when the Railroad Bubble burst causing a string of bank failures and a run on the gold market known as the Panic of 1893. Following the conventional wisdom of the day, Cleavland took no steps to stop the wave of bank failures nor alleviate the suffering of those left unemployed in the wake of the bubble bursting causing unemployed laborers to march on Washington. see Coxey's Army, demanding economic stimulus be undertaken to keep workers employed. Cleavland also was forced to use Federal troops to break up the Pullman Railroad Strike a step he took on the grounds that the Railroads were needed to deliver the mail and thus the strike was an attack on the Federal government.

As a result of Cleavland's inaction on the economy and hostility to labor, Republicans won a landslide victory in the 1894 Midterm Elections leaving Cleavland to govern with a hostile congress in the midst of a depression. Cleavland had succeeded in repealing the free-coinage of silver provisions of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act as well as making a half-hearted attempt to reverse the McKinley Tariff and replace it with the more resonable Wilson-Gorman Tariff but inflation is never really that big a problem in times of economic depression and the so the depression persisted.

Cleavland declined endorsing populist William Jennings Bryan whom the Democrats had nominated to succeed him in the 1896 Presidential Elections as Bryan's platform of free coinage of silver and nationalization of the railroads essentially went against everything that Cleavland had ever stood for. Cleavland died in 1908 at the age of seventy-one, Historian Polls rank Cleavland's Presidency as well above-average, though his ranking has begun to drop in recent years, coming in at around number thirteen along side Presidents John Quincy Adams and Lyndon Johnson.

William McKinley 1897 - 1901, Republican from Ohio
The 1896 Presidential Election, in which McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan, was one of the most colorful in American History. Bryan had a definite flair for the dramatic (some would say melodramatic) and the Free Silver Debate was almost certainly the basis of L. Frank Baum's timeless children's classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Nevertheless the silver issue didn't really come up during McKinley's term as new gold discoveries in Alaska were to inflate the economy more than enough so intentionally debasing the currency became completely unnecessary. Aside from the silver issue, the 1896 Election was widely viewed as voters having rejected the radical socialism which had overtaken Europe in favor of tried-and-tested conservative policies.

Conservatives today remember McKinley's Presidency as a golden-age of financial prosperity brought about by adherence to their policy agenda, which has changed little in the intervening 109 years since McKinly's death, however, McKinley was no reactionary. Rather, McKinley himself was a very pragmatic and progressive President who, having made a political career for himself as the chief spokesperson for isolationism, would transform the United States setting the stage for it to grow into the world leader it would later become.

On the negative side McKinley's term was characterized by the unmitigated growth of financial trusts who would consolidate much of the nation's great wealth in the hands of a few unscrupulous business leaders known in McKinley's time as "Robber Barons." Even the Patron Saint of Social-Darwinism, Adam Smith had warned against the evils of monopolies but McKinley did not use any of the tools available to him to mitigate the rise of monopolies nor try and create any new tools resulting in great instability for the American economy for decades to come.

McKinley's name will forever be associated with high protective tariffs and the Dingley Act created tariffs in excess of any of those enacted up to that point in history. McKinley's philosophy on Tariffs was that they should reflect the ratio of workman's wages in a given foreign nation to those of their American counterparts. The mind boggles at attempting to apply that philosophy today as it would result in tariffs in excess of 4000% in comparison with the 40-50% tariffs which were still fairly excessive at the turn of the Twentieth-Century. McKinley's philosophy on tariffs was widely blamed for the Great Depression with the result that Protective tariffs would be largely abandoned in the United States in favor of Reciprocal Trade Agreements so that today there are few tariffs in excess of 10%.

The Spanish–American War in 1898 is the most memorable event in McKinley's term. Perhaps having gotten a taste for expansionism during his Annexation of Hawaii at the beginning of his term McKinley reversed the isolationist policies indicative of his anti-imperialist predecessor and in contrast to sentiments that he himself had articulated and embraced the concept of America taking on international responsibilities by becoming involved in the Cuban War of Independence.

From George Washington's Farewell Address to the Monroe Doctrine the US, having once been colonized themselves, had hitherto embodied the very spirit of anti-colonialism. However, the rise of Yellow Journalism and the unexplained sinking of the USS Maine had shifted public opinion decisively toward interventionism leaving McKinley as seemingly the only person left in America opposed to war with Spain and after thrilling victories in: Cuba, and The Philippines where future President Theodore Roosevelt was to make himself a superstar, the Treaty of Paris was signed bringing: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines under American control making the United States a colonial superpower for the first time in her history. Imperialism would replace the silver issue in the 1900 Presidential Election where McKinley would once again trounce William Jennings Bryant who ran against the Gold Standard Act and the Annexation of the Philippines.

Bryan was correct that, by colonizing Cuba and the Philippines, McKinley had transformed the US into something that the Founding Fathers would neither recognize nor approve of. But, soon the concept of American Exceptionalism would capture the hearts and minds of the people and the once revolutionary Bryan would find his own values discarded and the man himself widely viewed as old fashioned and out-of-touch.

McKinley's second term was cut short by an assassin's bullet in September of 1901. An anarchist Leon Frank Czolgosz shot the President and then was captured on the spot by the surrounding crowd with McKinley showing his kindly nature by instructing his Secret Service guards "boys don't let them hurt him!"
In Historian Polls McKinley scores average to above average coming in at around number sixteen in close proximity to John F. Kennedy and James Monroe.

Theodore Roosevelt 1901 - 1909, Republican from New York
By far the most charismatic of all US Presidents and perhaps the hardest working and most talented Cheif Executive as well, Roosevelt is one of those larger-than-life, iconic, figures who grace the body politic at most once per century. Much of his ambitious agenda continues to benefit the American people over a century after he left office.

It has become fashionable in recent decades for Republican leaders to evoke Roosevelt's impressive Progressive Resume as a means of reminding voters: "see we're not all bad, remember that guy 100 years ago?" However, Republican leaders in Roosevelt's time were a good deal less confident that Roosevelt represented their political views. William McKinley's political handler, Mark Hanna is known to have arranged for Roosevelt's nomination as Vice President (an office Roosevelt described as being "as useful as a bucket of warm spit") during the 1900 Republican National Convention specifically to keep "that damn cowboy," as Hanna called the popular then New York Governor, from being able to influence policy.

This may not have been an unmerited move on Hanna's part as Roosevelt's domestic policy agenda, known as the "Square Deal" revolving around: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations and consumer protection, borrowed heavily from the progressive ideas introduced by Democrats. Apart from the Civil Rights issue upon which the Republicans certainly could claim the moral high-ground, Roosevelt's agenda was far more in line with the Democratic Party's than his own in nearly every respect.

The most enduring icon of Roosevelt's energetic two terms in office was the digging of the Panama Canal begun in 1904 but not completed until 1914 which revolutionized international commerce by creating a passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that had been sought after for centuries. To do this Roosevelt had to convince Panama to declare their independence from Colombia creating something of an international incident. In foreign affairs the President also articulated the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine discouraging European intervention in Central and South America by guaranteeing debts of smaller nations in the Western Hemisphere.

Roosevelt's Progressivism (is that really a word?) often came into conflict with the business and financial interests that were the core support of the Republican Party (and which remain so today). Roosevelt was not just a "Trust Buster" he was THE Trust Buster, pushing through the Elkins Act and Hepburn Act reducing the power of the Railroads and busting up dozens of monopolies, most famously Standard Oil
whose unscrupulous president, John D. Rockefeller, was (and remains) the very personification of the evils inherent in the Gilded Age of Robber Baron Social Darwinism which had preceded Roosevelt's coming to power.

Roosevelt also championed the Pure Food and Drug Act requiring labeling of all foods and drugs and the Newlands Reclamation Act, he also created the National Park Service, the US Forest Service and established a slew of: National Parks, National Forests and National Wildlife Preserves. Needless to say, Roosevelt was reelected in 1904 by a comfortable margin.

In his final years in office Roosevelt became much more aggressive in his economic policies essentially declaring war on big corporations pushing for: a national income tax, federal worker's safety legislation, an an eight-hour work day, campaign finance reform and many other progressive measures which would not be attained within his lifetime.

Roosevelt's career after he left office was the most active of any former President most notably coming in second in the Election of 1912 when he was seeking an unprecedented third term. Always the center of attention, Roosevelt stole the show during the campaign when he was shot giving a speech in Wisconsin and then insisted upon giving his speech before recieving medical attention ... He spoke for over and hour and a half.

Roosevelt died in 1919 at the age of sixty. Historian Polls consistently rank his Presidency in the top five but rarely in the top three traditionally alongside President Woodrow Wilson whose progressive agenda appears to have picked up right where Roosevelt left off.

William Howard Taft1909 - 1913, Republican from Ohio
The 1908 Presidential Election was the third and final election for Populist Icon William Jennings Bryan and one would think with all that practice he might have gotten it right this time but was handed his worst defeat ever. Taft was Roosevelt's hand-picked successor and, although having every bit of Roosevelt's intelligence if not more, Taft had none of Roosevelt's personal qualities, he was just a loser.

Taft's progressive resume is often overlooked but he did, in fact, bust a good deal more trusts than Roosevelt ever did. But Taft's political instincts led him into blunder after blunder which would cause a rift between Roosevelt and himself on which Taft is traditionally cast as the conservative.

Taft's fist blunder was to declare the confusing Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909 "the best bill to come from the Republican Party." In truth some tariffs were lowered and others raised with no change to the overall tariff at all infuriating everyone involved.

Then came the Ballinger Affair which finalized what would become a split in the Republican Party between Roosevelt and the Progressives and Taft and the Conservatives (even though Taft considered himself to be a progressive). U.S. Forest Service Chief Gifford Pinchot (of whom Roosevelt was a great admirer) disapproved of Taft's choice of Secretary of the Interior, Richard Ballinger who Pinchot was convinced to have been in league with corporate lumber interests in a conspiracy to "stop the conservation movement" and Pinchot's wild accusations led Taft to fire Pinchot and when Roosevelt returned from a tour of Europe he would declare his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President in opposition to Taft.

Taft came out on top in the 1912 Republican Convention inspiring Roosevelt to form the Bull-Moose Party and continue his campaign third party. The eventual winner of the 1912 Presidential Election, Woodrow Wilson, owed his victory more to the split between Taft and Roosevelt than any of his own efforts as Wilson received fewer votes in his successful campaign than William Jennings Bryan had in his three unsuccessful attempts. Taft came in third taking only: two small states, eight electoral votes and 23% of the popular vote.

In 1921 Taft was appointed Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court by President Warren G. Harding", the only President to have served as a Supreme Court Justice, a post he held until 1930 a mere five weeks before he died. Historian Polls rank Taft's Presidency as average coming in at or around number nineteen keeping company with Presidents Benjamin Harrison and George H.W. Bush (the elder) neither of whom won reelection either.

Woodrow Wilson 1913 - 1921, Democrat from New Jersey
Wilson is the only President to have a Ph.D. degree therefore big things might be expected of his administration and he does not disappoint. In his own time Wilson had sterling liberal credentials but that was a time when liberalism was compatible with appallingly shortsighted racism. Nonwhites should not necessarily take Wilson's bigotry personally, however, those closest to the President universally report that prejudice was far and away Wilson's overriding personality characteristic and in nearly a century of research historians have failed to turn up an instance of a single individual Wilson had contact with whose company Wilson is said to have enjoyed. Trust me, I know the feeling.

When Wilson came to the Oval Office his chair had been occupied by Republicans for forty-four of the past fifty-two years so Wilson had a good deal of catching up to do. And Wilson dug right in announcing his "New Freedom" agenda which would pick up the Progressivism (again that shouldn't be a word) articulated but never passed by President Roosevelt right where it had left off.

Wilson's domestic policy successes include: adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment authorizing an Income Tax, the Federal Reserve Act providing an independent, central bank responsible for the printing of all currency and setting interest rates, the Underwood tariff which finally actually lowered ALL tariff rates, the Smith–Lever and Federal Farm Loan acts which provided educational and financial assistance to farmers, the Seamen's Act and finally the Clayton Antitrust Act making certain monopolistic and anticompetitive corporate business practices a crime. He was less successful in his attempt to ban child labor which was overturned by the Supreme court and, needless to say, record on Civil Rights was nothing short of abysmal.

Having won reelection in 1916 over Charles Evans Hughes by a razor thin margin with the slogan "he kept us out of the war" Wilson then turned his attention to getting America involved in World War I. By 1917 the Axis Powers clearly had the upper hand in the European conflict due to the collapse of the Eastern Front in the wake of the Russian Revolution in February of that year but Germans will be Germans and used the opportunity to overplay their hand using unrestricted submarine warfare and attacking US merchant vessels, giving Wilson more than sufficient cause to go back on his campaign pledges of six months before and declare war on Germany on April 4, 1917 (actually back then Congress had to declare war some business about the Constitution or something).

I have undoubtedly covered the conduct of the First World War in many places on this blog, most recently HERE and I don't wish to spoil the ending but WE WON yay! On the negative side Wilson passed a bevy of legislation curtailing civil liberties and, in particular, freedom of speech culminating in the imprisonment of socialist political agitator Eugene V. Debs, BOO!

The war itself is not as important to Wilson's story as the long and involved peace negotiations that followed the conflict. In his message to Congress asking them to declare war in 1917 Wilson had laid out Fourteen Points that Wilson hoped to accomplish via American participation in the conflict which he optimistically hoped would be "the war to end all wars" and "making the world safe for democracy."

With these lofty principles in mind, Wilson set out for the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 where most of his Fourteen Points, including the formation of a League of Nation became incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles winning him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Perhaps no more wars and a world safe for democracy was a tad overly-ambitious but the whole thing never really got a chance as the Republican Congress, led by Henry Cabot Lodge would not ratify the Treaty. Wilson's successor would sign a separate peace treaty with Germany and Austria formally ending World War I in 1921 forever banishing the League of Nations to the dustbin of mighta-beens.

The last two years of Wilson's administration were a time of great misery and unrest centering around the economic depression brought on by the return home of millions of soldiers from World War I who found themselves without jobs or money and could be seen wandering the streets of every major city en masse leading to race riots and labor strikes. The only activity of note was the adoption of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth amendments to the US Constitution establishing Prohibition of Alcohol and granting women the right to vote.

In the midst of this depression Wilson became incapacitated by a stroke (his fifth) and almost certainly should have been forced to confer his executive authority or resign the office of the Presidency and undoubtedly would have been required to resign under the provisions of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution passed in 1967.

Wilson died in 1924, Historian Polls rank him as one of the near-great presidents usually coming in at around number six along side President Andrew Jackson.

Warren G. Harding1921 - 1923, Republican from Ohio
Universally considered the worst President ever in American history (well until relatively recently) Harding governed the United States with a combination of corruption and incompetence, which Harding referred to as "Normalcy (again this is not a word)."

Harding has received a good deal of bad press over the years, not all of which is entirely fair. He actually did accomplish a lot during his short term: establishing the Bureau of Veterans Affairs and Office of Management and Budget, he passed the first peice of social welfare legislation in American History, freed Eugene V. Debs from prison, subsidized aviation and radio enterprises, pressed for passage of the first, Federal, anti-lynching law and gave tax cuts to the rich. Harding was also: handsome, energetic and charming. He had a great relationship with press ... Etc, etc, ...

At the same, Harding really wasn't a responsible enough person to have held an office anything like President of the United states. Harding himself was fond of quoting his father who had apparently told him once, "Warren, it's a good thing you weren't born a gal, because if you had you'd always be in the family way 'cause you can't say no."

The scandals, which we will get to in a moment, are far from the only reason that Harding ranks at the bottom of the pile. In the 1920 Presidential Election Harding had appeared to have endorsed the League of Nations and there were prominent Republicans campaigning for Harding who had said that a vote for Harding was a vote FOR the League. Nevertheless Harding took the election results as a referendum not to join the League and instead sent Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes to negotiate a separate with Germany and Austria than the Treaty of Versailles known as the Knox-Porter Resolution. Without US participation the League fell apart and many historians hold Harding and to some degree Wilson responsible for the rise of Hitler and the Second World War. Again, this is not at all fair and the harsh conditions placed on Germany which inspired the rise of Hitler were almost all contained in the Versailles document.

And then there were the scandals most prominently Teapot Dome where Interior Secretary Albert Fall was convicted of taking bribes becoming the first Cabinet member in US history to be sent to prison, the second third and fourth Cabinet members to be incarcerated were not far behind: Thomas Miller, Jess W. Smith and Charles Forbes all went to prison while Attorney General Harry Daugherty was also found to have been taking bribes and resigned a year after Harding's death.

It should be noted that few believe Harding to have personally been involved in any of the scandals that rocked his administration rather it was the men who surrounded him, the so-called Ohio Gang who appeared to have taken advantage of his trusting nature. Harding had his personal failings as well, for instance he is known to have once lost an entire set of White House China that dated back to the Harrison Administration in a single hand a poker. Again, Harding was an exceedingly irresponsible individual and, as a result, bootlegging, narcotics trafficking, bribery and embezzlement went on right in the white house itself and Harding did little if anything to stop it.

Harding was facing certain impeachment when he contracted pneumonia and died in August of 1923. Historian Polls rank Harding dead last coming in at or near number forty-three out of forty-three along side Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan who were bad presidents but were at least honest men.

Calvin Coolidge 1923 - 1929, Republican from Massachusetts
Contrary to what you may of read in the National Review, Calvin Coolidge was not a great man like Teddy Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson. Rather the secret of Cal's success appears to have been knowing when to keep his mouth shut, which was most of the time.

Early in his Presidency, which he succeeded to upon the death of President Harding, Coolidge was devastated by the death of his fifteen-year-old son Calvin Coolidge, Jr. from blood poisoning. The grief that this event must have caused may account for Coolidge's lack of interaction with the American people during his Presidency, although he had already earned the moniker "Silent Cal" during his term as Vice President under President Harding.

Everyone knows, whether you agree with it or not, that President Coolidge Cut Taxes on the Rich. This was, in fact, a continuation of Harding's economic policy, however, the rich had already received a 23% tax cut from Harding only a year before so Coolidge's tax cuts may have gone a bit too far.

Coolidge did, however, manage to eliminate the huge budget deficit and even retire a portion of the national debt. In his first year in office he also signed the Indian Citizenship Act granting Native Americans full citizenship without requiring them to abandon their tribal citizenship.

Following the scandals that had rocked the White House in the Harding administration it would seem Harding would have faced an uphill battle in the 1924 Presidential Election and the presence of the third party bid of popular Progressive Republican Senator Robert La Follette, syphaning off the remainder of Teddy Roosevelt's Bull-Moose Party supporters, would have doomed Coolidge to half-a-term. But it was a runaway for Coolidge with his Democratic opponent, John Davis taking only the states of the Former Confederacy. In spite of all that had transpired only two years before, people trusted Calvin Coolidge. Voters have short memories.

Coolidge's term was renown for financial prosperity with the Roaring Twenties and his corny biline "the business of America is business." In contrast to every other President since Grant Coolidge felt no need to be a trust-buster instead embracing the opposite approach arguing that the government simply shouldn't interfere with business.

There was unprecedented prosperity but it came on the heals of the worst depression in American history and within a few months of his leaving office "no one could rediscover his secret."

Coolidge used his veto pen to block Farm Relief and Veteran's Bonuses. Also on the negative side he took no action durring the Great Mississippi Flood.

Coolidge died in 1933 at the age of sixty, the running joke at the time was "how could you tell?" Historian Polls are particularly unkind to Coolidge consistantly ranking him firmly in the well below-average, poor and even worst categories coming in at around number thirty along with President Zachary Taylor whose term only lasted sixteen months.

Herbert Hoover 1929 - 1932, Republican from California
Herbert Hoover is another President who has unfairly received a good deal of bad press, in my opinion. Persons who survived his administration, such as my great-grandmother, will give you the impression that the vast majority of the US population spent his entire term in office living in cardboard boxes and sleeping under newspapers because Hoover had wanted it that way.

Some time back at work I had neglected to recycle some empty shipping containers prompting the manager to ask me "what are you doing, starting your own Hooverville back there?" In truth, Hoover was not at all a proponent of Rober-Baron Social-Darwinism and had a fairly sturdy progressive resume both before he became President and as President.

Why then did everyone hate him so much? Oh yes, The Great Depression, that little piece of business (or dare I say lack thereof).

Hoover came to the Presidency making the outlandish promise that "[g]iven the chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation ..." but, of course, it didn't work out that way at all. When he made that statement, at his Inauguration, the signs of economic decline were already in the air as unemployment and foreclosures were both on the rise and then, the Stock Market Crashed sending GDP in a downward spiral and setting off a string of business failures and everyone was pointing at Hoover.

What Hoover did next was to sign into law the moot-Hawley Tariff Act restricting imports and raising tariffs almost across the board and deport a bunch of Mexicans. The idea was that somehow foreigners were to blame for individual's loss of their jobs, a diagnosis which did not turn out to be the case but remains a common response to economic downturns among Republican politicians in the US to this day

Hoover refused to fund direct Federal relief to the unemployed believing it would make them lazy but he did create the Reconstruction Finance Corporation which provided loans to banks and businesses and the Federal Home Loan Bank Act to encourage new home development and prevent foreclosures. These measures do appear to have kept the economy from coming to a complete halt but did little to mitigate the skyrocketing unemployment rate.

The frosting on the cake, so to speak, came with the Revenue Act of 1932 which increased taxes across the board to make up for budget shortfalls resulting from the lack of income to tax during the Depression. This fiasco was followed by Hoover's mishandling of the Bonus Army, consisting of World War I veterans demanding payment of a bonus not due to them until 1945. The marchers set up "Hoovervilles" in and around Washington DC prompting Hoover to send in Federal troops injuring many civilians and making for some very bad press going into the 1932 Presidential Election.

Needless to say, Hoover was not reelected in 1932 but remained outspoken in politics until his death in 1964 at the age of ninety only hours after having endorced Barry Goldwater for President. Historian Polls rank Hoover in the well below-average to poor (but never worst) category coming in around number thirty-five out of forty-three along with fellow Quaker President Richard Nixon.

US Presidents Part II: 1845 - 1881

2010-07-28T12:02:00.000-04:00

James Knox Polk 1845 - 1849, Democrat from Tennessee
Having been a "dark horse" compromise choice for the Democratic nomination and having scored a razor thin upset victory over the far more well established politician Henry Clay in the 1844 Presidential Election James K. Polk was forced to promise to only serve a single term as President before he ever entered office. However, in contrast to his three predecessors in the office of the Presidency: Van Buren, Harrison and Tyler, Polk was a force to be reckoned with.

It is difficult to exaggerate the impact of Polk's single term had on American history and yet he is often overlooked with considerable attention going to the great "Lions of Senate:" Clay, Webster and Calhoun. Polk was, however, the first man to govern most or all of what we now recognize as the Continental United States having conquered huge tracks of western territory for the Republic in the Oregon boundary dispute and the Mexican–American War.

The question of if this land was to be slave or free would, of course, lead the nation into Civil War and near dissolution fifteen years later and this was foreseen by many in Polk's own time leading to much unrest in Congress and throughout the nation. At this point it appeared that, largely southern, pro-slavery forces had the upper hand but the industrialized north was very much a sleeping giant and a light sleeper at that.

Of course, Democrats at the time did not propose war with Mexico et..al by saying "we need to expand slavery give us more land" but rather promoted their expansionist ideology under the umbrella of the pseudo-religious auspices of Manifest Destiny. Perhaps it was a sign that the Age of Enlightenment had truly come to an end in the 1840s that powerful leaders of industrialized nations could say with a straight face and with absolute certainty that the creator of the Universe which we now know to be dozens of billions of light-year across, if not infinite, gave a flying crap over whether Mexico or the United States governed the Western territories.

Driven by "destiny" Polk proceeded to expand the borders of the United States first completing the Annexation of Texas which had largely been negotiated by his predecessor, John Tyler. Having only been President for six days he could already brag to have increased the US' landmass by a third.

Realizing that Northerners would not be happy seeing the south expanded so drastically Polk then undertook negotiations with Great Britain to annex the Oregon Country (the present day states of: Oregon, Washington, Idaho and parts of Montana and Wyoming). Less than one year on the job and Polk had already nearly doubled the size of the nation.

Polk was less successful in his attempt to purchase California from Mexico a slight which Polk repaid by sending in troops to disputed territory between the Nueces River (which Mexico claimed as its' northern border) and the Rio Grande (which the US claimed as its's southern border). Clearly, Polk was attempting to provoke armed conflict with Mexico so as to have an excuse to declare war and eventually eleven American soldiers were killed in an ambush (albeit on the wrong side of the Rio Grande) allowing Polk to goto congress claiming that "American blood had been spilled on American soil" ... I know, as if we were being invaded by Mexico or something.

Even John C. Calhoun voted against the war resolution seeing it for the crock that it was but it passed nevertheless and the next year, following severe ass-beatings inflicted upon the smaller and weaker Mexican armies by American troops led by legendary generals Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848 adding 1.2 million square miles of new territory to the United States finally fulfilling the Manifest Destiny. God must have been so relieved.

Polk was indeed the hardest working President, ever up to that part and possibly the hardest working President before Lincoln. Polk was not known to have any hobbies or interests outside of politics and naturally this took a great toll on his health and he died only three months after leaving office at the age of fifty-four. Historian Polls rank Polk in the well above average to near-great range frequently coming in at number ten along with President James Madison whom I also believe to be underrated.

Zachary Taylor 1849 - 1850, Whig from Louisiana
Prior to Taylor's victory over the infinitely more qualified Lewis Cass of Michigan in the 1848 Presidential Election "Old Rough and Ready," as he had been known to his troops throughout his lengthy military career, had never held public office or even voted. As such his views on the issues of the day: tariffs, internal improvements, expansion of slavery, the national bank, et..al had not really been articulated when he entered the Oval Office in 1849.

Taylor was the last President before Jimmie Carter to have been elected from the deep south and was the last President to have owned slaves while holding the office of President. Nevertheless, Taylor took a hard line against the expansion of slavery and roundelay condemned the secessionist rhetoric of such pro-slavery southern firebrands as his son-in-law Jefferson Davis during his brief but energetic term in office.

To be clear, Taylor does not appear to have in any way opposed the institution of slavery but rather saw it as his duty to keep the peace between radical pro-Southern interests on the one hand and increasingly agitated abolitionist forces on the other. Taylor's career had not been in politics but in the Military and he had seen first hand what happens when politicians failed to keep the peace and was going to be responsible for no such thing in his own political career.

Taylor's brief term was dominated by debate over the Compromise of 1850 which Taylor derided as the "omnibus bill" with its' concentration upon Popular Sovereignty allowing individual citizens of the territories to decide for themselves whether slavery was to be permitted within their borders. It is agreed that Taylor had every intention of vetoing the bill but was denied the opportunity due his unexpected death in July of 1850 ostensibly from food poisoning but latter sources indicate medical malpractice to be the cause.

In Historian Polls, Taylor, the third shortest serving President in history, generally ranks near the top of the below-average quartile along with Presidents Benjamin Harrison and Calvin Coolidge both of whom had the benefit of serving at least one full term in office.

Millard Fillmore 1850 - 1853, Whig from New York
Millard Fillmore was not a very good President. So weak and ineffective was his administration that his name is practically a byword for forgettable events, eg: "that regional-semi-quarter-final match was the 'Millard Fillmore' of lacrosse matches."

It almost goes without saying that Fillmore signed the 1850 Compromise in an half-hearted attempt to settle the brewing issue of whether the new territories acquired in the War with Mexico were to be slave or free. This was in stark contrast to the hard line taken by his predecessor.

Of all the provisions of the Compromise the one that most dramatically opens Fillmore up to charges of archvillainy was the Fugitive Slave Act which severely impacted the civil liberties of northerners allowing slave-catchers to run amok in search of runaway slaves from the south to insure that no free-state would be a safe-haven. To make matters worse, southern slaveholders had the nerve to complain that their own liberties were violated by state laws requiring that captured slaves be allowed a trial before they were returned to captivity. States' rights my ass.

There had been hope of another bill called the Wilmot Proviso banning slavery in any of the western territories but it had not passed the Senate and the final Compromise that Fillmore signed contained precious little compromise (California was to be admitted as a free-state big whop) on the part of pro-Slavery southerners and a lot of new restrictions on abolitionist northerners and yet talk of succession continued among the southern politicians. What more did they want?

Furthermore when Civil War finally did break out a decade later the agrarian south proved no match for the industrialized north ... I could easily exceed my monthly bandwidth allowance describing the inanity of the 1850 Compromise so I suppose its' time to move on.

Needless to say, Filmore did not stand for reelection in 1852 but ran as the candidate of the Know Nothing Party in 1856 which was sort of a clownish anti-Catholic secret society which surprised everyone by taking over 20% of the vote. Fillmore died in 1874 at the age of seventy-four. Historian Polls consistently rank Fillmore very close to last as one of the five or six worst Presidents at around number thirty-seven along with Presidents William Henry Harrison who only served thirty days and James Garfield who served only six months.

Franklin Pierce 1853 - 1857, Democrat from New Hampshire
Peirce may very well be the most handsome President and he was clearly the most cultivated having attended college alongside and been a lifelong associate of literary giants of his day such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I say this because Franklin Peirce was a horrible President and not a very nice man either and I wanted to soften the blow a little bit.

Having been, yet another dark-horse/compromise candidate for the Democrats, Pierce somehow defeated a great man in the Election of 1852 in the person of Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott who would be the last Whig Party Candidate for President. Those elegant speeches that propelled Peirce to victory over, arguably, the greatest war hero since the Revolution (and the polling was not close) were undoubtedly the handy-work of author Nathaniel Hawthorne who was Peirce's closest friend and constant companion.

As President however, Peirce would prove a pitifully indecisive Chief Executive as he was already deeply in the throws of the alcoholism that would eventually take his life and was in a horrible state emotionally having witnessed the death of his son in a train crash only two months before taking the oath of office. Peirce also appears to have been heavily under the influence of his Secretary of War Jefferson Davis whose loyalty to the cause of preserving the Union really does have to be questioned at that point.

It has been said that Peirce's policies could not have been more disastrous to the Union cause if the future Confederate President had designed them himself, which may very well be true. Davis also was known for introducing some strangely ineffective policies for the War Department such as his attempt to introduce the use of camels in the cavalry.

That's all speculation however, history shows that no conspiracy is needed to account for a wide assortment of weak and ineffective leaders and early on there were hints that the Peirce administration was being conducted in a disorganized fashion. All this came to a head with publication of the Ostend Manifesto which tied Peirce to a secret plan to annex Cuba by force adding countless slaves to the already overflowing southern states. That combined with the Gadsden Purchase finishing off President Polk's conquest of the southwestern territories from Mexico, convinced many Northerners that Peirce was in the pocket of the Slaveocracy. In my opinion they were correct but this is not the majority view of historians on the subject.

A frequent consequence of corrupted and/or incompetent administrations throughout the history of civilization has been destructive and bloody guerrilla warfare breaking out in the outlying regions of a given government's lands and that is exactly what happened in 1854 in what has become known as Bleeding Kansas. In an attempt to create a transcontinental railroad Senator Stephen A. Douglas pushed through the Kansas-Nebraska Act effectively nullifying the Missouri Compromise leaving the question of slavery open for "popular sovereignty" in the teritories of Nebraska and Kansas. Nebraska was at no risk of legalizing involuntary servitude, however, Kansas bordered the slave state of Missouri and the possibility of Kansas entering the Union as a slave prompted pro-Slavery Missourians, known as "Border Ruffians" to cross into Kansas to influence formation of a pro-slavery constitution.

In the violence that broke out it appears that the pro-slavery faction were largely the aggressors but it is difficult to tell as there were atrocities on both sides including the infamous Pottawatomie Creek Massacre led by abolitionist John Brown who would be executed in 1859 following an unsuccessful Raid on Harper's Fairy, Virginia.

As an interesting side note, the original title of The Battle Hymn of the Republic was John Brown's Body. Historians today treat him as some sort of fringe nut, but he was taken quite seriously in his own time ... But I digress.

There appeared to be little doubt as to Peirce's sympathies for the "Slavocracy" when he recognized a clearly illegal pro-Slavery Constitution which had been voted in by the so-called Ruffians. Furthermore, the pro-Slavery contingent seemed to have gone mad with power and were now using violence and trickery to force the institution of slavery upon persons who clearly did not want it within their borders.

The violence in Kansas soon spilled over on the floors of Congress when Congressman Preston Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner into unconsciousness with his walking stick permanently disabling Sen. Sumner, the title of the speech that had provoked Rep. Brooks to this extreme "The Crime Against Kansas."

Fully three-quarters of the Republican Party Platform of 1856 consisted of an indictment of Peirce's outrageous behavior in Kansas. And as we shall see, it was about to get worse.

Peirce died of Cirrhosis of the Liver in 1869 at the age of sixty-four. Historian Polls consistently rank Peirce near the very bottom as one of the worst Presidents ever to hold the office typically ranking him at around number forty out of forty-three somewhere between his successor James Buchanan and his predicessor Millard Fillmore.

James Buchanan 1857 - 1861, Democrat from Pennsylvania
There used to be a joke asking who was the smartest President. Persons would then suggest such intellectual luminaries as Woodrow Wilson who had a PhD only to be disappointed when the asker announced they were wrong. James Buchanan, the prankster would announce was the smartest US President, "because he never got married."

As we shall see, not only is this joke not funny it bears very little resemblance to the truth as Buchanan is widely viewed as the WORST, full-term President whose administration had not been touched by major scandal.

If, the Bleeding Kansas situation were already not enough to convince northerners of the sinister plans of the wicked "Slavocracy" to impose the brutal institution of involuntary servitude upon the rest of the nation irregardless of the wish of the residents of the various states then, the Dred Scott Decision declaring that Congress lacked Constitutional Authority to prohibit slavery in any of the territories, including those bordering Canada, should at least convince one that this "Slaveocracy" business was not a crackpot conspiracy theory cooked up by some tin-foil-hat wearing pothead in his mother's basement.

Needless to say, the Dred Scott Decision was very bad law under any standard of justice one cares to name. The decision begins by claiming that the defendant, Dred Scott had no rights whatever under the US Constitution and thus could not sue in court but then went on for several pages finding the facts of the case against him. Those who claim, still today, that State's Rights and not slavery was the overriding cause of the Civil War have some explaining to do in re Bleeding Kansas and Dred Scott which blatantly usurped State and territorial autonomy in addition to severely restricting the civil liberties of their citizens. And, by the way, the tariff hadn't been a major issue on the national stage in forty years so those making that claim are, at best, misinformed but more likely just lying.

Buchanan cannot be held responsible for the entirety of the Bleeding Kansas affair but his behavior was not much better than his predecessor's in that regard appointing a bellicose pro-slavery partisan Robert Walker as Territorial Governor and endorsed the ill-fated Lecompton Constitution which Congress overwhelmingly rejected. In addition to doing a disservice to the citizens of Kansas this act Slavocracy-boot-lickery caused a severe rift in his own, Democratic, party as northern Democrats, following the lead of Stephen A. Douglas joined Republicans in opposing the measure on the grounds that it violated the cherished principle of "popular sovereignty" which, truth to be told was the principle at the heart of the violence in Kansas in the first place, but let us not look a gift horse in the mouth.

In the Spring of 1860 a House committee chaired by John Covode launched an investigation of Buchanan's behavior in the wake of the Kansas situation in hopes of finding grounds for impeachment. Among other things the committee found that Buchanan had freely used the "power of the patronage" to promote the pro-slavery constitution upon Kansas and that he sought to prevent the reelection of Sen. Douglas. The Kansas situation eventually petered out and Kansas would be admitted to the Union as a free state on January 29, 1861 in one of Buchanan's final acts as President.

In the hotly contested Election of 1860 former Congressman Abraham Lincoln, an outspoken opponent of slavery of any kind being permitted in any of the territories topped a very crowded field becoming the President-Elect of the United States and those perpetual troublemakers, South Carolina, almost immediately called for a convention to discuss secession from the Union. Buchanan, while stating unequivocally that secession was illegal, claimed that he was Constitutionally prohibited from using force to prevent secession. An ineffectual attempt at avoiding rebellion was attempted in the form of the Crittenden Compromise which would have extended the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific but Lincoln and his supporters were adamant that slavery not be permitted in any of the territories.

South Carolina declared their secession from the union on December 24, 1860 and by the time Buchanan left office on March 4, 1861 fully seven southern states had left the Union and had established a government known as the Confederate States of America. Upon leaving Washington DC Buchanan left a note for Lincoln "if, you are as happy about taking this position as I am to leave it then, you are a happy man indeed."

Buchanan died at his home near Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1868 having been the fist President to have authored memoir. In Historian Polls Buchanan nearly always ranks close to dead last at anywhere from number forty to number forty-three, though occasionally the financial scandals of Warren G. Harding and Ulysses S. Grant have pushed him as high as number thirty-seven.

Abraham Lincoln 1861 - 1865, Republican from Illinois
The 1860 Republican Platform that excelled Lincoln to victory in the 1860 Presidential Election contained many useful items such as: securing fair wages for industrial workers, protective tariffs, the construction of a Transcontinental Railroad and the founding of Land-Grant Colleges but those things come a long way down toward the bottom of the page. Of eighteen planks in the platform fully fourteen are simple restatements of the single principle of opposition to the extension of slavery.

Furthermore, Lincoln's first Inaugural Address doesn't mention colleges, tariffs or railroads at all. Things had changed a little bit since the nominating convention.

Lincoln's predecessor had done nothing to prevent the Confederate States of America from seceding from the Union and done very little to protect the military forts that Confederate armies were besieging all across the South. Within six weeks of his accession to the Oval Office Confederate Forces won their first major victory in the Battle of Fort Sumter forever banishing any hope of a peaceful reconciliation, with or without slavery.

Four more states joined the Confederacy shortly after the fall of Sumter who racked up another victory in July at the First Battle of Bull Run. The nation was now in a state of full on Civil War complete with: suspension of civil liberties, conscription and all the "unAmerican" thrills that accompany it.

Lincoln was very active in the planning of war strategy which was largely planned out by Gen. Winfield Scott in his last act as an active duty military commander. Scott's plans were for a quick and decisive overwhelming of the enemy which it would take Lincoln nearly four years to find a General willing to implement fully. In the end, however, it would be Gen. Scott's initial strategy that would win the day for the North.

In the meanwhile, Republicans found themselves with an overwhelming majority in Congress due to the conservative democratic Southern constituency having all resigned their seats to serve in the Confederate Government. This meant that the long-awaited progressive Whig/Republican agenda that southern interest had derailed at least since the death of William Henry Harrison could be passed.

Historian Shelby Foote once noted that he thought that the North was fighting the war with "one hand tied behind their back" for the first three years of the conflict at any rate. But it should be noted that the Land-Grant Colleges, railroads, harbors and other expenditures authorized by Lincoln and the Republican Congress were truly national in nature and did not exclude the Southern States they very much behaved as if the Union were still in tact.

What Lincoln is undoubtedly most famous for is the Emancipation Proclamation delivered on September 22, 1862 only five days after Union Forces scored a major victor at the Battle of Antietam. In truth this was actually quite toothless as it only applied to slaves in states that were still in rebellion as of Jan 1, 1863. Lincoln clearly had no law enforcement powers he could reasonably exercise in those areas at that time. The Proclamation freed slaves in areas conquered by the invading Northern Armies as a confiscation measure taken under War Powers but did not outlaw the practice of slavery.

However earlier in 1862 slaves were freed in Washington DC (with compensation made to their owners) and congress did pass a "resolution" agreeing to undertake the gradual abolishment of Slavery in the Republic, again with compensation to owners.

Following a sea-saw of Union and Confederate victories and defeats under a succession of unsatisfactory generals, culminating the Battle of Gettysburg where Gen. George Meade "snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory" having defeated Robert E. Lee but then allowed Lee's army to escape back to Virginia, Lincoln appears to have stepped up the war effort a notch appointing Ulysses S. Grant commander of the Union Armies. There would be no more hands tied behind anyone's back as Grant's specialty was "total war." The Confederates were remarkable fighters but they had no where near the number of troops at their disposal as the North did and, now, they were going to see what a General in charge who did not to care about his own losses (provided that replacements were available) could do to them.

In 1864 Lincoln faced a tough reelection campaign against his former General and Chief George McClellan. The timing of what came next seems awfully convenient to me but coincidence can happen. As I go though the events of the 1864 Presidential Election keep in mind Shelby Foote's comment about the North having one hand tied behind its' back.

To try and minimize the partisan nature of the conflict Lincoln changed the name of his party from the Republican Party to the National Union Party and chose as his running mate Andrew Johnson a Democrat from Tennessee. The Democratic Party then held its' convention nominating McClellan but choosing as his running mate George Pendleton an outspoken advocate of ending the war and allowing the South to succeed, an error compounded by adding a plank to the party's platform declaring the war a "failure."

Between the Democratic Convention and the General Election: New Orleans and Atlanta fell, Richmond was under siege and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman had begun his devistating March to the Sea setting most of the States of Georgia and South Carolina on fire as he went. The South had been essentially defeated leaving poor old Gen. McClellan with a peace platform and a hippy peacenic running mate ... Really, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

The war was not officially over but it was over enough for Lincoln to win reelection.

Richmond fell and Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House only six days before Lincoln's Assassination at the hands of actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater, April 14, 1865. In his Second Inaugural Adress Lincoln had promised to treat the vanquished South "charitably" but the murder of their beloved President caused Northern politicians to make the Reconstruction era as brutal and humiliating as the law would allow. Only the Disputed Presidential Election of 1876 saved the South from, perhaps, becoming a permanently occupied territory of the North.

Historian Polls almost without exception rank Lincoln at the very top of the list of great Presidents, though he has occasionally been pushed out by Presidents George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt.

Andrew Johnson 1865 - 1869, Democrat from Tennessee
Remembered mostly for being impeached (and acquitted) in addition to his consistent drunkenness and liberal use of racial epitaphs in official state speaches Johnson would appear to be the worst person who could have possibly succeeded Lincoln and in particular under the tragic circumstances in which the succession took place. However, it was during his administration that the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the US Constitution were either introduced or adopted: outlawing slavery, guaranteeing equal protection under the law and granting voting rights to all adult male citizens regardless of race (Johnson held out on this one and it was adopted under Grant), and the more lenient reconstruction policy he pursued was very much in keeping with Lincoln's stated opinions on the matter.

Johnson's problems with the Republican Congress began with his veto of a measures to reauthorize the Freedman's Bureau and the very first piece of Civil Rights legislation both of which they passed over his veto. Johnson was clearly hostile to inferring all the rights of citizenship upon the former slaves and immediately broke with Republicans and reunited with his previous Democratic Party who had declared themselves to be "a white man's party."

Another act passed over the President's veto was the (possibly unconstitutional) Tenure of Office Act forbidding the President from dismissing any of his Cabinet members without Congressional consent. Ignoring this act of congress Johnson dismissed Edwin Stanton leading to his impeachment by Congress beginning in March of 1868 and ending in May of that year.

The charges were trivial and the evidence was thin and a two-thirds majority was needed to remove Johnson from office 35 yea to 19 nay. The rest of his term was uneventful save the Amnesty Proclamations of Christmas Day 1868 granting unconditional amnesty to all Confederates.

Johnson was elected to the US Senate from Tennessee in 1875 less than five months before he died at his home in Carter's Station, TN. Historians Polls fluctuate wildly as racism becomes more or less acceptable but he almost always ranks in the worst category occasionally finishing as low as forty-three along with Presidents James Buchanan and Warren G. Harding

Ulysses S. Grant 1869 - 1877, Republican from Ohio
The Election of 1868 in which Grant trounced Horatio Seymour was largely seen as a referendum on the more agressive reconstruction measures Radical Republicans (who then stood for everything they now stand against and vice versa) had been pushing for. The Grant administration was marked by many civil rights breakthroughs for African Americans as well as Native American Indians and in particular by the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibiting the government from from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." However, his two terms were also stained by a number of scandals some of which directly impugn the President's credibility and competence.

In addition to the Fifteenth Amendment, Grant also sign a bill targeting Ku Klux Klan activity in the south as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1875 prohibiting racial discrimination in jury selection.

Other successful measures included the Treaty of Washington settling damage claims with Great Britain who had built ships for the Confederacy that had inflicted much damage upon American commercial vessels during the Civil War, the creation of the first of its' kind Civil Service commission and in restoring civil liberties to citizens of the former Confederacy (save 300 to 500 high ranking Confederate office-holders).

Grant was less successful in his drive to annex the Dominican Republic. The Dominican government had requested annexation to which Grant was amenable but the resulting treaty failed to get the two-thirds majority required in the Senate.

In spite of a wave of coruption and very damaging scandals, which we shall get to in a moment, that had overtaken Washington DC and which Grant was clearly not up to the job of mitigating, Grant won reelection handily over New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, a Liberal Republican also endorsed by the Democrats. Greeley was, frankly, a bit of a kook, so while there was a good deal of sentiment for their platform of clean government and ending Reconstruction Greeley only took six states and died shortly after the election.

Grant's second term was generally uneventful aside from his veto of the 1874 Inflation Bill, an unpopular move in light of the Panic of 1873 which Grant himself had helped to cause, and the subsequent passage of the Resumption Act of 1875 returning to the gold standard. Grant's name would continue to be associated with "sound money" policies long after he left the White House.

As I said, Grant's two terms were marked by unprecedented financial scandals involving: members of his Cabinet, close friends, family members and even Grant himself. Many of these scandals wreaked devastation upon the American Economy:

Black Friday (1869)

Emma Silver Mine (1871)

Star Route Postal Ring (1872)

Crédit Mobilier (1872)

Salary Grab Act (1872)

Sanborn Incident (1874)

Delano Affair (1875)

Pratt & Boyd (1875)

Trading Post Ring (1876)

Cattellism (1876)

Safe Burglary Conspiracy (1876)

It should be noted that Grant's administration is not considered the most corrupt in history. Rather, no not Harding or Nixon, that kewpie-doll remains firmly in the grasp of the Regan Administration.

An extremely heavy smoker, Grant died of throat cancer in 1885 at the age of sixty-three. Because of the enormous number of scandals that plagued his two terms, Historian Polls traditionally to rank Grant fairly close to the bottom as one of the worst Presidents ever, however his ranking has seen remarkable improvement over the past few years. Even with these more recent higher scores he still averages out to rank at number thirty out of forty-three, slighly higher than President Warren G. Harding who is also remembered primarily for the major scandals of his administration.

Rutherford B. Hayes 1877 - 1881, Republican from Ohio
Were there any justice in the mixed up world I would, right now, be writing a summary of the no-nonsense, corruption-free administration of President Samuel J. Tilden who won the 1876 US Presidential Election by a fairly comfortable margin. But Republicans were thieves even then so I shall now share the tale of Rutherford B. Hayes.

The 1876 Election results showed a clear victory for Samuel Tilden, whose reputation as the nation's foremost reformer was earned by the breaking up of New York City's infamous Tammany Hall Political Machine that had blighted Democratic Party politics for nearly a century, but Republicans had managed to challenge the electoral votes of: Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina on the grounds that African-American voters had illegally been kept from the polls. Even with these challenged states in play, Tilden only needed a single electoral vote to claim the White House and Hayes needed them all. An Electoral Commission was established to settle the matter (though the US Constitution clearly mandated that it be settled by a vote of the House of Representatives) which was anything but nonpartisan and in a strict party line vote the commission awarded all the disputed electoral votes, and the Presidency, to Hayes.

It seems likely that Hayes engaged in some sort of informal compromise with Democratic Party leaders agreeing to end the military occupation of the former Confederate States in exchange for their agreeing not to further challenge the 1876 election results. In consequence of this, the Era of Reconstruction came to an abrupt end and Jim Crow laws were soon erected all over the former Confederate states reducing the legal status African American populations who were severely deprived of the full rights of citizenship promised under the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the US Constitution.

On the positive side many of the "carpet-bag governments" that had sprung up in the South under the auspices of Northern occupation had become quite corrupt. And Hayes does appear to have been genuine in his desire to enact civil service reform (excluding political operatives from holding nonpolitical Government jobs) for the nation as a whole.

In this he was not entirely successful coming in conflict with Senator Roscoe Conkling, whose power and influence had helped Hayes gain the White House in the wake of the disputed election results, over the removal of Chester A. Arthur and other Conkling lieutenants from prominent patronage posts in the custom-house and the post-office of Conkling's home state of New York. Hayes did manage to implement some minor reforms to the Civil Service but was dogged every step of the way by the Stalwarts in his own party who had become quite powerful in the lackadaisical Grant years.

Apart from: the repeal of Civil Rights legislation, minimal civil service reform and his use of Federal troops to break up the Railroad Strike of 1877 Hayes' term was largely uneventful and having pledged not to seek a second term during the settlement of the disputed election Hayes' only notable intrusion into politics after leaving office 1881 was to speak out against woman's suffrage shortly before his death in 1893 at the age of seventy. Historian Polls generally are unkind to Hayes placing him firmly in the below-average quatril at or around number twenty-four along side unelected Presidents such as Gerald R. Ford and Chester Arthur.

James Garfield 1881, Republican from Ohio
The razor thin margin of victory for Garfield in the 1880 Presidential Election over Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock seems to have been mainly due to gaff on the part of Hancock who, when asked about his party's "tariff for revenue only" plank where he said he thought the tariff "was a local issue." By contrast Garfield was a polished and skilled politician with many years of experience in government. Nevertheless, only 2,100 votes separated the two Candidates on election night though Garfield's majority in the Electoral collage was much more impressive.

Nerds the world over know Garfield as the author of a very unique Proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. However, as President his administration was brief due to his having been assassinated by Charles Guiteau following a dispute Garfield had had with Guiteau's political boss Roscoe Conkling over the distribution of patronage in New York State, only six-and-a-half months into his administration.

Conkling was never implicated in the murder personally but the assassination did draw attention to the rampant corruption of the political machine that Sen. Conkling was at the center of and did much to inspire the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act restricting the political activities of most Federal Employees which remains in force to this day.

Because of the brevity of his term in office it is traditional not to include Garfield in Historian Polls however the last three such polls have included him in the well-below-average to poor range but he has consistently beaten President George W. Bush

US Presidents Part I: 1789 - 1845

2010-07-28T12:01:00.000-04:00

George Washington 1789 - 1797, Nonpartisan from Virginia
Americans know him as the "father of their country." Having been General and Chief of the Continental Armies durring the War of American Independence as well as the presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 there seemed little doubt that he would be the first to occupy the office of the Presidency and he was elected unanimously to that office by the Electoral Collage in 1788 and reelected unanimously in 1792. This was the only time that a single candidate captured every singe electoral vote. James Monroe did not have an opponent listed in 1820 but fell one vote short of unanimousness, perhaps in hopes of keeping Washington's record in tact.

As President Washington faced the daunting challenge of fleshing out the bare-bones structure of the executive office articulated in the US Constitution. As such Washington was keenly aware that every move he made was to be precedent setting he stated: "As the first of every thing, in our situation will serve to establish a Precedent, it is devoutly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles."

The first of these precedents involved the selection of his Cabinet. Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution states quite clearly that these appointments are to be made with the "advise and consent of Congress," however, the great reverence that the nation felt for Washington made these confirmation hearings a mere formality. None of his appointments were challenged setting the precedent that the President thereafter is generally permitted to appoint his own Cabinet officers without Congressional interference, even in cases where the President is: blatantly playing favorites, making appointments that are clearly underqualified or just plain weird.

He also, reluctently, set the precedent that the President accept a salary and initiated the practice of calling the President "Mr. President" as opposed to "your worshipfullness sir" or something equally appalling as was common in Europe.

Domestic affairs were dominated by the conflict of personalities within his Cabinet between liberal Thomas Jefferson and conservative Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson was an admirer of the Free Market Capitalism articulated by Adam Smith while Hamilton preferred the tried and tested Mercantilism which had been practiced in England since the fifteenth century with some success. Washington eventually chose to side with Hamilton causing Jefferson to eventually resign from the Cabinet and join the burgeoning Anti-Federalist movement laying the ground-work for the two party system as we know it today, much to chagrin of Washington who had hoped to avoid the rise of political parties.

Early in his term Washington had to face down Rebellion in the Western part of the country (now the East) over taxes and the enforcement of unpopular laws. Washington's swift and effective response both crushed the Rebellion and sent out the message that the Revolution was over.

Another rift between Washington and more progressive elements in his Cabinet arose over his pro-English foreign policy which many saw as a slap in the face of France who had been the American's most important allies during the Revolutionary War. The excesses of the French Revolution combined with the military threat that England posed to the fledgling nation which Washington headed the government of caused Washington to pursue a policy of, at best, nutrality in the Anglo-Frankish Wars. Washington also foresaw England as a valuable trading partner and insisted that American Citizens continue to be held liable for debts incurred to the English prior to the Revolution.

Historians have generally vindicated Washington in regard to Anglo-French relations. Washington was revolutionary but he was no radical.

Americans have largely ignored the warnings issued by Washington in his famous Farewell Address in regards to the evils of political parties and the dangers of "entangling alliances" with foreign powers. Washington died in 1799 at the age of sixty-seven. Polls of historians generally rank Washington second behind Abraham Lincoln as one of the greatest of all US President but he has ranked as low as fourth.

John Adams 1796 - 1801, Federalist from Massachusetts
In 1796 George Washington refused to seek election for a third terms as President of the United States setting the precedent, only overlooked by Franklin D. Roosevelt, of Presidents, no matter how popular, being limited to two four-year terms. John Adams was clearly Washington's choice to succeed him but Adams faced a formidable electoral challenge from Thomas Jefferson in what was to become the first partisan election campaign much to the disappointment of Washington.

The election was a good deal closer than anyone could imagine as Adam's promise to continue the conservative policies of Washington and Hamilton was very much against the growing trend toward making the United States the exemplar of egalitarianism. However, the nod from Washington was enough to put Adams over the top.

Although a very piteous and honorable individual on a personal level, Adams was a weak and ineffective President whose political skills just weren't up the challenge of the nation's highest office. At the same time, the Nation's Gross National Product more than doubled during his single term. This is the largest increase in wealth the US has ever experienced under a single administration, a record unlikely to be bested any time in the future.

Adams' term was doomed from the start due to an oversight by the drafters of the Constitution. Because the Electoral Collage was instructed to cast two ballots without distinguishing which was for President and which was for Vice President with the individual receiving the second highest number of electoral votes winning the office of Vice President, the appearance of a fringe candidate forced Adams to accept his old enemy Thomas Jefferson as Vice President. The US Constitution also provides that the Vice President be the deciding vote should a tie-vote occur in Congress. The Nation was so divided at that point politically that Jefferson's Vice Presidency essentially paralyzed Adams' administration.

In his own time Adams had the reputation for always saying the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time, though this may only point to his unpopularity rather than to any inherent awkwardness on Adams' part. There were no new policy initiatives undertaken in Adams' administration and Adams himself put only minimal effort into executing the duties of the office the public had given him.

Adams continued the pro-English foreign policy initiated under Washington but was unable to continue the guise of neutrality which Washington had erected. Armed conflict with France appeared eminent and Franco-American hostilities nearly reached the breaking point with the famous XYZ-Affair when the French Diplomatic Corps demanded an enormous bribe of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney before he would be received for negotiations. Pinckney is said to have responded "NO NO NOT A SIXPENCE!" The favorite jingo of the "Quasi-War" with France was "millions for defense and not a cent for tribute."

True war never came but taxes were levied at unprecedented rates to pay for a large Navy to protect American commercial interests and civil liberties were severely curtailed under the Alien and Sedition Acts which made it a crime to criticize the President or Congress in print.

The final year of Adams' term was dominated by Fries' Rebellion in Western Pennsylvania which he handled both swiftly and amicably. Blaming the Democratic-Republicans for stirring up the persons involved Adams used his pardon power to diffuse the situation. The taxes and curtailment of civil liberties which were the cause of the Rebellion were not, however, adressed.

Adams was defeated for reelection in what was, perhaps, the nastiest Presidential Campaign in history. Adams had no knack for political campaigning and wildly accused his opponent, Thomas Jefferson, of being both an anarchist and an atheist, foretelling of "murder, rape and mayhem" being "openly taught and practiced" should Jefferson prevail. In the end Adams had a very ill-timed falling out with Alexander Hamilton whose home state of New York would cast the deciding votes in favor of Jefferson.

Adams' last act as President was to force through a slew of "midnight appointments" to the Federal Judiciary in hopes of derailing Jefferson's legislative agenda. This turned out to be a minor nuisance for Jefferson but remains as a stain on the memory of Adams who was otherwise not given to abuses of power of this magnitude.

The Federalist Party which had formed around his Presidential ambitions would flounder and die over the next few electoral cycles as Adams' ideal of a Republic governed by professionals and not subject to the "whims of the mob" as he called them became increasingly unpopular. In my view, although a founding father and an important figure in history, Adams was not a good President being both inattentive to the needs of his country's citizens and despotic in the suppression of his political opponents.

Adams died on July 4, 1826 (the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence) having been preceded in death by his old enemy Thomas Jefferson by only a few hours. His last words were purported to be "Thomas Jefferson still lives" indicating that he still saw himself in competition with his old adversary. Jefferson and Adams were the only two US Presidents to have signed the Decoration so the probability of their both dieing on that particular date must be astronomical. Historian polls generally rank him well above average often tied with John F. Kennedy for position number fourteen.

Thomas Jefferson 1801 - 1809, Democratic - Republican from Virginia
The inscription on Thomas Jefferson's tombstone reads: "[h]ere was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia." Anyone notice something missing?

That Jefferson was not proud enough of his accomplishments in his two terms as President of the United States of America to mention his having held this office in the inscription on his tombstone may be indicative of the fact that Jefferson's best days were already behind him when he took the oath of office. Nevertheless, the eight years he held the Presidency was a revolutionary period as the young nation increased in both size and status to new heights of independence.

Early on Jefferson faced opposition within his own party from Vice President Aaron Burr who made a play for the Presidency on the grounds that he had received an equal number of electoral votes as Jefferson. Republican electors had been instructed to cast one vote for Jefferson and one vote for Burr but the Constitution provided that electors not distinguish which ballot was for Vice President and which was for President. At Burr's insistence the election was settled by a vote in the House of Representatives where Jefferson was forced to seek the support of his old enemy Alexander Hamilton to secure the Presidency which he had won in a narrow defeat over his predecessor John Adams. Jefferson and his Republican Congress quickly pushed through the the 12th Amendment to the US Constitution requiring that Electors vote separately for President and Vice President so such a mess could never darken the hallowed halls of Washington again.

Jefferson's first term was largely occupied with undoing the policies of his two predecessors. The huge military amassed in the wake of the Quasi-War with France was largely dismantled. Taxes were decreased significantly. And the Alien and Sedition Acts allowed to expire. Jefferson also discontinued many rituals surrounding the office of the President setting the stage for our modern, informal methodology by which presidential duties are fulfilled.

The most enduring act of Jefferson's first term was the Louisiana Purchase from the French Emperor Napoleon nearly doubling the land area controlled by the United States at the piddly cost of $.08 an acre. Jefferson then commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition which explored the continent bringing back invaluable topographic and scientific information from which America would continue to benefit for generations to come.

Jefferson's first term also saw the United States' first military success in the Barbary Wars with Tripoli which was the first foreign war in which the United States had become involved.

Though not quite as stellar a record as one might expect from a "great man" like Jefferson, his successes in his first term were more than sufficient to win him a second term as he absolutely buried Charles Cotesworth Pinckney putting the last rusty nail in the coffin of the short-lived Federalist Party.

Jefferson's second term was a good deal less successful, however. Jefferson faced rebellion from his former Vice President, Aaron Burr who, have shot Alexander Hamilton in duel in 1804, was caught sailing down the Mississippi River in a boat full of weapons hoping to incite an armed insurrection in the Louisiana Territories. Burr was tried for treason but the Supreme Court, wisely not wishing to make a martyr of such a man, acquitted him.

This failure to maintain order was followed by an ineffective foreign policy venture which led to the Embargo Act of 1807 barring trade with England and France for the duration of the Anglo-Frankish conflict. This proved very unpopular as the US was not yet the industrial powerhouse it would one day become and her citizens were thus deprived of many consumer items causing a black market to arise further undermining the authority of the government. Historians have partially vindicated Jefferson on the issue of the unpopular embargo since the US' economic independence was largely secured at time planting the seeds of the industrial revolution in American which would grow into the greatest industrial powerhouse the World has ever known. Unfortunately, Jefferson misses getting the credit for this due to his shortsighted view of America's future as being agrarian in nature as opposed to promoting industrialization which Jefferson affiliated with the Mercantilist system. Jefferson refered to cities as "sores upon the body politic."

Of course, criticism of Jefferson's economic views seems, frankly, unimportant as he shows himself as being most short-sighted on the issue of race. An owner of an obscene number of slaves whom he treated quite cruelly he did, nevertheless, sign into law a bill banning the importation of any more slaves to the Republic.

Jefferson's system of government was to remain in effect for most of the next generation being suplanted by that of Andrew Jackson shortly after Jefferson's death in 1826, upon the very same day that his predecessor John Adams died. In polls Jefferson normally ranks in the top five but rarely breaches the top three ranking with other "near great" Presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, however his impact on American history far exceeds the influence of his term as President.

James Madison 1809 - 1817, Democratic - Republican from Virginia
At only five feet tall, Madison was the shortest of all US Presidents but he is a giant intellectually being known as the "Father of the US Constitution." Madison has always been a personal hero of mine for the principled stance he took against Virgina Governor Patrick Henry's unsuccessful attempts to institutionalize the Christian Religion in Virginia, a move that cost him a seat in the newly formed United States Senate but did much to strengthen the tradition of separation of Church and State that the United States has enjoyed on and off ever since.

Madison was shoe-in as the Republican candidate in the 1808 Election as Federalism had essentially petered out by that point. Madison's first term was practically Jefferson's third term and the two men remained close friends throughout their lives.

Ron Paul supporters might like Madison's continued opposition to the first Bank of the United States, an issue that would consume the body politic for much of the next twenty years of American history. He did eventually relent forming a national bank in 1816 but his eloquent arguments against the institution continued to influence the debate for many years to come.

The War of 1812 was to dominate Madison's second term. The war initially broke out over the issue of impressment of American sailors into the British Navy, claiming, "once an Englishman always an Englishman."

The war itself was something of a disaster inviting a destructive full-scale British invasion of the Americas. Complete disaster was averted by the magnanimous Treaty of Ghent in which neither the Americans or the British lost any territory but the issue of impressment was not resolved. The lost blood and treasure from that conflict was largely in vain, unfortunately.

Nevertheless, Madison played off Ghent as though it had constituted a great victory causing the final collapse of Federalism initiating the Era of Good Feelings in which partisan hostilities no longer dominated the political landscape. In his last two years in office Madison became the chief proponent of State's Rights vetoing spending measures he felt were not sufficiently national in nature. Madison also achieved military success over the Barbary Pirates which did much to expand American exporting abilities and raised America's status as a player on the international scene.

Madison died in 1836, the last Founding Father to pass away, at the age of eighty-five. As the chief framer of the US Constitution, Madison's name continues to be associated with the birth of Democracy. In polls Madison ranks slightly above average usually keeping company with John Quincy Adams and William Howard Taft.

James Monroe 1817 - 1825, Democratic - Republican from Virginia
James Monre was not a great man like his predecessors, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, however, his namesake, the Monroe Doctrine, is one of the few initiatives left-over from the earliest period of US history which is still evoked today when examining policy.

Monroe faced almost no opposition in his quest for the Presidency since the Federalist Party did not even proffer an opponent in either the 1816 or 1820 elections. For this reason his presidency is remembered as "The Era of Good Feelings" an attitude of nationalist cooperation that Monroe encouraged with lengthy tours of the country to see for himself how good the people were feeling.

Divisions did exist within the dominate Republican party as the issue of slavery reared its ugly head as one-by-one all of the Northern States of the Union, save Deleware, abolished the practice of involuntary servitude while the slave-based plantation-system began thriving in the American South due to an increased demand for cotton to fuel the European textile industry. Madison himself appears to have been opposed to the practice of slavery as evidenced by his founding of Liberia in 1822 as a safe place for freed slaves to escape to. Today we wouldn't consider "put 'em on a boat and send 'em back to Africa" a very culturally sensitive solution but at the time it was.

Unfortunately Madison's personal beliefs on the issue ran up against his political beliefs in re State's Rights. Madison had hoped to confine slavery to the American South with the Missouri Compromise of 1824 which barred slavery North of Missouri's southern border at the same time admitting Missouri as a slave slave state along with Maine as a free state setting the precedent that all new slave state admissions be paired with a free state not allowing either abolitionists or ardent defenders of slavery to ever gain an upper hand in the US Senate. Like most compromises, it settled absolutely nothing brining to an end the Era of Good Feelings and causing the nation to become more divided than it had ever been or has ever become since.

As I said, Monroe is mostly remembered for the Monroe Doctrine in which the United States takes the position that attempts by European powers to further colonize other nations in North and South America would be construed as an act of War and be responded to in kind. Sadly, Monroe was not farsighted enough to prohibit American intervention in the affairs of the various free-states of the Americas but the Monroe Doctrine became an integral part of American foreign policy in the Early Twentieth Century and remains so to this day.

Monroe died in 1831, he was the third President in a row to have died on July 4 defying many odds. Polls rank Monroe as quite average to slightly above average along with presidents Grover Cleveland and the Elder George Bush.

John Quincy Adams 1825 - 1829, National Republican from Massachusetts
A former Federalist, the younger Adams might seem an unlikely choice to succeed Monroe who had banished Federalism to the back-pages of history during the "Era of Good Feelings." Adams, however, had distinguished himself as Secretary of State throughout the Monroe administration and was clearly the most talented person seeking the Presidency at the time.

Adams, however, did not win the popular vote nor a plurality of the Electoral Collage in the election which placed him in the White House (which his Father John Adams had been the first President to occupy). A four-way race for the office which had largely split according to regional loyalties had prevented the front-runner Andrew Jackson from achieving the required majority of Electoral Votes to win the office forcing the election to be decided by a vote of the House of Representatives. Jackson's lead over the other three candidates was substantial but only three candidates were to be voted upon under the house rule and Henry Clay, who had been excluded from the house vote, threw his support behind Adams giving Adams the requisite number of votes in the House to defeat Jackson. Clay was then appointed Secretary of State, then seen as the top stepping-stone to the Presidency. Jackson pronounced this robbery a "corrupt bargain" and he and his supporters would be a misery to Adams and his administration during Adams' single term as a result.

Immediately upon acceding to the Chief Executive Adams endeared himself to me due to the, possibly apocryphal, story of his having taken his oath of office on a stack of law books rather than the Bible either due to his Unitarian religious beliefs or his staunch support of separation of Church and State. Adams is not remembered as a great president like Jefferson before him and Jackson after but he certainly is one of the "great men" in American history.

In many ways Adams was decades ahead of his time calling for Civil Service reform which would exclude mere office seekers from filling government jobs and a wide array of internal improvements and protective tariffs to encourage America's fledgling manufacturing sector which Adams was farsighted enough to see as the true wave of the future. On the debit side he was not much more astute in politics than his father had been and tended to look down on those farmers and agrarian interests which had been the bedrock of Jefferson's popularity.

Already unpopular due to the "corrupt bargain" that had brought him into the Presidency, Adams was completely unsuccessful in getting any of his farsighted initiatives enacted due to his complete and utter incompetence in the art of swaying public opinion.

Adams was the first President to seriously undertake promotion of the arts and sciences at the Federal level and the Smithsonian Institution that he founded remains America's premier educational facility to this day largely though Adam's efforts.

The only legislation passed during Adam's single term was the ill-fated tariff of abominations which would later cause his successor to have to threaten to invade the state of South Carolina due to its' unpopularity.

Defeated overwhelmingly for reelection in 1828 Adams became the only former President to serve in the US House of Representatives where, in his dotage, Adams was the leading voice of opposition to the Mexican–American War and a constant foe of the expansion of Slavery. In 1997 Adams was immortalized by actor Anthony Hopkins in the film Amistad dramatizing his successful arguing before the Supreme Court in the case of United States v. The Amistad Africans which won the freedom of African Slaves who had mutinied on a Spanish Slave vessel which had been illegally transporting them through American waters.

Adams was an abolitionist but died before he could see any more slaves freed, in 1848 at the age of eighty-one shortly following his having cast a very loud and impassioned NO vote on a proposal to decorate certain officers from the Mexican War. In polls he tends to rank average to slightly below average, usually coming in around number eighteen along with Presidents Lyndon Johnson and William McKinley both of whom did manage to win a second term.

Andrew Jackson 1829 - 1837, Democrat from Tennessee
The only President to have both an era and a brand of democracy named for him, at first sight Jackson appears an unlikely candidate to revolutionize the Presidency in the way that he did. Jackson was: cantankerous, vindictive, crudely educated and could be quoted on both sides of every major political issue of his day with absolute assurance. Jackson also had a disturbing history of violence having killed at least a dozen men in duals and summarily executed deserters in his role as a general in the War of 1812 and the First Seminole War where he also received a sanction from Congress for having undertaken the conquest of Florida of his own initiative.

All that said, Andrew Jackson was the first modern President, vetoing dozens of bills and really controlling the tone in Washington through the force of his own character. Widely viewed in his own time as corrupt and despotic for his less than eloquent defense of the spoils system, filling most civil service positions with political appointments, his opponents labeled him "King Andrew I" and formed a new political party, the Whigs whose only unifying theme was opposition to Jackson's person. Because political figures were largely influential on a regional level this brought together an unlikely coalition of Federalist leaning Republicans enraged by Jackson's vetoing of internal improvement bills and radical state's rights Democrats who saw Jackson's strong style of executive leadership as running roughshod over the rights of states as outlined in the Tenth Amendment.

Jackson's first term was, unfortunately, dominated by the Peggy Eaton affair. During the 1828 Presidential Election his opponent, John Quincy Adams, had taken to "hitting below the belt," attacking his relationship with his wife, Rachel, whom Jackson had married before her divorce from her first husband had been finalized, technically bigamy. Rachel died shortly after Jackson's election in 1828 but before his inauguration 1829, an event Jackson blamed on the attacks on her honor she sustained during the Presidential Campaign.

Thus it was quite natural that when the wives of many of Jackson's Cabinet members began snubbing his friend and Secretary of War John Eaton's wife Peggy, a widow of a Naval Officer who had died at sea, some said under "mysterious circumstances," over unfounded rumors about the death of her first husband that Jackson would step in ordering that the wives of his Cabinet members pay Mrs. Eaton "courtesy calls" setting off a feud with fellow Southerner Vice President John C. Calhoun and prompting the resignation of most of Jackson's Cabinet.

The feud with Calhoun, naturally, went a good deal deeper than the simple case of Jackson's disapproval of Calhoun's snooty wife. While the Eaton Affair was going on Jackson faced a more tangible threat to the Union of States in the form of the Nullification Crisis whereby Calhoun's home state of South Carolina began insisting it had the right to "nullify" the infamous "Tariff of Abominations" which Calhoun also claimed was Unconstitutional because it constituted a protective tariff and some ambiguous wording in the Constitution led him to believe that the Federal Government was authorized to issue tariffs "for revenue only."

The lines were drawn in 1830 when Jackson raised a toast "our federal Union: It must be preserved" to which Calhoun replied "The Union: Next to our Liberty, the most dear!" Calhoun was dumped from the Democratic ticket shortly thereafter prompting him to resign the Vice Presidency and take up the Senate Seat from South Carolina a position from which he would rabble-rouse the cause of Southern succession and the expansion of slavery until his long-overdue death in 1850.

In Jackson's day, however, Calhoun very nearly began the Civil War three decades before time as Jackson had to actually get authorization for the use of force from Congress before South Carolina would back down from its' claim to be able to nullify Federal laws. The state continued to pursue their right of succession, however until 1864 and it is not unheard of for succession language to be heard from politicians in the deep south to this very day.

Jackson's legacy as an egalitarian figure is severely damaged by his Indian Policy in which an estimated 45,000 Indians were relocated to the Western Territories along the infamous Trail of Tears. Though popular in the Southern States where most of the removal was taking place the move was widely condemned in the Northern States and historians generally see this as a dark stain on American history.

Jackson's economic policy was something of a mixed bag. In his second term as President Jackson managed to pay off the entire National Debt through spending cuts alone and without raising taxes. No other President can make a claim to have even tried such a thing. While this shows a level of efficiency in his administration for which he deserves much credit, his handling of the dissolution of the Second National Bank by withdrawing all Federal funds from the institution to insure its' quick demise and placing those funds in State Banks of his own choosing was to prove disastrous economically. As is often the case when large amounts of funds are transfered in an economy the funds deposited in those state banks were confused for investable funds setting off a flurry of speculation and irresponsible lending practices which culminated in the Panic of 1837 causing the next three Presidential Administrations to govern the nation in the midst of an unprecedented economic depression. It must have felt good for Jackson to take all that money away from those greedy bankers who he hated so much, though.

Like many of the Founding Fathers, Jackson was also a slave-owner, but, whereas the founders showed great discomfort with the institution of involuntary servitude Jackson appears to have reveled in the Plantation culture. Any hope of history depicting the President, who really was the first "man of the people" to hold that high office, as a force for justice or egalitarianism dies upon examination of his Indian policy and the steps he took to expand the institution of slavery.

Jackson died in 1845 at his plantation The Hermitage in Nashville, TN. Historian polls had traditionally ranked him at the top of the "near-great" category coming in at around number six, however, in recent years he has fallen out of the top-ten into the "above-average" category alongside much less talented individuals such as President Dwight Eisenhower.

Martin Van Buren 1837 - 1841, Democrat from New York
By far the most homely of US Presidents, in contrast to the rugged frontiersman Jackson, Van Buren cultivated a very dainty and almost effeminate appearance and was known to adorn himself with ruffles and perfumes causing Congressman Davy Crockett of Tennessee to remark that he was unable to tell if Van Buren were a man, a women or "something else altogether."

In spite of their differences in opinion on wardrobe issues, Van Buren was very much Jackson's man and had been hand-picked by Jackson to succeed him as President. A wily political operator, Van Buren is traditionally credited with the founding of the Political Operation we now know as the Democratic Party of the United States through his association with the corupt Tammany Hall Machine.

Van Buren's ridiculous attire and association with the "fat cats" of Tammany Hall caused his political opponents to cast him as a politician of the "silk-stocking-set." This is more than unfair, as Van Buren was very much a self-made man, being the son of a tavern-keeper and having never attended college.

In spite of his political astuteness and the endorcement of Jackson (for which he owed his winning of the 1836 Presidential Election) Van Buren was a weak and ineffective President and his single term is remembered for: financial hard times, cruel treatment of American Indians and the ballooning of the slavery issue that would come to tear the Nation apart in the next generation. A Northerner elected on a Southern platform Van Buren only manged to inflame the passions of both side of every issue he put his hand to.

In the 1997 film Amistad Van Buren was ably portrayed by actor Nigel Hawthorne and was very accurately cast something of a villain due to his overtly political nature and disregard for the rights of anyone who might stand in the way of his winning a given state or district in his upcoming reelection campaign. None of this was ahistoric, however Van Buren did have a history of anti-Slavery sentiments both before and after his term as President having voted against the admission of Missouri as a slave state as a Senator before and having run as the candidate of the anti-Slavery Free Soil Party after.

Van Buren also had distinguished himself in New York politics as the chief proponent of abolishing the practice of Imprisonment for Debt in that state. Sadly, he did not pursue that agenda nationally as that would have gone a long way to exonerate him for his short-sightedness in the areas of slavery and Indian Relocation. Ultimately it was Van Buren who would oversea the Trail of Tears fiasco which continues to darken American History to this day.

Van Buren died in 1862 at his traditional family residence in Kinderhook, NY. Polls consistently rank Van Buren's Presidency as consistently well-below average to poor usually placing him around number thirty along with President Chester A. Arthur who, like Van Buren, is often remembered as much for the homliness of his physical appearance as much as for the failings of his administration.

William Henry Harrison 1841, Whig from Ohio
Harrison rode to victory in the 1840 Presidential Election on a populist "log cabin and hard cider" platform portraying himself as a poor man of the people and depicting his opponent as the candidate of the silk-stocking-set. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Harrison and his running mate John Tyler were well-established members of the Virgina Gentry and descended from the Landed and Armored classes dating at least back to Magna Carta.

The success of this ruse was often chalked up to the lack of accurate information available to voters in the period until the early twentieth century a graduate of Harvard and Yale, the son of a former President and member of the most elite aristocratic social circles in the world managed to portray himself as a Texas rancher, unable to pronounce the word "nuclear" by clearing brush for a few photo ops smack dab in the middle of the age of the internet. Not important, Harrison came to office with high expectations that the newly formed Whig Party would serve as a more liberal and credible alternative to the widespread corruption and financial ruin which abounded in the wake of the Jacksonian era.

This new era of progress to be marked by: protective tariffs, expenditures on internal improvements and a harder-line on constraining the expansion of slavery was to be initiated by the longest Inaugural Address in American History which the tough old hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe insisted upon giving outdoors during a rainstorm in March catching Pneumonia and dieing only thirty days into his term as President. By far the shortest term of any US President.

Harrison's brief tenure as chief executive was occupied primarily by a barrage of office-seekers harassing the poor, sick, old man so that his pockets were known to bulge with petitions. There was every indication that Harrison had planned to undertake Civil Service Reform as a result of the cruelty and corruption he had witnessed. His last words were "these office seekers, will they ever cease?"

Because of the brevity of his term in office it is customary not to rank Harrison in Historian Polls however he did manage to outrank George W. Bush in a 2010 Poll of historians conducted by Siena College.

John Tyler 1841 - 1845, Whig from Virginia
Perhaps the most unpopular President in history owing to his choice to join the Confederate Congress at the end of his life it really cannot be said that Tyler did not accomplish anything during his single, unelected term. Tyler was a staunch conservative and states-rights advocate who had fallen out with the Democratic Party due to Andrew Jackson's handling of the Nullification Crisis in South Carolina. The Whigs had placed Tyler on the ticket to provide geographical and philosophical balance with the more Liberal Harrison but had never wanted him to President, after all he was more Jacksonian than Jackson in nearly every respect.

Once again some vague wording in the US Constitution came back to haunt the nation as many began referring to Tyler as "acting-President" inferring that only the duties of President and not the title had passed to Tyler upon the unexpected death of Harrison. For his part Tyler was indignant at such legal wrangling returning, unopened, all mail addressed to the acting-President. This set the stage for a massive feud within the Whig party as more liberal Whigs such as Henry Clay soon found themselves on the outside with the new President ensuring that the great Whig platform for responsible and responsive government would never see the light of day if Tyler had anything to do with it. Tyler vetoed nearly the entire platform once it has passed through congress, most alarmingly a banking reform act which would have reestablished the National Bank.

Tyler's entire cabinet apart from Secretary of State Daniel Webster (who was in the midst of negotiating the very important Webster-Ashburton Treaty assuring a permanent state of peace with Great Britain) resigned in protest.

On the positive side Tyler's administration was the scene of many successful measures in the area of foreign policy. In addition to the above stated Treaty with Great Britain, Tyler also oversaw America's first diplomatic success in the East signing the Treaty of Wanghia in addition to making necessary preparations for the annexation of Texas and Hawaii into the United States.

The Texas question was settled when Tyler shifted parties to support Democrat James K. Polk, who was in favor of annexing Texas, over his fellow Whig Henry Clay who was opposed. Polk won the 1844 election which was largely seen as a referendum on annexation. Though increasing the land mass of the United States' territory significantly, Texas was largely south of Missouri's southern Border making it slave territory under the Missouri Compromise causing even deeper divisions in the country on issues surrounding slavery and state's rights.

Tyler died in 1862 at the age of seventy-one shortly before he was to take his seat in the newly formed Congress of the Confederate States of America. Because of his support of the Confederacy his name is often associated with treason and Historian Polls almost always list him as one of the worst Presidents in history averaging out at about number thirty-six somewhere in-between Presidents George W. Bush and Tyler's own predecessor, William Henry Harrison who only served 28 days in the office.

Ninja Sex Party - The Sacred Chalice

2010-07-28T08:09:00.002-04:00

Ninja Sex Party - The Sacred ChaliceThis is the first of a four-part miniseries that will probably make your pants and/or face explode. Check out NinjaSexParty.com for more amazingly sexy goodness!!!

American History With Grandpa Simspon

2010-07-28T08:01:00.001-04:00

American History With Grandpa SimsponThe best thing since he invented sliced bread back in 1943.

Guatemalan Flight's Data-Recording Parrot Holds Clues To Crash

2010-07-27T16:38:00.002-04:00

Guatemalan Flight's Data-Recording Parrot Holds Clues To Crash
Guatemalan Flight's Data-Recording Parrot Holds Clues To Crash

SMBC Theater - Just Friendship

2010-07-26T03:19:00.003-04:00

From: www.smbc-theater.com

SMBC Theater - Just FriendshipLove is a battlefield ....

Casual Encounters

2010-07-23T18:48:00.002-04:00

At Home with Hal and Christinith: Casual EncountersChristinith needs sexual satisfaction but she wont let her husband Hal touch her ...

Condescending Apple Press Conference

2010-07-23T18:25:00.002-04:00

Condescending Apple Press ConferenceSteve Jobs finally says what he really means.

Double Rainbow Guy in Everyday Life

2010-07-20T17:37:00.002-04:00

Double Rainbow Guy in Everyday LifeHe's still not sure what this means.

How a Bill DOESN'T Become Law

2010-07-20T16:37:00.003-04:00

Just a Bill with Cedric Yarbrough & Gary Anthony WilliamsThe Schoolhouse Rock bill is back to help convince congress to pass some real bills with an extra incentive to make sure BP never spills oil in the ocean again.

Jennifer Aniston Adopts 33-Year-Old Boyfriend From Africa

2010-07-20T16:16:00.001-04:00

Jennifer Aniston Adopts 33-Year-Old Boyfriend From Africa
Jennifer Aniston Adopts 33-Year-Old Boyfriend From Africa

SMBC Theater - Superhero Tryouts

2010-07-19T01:10:00.003-04:00

From: www.SMBC-Theater.com

Superhero TryoutsWho will be selected to join the Superpals?!

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

2010-07-17T19:50:00.044-04:00

At first glance it would appear very easy to obtain information about Mormonism with the Google search results numbering in the millions. A second look, however, and one is generally confounded by the irreconcilableness of various claims being made about LDS history and doctrine.

The reason for this is a combination of the fact that Latter-day Saints themselves are notoriously evasive in answering questions which may call into question the legitimacy of their Church and, while there is dirt on the church to be found aplenty elsewhere, other sources tend to be dominated by Evangelical Christian groups and disgruntled former members such as the Utah Lighthouse Ministry whose sinister spin and provocativeness makes it difficult to provide the kind of circumspect view of the LDS for which this particular blog is known ... Yes, that was a joke ... It's okay to laugh.

Furthermore the actual source documents containing the "dirt" tend to be sandwiched between hundreds or even thousands of pages of dryly worded proclamations on the church's administration such as the establishment of new ministries. However, after challenging game of mental chess, balancing the overly rosy picture of the church provided by the LDS themselves and the more provocative picture painted by their more vocal opponents I think that I have a fairly good grasp upon where the LDS came from and what they believe which I would like to share with you here. To begin with I would like to take a critical look at the core beliefs of the church (those things that individual church members will tell you that they believe), then I would like to look at some of the so-called "Deep-Doctrine" which are not "required beliefs" with special attention paid to those beliefs which tend to raise the ire of Fundamentalist Protestants and, finally, I would like to take a look at three incidents from the earliest history of the church which should convince even the most hard-headed of adherents that the foundations of that church are, in fact, completely fraudulent.

CORE BELEIFS

There are those who will tell you not to do this, however, a good place to start when investigating the church might be to ask a church member. Upon doing so you will given what is known as a "Testimony" that:

1. The Church is True

This statement immediately strikes this poster as odd. It seems to predict the skeptic's imediate objective that the doctrines of Mormonism "weren't made up." But it's just a bit more intricate than that. Like many of the religions of the World, Mormonism, considers itself the one true church on the face of the Earth to the exclusion of all others. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints claims to date to a vision beheld in 1820 by their founder Joseph Smith who, while praying to know what church to join, claims to have been visited by God the Father and his son Jesus Christ who explained to him that all the Christian denominations of his time were in apostasy. Mormon's are very careful not to be rude to other churches, however, they generally do have to testify that their's is the only true church and that all other faiths are defective.

2. Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God

The term Prophet in its' Jeudo-Christian context generally refers to someone who has had direct communication with God, however, we have come to expect that someone known as a prophet be able to make predictions about the future. Like many prophets before him and since, Joseph Smith prophesied that we were "living in the last days of the Earth" and that the return of the Savior was eminent. Sadly, Joseph Smith produce a wide array of predictions which did not come to pass causing many Christians to declare him a "wolf in sheep's clothing" as warned against by Jesus in Matthew 7:15

3. The The Book of Mormon Is true

The Book Of Mormon: Another Testimony of Jesus Christ is the central set of scriptures of the LDS. It contains a sequel to the Stories of the Old and New Testaments whereby an Israelite Tribe who would become known as the Nephites settles in the Americas, are visited by Jesus following his resurrection and then are completely destroyed in epic battles, leaving the BoM behind as a testimony to their heretofore unknown civilization.

Needless to say, the volume is completely fictional. However, the story goes that Joseph Smith was given the plates to translate by an angel named Moroni who was also a prominent character in the last few chapters of the book. Generally Christian doctrine does not allow for humans to become angels, but, there you go.

Brian Dunning has a very good breakdown of why the content of the BoM do not adhere to what we know of Pre-Columbian American History on his Podcast Program: Skeptoid Episode #43.

Mormons are fond of pointing out (correctly I have no doubt) that most of their most vocal critics have never read the Book of Mormon. For myself, having once attempted this horrific task, it seems likely that BoM critics are mostly working off the discoveries of others rather than rediscovering the book's flaws for themselves. There's a reason this is so, the Book is: dry, dull, awkwardly worded and exceedingly long.

Someone, however, who did read the book was Mormon Historian B. H. Roberts, a member of the elite Quorum of the Seventy and he found a number of problems with the historicity of the volume which were published postumously as Studies of the Book of Mormon. You may be surprised to learn that there are apparently some members of the church who have expressed reservations in regards to the historicity of the the BoM's tale that Native American Indians were: of Israeli extraction, wrote in Egyptian Hieroglyphs and practiced Christianity, but there are.

In recent decades Mormon scholars had shifted to the Limited Geography Model shrinking the civilization described in the BoM which, while somewhat minimizing the problem of glaring anachronisms found in the Book: horses, elephants, cattle, sheep, wheat, barley, steel, wheeled vehicles, shipbuilding, sails, coins, et..al, still presents a problem in that the location where Joseph Smith is said to have found the plates from which he "translated" the BoM, Mt. Cumorah near Smith's hometown of Palmyra, New York plays a prominent role in the closing chapters of the Book. It seems likely that the story of the Gold Plates was inspired by the swashbuckling adventures of Capitan Kidd which largely took place on the island of Comoros with its' lovely capital Moroni.

Most damning of all, scholars have found entire pages of the BoM to have been plagiarized word for word from the 1611 King James version of the Bible with original translation errors completely in tact. The Book of Mormon also is believed to contain quotes from Shakespeare's Hamlet ... Did I mention that the Book of Mormon is completely Fraudulent? Oh what a tagled web we weave when first we practice to decieve.

4. The Gospels were restored to the Earth

The term "gospel," an Old English term meaning "good news," generally refers to the four biographical accounts of the life and ministry of Yeshua Ha-Nozri however, the Mormons have broadened the term to describe their, more than a little perplexing, "plan of salvation." This includes many things unique to the LDS such as:
Degrees of Glory whereby heaven is subdivided into three Kingdoms (Celestial, Terrestrial and Telestial) with the most faithful Mormons, of course, occupying the top kingdom.

Temple rituals such as: Baptisms for the Dead, Endowment and Celestial Marriage

The words of Wisdom and Law of Chastity prohibiting members in good standing of the Church of Latter-day Saints from using: coffee, tea, tabacco, alcohol, recreational drugs of any kind or engaging in any sexual act, including masturbation outside of wedlock.

The Pre-Existence where all human "intelligences" are born as spirit Children of God awaiting bodies to be born for them on Earth. Mormons also believe that when you die you are transmuted to a Spirit World. Those who have received baptism as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are transmuted to a spirit paradise while those who have not are confined to a spirit prison awaiting Baptism for the Dead to be performed on their behalf in the LDS Temple

5. There is a living Prophet today

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is overseen by a governing body known as General Authorities. At its head is the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and at the head of that quarum is the First Presidency whose leader, currently Thomas S. Monson, is considered to be a Prophet, seer, and revelator. The "revolations" of these "Prophets" are recorded in a third sacred text know as Doctrine and Covenants. While the first seventy years of the Church's history produced many hundreds of pages of so-called prophecy, pronouncements worthy of cannonization have been rare over the past 120 years with only two significant additions to the text: the 1890 Manifesto disavowed the continuing practice of polygamy and a 1978 proclamation reversing the ban on Mormons of African decent holding the priesthood.

6. Jesus is the Christ

Though it could be argued that some of the "deep doctrines" we shall see in the next section hardly qualify the Mormons as Christians, that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah (Christ) to the Jews and God in flesh on Earth is, in fact, central to LDS Doctrine and devotion. Mormons make a point of closing all of their prayers "in the name of Jesus Christ" and the name of Jesus is twice the size of the other letters in their logo. Nevertheless, Mormons do not accept the Trinity as articulated in the Nicene Creed which most Christian sects accept as a minimum standard of orthodoxy. Instead the Mormons believe that: God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are separate beings and that God and Jesus each have a "Body of Flesh and Bone as tangible as Man's". These facts combined with Jesus' continued adventures in the Americas depicted in the Book of Mormon have opened the LDS to charges of "worshiping a false Jesus." There are a wide array of reasons to doubt some of the stories attributed to the traditional Jesus in the New Testament as well, however, there are also places and people in those stories which are known for a fact to have existed. I, for one, find little reason to doubt that Jesus of Nazareth existed as a historical figure in the Middle East but do not believe for one second that he visited the Americas.

DEEP DOCTRINES

Mormon's Theology cartoonThe above cartoon was taken from a 1982 film called The God Makers which was produced by a vitriolic anti-Mormon Ministry who often discredits themselves, in my opinion, by obsessing on things demonic and satanic. A rebutle to some of the claims made in the film can be found at www.FairLDS.org and is a worthwhile read. It does appear that certain doctrines such as that God had sex with Mary were once taught had been abandoned long before the film was produced and that other doctrines such as that God lives on a planet orbiting the Star Kolob have been abandoned more recently. Nevertheless, examination of Mormon cosmology is an endlessly fascinating subject.

It should be noted that these are not required beliefs for members of the Church and it should not be assumed that persons calling themselves Mormons believe any of these particular doctrines. Also, from personal experience I have found that many converts to Mormonism are completely unaware that such doctrines exist in their church, indicating that this cosmological perspective may not be as central to the modern practice of Mormonism as many of their opponents would have us believe.

When I first encountered that cartoon I did not believe that the content of it was accurate. But then, cartoonist Steve Benson (a former LDS member and grandson of one-time LDS President Ezra Taft Benson) directed me to a widely issued pamphlet from the LDS First Presidency known as The Family: A Proclamation to the World.

The purpose of this pamphlet was to articulate the Church's opposition to Gay Marriage, however, in it they also present the core beliefs of the Church and the portions relevant to the "deep doctrines" unique to the LDS' cosmological perspective I have highlighted IN GREEN

We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children.

All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.

In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshiped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize his or her divine destiny as an heir of eternal life. The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally.

The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God's commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.

We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God's eternal plan.

Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. "Children are an heritage of the Lord" (Psalms 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.

The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.

We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.

This was in 1995, and while the sexism inherent in statements such as "fathers are to preside over their families" probably stick out more than anything about God living on a planet orbiting Kolob there is a subtle reminder in the GREEN that Mormons believe in multiple gods and believe that they can become gods themselves.

Or as the Wikipedia article states so articulately:

In Mormonism, the concept of divinity centers around an idea of "exaltation" and "eternal progression": the idea that mortals themselves may become gods and goddesses in the afterlife, be rulers of their own heavenly kingdoms, have spirit children, and increase in power and glory forever as a result of their cosmic posterity ...

Note also that the Proclamation refers to divinity in very specific terms ie "heavenly parents." It appears that Mormons do believe in the existence of a Heavenly Mother. Sadly, she appears to have been excluded from the Godhead in favor of her three male counterparts. Yes, apparently the glass ceiling continues to oppress women in the afterlife under LDS Dogma. Religions come and go but sexism appears to be eternal.

That LDS members have a "divine potential" meaning that they can become like God in the afterlife is tied to the LDS doctrine of Exaltation and eternal progression. Although many LDS will deny it, LDS leaders have taught that God was once a man living on another planet who died and was resurrected achieving his own godly status by following the LDS' Path of Salvation. This was first articulated in Joseph's Smith's The King Follett Sermon in which he stated:

God Himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make Himself visible,—I say, if you were to see Him today, you would see Him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another.

The question of how God could have created the Universe if he were already in it is usually ignored by Mormons but my guess is that the LDS probably accept some sort of Multiverse Theory.

As you can see there are a number of very good reasons for other Christian Sects to reject the LDS's claim to being a "Christian Church" and I'm not 100% convinced that their elaborate cosmology even qualifies them as a religion. It is strikingly similar to many conspiracy theories that hypothesize the Earth and its inhabitants having been created by aliens. However, I reiterate, my own interactions with Mormons, attempting to decipher their doctrines, causes me to question how central this cosmology is to individual Mormon's beliefs. Also, the Mormons I have had contact with struck me as being exceedingly scholarly in contrast with the rather crudely educated conspiracy theorists who have articulated similar beliefs in my presence causing me to question if they are capable of believing such things.

CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE THAT THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS IS FRAUDULENT

The Lost Book of Abraham As if the historical and linguistic problems with the Book of Mormon were not enough, three incidents in the early history of Church: The Book of Abraham, The Kinderhook Plates and the Greek Psalter Translation appear to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Joseph Smith's "translation" of the Book of Mormon from "Reformed Egyptian Hieroglyphs " was, in fact, an incidence of fraud.

The Book of Abraham Controversy is one of the most mind-blowing investigations of paranormal shams that I have ever undertaken. One of the better summaries I have seen on the subject appeared in American Atheist Magagzine January 1985 and Brian Dunning has also investigated this issue and provided a nice summary on his Podcast Program: Skeptoid Episode 168 - Decrypting the Mormon Book of Abraham.

The Book of Abraham was known to be fraudulent very shortly after its' publication in 1880 in the book of Sacred Scripture known as the Pearl of Great Price owing to Smith's inclusion of "facsimiles" of vignettes copied from ancient Egyptian Papyri which Smith claimed to have translated a book written by the Hebrew Patriarch Abraham while in Egypt.The first of these facsimiles is one of the most famous Egyptian vignettes from the Egyptian Book of the Dead depicting Osiris being raised from the dead by Anubis. But Smith's explanation was a bit different. Each figure in the vignette is numbered and Smith gave the following explanations (true explanations IN GREEN):

1. The Angel of the Lord - The soul reentering the body upon resurection
2. Abraham fastened upon an altar - Osiris being raised from the dead
3. The idolatrous priest of Elkenah attempting to offer up Abraham as a sacrifice - Anubis the God of Mummification
4. The altar for sacrifice by the idolatrous priests, standing before the gods of Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah, Korash, and Pharaoh - The Lion Couch, a traditional resting place for Egyptian Kings and priests
5. The idolatrous god of Elkenah
6. The idolatrous god of Libnah
7. The idolatrous god of Mahmackrah
8. The idolatrous god of Korash
9. The idolatrous god of Pharaoh - Canopic jars containing the internal organs of the mummified corps bearing the likenesses of the
10. Abraham in Egypt
11. Designed to represent the pillars of heaven, as understood by the Egyptians
12. Raukeeyang, signifying expanse, or the firmament over our heads; but in this case, in relation to this subject, the Egyptians meant it to signify Shaumau, to be high, or the heavens, answering to the Hebrew word, Shaumahyeem

These discrepencies alone should have discredited the Book's origins in the 1880s, however, the Book of Abraham remains canonized as Scripture by the LDS Church today. The other two facsimiles are equally mundane pagan relics to which Smith gave even more elaborately inaccurate descriptions, as well, but the above abomination should convince even the most hard-headed of True-Blue-Mormons that Joseph Smith had no knowledge of Egyptian: language, culture, region or history whatsoever.

To compound the matter in 1966 Jerald and Sandra Tanner, operators of the Utah Lighthouse Ministry, managed to sneak out microfilm of what have come to be known as the Kirtland Egyptian Papers containing what what was labeled an Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar Dictionary parts of which were in Joseph Smith's handwriting and containing his signature. Needless to say, Smith's interpretation of the hieroglyphics which he had borrowed from the Papyri were inaccurate. Smith and his cohorts, apparently did not even understand that Egyptian Hieroglyphics constitute a phonetic alphabet as entire paragraphs from the Book of Abraham are attributed to single phonetic characters.

Later that year the Joseph Smith Papyri were discovered in the archives of the Metropolitan Museum and translated by experts in Egyptian. As expected, the translators found that, rather than a story of Abraham in Egypt dating from the Nineteenth Century BCE, the Papyri were a copy of the Books of Breathing dating to about 70 of the Common Era and were routinely buried with Egyptian Mummies. This book constituted a prayer to allow the deceased to be able to: breath, hear and see again in the Underworld and were entirely pagan in nature unrelated to Jeudeo-Christian theology of any kind. An already well-sealed coffin had received its' final nail.

Of course, the Book of Abraham controversy is not the only incident that we know of where Joseph Smith was presented with religious materials that he misclassified. In 1842 an English clergyman by the name of Henry Caswall presented Smith a Book of Psalms written in the Greek Language known as a Psalter and Smith declared it to be a "Dictionary of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics." Then, in in 1843, a couple of hoaxers concocted some bronze plates on which they had copied some Chinese characters that they had found on a tea-box. Smith declared these plates to "contain the history of the person with whom they were found and he was a descendant of Ham through the loins of Pharaoh king of Egypt."

In closing, while the events listed here and elsewhere with regard to the beliefs and history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to not directly impugn the credibility of older religions such as Christianity, there are prominent skeptics such as Tom Flynn who have stated that the blatant fraud which characterizes the history of that Church does show that wild stories such as a man walking on water or being resurrected from the dead can indeed be widely believed and that religions can be constructed from whole cloth.

I'm not so sure I agree with Flynn fully on this point. Those who wish to go out and debunk Christianity will, undoubtedly, have a much more difficult time locating a "smoking gun" such as the Kirtland Egyptian Papers and Joseph Smith himself appears to have had a long history of engaging in fraudulent enterprises having been convicted of "Glasslooking" in 1826 and of bank fraud in 1837. Documents from the First Century of the Common Era specifically implicating Christian Church founders in that level of fraud almost certainly do not exist.

Yet, were you to ask a Mormon why they believe these outrageous things in spite of the mountainous evidence that they could not possibly be true they will cite the "testimony of the Holy Ghost" as evidenced by a "burning in the bosom" rather than junk science or pseudohistory to support their claims. So, while I cannot discount completely that the Mormon story discredits the religious enterprise en-macro, a more important lesson to learn from all these hours of research might be that immediate emotional responses are simply not an effective means by which to evaluate truth claims.

Giant Vortex Cannon

2010-07-16T08:57:00.002-04:00

Giant Vortex CannonBritish TV's "Bang! Goes the Theory" proves that the big bad wolf could have gotten those pigs, if only he had an advanced grasp of physics and combustion.

Boys Will Be Girls: Night Out

2010-07-16T08:27:00.005-04:00

Also See: "Besties with Testies ...." (Part I of this series)
Hattip: www.BuzzFeed.com

Harvard Sailing Team - Boys Will Be Girls: Night OutAnd the battle of the sexes continues .... If you are offended by the stereotyping of of one or the other gender as snotty-upper-class-twits, think of it as being directed at snotty-upper-class-twits. If you are offended by the stereotyping of snotty-upper-class-twits think of it as being directed at one or the other gender.

Girl Raised From Birth By Wolf Blitzer Taken Into Protective Custody

2010-07-15T21:42:00.001-04:00

Girl Raised From Birth By Wolf Blitzer Taken Into Protective Custody
Girl Raised From Birth By Wolf Blitzer Taken Into Protective Custody

Idiots

2010-07-15T12:23:00.002-04:00

Idiots with Zoe Saldana & Kate BosworthTwo lovely young ladies walk into a bar to order a few drinks when they reveal just how mature they really are.

NICE DECK!

2010-07-15T09:41:00.002-04:00

From: www.JoshRimer.com

Sit on my big deck!Harry visits his neighbour Hank to see why the rest of the neighborhood can't stop talking about the size of his ...

Straight Bashers [Updated with Part iv]

2010-07-14T23:00:00.000-04:00

An investigative six-part report on 'straight bashing', the devastating new crime wave that is sweeping the nation.

Straight Bashers Part 1
Straight Bashers Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Mind-Exploding Assumption

2010-07-14T22:37:00.003-04:00

Mind-Exploding AssumptionStupid brain. Be more evolved!

The storming of The Bastille July 14. 1789

2010-07-14T18:48:00.004-04:00

The storming of The Bastille July 14. 1789 -- 22 min 56 sec
www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4DB7E887CFA61390The storming, and subsequent take over of the Bastille, ushered the beginning of the French Revolution. No longer were the angry peasants defying local lords, but they were now striking at the symbolic heart of the monarchy. The Bastille, a hated emblem of control and domination, became the war cry for hundreds of thousands of scorned and maltreated revolutionaries.