Tough Decisions

All our presidents have faced making difficult decisions. Here might be the toughest tests for our last 14 presidents:

FDR - Declaring war on Japan AND Germany

Truman - Dropping the atomic bomb on Japan

Ike - Agreeing to an armistice in Korea

JFK - Embargo on Cuba during the missile crisis

LBJ - Handling the Vietnam war protests

Nixon - Watergate and his eventual resigning

Ford - Pardoning Nixon

Carter - Trying to rescue our Iran hostages

Reagan - Walking away from Helsinki meeting with Gorbachev

Bush 41 - Desert Storm war

Bill Clinton - Impeachment and fessing up to Monica Lewinsky affair

Bush 43 - America’s response to 9/11

Obama - Osama Ben Laden raid

Trump - Restarting the economy after the coronavirus shutdown

Name Game

Ever since Bill Clinton won the presidency over George H.W. Bush, the candidates with the fewer letters in their last name generally have won at the polls — Bush over Gore (tie), Bush over Kerry, Obama over McCain, Obama over Romney and, finally, Trump over Clinton.

Before that ... there were a few modern exceptions to this rule ... Carter over Ford, Eisenhower over Stevenson, Kennedy over Nixon and Raegan over Carter ... all of which can be explained away due to extenuating circumstances.

If this loopy trend holds, the only Democrat who has a chance against a Trump second term is (promising $1,000 per month per US resident) Yang ... while Biden ties. All the other possible Dem opponents ... Warren, Buttigieg, Harris, Sanders, Booker, Klobuchar, O’Rourke and Castro would suck wind.

Loyalty

We all have our loyalties ... to the world, to our country, our state, our community, to our family, our ancestors, our mate, our friends, the poor, to our school, our political party, our social organizations, our religion, the environment, to our stomach, to our libido, our ego. Mostly we have mixed localities but, there is usually one or two localities that dominate ... and this can you be judged. And you cannot depend on what people say their loyalty priorities are ... you need to watch their actions.

Think about it. What dominated Bill Clinton's and JFK's lives? Their libidos. (JFK said he would get a headache if he didn't have sex every day.) FDR, his family and his country. Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter kept their religion and the poor foremost in their minds, To Ronald Reagan, our country was the "shining city on the hill" that was his  primary motivation. Truman and Eisenhower, their country. Obama, the environment or his ego. The Bushes, their family. Nixon, the world. Hillary, herself.

What about Trump? He says, and I believe him, he is a nationalist ... which means he puts his country first. And, if you think about things, it is those presidents who put their country at the top of their loyalty pyramids who we now consider great.

Perhaps?

Lesser of Two Evils

What is the lesser of two evils -- Trump calling the country Haiti a "shithole" or the Clintons' stealing $1.3 billion of earthquake relief funds from this same country? See: National Review Article.

Sidebar; President Truman once called something a "pile of manure." A reporter then asked Bess Truman if she couldn't get her husband to say "fertilizer" instead of "manure?" She replied that it had taken her many years to get him to say "manure" ...

Was MacArthur Right?

                              "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away ..."

Back in 1950 after North Korea had invaded South Korea ... and the ROK/UN forces with the considerable help of the United  States under General Douglas MacArthur had, within the year,  pushed the Norks back to the Yalu river, the Chinese Communists entered the war with massive hoards of soldiers ... some not even armed. MacArthur felt that this aggression required that the U.S. respond with tactical nuclear weapons against these massive Chinese armies. For his outspokenness on this issue, he was fired by President Harry Truman.

The question now poses itself ... was MacArthur right? The real decision point was whether MacArthur's action would have started a world-wide nuclear conflagration? I think that this is a difficult question. But my best guess is no ... because the U.S. was so far ahead of every other country that China and Russia would not dared to respond in kind. China was 14 years away from having an atomic weapon and Russia only had had them for four years ... and was three years away from the H-bomb.

So, what might have been the result if Truman had given MacArthur his leash? One, we would now have a unified Korean peninsula with no Kim Jong Un and his atomic madness. Number two, China might well feel more reticent to challenge the West militarily. And three, China might even have followed Japan's path toward demilitarizing as a result of the trauma it experienced at the Yalu river.

Yes, there were risks involved under MacArthur's strategy ... but were they any larger than what we face today?

Oval Office Signs

The following signs were conspicuously displayed on the White House’s Oval Office desk during the terms of the following presidents;

Harry S. Truman                  “The buck stops here”

Dwight D. Eisenhower        “Interstate highways start here”

John F. Kennedy                 “Don’t fear the bear”

Lyndon B. Johnson             “Viet Nam starts here”

Richard M. Nixon               “The muck starts here”

Gerald Ford                          “The pardon starts in the Rose Garden”

Jimmy Carter                       “Buck teeth star here”

George H.W. Bush              “Iraq stops there”

Bill Clinton                          “The suck starts here”

George W. Bush                  “WMDs won’t drop here”

Barack Obama                    “Let me be clear" [You can …]

     

The Party of War

There is a popular myth that the Republican party was the belligerent during most American armed conflicts.  If one looks at who was running the U.S. when we have sent our soldiers into battle, this clearly proves wrong, viz:

First World War -- Woodrow Wilson (D)
Second World War -- Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
Korean War -- Harry S. Truman (D)
Vietnam War -- John F. Kennedy (D)
Vietnam War Escalation -- Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
Bosnian War -- William J. Clinton (D)
Kosovo (Monica's) War -- William J. Clinton (D)
Kuwait War -- George H.W. Bush (R)
Afghanistan War -- George W. Bush (R)
Iraq War -- George W. Bush (R)
Afghanistan War Escalation -- Barack H. Obama (D)
Libyan Incursion -- Barack H. Obama (D)

Even the Spanish American War, although started under William McKinley (R), was really instigated by the Democrat congress at the time (see Spanish-American War.)  So, we see, popular myths are often just that.

Afterthought:  I (conveniently) forgot about Ronald Reagan's (R) incursions into Granada and Panama.