Obama's legacy: Historians take a first crack; so do I

President Barack Obama —
how much is he actually like

Supreme Court Associate Justice
Clarence Thomas

If Charles Pierce considers George W. Bush our "C+ Augustus," where does that leave Barack Obama, who is arguably a better president, but primarily due to that Bush phrase "the soft bigotry of low expectations"? Since Obama actually — deluded not-too-liberal of liberals and "projections" aside — "delivered" even less on what he actually promised or semi-promised than did C+, too, in terms of any "base" of support, just how should we rank Dear Leader?

Well, at New York Magazine, a coterie of professional historians, ranging from from quasi-reactionary to left-liberal, give it their shot. (Clickable links lead to full reviews of DL by each historian.)

A fair amount of more liberal to left-liberal ones appeared to have, like me, "seen through" Obama at least by 2010, if not during his 2008 campaign. As for that group, I have no idea how many of them still voted for him anyway, rather than voting Green or Socialist or whatever.

Anyway, here's a roundup of the few best insights from left of center:

"His contributions were sometimes remarkable, but Obama’s primary legacy is his destruction of political idealism for the foreseeable future. He proved an impressive steward of the traditions of his party since the 1970s. Where Obama differed was his brief but unforgettable achievement of a surprisingly large consensus around a belief — or delusion — that Americans rarely entertain. Put simply, it was that American politics could and must fundamentally change. The energies he conjured will not reappear soon and are less likely to do so because he summoned them for so ordinary and predictable a set of policies." – Samuel Moyn

Those of us semi-idealists who "saw through him" before the 2008 general election haven't had our semi-idealism destroyed, or ditto on full idealists like me, because we never invested it in him in the first place.

Other than that, Moyn is totally right on Obama being a "worthy" steward of neoliberalism. As for Obama's "consensus"? Maybe Obama never intended that fundamental change. Either that, or a point I've hammered into the dust is true here, too — Dear Leader thought the mellifluous dulcet tones of his voice (sarcasm alert) would work fundamental change all along.

What about Obamacare? This is not a bad observation:

“It might very well be insurance exchanges, rather than the expansion of coverage, that stands as the most significant aspect of the Affordable Care Act. That is especially the case if the exchanges work and therefore lay the foundations for privatizing or ‘“marketizing” Medicare and Medicaid. As much as some called him a socialist, he might well be remembered as someone who de-socialized public health care.” – Alexander Gourevitch

Gourevich? I'm not sure if he means that in a good or a bad sense. It could be in a bad sense, as he is a left-liberal type. If so, I'd totally agree. It's hard to tell from his whole set of responses, but, since he is some sort of left-liberal, I'm going to take it he means it in a bad sense.

I certainly look at O-care that way myself. Sometimes, the good is the enemy of the best, and I fear that is very much the case here — he wrecked political capital, per Moyn, for a non-fundamental change which he chose as his target all along.

Next, let's look more directly at the myth of The Great Communicator 2.0:

“Talk to us — tell us what he is aiming at, what our challenges are, especially abroad. He may be our mutest president.” – Mark Lilla

Indeed, whether deliberately Sphinx-like, or simply unable to move much beyond TelePrompTer 101 on a regular basis, the allegedly divine powers of Obama here were often not displayed.

That said, regular readers won't be surprised by my allegedly. Obama as Great Communicator 2.0 was a flop, a lie, and a social construct all three. As for political oratory, he's never been close to Reagan.

His legacy? One of the historians said that he currently puts Obama at the top edge of the bottom one-third of presidents, but thinks he will rise in the future, and into the bottom slice of the top one-third of presidents. See my take below the fold.

So how much was Seward Lincoln's eminence grise?

Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man by Walter Stahr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Excellent read, especially in light of the new Lincoln movie

I had never read a full bio of Seward before, and this was great.

First, looking near the end of his life, I did not know he was such a conservative on Reconstruction. Indeed, while not a racist like Andrew Johnson, he fully supported the generally conservative nature of his approach. He appears not to care much for the fate of post-war Southern blacks, and also, ironically at least, fretted about too much federal intervention in states' rights. It made me wonder if he would have tried to influence Lincoln that way, had Lincoln lived.

Oh, and other things that kind of connect to the Lincoln movie?

Apparently, a fair amount of bribery was used to get the treaty of purchasing Alaska approved by the Senate; shades of 13th Amendment passage. (And, speaking of, which the movie doesn't tell us, Kentucky's Rep. Yeaman? Was named minister to Denmark for his vote swap; that's a pretty big payoff.)

Anyway, beyond that, it's stuff like this, and other stuff by Seward's "Karl Rove," Thurlow Weed, that make this a very good read.

View all my reviews

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Meanwhile, related to my posts about the Lincoln movie, some of its issues with historical nuance and depth, and Lincoln's claw-like attachment to colonization, makes one further wonder just how much different Lincoln would have been from Andrew Johnson on Reconstruction. Maybe he, like Seward, would have found the Freedman's Bureau too much government meddling. Would have rejected Reconstruction military districts.

I don't know. We do know that he pocket-vetoed the Wade-Davis bill, which called for stringent Reconstruction.

A brief overview of modern presidential lying

As the 2012 presidential campaign continues to deterioriate, I got to thinking about recent presidential lying and lying styles. Here's a few thoughts:

It’s arguable that the history of modern presidential lying begins with Jack Kennedy.

(For the purposes of this blog post, I’m ignoring Eisenhower’s “reasons of state” lies to Khrushchev about who ordered the fateful U2 flight of Francis Gary Powers.)

Kennedy lied for reasons of politics about his health, above all.

LBJ’s staff, during the Democratic race, had some inkling of his health problems, though it’s not clear they knew he had Addison’s disease.

Now, his affairs? That was more a conspiracy of silence by the few in the media (and the government, like J. Edgar Hoover, or pre-Veep nomination LBJ) who had any idea of how bad they were. Here, it’s more hypothetical, but the fact that he ditched the nuclear command codes “football” on at least one occasion assures me he would have lied if necessary, if confronted.

Two of his affairs were of particular concern: Ellen Rometsch and Judith Exner.

Rometsch was allegedly an East German spy; Jack left himself exposed, pun intended, to blackmail. Exner, of course, was a Mafia moll; while I don’t believe conspiracy theories about his assassination, he nonetheless made himself more of a possible Mob target because of this, or the Mob in combination with right-wing Cuban exiles. Short of assassination conspiracies, he was open to blackmail on this affair, too. And, such blackmail, in both cases, likely would involve forcing the president into certain executive actions, not seeking money.

Addison’s? The public had a right to know that it was voting for a man who might be incapacitated by the end of his (first) term. Not necessarily permanently incapacitated, but on an irregular basis, and before the passage of the 25th Amendment.

LBJ? Lied for his own version of reasons of state, which carried much less water than Ike’s.

I have no idea if Jack Kennedy would have kept troop levels steady in a second term, increased them, or tried to pull out, but I highly doubt the third option. I don’t know if he would have exploited the Gulf of Tonkin incident like Johnson, but it’s possible.

That said, we know that Johnson did. And, as the head of the rotting fish, he let pass and signed off on multitudinous lies about Vietnam by people in his charge.

David Halberstam notes he personified the war as a mano-a-mano contest with Ho Chi Minh. So the lies were on the line of macho brags. That makes it all the worse.

Richard Nixon? Lied from paranoia, couple with the brief that he deserved the same level of lying as his predecessors. (Sidebar: It’s too bad LBJ decided to let Nam chase him out of seeking renomination — the paranoia squared of him and Nixon would have been a Greek tragedy run through the filter of Marxian farce.

There’s no need to list further all his lies, but we should note they went far beyond Watergate, including his manifold campaign finance lies.

Jerry Ford? An honest, partisan (for that day) hack as House Minority Leader. That’s why Nixon nominated him as Veep, along with being almost as cynical about Ford’s brains as was LBJ. Nixon, from what I’ve read, honestly hoped that Ford as Veep would block impeachment moves.

Well, Ford started as a relatively guileless president. Did he believe that his pardon of Nixon would start a great national healing, or was he lying about that? The “no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” after the presidential debate, was stubbornness, not a lie.

Jimmy Carter? He lied, like he lusted, in his heart. In public, he wasn’t really a liar, as much as he was a literalistic truth-teller while shaving corners. Jesuitical, to use an old term.

Below the fold — more modernistic presidential liars and styles.

C-SPAN whiffs on presidential greatness

With George W. Bush leaving office, C-SPAN takes a look, via professional historians, at ranking our nation’s top presidents. And fails badly.

I rank Bush at No. 40 of 42 myself (W.H. Harrison and Garfield served too short to be ranked). Only Buchanan and Andrew Johnson rank worse. A case could arguably be made for Franklin Pierce, as C-SPAN does, but I’d keep Harding above Bush.

Wilson is ranked WAY too high. The man who invented "Wilsonian idealism" needlessly dragged us into WWI. (Yes, German submarine warfare's shoot-on-sight blockade violated international law; SO, TOO, did Britain's blockade by extension). Wilson also officially segregated Washington. He barely deserves the top 20.

Grant? While not personally corrupt, his administration was one of the most corrupt in history. It oozed out of everywhere.

And, his record on Reconstruction is overrated. He has the luxury of following Andrew Johnson.

Truman in the Top 5? Yes, he had the principle to integrate the Army in 1948 while in a presidential campaign. But, trying to nationalize steel mills in peacetime? Hiring personal Missouri county judgeship days cronies for a variety of offices.

Kennedy at No. 6? Camelot mythology. The best thing Kennedy did for civil rights was getting assassinated.

‘The decency of George W. Bush’

Ladies and gentlemen, for your post-election humor – Michael Gerson!

No word yet if Gerson has been nominated to serve as Secretary of Legacy.

What is Schmuck Talk Express™ hiding in his unreleased med records?

Based on health secrets of past presidents, we have plenty of reasons to be concerned.

Every intelligent American my age or older knows about Jack Kennedy’s Addison’s disease. Twenty years before that, we had FDR suffering congestive heart failure at the climax of World War II.

Go back further. Woodrow Wilson suffering a stroke while campaigning for the League of Nations. Grover Cleveland’s jaw cancer.

Yes, we know about these things today. But people at the time didn’t.

And, in at least two presidencies, this had serious consequences.

Certainly, Wilson’s wife running his presidency was unconstitutional. And, Vice President Marshall might have actually come to a compromise with the Senate on the League of Nations, to boot. Of course, we had no 25th Amendment then.

Kennedy’s variety of drugs for Addison’s, plus other drugs he took for the effects of those drugs, arguably influenced him mentally as well as physically.

So, what is John McCain hiding?

Yes, he’s “supposed” to release his medical records Friday. But, he’s been stonewalling for months.

What is John McCain going to try to sanitize Friday?

On the coffee table -- 'Presidential Courage'

Michael Beschloss is more a “pop”-level historian than a heavyweight like Garry Wills. The bad side is less depth. The plus side is, especially on a straightforward topic like this, an easy read.

Beschloss looks at several instances of presidential courage, some controversial. They include efforts by both Washington and John Adams to steer clear of war against both England and France, Andrew Jackson’s battle with the Bank of the United States, Lincoln’s management of the Civil War, especially his pre-election storm clouds of 1864, TRs trust-busting, FDR’s efforts to prepare the country for World War II, Truman’s decision to recognize the state of Israel (the least familiar to me, by far, in its details), Kennedy’s often-halting efforts on civil rights, and Reagan’s dealings with the Soviets on nuclear arms.