May 24, 2015

The best and worst of the NYT article about the best and worst of the U.S. Presidents in their post-presidential phase.

BEST: cool illustrations (of John Quincy Adams, Teddy Roosevelt, etc.); appropriate selection criteria (do good work, don't undermine your successors, etc.); actually saying something nice about Nixon (a "purposeful post-presidency," becoming a "respected elder statesman").

WORST: Acting like they're offering help to Obama (who's "deeply engaged in his presidency," but must be thinking about his post-presidency), when the subject obviously came up because of Hillary Clinton and her ex-president spouse coming in for criticism for their grandiose and lucrative posturings in the direction of great good work.

17 comments:

Ron said...

The remarks about Hoover don't mention that before he was president he did the same food distribution efforts in WWI and during the world flu crisis as well.
He saved the lives of millions...twice!

clint said...

"... James Buchanan, who went on to be the worst president in American history..."

Someone check the temperature in Hell. I actually agree with an opinion expressed as fact in the NYT.

Of course, I would have made a similar comment in the section on Teddy Roosevelt's post-presidency.

Unknown said...

Didn't Franklin Pierce develop a drinking problem after losing a child in a train wreck? That feels like something of a cheap shot.

Hagar said...

Bill Clinton's presidency was just a phase in the life of Clinton, Inc.

David Begley said...

Barack is deeply engaged in passing TPP so he can enjoy an annuity stream of six figure checks giving speeches to he likes of GE once it is law.

Barack saw how the Clntons ran that criminal enterprise so expect the first real black president to follow suit. And Michelle runs for Senate from Chicago. You saw it here first.

iowan2 said...

Kennedy was a bad President and given his family, would have been Hillary's example of scamming for $millions, post President.

Obama is destine to receive the same unearned canonization from the Media as Kennedy.

Phil 314 said...

Can we once and for all get rid of the phrase "wrong side of history"?

Hagar said...

The "iron laws of history" are fundamental for the intellectual left.
It is not just them you oppose; it is "history."

Michael K said...

Sorry. I only got this far:

"Though deeply engaged in his presidency — battling for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and against ISIS "

Sebastian said...

O is deeply engaged in O.

Big Mike said...

I'm hard-pressed to figure why anyone would place Jimmy Carter in the list of "best" post presidencies. He did a little carpentry when the cameras were rolling and his unwarranted, and disastrous, intervention with respect to North Korea's nuclear development should have moved him into the "worst" column.

MadisonMan said...

Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy, Harrison, Taylor, Harding, FDR -- all of these Presidents fell far short of expectations in the post-Presidency realm.

O is deeply engaged. Deeply.

(A reference to Top. Men.)

The Wasp said...

Wait, so TR is bad for messing with Taft and letting Wilson, a terrible president get elected, AND for messing with Wilson's useless League of Nations plan?

Joseph Blieu said...

This article is useless due to political bias, when again will someone write honest discourse. "Took strong positions against the national interest and undermined successors for personal and political reasons." This is a statement of the etirty of Jimmy Carters's post presidency.

Brando said...

The Clintons belong I the John Tyler category. They would sell out their country for a buck. This is what happens when you elect shysters.

Douglas B. Levene said...

The article got Carter's post presidency wrong. Yes, his work for the poor was admirable. But he single handedly demolished the post war consensus that ex-presidents should stay out of current politics. It's too bad, really, but when I think about Carter's post-presidency, all I remember is him cozying up to commie dictatorships, bashing Israel and bashing W.

Sammy Finkelman said...

There's tremendous political bias in this, some of which I might agree with and some of which I might not.

Faulting some ex-presidents for what they did with regard to the Civil War is judging according to whether you think hat they did was right or wrong, and is not a neutral point of view. It's all right to do that, but then don't pretend to be neutral.

The strange thing in that article is to find great fault with Theodore Roosevelt, including, of all things, his hunting as a big thing, and to find Taft very good. I would expect they would find him much too conservative a Supreme Cout Justice but somehow they didn't. Somehow there they ignored what I'd expect would be their politcal opinons, or maybe they are just too ignorant.

And then saying Carter was good, with the only possible fault being his approval of Venezualan elections?? Who thinks so?