I haven’t really expressed any sort of political view in this paper yet, so you probably should know that I feel much more comfortable with a president that has demonstrable skills in governing, combined with experience at the ways of our particular style of government, rather than a showman.
I was born during the Eisenhower administration. Ike was a beloved WW2, not particularly interested in being president, but the country asked for him, both parties, if I remember my history correctly, and he became the Republican president for most of the 1950’s. Adlai Stevenson, his opponent in both elections, came from a political family, graduated from Princeton, became a lawyer, served in the FDR administration, and was elected governor of Illinois. This from Wikipedia: Journalist David Halberstam later wrote that “Stevenson was an elegant campaigner who raised the political discourse” and that in 1952 “Stevenson reinvigorated the Democratic Party and made it seem an open and exciting place for a generation of younger Americans who might otherwise never have thought of working for a political candidate.“
It would have been interesting to have him as President, but Eisenhower was just fine, bringing the country toward its slow progression to the 60’s, and it gave Nixon eight years of White House experience, as Vice President.
JFK also came from a political family, became a Harvard graduate, war hero and served two terms in the Senate. I was still too young to know much about this stuff, but I remember my teachers and my mother crying one afternoon in November, 1963.
Lyndon Johnson, who took over, was the consummate politician, learning his craft in the Senate, and used the nation’s sorrow to pass many of JFK’s proposals, including the Civil Rights Act, something that might not have occurred without the assassination.
In 1968, both Nixon and Humphrey possessed excellent resumes. The election was basically about center right vs. center left, and either candidate would have probably taken the country on the same course, although perhaps we’d have been out of Vietnam sooner with Humphrey.
Nixon’s personal demons ended up being his downfall, and another experienced politician, and nice guy, Gerald Ford, took over.
However, the country was not going to vote Republican after Watergate, and elected Jimmy Carter, a businessman, a Navy officer and graduate of the Naval Academy, and Governor of Georgia. Both Carter and Ford had excellent resumes. Both ended up leading the US extremely competently, at least in my opinion. Both hired excellent cabinets. It wasn’t their fault that America went through a sort of decline in the 1970’s. That was because events caught up to us. The defeated countries of World War 2 revived, became friendly and successful economic competitors, and we lost the post war edge that victory gave us.
Taking advantage of that malaise was someone from the world of entertainment, Republican Ronald Reagan. While a beloved president who used media to charm Americans, he surrounded himself with a Rush Limbaugh styled cabinet that, according again from Wikipedia “implemented Reaganomics, which involved economic deregulation and cuts in both taxes and government spending during a period of stagflation. He escalated an arms race and transitioned Cold War policy away from détente with the Soviet Union. Additionally, he, fought public-sector labor unions, expanded the war on drugs, and was slow to respond to the AIDS epidemic. Foreign affairs dominated Reagan’s second term, including the 1986 bombing of Libya, the Iran–Iraq War, the secret and illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund the Contras, and a more conciliatory approach in talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that culminated in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.”
Except for the nuclear treaty which lasted until Donald Trump pulled us out, I felt that these were all things that I and many others didn’t like, and possibly helped begin today’s toxic division of the country, something that worsened with Rush Limbaugh fueled attempts to kill the Clinton administration with impeachment based on personal attacks on both the president and his wife.
One thing that Reagan did during his administration was to deliver a taped weekly address to every radio station. Americans heard him speak personally to them on a regular basis.
While doing a lot to kill the New Deal (the Republican Agenda since the Depression), Reagan was a big fan of FDR, and emulated the famous fireside chats, which FDR used to reassure Americans that things were getting better, and we would get through the Depression and the war.
I’m highly afraid of another Trump administration for a whole host of reasons. I happen to think that Joe Biden, a lawyer and career politician with many years of experience in the Senate, and eight years as Vice President, has done a tremendous job bringing the country back from four years of Trump.
What I see as a failure is his connection with Americans. We need to understand the things that the country faces. He needs to patiently explain why he is doing the things he does.
Let us hear from you, Joe, maybe even from in front of the fireplace.
