If Facebook posts
and news media coverage are any indication, there seems to be some level of
interest in our newly elected president.
This caused me to reflect and ask the question, is this presidency
really that unusual? I can, after proper
reflection, unequivocally answer, yes and no.
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| Presidents In My Lifetime |
At this
writing on March 27, 2017, Mr. Trump has been president for a mere 66 days. In that time:
- The world did not end.
- A bill was passed that removed restrictions which would block guns sales to the mentally ill.
- Coalmines can now dump waste into our
waterways.
- Energy companies can now hide
royalties and government payments.
- Some Dodd-Frank reforms protecting
consumers were lifted.
- Two Executive Orders were issued restricting travel from some Muslim nations (under a court stay).
- The Affordable Care Act was overhauled
on paper but was pulled without a vote.
- The Keystone XL Pipeline will be
finalized using steel pipe from Russia.
- Construction of the US
Mexico border wall was ordered (waiting on the Mexican check to clear).
- An insurance rate cut was eliminated
for new homeowners.
- I repeat, the world did not end.
President
Trump is my 13th president. Yes,
lucky number 13. I’ve seen them come and
go since the times of Harry S. Truman.
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| Harry S. Truman with Lauren Bacall |
I don’t remember much about Harry except that
he was married to Bess, has a street named after him in Key West, and he was
known as “Give ‘em Hell, Harry.” He ended
WWII with the dropping of two atomic bombs.
I was seven when he left office.
He seemed like a nice guy, I think I would have liked him.
Next up was
Dwight D Eisenhower in 1953. He had been
a rare five star general and oversaw the D-Day invasion of Normandy. I had an “I Like Ike” sticker on my little
red wagon. It represents one of the best
campaign slogans in my memory. Ike is
credited with the implementation of the Interstate Highway System. The highways and bridges were made mostly out
of concrete and I guess it was assumed they would last forever because
presidents in the successive 50 years have largely ignored their upkeep.
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| Eisenhower Addresses the Troops Before D-Day |
JFK came to
the presidency in 1961, and is perhaps one of the best known of my
generation. He was charismatic, well
liked, and was assassinated in office.
When I was younger, people would question my use of Jack as a nickname for
John. I would use JFK in my explanation. Back then, I would get a slow nodding
acknowledgement that Jack is indeed a nickname for John. Now, looking across at millennials and
Gen-Xer’s I get blank stares and the shocking, “who’s Kennedy”?
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| John F Kennedy with Eleanor Roosevelt |
During his
short presidency, JFK was credited with forming the Peace Corps and avoiding nuclear
disaster during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
He was also blamed for the Bay of Pigs failure by many Cubans even
though this operation was initiated by the CIA during Eisenhower’s
administration. The Bay of Pigs invasion
plans were the worst kept secret in Miami.
A Cuban born student in my Spanish class pulled down a map in the front
of the room and told us of the upcoming invasion strategy to divide Havana from
the rest of the nation and to cut communication lines to begin a guerrilla war
for freedom.
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| Headline During Cuban Missile Crisis |
JFK also had
reported affairs with several women, some of whom met mysterious
ends. Among his affairs were Judith Exner a
mobster’s girlfriend, actress Marilyn Monroe, Mary Meyer the sister-in-law of a
Washington Post editor, Mimi Alford a White House intern, Jill Cowan a
secretary in the White House Press Office, Pricilla Wear a White House staff
member, and Ellen Rometsch an East German spy.
Top that Donald Trump.
During his
term in office, President Kennedy also managed to piss off Russian president Nikita
Khrushchev, Cuban president Fidel Castro, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and mafia
boss Sam Giancana. Is it any wonder that
conspiracy theorists had a field day with the Kennedy assassination? Lee Harvey Oswald was married to a Russian,
visited and had ties with Cuba, was known to the FBI, and was himself killed by
a mob figure.
While the
movie The Manchurian Candidate has meaning today for the Trump presidency,
there are certain parallels with JFK as well.
He was a war hero, had a powerful father, came from a prominent family,
and won a close election. At this point
President Trump takes the lead in the movie plot with suspected ties (not
proven) to a foreign enemy government. It
should also be noted that President Trump has no military experience.
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| 1962 Movie The Manchurian Candidate |
LBJ was the
Rodney Dangerfield of recent presidents. A great quote from Johnson, “If one morning
I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that
afternoon would read: "President Can't Swim."
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| Johnson Sworn in on Air Force One after Kennedy Assassination |
LBJ became
president after the assassination of his predecessor. Not that Johnson had anything to do with
that. There are theories out there to
the contrary however, since Oswald visited an area of Texas before going to
Dallas in which LBJ had ties. LBJ
launched his senatorial career in a tight primary election where 202 voters in
Jim Wells County came to the polls in alphabetical order and signed in using
the same handwriting. Johnson’s campaign
manager just happened to be John Connally.
Johnson won his senate party primary by just 87 votes, which won him the
title of, “Landslide Johnson.” You have
to love politics. John Connally went on
to become governor of Texas and was later wounded in the presidential limo
during the JFK assassination. Things
that make you scratch your head and go hmmmm.
Johnson did
make his mark in the White House in the areas of Civil Rights, Immigration
Reform, increased spending on education, and he championed the formation of
Medicare and Medicaid. That was all in
the plus column. On the other side, the
Vietnam war continued to escalate.
In 1969,
enter Richard Nixon, aka, “tricky dicky.”
While people will remember him for making the Watergate complex famous,
he did a few good things. He ended the
Vietnam War, eliminated the draft, and opened diplomatic relations with China. The ending of the Vietnam war happened on Nixon’s
watch but was the end result of negotiations started under Johnson. Nixon perhaps delayed the end of the war at
the end of Johnson’s administration by promising South Vietnamese president
Thieu a better deal when he took over as president. Johnson knew this because he had been
wiretapping (yes there is that nasty presidential word) the ambassador’s
office.
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| Can You Spot Nixon In This Photo? |
Nixon,
during the Yom Kippur War of 1973 (Egypt and Syria, supported by USSR, attacked
Israel), airlifted arms to support Israel.
Brezhnev threatened military action and Nixon took the US to
DEFCON3. If you are a movie buff and
remember your DEFCON levels, you know they are related to defecation and to how
deep the shit happens to be. DEFCON 3 is the Air Force is ready to mobilize in 15 minutes, DEFCON 2 we are ready to launch, and DEFCON 1 “I won’t be home for dinner.”
Brezhnev
backed down but, as a result of Israel’s victory, the Arab OPEC nations halted
oil sales to the US resulting in the 1973 oil crisis, aka, go wait in long lines
for gas and prepare to be disappointed.
I will however, be forever thankful to OPEC, because I was working for
General Motors at the time. Large car
sales plummeted and GM was forced into layoffs.
If I hadn’t been laid off at GM, I might now be the proud possessor of a worthless retirement fund.
Nixon’s vice
president Spiro Agnew resigned. He was then
convicted of bribery, tax evasion, and money laundering for activities during
his time as governor of Maryland. Gerald
Ford was picked as his replacement.
Watergate happened and Nixon had to go on TV to tell his fellow
Americans, “I’m not a crook.” Nixon was
forced out and Ford became president.
Are we beginning to remember that the presidency has not always been a
bastion of honest and thoughtful government?
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| Watergate Cast |
Gerald Ford
served as vice president and president without having been elected to either
office. As president, Ford held that
office for only 895 days, the shortest on record for someone who did not die in
office. He also lived longer than any
other president did, as he was 93 when he died. He famously fell down the gangway departing
from Air Force One while visiting Austria in 1975.
He was Commander in Chief during the Mayaguez
incident where a merchant ship was seized by Cambodians and our Marines were
dispatched to rescue the crew. They
landed on the wrong island and suffered heavy losses. We, the US, didn’t know that the Cambodians
had already released the captured sailors.
The raid was viewed as a US victory and Ford enjoyed an 11-point boost
in approval ratings. The 41 servicemen
killed were the last official casualties of the Vietnam war.
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| Gerald Ford Teaches Pele How to Really Play Football |
Ford
pardoned Nixon and gave amnesty to Vietmam draft-dodgers. He supported the Equal Rights Amendment. This made all women equal under the law. He survived two assassination attempts; both
shots were fired by women. He lost the presidential
election to Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter
is a distant descendant of Thomas Cornell, as is Bill Gates, Richard Nixon,
Amelia Earhart, and ax murder Lizzie Borden.
Top that family tree Donald Trump!
Carter is famous for bailing out Chrysler Corporation, giving away the Panama
Canal, managing the 444 days of the Iran hostage crisis, deregulation of the
airline industry, and deregulation of the beer industry (making microbrew and homebrew
OK). Speaking of beer, Jimmy's brother Billy went into the beer business promoting Billy Beer. By most standards it was awful stuff and Billy cited it for why he stopped drinking.
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| Billy Carter Promoting His Beer |
Billy Carter became the center of a Senate investigation, known as Billygate, for his ties to Libya. It seems Billy registered as a foreign agent of the Libyan government and was "loaned" $220,000 for his efforts. An article published by The New Republic stated Billy had been paid $2 million by Libya. It was later determined that this was "fake news" and the author had been paid $120,000 to disseminate disinformation in order to influence the upcoming presidential election. Sound familiar?
Carter supported the Mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. This support of Afghanistan forced Russia to
withdraw which also contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Carter was defeated in 1981 by Ronald Reagan
and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
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| Jimmy Carter |
The actor Reagan,
beat out the peanut farmer Carter, and served as president from 1981 to 1989 with
George HW Bush as his VP. Reagan, like
Trump, was formerly a Democrat and switched parties in 1962. He left office with a 68% approval rating
matching FDR and Bill Clinton. As an
actor, one of his memorable titles is Bedtime for Bonzo, where a psychology
professor (Reagan) tries to teach human morals to a chimpanzee. Boy, could we use his help today at the White
House.
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| Bedtime for Bonzo |
Reagan was
the oldest president elected, at age 69, until Trump came in at age 70. On the jobs front, Reagan fired 11,345
striking air traffic controllers. His
so-called Reaganomics plan reduced inflation, created jobs, but also almost
tripled the national debt.
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| Ronald Reagan and Nancy |
Reagan was
shot in 1981 by a nut-job named Hinckley who was trying to impress actress Jodie
Foster.
The
Iran-Contra affair also happened on Reagan’s watch. If you remember, we covertly sold arms to
Iran (which was against the law), the sale was brokered through Israel, and we used
the sale proceeds to fund the Contras fighting the government in Nicaragua (also
illegal). The cover story was that the
arms sale was to help free 7 hostages taken
by Hezbollah. Reagan claimed he didn’t know what his staff
was doing and appointed the Tower Commission to investigate. A great many documents were withheld from the
commission or destroyed and the final report found that it couldn’t be proven
that Reagan knew the full extent of the program. At one point however, Reagan took “full
responsibility” for the arms for hostages’ portion of the deal. Eventually, fourteen administration officials
were indicted which resulted in eleven convictions. All were eventually pardoned by our next
president, George H.W. Bush.
Bush the
First, inherited $220 billion of national debt from the Reagan administration
so his promise of, “Read my lips, No new taxes,” didn’t quite hold water. In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and we
got into the Gulf War. We won that war
and Bush’s ratings skyrocketed. Bush
promoted NAFTA eliminating tariffs on products traded between the US, Canada,
and Mexico. It should also be noted here
that President Bush is the first elected official to personally retaliate for
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor by puking on the Prime Minister of
Japan. This happened in 1992 during a
visit to Tokyo. It was blamed on the flu
or maybe some bad sushi. Bush lost his
re-election bid to Bill Clinton.
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| Bush Pukes on Japanese Prime Minister |
President
Clinton was the first of “my people” to be elected. By that, I mean he was the first Baby Boomer
to make it to the White House. He was
also the first to be impeached for his libidinous behavior even though he was a
piker compared to the dalliances of JFK or the current Mr. Trump. He was technically impeached for perjury by
the House of Representatives and later acquitted by the Senate. On a positive note, the affair boosted the
GNP as Monica Lewinsky used her new pop culture status to start up a handbag line.
Clinton is
the first president in this review to have not served in the military. Several used money and influence to avoid
personal risk but Clinton was the first to avoid any form of military service. Bush the Second (“W”), Obama, and Donald Trump
also share the distinction of not having served in the military. It should be noted that “W” did serve in the
Texas Air National Guard.
Clinton and his
VP Al Gore launched whitehouse.gov and moved other federal agencies to the
Internet. During Clinton’s presidency, the
1996 US campaign finance controversy involved an effort by the People’s
Republic of China’s efforts to influence US domestic policy. It almost sounds like something ripped out of
a 2017 headline.
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| Bill Clinton |
During a
1996 trip to the Philippines, several assassination attempts were thwarted by
the Secret Service. There was a massive
IED scheduled to blow up a bridge to be travelled by the presidential
motorcade, several hand grenades were discovered in a travel bag at the airport,
and another bomb was found at a US naval base where Clinton visits were
scheduled. The bridge bomb was traced to
a Saudi terrorist group called al-Qaeda then headed by Osama bin Laden. Until recently, these assassination attempts
were withheld from the public.
George W
Bush, aka Bush the Second, or just “W,” won a close election over Al Gore that
was ultimately decided by the Florida Supreme Court. He won Florida by 537 votes out of six
million cast. This was the “hanging chad”
fiasco. I had a front row seat to the recount
in Miami as my office was on a floor adjoining the recount area. Bush also had the dubious distinction of
being the Commander in Chief during the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
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| Looking For Chads (picture taken just feet from my office) |
After the
9/11 attack, Bush signed the executive order that implemented the President’s
Surveillance Program that allowed the NSA to, without even a FISA warrant,
surveille terrorists outside the US who contact people in the US. This executive order was later replaced by
PRISM that did require a FISA warrant.
Does any of this sound as if it’s had an impact in current events?
There was
only one assassination attempt involving president Bush and that took place in
Georgia. That’s Georgia the country not
Georgia the state north of Florida. The
attempt was in the form of a hand grenade tossed toward the podium where Bush
was speaking. The Armenian “tosser”
(that’s British slang for something) didn’t have much of an arm as the grenade
fell 65 feet from Bush and didn’t detonate.
Bush wanted to invade Armenia but couldn’t find it on a map. (Just kidding)
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| Bush Quote |
Two other
periods of the Bush presidency where the country could have ended up in deep
shit, so to speak, happened in 2002 and again in 2007. For brief periods during those years, Dick
Cheney became the acting president when Bush underwent colonoscopies. Both Bush and the country survived those near
catastrophes.
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| President Bush Gives Encouragement to American Team at Beijing Olympics |
When Bush
took office, the DOW was over 10,000, but when he left office, it was under
8,000. The US also endured the longest
recession since the end of WWII. The
Dot-com bubble coupled with the 9/11 attacks contributed to the recession. His term in office also saw the subprime
mortgage crisis, a housing market correction, and rising oil prices. Bush also pushed major tax cuts that didn’t
help matters. On a more positive note,
he signed the Medicare drug benefit program.
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| Invasion of Iraq |
The biggest
blunder of the Bush presidency however, was his 2003 invasion of Iraq to find
Weapons of Mass Destruction. The
eventual toppling of the Hussein regime created a power vacuum that was filled
by al-Qaeda and Isis. As presidential screw-ups
go, this one topped the charts. Speaking
of charts, Bush had the highest and lowest approval ratings for an American
president ever recorded. It was highest
after 9/11 and the lowest at the 2008 end of his presidency, partly because of
the 2008 financial crisis.
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| Putin and Bush Argue About Fashion |
This brings
us almost up to date with the election of Barack Obama in 2008. President Obama inherited the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan and an economy in the worst shape since the Great Depression of
the 1930’s. During his presidency, the Dow
Jones average went from around 8,000 to almost 20,000, the S&P 500 was up
181%, and NASDAQ tripled in value.
Corporate profits rose 166%, wages increased by 3.4%, 15 million people
got health insurance, but the national debt went up 116%. Also of note, on May 1, 2011, Osama bin Laden
was killed and buried at sea hours later.
His crowning
achievement was the ACA, which is commonly called Obamacare. It certainly has room for improvement and will
need to be changed but, as we have seen in recent weeks, it’s complicated.
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| Obama Family Portrait |
The
unemployment rate was 7.8% when Obama took office and quickly rose to 10%. At the end of his second term, unemployment
was around 4.7%. Could Obama have done
better? Of course, he could have done
more. In his defense, he did not have an
advantage in Congress for much of his tenure, but did have a majority early on. He inherited a mess, made some improvements,
and he will be more properly judged in the years that come. He also won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Now we are
up to date. It is far too early in the
Trump presidency to draw many comparisons but, as we have seen, every president
has had his problems. Not one was
without his flaws. We have seen that, as
philanderers go, president Trump doesn’t hold a candle to JFK. Give him time though, and we shall see what
the future brings. President Trump has a
lot of wiggle room if history is allowed some light. His predecessors in my lifetime:
- ·
dropped two atomic bombs
- ·
launched a failed covert
invasion of Cuba
- ·
brought us to the brink of mutually
assured destruction
- ·
been assassinated in office
- ·
taken us twice to DEFCON 3
- ·
were suspected of rigging
and/or interfering with elections
- ·
been forced to resign
- ·
launched an attack that
landed on the wrong island
- ·
survived numerous
assassination attacks
- ·
puked on a Japanese Prime Minister
- ·
“did not have sex with that
woman”
- ·
illegally sold arms to an enemy
- · initiated wars based on poor intelligence
This list is
far from complete. Let’s allow President
Trump to go about the business of being the leader of the free world, as we
shamelessly refer to the position. He
will surely provide us with ample material for a follow-up article.
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| Trump |
