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US Presidents: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Last modified: Fri Jun 12 10:23:35 PDT 2009
These are my notes from books and articles that I have read over
the years. There is no attempt to be complete; when I find out
something new, I add it to the list, but I don’t particularly go
looking for things to add. Also, I’ve attributed some things to
Presidents that are probably more Congressional than
Presidential based simply on the date. Finally, I cannot vouch
for the accuracy of my sources; I’ve tried to avoid adding
things that are not well documented, I cannot say that the
authors I’ve read don’t have biases in their selection of
material. Finally, some things (particularly CIA actions)
started in one administration and culminated in another, so
attribution is sometimes arbitrary.
Most of the items about the CIA come from William Blum’s
Killing Hope.
Contents
Barack H. Obama (2009-)
Good
- Ordering closure of Guantanamo (but follow-thru uncertain)
Bad
- Continuing President Bush’s military tribunals
- Public-Private Investment Program
Ugly
- Allowing 42 mountaintop removal mining permits in May 2009
- Continuation of indefinite detention without trial
- More troops for a lost-cause in Afghanistan
- UCAV attacks that kill innocent civilians
George W. Bush (2001-2009)
Good
-
Plans to abandon the requirement that the
U.S. military be able to simultaneously fight two
major wars.
- Sponsoring U.N. Security Council resolution 1397
- Signed campaign finance reform bill (hardly
adequate, but at least it was something)
- Forced Senate majority leader Lott to step down
Bad
-
Outsourcing government functions to private
companies (privateering)
-
Military tribunals
-
Environment
-
Killed some of Clinton’s end of term environmental
regulations (“let them drink arsenic”)
-
Drastic cuts in EPA budget
-
Proposed Energy Plan
-
Relaxed clean-air rules for old factories
-
Changes to forest management policy to benefit logging industry
-
Changes to Clean Water Act regulations that allow dumping of
solid waste (e.g. mine tailings) into streams
-
Attempts to exempt methyl bromide from the ozone treaty
-
Mercury policy
-
Failed to submit Persistent Organic Pollutant
treaty for ratification
-
Failed to ban lindane
-
Opposing REACH in Brussels
-
Secrecy
-
Executive Order 13233 torpedoing the Public Records Act
-
>750 signing statements to undermine acts of Congress
-
Prohibiting Medicare’s chief actuary, Richard Foster, from
informing Congress of his $500B to $600B estimate of the drug
benefit change (the CBO estimated only $395B)
-
Refusal to turn over energy task force records
-
Stonewalling Freedom of Information Act requests
-
Failure to cooperate with 9/11 commission (many many
items, with the general theme that politics and
particularly preventing politically embarrassing
disclosures was more important than the work of the
commission)
-
Politics
-
Exploiting the California energy crisis
-
A lie a day keeps the Democrats away
-
Firing Lawrence Lindsey for estimating Iraq war
cost at 2-4× White House estimates
($100-200 billion instead of $50-60 billion)
-
Domestic
-
Failed Hurricane Katrina emergency response
-
Budget cuts for other regulatory agencies (e.g. FDA, FEMA)
-
FEC rulings gutting campaign finance reform
-
FCC rulings allowing
further media consolidation
-
Failure to clean up the corporate mess (e.g. not following through
on SEC budget increase,
keeping Harvey Pitt too long)
-
Elevated Michael Powell to chairman of FCC
-
Estate tax reduction/elimination
-
Libby pardon
-
Foreign Policy
-
Opposition to the International Criminal Court
- The American Servicemen’s Protection Act of 2002
- Forced poor countries to sign mutual immunity pacts
-
Opposition to international treaty to control small arms
-
Opposition to international biological warfare treaty
-
Rejected the landmine treaty in August 2001 (Clinton also failed to sign)
-
Declared it would not be bound by the Vienna Convention on
the Law of Treaties (signed in 1969, but not ratified)
-
Opposition to a G8 Plan for Cleaner Energy in Genoa, July 2001
-
Withdrew from the UNESCO World Conference Against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,
September 2001
-
Opposition to WTO Ministerial Conference plan of November
2002 to help poor nations buy medicines to AIDS,
turberculosis, malaria, and other diseases
-
The “axis of evil” designation, combined with
the Iraq threats, pushing North Korea and Iran further
toward nuclear capability
-
Ignoring multiple warnings on Al Qaeda before 2001.09.11,
prioritizing Iraq over Al Qaeda before and after
-
Looking into Putin’s eyes and being hypnotized
-
Iraq
-
The Iraq war justification (e.g. Powell’s Security Council
testimony), lying about weapons of mass destruction
-
Allowing the looting of Iraq’s museums (but protecting the
oil ministry)
-
Deciding on an Iraq invasion in April 2001
-
Waging the war so incompetently that it will
cost the US $3 trillion (according to Stiglitz
and Bilmes)
-
Releasing identity of CIA agent to punish her husband
-
Afghanistan
-
Failing to abide by International law in attack on Al
Qaeda / Taliban (e.g. bypassing the U.N., ignoring the
Geneva convention)
-
Allowing opium production to resume
-
Failing to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed in the war
-
Allowing warlords to reemerge
-
Economy
-
Very weak job creation
-
Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation in 2007
switched from 100% bonds to 55% stocks and real
estate.
Ugly
-
Appointments
- Dick Cheney (Vice President)
- Karl Rove (Deputy Chief of Staff)
- John Ashcroft (Attorney General)
- Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense)
- Alberto Gonzalez (Attorney General)
- John Yoo (Office of Legal Counsel)
- Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense)
- Douglas Feith (Under Secretary of Defense)
- Samuel Alito (Supreme Court)
- Christopher Cox (Securities and Exchange Commission)
- Stephen Johnson (Environmental Protection Agency)
-
-
Politics
-
Occupying the White House despite losing the 2000 election
(the Florida vote was manipulated through Republican
fraudulent voter registration purges, counting illegal
ballots, and dirty post-election legal tactics)
-
Environment
-
Abandoned Kyoto treaty and campaign promise to limit CO2,
substituting only “research”
-
Denied California’s AB1493 waiver request.
-
Ignored Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA
order to enforce the Clean Air Act.
-
Failed to follow the law on mountain top removal mining
-
Foreign Policy
-
Illegal war on Iraq (which actually started in summer 2002
according to Lt. General T. Michael Moseley)
-
Withdrew from the ABM treaty to waste billions on missle defense
-
Letting the Darfur situation reach the level of genocide
before acting, refusing to use the word
genocide
to
describe the situation, and not acting vigorously to get a
UNSCR
mandating action
-
Fiscal Policy
-
Rekindled deficit spending through tax cuts and spending
increases (another “borrow and spend” Republican
who thinks the wealthy are insufficiently rich, so the
U.S. has to borrow to give them more)
-
Increased US debt from $5,727,776,738,304.64
(2001.01.19) to $10,628,881,485,510.23
(2009.01.16). This 86% increase does not include
the legacy of the financial collapse, or the
additional $2 trillion that the Iraq war will
cost in future years.
-
Human/civil Rights
-
Torture
-
Abu Ghraib
-
Indefinite detention of prisoners without due process in Guantanamo
-
Use of the enemy combatant designation to avoid due process
-
Curtailing rights of suspects and otherwise moving the
U.S. toward a police state (e.g. USA PATRIOT Act)
-
Plans to subvert U.S. democracy
by accelerating Free
Trade Area of the Americas
-
Poindexter’s Pentagon Total Information Awareness project (a
database of personal information about Americans)
-
Bypassing the
FISA
court with its illegal wiretap program
-
Aerial bombing and UCAV attacks that kill innocent civilians
-
Economy
-
Sub-prime mortgage / Collateralized Debt
Obligation crisis
-
Paulson plan to buy bad debt from Wall St (Cash
for Trash), instead of equity investments
William Jefferson Clinton (1993-2001)
Good
- Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
- Vetoed the worst of the Gingrich congress
- Further Myanmar sanctions
Bad
- GATT
- NAFTA
-
Killed
Layla Al Attar
with an errant cruise missile in 1993 attack on Baghdad in
retaliation for an
alleged
assassination plot against former President George Bush
- Failed to sign landmine treaty
- Giveaway of the digital TV spectrum
- Bombing Sudan on the pretext of a nerve gas factory
- Opposed the creation of the International Criminal Court
- Campaign fund-raising scams
- Subverting the Iraq arms inspection process (UNSCOM)
- Violated the War Powers Act
- Failed to get ratification of various arms control agreements
- Biased mediation in the peace negotiations between Israel
and Palestine (threatened to move U.S. embassy to Jerusalem)
- End of term pardons
- Waited until end of term to issue several environmental
regulations
- Giveaway of spectrum in the Telecommunications Act of 1996
- Took three years to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide as Haitian President
- Handling of East Asia financial crisis (primarily the IMF’s
fault, but the U.S. has an effective veto over IMF policy)
- Appointed Michael Powell as FCC commissioner
- Releasing oil from the strategic petroleum reserve for
political purposes
Ugly
- Added $1,539,684,631,121.04 (37%) to US debt
- Failed to implement U.S. commitment to greenhouse gas control
- Bombing of Yugoslavia
- Killed over a million Iraqis with continued sanctions
- Blocked efforts to stop the genocide in Rwanda
- Resurrected missile defense and attempted to destroy the ABM treaty
- End of term pardons
- Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000
- Repeal of Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act)
George Herbert Walker Bush (1989-1993)
Good
- Phaseout of ozone-depleting chemicals
- Market approaches to emissions control that worked
-
Various sanctions against Myanmar starting with a ban on arms
sales in 1988
Bad
- Failed to prevent the invasion of Kuwait
- Dirty campaign tricks (e.g. Willy Horton)
- Failed to enact enabling legislation for the Basel Convention
Ugly
-
Veto of Congressional attempts to reinstate the fairness
doctrine via legislation
- Invaded Panama
- Added $1,042,000,000,000 to the U.S. debt
- Aided the Guatemala military’s genocide of its Mayan population
- Appointed Clarence Thomas to Supreme Court
Ronald Wilson Reagan (1981-1989)
Good
- Simplified the tax code
- Arms control agreement with Soviet Union
- Appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to Supreme Court
Bad
- Massive military defense spending increases
- “Stars Wars” missile defense system (aka
SDI)
-
Laid the foundation for the Savings and Loan debacle by
deregulation
- Gutted the EPA using hatchet-woman Anne Gorsuch
- James Watt
- Government by anecdote*
- Supply-side economics
- Lebanon policy (allowing Israel’s invasion and having US
marines take sides in the civil war)
- Appointed Antonin Scalia to Supreme Court
- Refused to sign Law of the Sea
Ugly
-
FCC repeal of the fairness
doctrine in 1985 and veto of Congressional attempts to
reinstate it via legislation in 1987
- Iran-Contra
- Grenada
- El Salvador terror
- Angola
-
So unbalanced the budget that he created a
multi-trillion dollar debt legacy:
e.g. $1,763,884,000,000 in his 8 years,
$1,469,243,000,000 in Bush’s, totalling $3.2
trillion (a 346% increase from the $934,073,000,000
debt left by President Carter to Reagan)
-
Committed treason (negotiating with Iran to delay release of
hostages) in order to win the 1980 election
-
Aided the Guatemala military’s genocide of its Mayan
population (subverting Congressional bans against military aid
to do so)
-
Deregulated derivatives (Wendy Gramm)
-
Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act
James Earl Carter, Jr. (1977-1981)
Good
- Made Human Rights an issue
- Expansion of national parks
- Egypt-Israel Camp David accords
Bad
- Continued to support and defend dictators and their human rights abuses
- Handling of the Iranian situation
Ugly
- Allowed continued slaughter in East Timor
- CIA forms the Contras in Nicaragua
Gerald R. Ford (1974-1977)
Good
- Safe Drinking Water Act (1974)
- Toxic Substances Control Act (1976)
Bad
Ugly
- Allowed and probably sanctioned Indonesia’s invasion and massacre in East Timor
- Team B, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz
Richard M. Nixon (1969-1974)
Good
- National Environmental Policy Act (1969)
- EPA (1970)
- Signed Clean Air Act (1970)
- Signed Occupational Safety and Health Act (1970)
- Signed Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of
1972 (commonly referred to as the Clean Water Act)
- Signed Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (1972)
- Signed Endangered Species Act (1973)
- Arms control
- China
Bad
- Spirow Agnew
- Possible CIA involvement in overthrow of Prince Sihanouk
Ugly
- Watergate
- Vietnam
- Bombing of Cambodia and the murder of 600,000 to 700,000 Cambodians
- CIA destabilization of Cambodian Prince Sihanouk’s government
(and possible support of the 1970 coup) that eventually
brought Pol Pot to power
- Overthrow of Salvador Allende and the support of Augusto
Pinochet’s reign of terror
Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969)
Good
- Civil Rights
- Freedom of Information Act (1966)
Bad
- Started significant deficit spending to pay for Vietnam
- Started combining the Social Security surplus and the general
account deficit to make the deficit appear smaller
- Probable CIA involvement in 1967 Greek coup by George Papadopoulos
Ugly
- Invasion of Dominican Republic
- Bombing and napalming of Guatemala countryside and giving
military aid to the government and its death squads
- Vietnam
- FBI started campaign to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- Overthrow of Brazillian democracy (President Goulart)
followed by installation of a military dictatorship
John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)
Good
Bad
- Missile Gap deceit
- CIA destabilization of Prime Minister Dr. Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana
Ugly
- Bay of Pigs
- Operation MONGOOSE
- Vietnam
- Increased U.S. involvement in Latin American military repression
- FBI greatly expanded COINTELPRO
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961)
Good
- Stopped the Governor of Arkansas from thwarting a local
plan to desegregate a Little Rock high school
Bad
- Allen Dulles (CIA) and John Foster Dulles (Secretary of State)
- CIA interference, murder and terrorism in Indonesia
(e.g. captured bomber piolet Allen Lawrence Pope) targeted at
President Sukarno
- CIA destabilization of Cambodian government of Prince Sihanouk
- Involvement in assassination of Congo’s former President Lumumba
- Use of the Smith Act
- Added the phrase
under God
to the Pledge of Allegiance
Ugly
- FBI started COINTELPRO
-
CIA overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh, putting the CIA
controlled Shah into power
-
CIA overthrow of democratically elected Guatemalan President
Jacobo Arbenz, installing dictator Castillo Armas
Harry S. Truman (1945-1953)
Good
-
Executive Order 9981
ending official segregation in the U.S. military and declaring
there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all
persons in the armed services without regard to race, color,
religion or national origin.
Bad
- Supported the return of Vietnam to France after World War II
- Use of the Smith Act
Ugly
- CIA overthrow of Dr. Muhammed Mossadeq in Iran, restoring
Shah
- CIA overthrow of democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz in in Guatemala
-
Dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki non-combatants
to terrorize Japan into surrender
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945)
Good
Bad
- Smith Act (1940), prosecution and conviction of Eugene Dennis
Ugly
- Executive Order 9066 — Internment of Japanese Americans
- Firebombing of Dresden
- Firebombing of Tokyo
Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)
Good
Bad
Ugly
Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)
Good
Bad
- Appointed J. Edgar Hoover as director of the FBI
Ugly
Warren Harding (1921-1923)
Good
Bad
Ugly
Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921)
Good
Bad
Ugly
William H. Taft (1909-1913)
Good
Bad
Ugly
Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)
Good
- Expanded national forests
- Trust busting
- Reacted to The Jungle by improving food safety
Bad
Ugly
- Continued Philippines occupation and massacres (e.g. 1906)
- Splitting Panama off from Colombia
William McKinley (1897-1901)
Good
Bad
Ugly
- Annexation of Hawaii
- War on the people of the Philippines
John Adams (1797-1801)
Good
Bad
Ugly
Copyright © 1997-2009 Earl A. Killian. All Right Reserved.
