4 ms·

Being viewed as a good president is often luck. Carter had very bad timing. Iranian hostages, inflation and other issues. Reagan on the other hand had lucky tim

Being viewed as a good president is often luck. Carter had very bad timing. Iranian hostages, inflation and other issues. Reagan on the other hand had lucky timing with the economy going up and Gorbachev coming in which sealed the end of the Soviet Union. Clinton was lucky riding the .COM bubble and which then blew up on Bush. Bush also had bad luck with 9/11 and the real estate bubble blowing up during his presidency and not two years later under Obama. Trump was lucky that the upturn from 2008 on kept going during his 4 years. Seems Biden has bad luck that the bubble created by easy money seems to finally cause negative consequences.

kzrdude 5y ago
Reagan is viewed as good while the Iran Contra affair was entirely illegal and immoral. There certainly is no fairness in these common reputations.
- philjohn 5y ago
  See also the utterly disgraceful handling of HIV/AIDS under his watch, throwing long standing gay friends of Nancy and himself under the bus to woo the evangelical vote.
tasty_freeze 5y ago
> Bush also had bad luck with 9/11 Certainly 9/11 was a national tragedy, but Bush's ratings skyrocketed after 9/11, so I would disagree that it was bad luck for Bush.
- Grazester 5y ago
  I often wonder if Bush would have been reelected if the U.S. was not attacked. There is nothing like "war" to bring a country together.
  - JshWright 5y ago
    The Iraq war still would have happened.
  - toyg 5y ago
    It is almost a given that he wouldn't have. He had squeezed through on the technicalities of the electoral college (not unlike Trump), significantly losing the popular vote (also considering that the hard-left Nader had his best result ever, attracting 3m votes and forever discrediting the wisdom of voting for a third-party candidate). GWB's ratings pre-9/11 were consistently low almost from the start. He set up a cabinet of old-school industrialist cronies, led by Dick Cheney, focused largely on exploiting energy markets and neutering antitrust laws, and substantially expanded the doctrine on executive privilege to block laws he didn't like or hide Cheney's shenanigans. Then 9/11 happened, he made the best of the photo ops, and then rode a wave of proto-fascism all the way to Katrina.
  - KerrAvon 5y ago
    He would not have. He was an unpopular buffoon, and a lot of the population viewed him as illegitimate due to the Supreme Court effectively appointing him over Gore. (In fairness, Gore did win the count once all of the counting was complete, so the population had a point here.) Before 9/11, there was a sitcom about how incompetent he was [1]. And no, there would not have been an Iraq war, because even if hypothetical President Gore hadn’t been able to ramp up security after the “bin laden determined to strike in the US”, he wouldn’t have immediately invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. The Bush administration pushed the lies that sold it to the world. And they knew it was bullshit. Gore definitely wouldn’t have done that bit. 1. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That's_My_Bush https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That's_My_Bush!
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      > a lot of the population viewed him as illegitimate due to the Supreme Court effectively appointing him over Gore. That may have been the perception, but that's not an accurate reflection of what the Supreme Court actually decided. They decided two things. First, the Supreme Court ruled (by a 7-2 vote) that Gore could not selectively recount. Gore was very carefully asking for recounts in precincts where he was likely to gain votes, and not asking for recounts in precincts where Bush would be likely to gain votes. The court ruled that he couldn't do that. He had to recount generally, not super-selectively. Second, the court ruled (by a 5-4 vote) that he couldn't keep recounting forever. Florida had to have an answer to give to the Electoral College; if they missed the deadline, that would disenfranchise the entire state of Florida. The court ruled that they had to stop recounting and produce an answer. Look at Trump's attempts to recount in Arizona and Wisconsin months to years after the vote was over. Think what would happen if those were official recounts, and we were having to wait on them. That's what the court voted against. > In fairness, Gore did win the count once all of the counting was complete When the unofficial recount done by the press was finished - months after the Electoral College vote - yes, Gore won... by two votes. Would that have been the result of an official recount? Hard to say, but I bet the margin of error of the press operation was higher than two votes.
      - tasty_freeze 5y ago

kzrdude 5y ago

Reagan is viewed as good while the Iran Contra affair was entirely illegal and immoral. There certainly is no fairness in these common reputations.

philjohn 5y ago
See also the utterly disgraceful handling of HIV/AIDS under his watch, throwing long standing gay friends of Nancy and himself under the bus to woo the evangelical vote.

tasty_freeze 5y ago

> Bush also had bad luck with 9/11 Certainly 9/11 was a national tragedy, but Bush's ratings skyrocketed after 9/11, so I would disagree that it was bad luck for Bush.

Grazester 5y ago
I often wonder if Bush would have been reelected if the U.S. was not attacked. There is nothing like "war" to bring a country together.
- JshWright 5y ago
  The Iraq war still would have happened.
- toyg 5y ago
  It is almost a given that he wouldn't have. He had squeezed through on the technicalities of the electoral college (not unlike Trump), significantly losing the popular vote (also considering that the hard-left Nader had his best result ever, attracting 3m votes and forever discrediting the wisdom of voting for a third-party candidate). GWB's ratings pre-9/11 were consistently low almost from the start. He set up a cabinet of old-school industrialist cronies, led by Dick Cheney, focused largely on exploiting energy markets and neutering antitrust laws, and substantially expanded the doctrine on executive privilege to block laws he didn't like or hide Cheney's shenanigans. Then 9/11 happened, he made the best of the photo ops, and then rode a wave of proto-fascism all the way to Katrina.
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  He would not have. He was an unpopular buffoon, and a lot of the population viewed him as illegitimate due to the Supreme Court effectively appointing him over Gore. (In fairness, Gore did win the count once all of the counting was complete, so the population had a point here.) Before 9/11, there was a sitcom about how incompetent he was [1]. And no, there would not have been an Iraq war, because even if hypothetical President Gore hadn’t been able to ramp up security after the “bin laden determined to strike in the US”, he wouldn’t have immediately invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. The Bush administration pushed the lies that sold it to the world. And they knew it was bullshit. Gore definitely wouldn’t have done that bit. 1. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That's_My_Bush https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That's_My_Bush!
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    > a lot of the population viewed him as illegitimate due to the Supreme Court effectively appointing him over Gore. That may have been the perception, but that's not an accurate reflection of what the Supreme Court actually decided. They decided two things. First, the Supreme Court ruled (by a 7-2 vote) that Gore could not selectively recount. Gore was very carefully asking for recounts in precincts where he was likely to gain votes, and not asking for recounts in precincts where Bush would be likely to gain votes. The court ruled that he couldn't do that. He had to recount generally, not super-selectively. Second, the court ruled (by a 5-4 vote) that he couldn't keep recounting forever. Florida had to have an answer to give to the Electoral College; if they missed the deadline, that would disenfranchise the entire state of Florida. The court ruled that they had to stop recounting and produce an answer. Look at Trump's attempts to recount in Arizona and Wisconsin months to years after the vote was over. Think what would happen if those were official recounts, and we were having to wait on them. That's what the court voted against. > In fairness, Gore did win the count once all of the counting was complete When the unofficial recount done by the press was finished - months after the Electoral College vote - yes, Gore won... by two votes. Would that have been the result of an official recount? Hard to say, but I bet the margin of error of the press operation was higher than two votes.
    - tasty_freeze 5y ago