Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:03 Well, it's a Thanksgiving day, 2020, and we are, go ahead.
Speaker 0 00:00:10 We're so dedicated to our new schedule that we were recording on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1 00:00:14 We are, there could be a meteor hurdling towards us, and we would now record, we are dedicated to doing this regularly so people can count on this. Um, we've got a lot of positive feedback being back on a regular schedule, which is great. Thanks for the feedback. Definitely. Um, you know, go to our website on incomplete history.com there place you can comment there. Uh, you can also send us emails and stuff. And, uh, I mean, if you're listening to us on, uh, via Apple or Google play or anything like that, leave a review. Um, also if there's something you'd like us to cover, let us know. I mean, we have covered things that, that listeners have asked us to cover in the past and we will do that, but, um, yeah, happy Thanksgiving. And, uh, let's jump into the show. Welcome to an incomplete history. I'm Hillary and I'm Jeff. And we're your hosts for this week?
Speaker 2 00:01:14 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:01:35 So sorry about jumping the gun there on the soundboard.
Speaker 0 00:01:41 I wasn't prepared. I forgot Cue the music. Um, so it is Thanksgiving day and, um, we're cooking here at home and there's just the four of us are just going to be here. We're not having anybody over and we're being really strict about, um, the social distancing and the lockdown stuff, but it's on our own because the state of Mississippi has not really given much guidance, but in California, you guys are in purple tier lockdown. Now are people honoring purple tier lockdown?
Speaker 1 00:02:15 Some are some aren't, uh, I mean we are, but you know, there was a big protest, I guess, in Huntington beach this last week, because there's a curfew. Yeah, there's a curfew going on now. 10:00 PM curfew. If you are, um, you have to have a reason to be out after 10:00 PM. They just don't want people going on. And, um, I mean, it's, I mean, this brings me to kind of a thing I wanted to ask you, cause I have some things in mind for me, but I mean, uh, what are the, what are three things you are thankful for this year? I mean, 2020 has been a rough year by any metric, but let's be a little positive before we get into today's negativity for our episode.
Speaker 0 00:03:02 And there's a lot of the question catches me off guard and I'm glad that it did because I didn't have time to prepare anything. And then that gives the most genuine answer, I think, but this year my family changed a lot and um, we adopted our nieces from California and they live with us now full time. And I'm so thankful that we went through that process in order to bring them here and be a part of our family. And I'm really, really just feeling great about that on a personal level. Um, I'm really thankful for my job. I love what I do. I love that. Um, I get to teach and talk to students every day about topics that I love. Um, and I'm thankful for mine and my family's health so far. I mean, we've had a really hard year, of course, just like everybody. Um, but we've managed to not be exposed to COVID or, um, have any major issues in that realm. So I'm thankful for those things, but what about you?
Speaker 1 00:04:07 Um, what am I thankful for? Well, so we have fortunately, um, I think we've been very diligent about masking and social distancing and all that stuff. So nobody in the house has gotten sick from COVID, which is good. I am thankful for that. We do have other health issues with our, I just won't get into here, but I'm thankful for friends and family, who've kind of constantly checked on us through everything to see how we're doing, which is good. Um, I am thankful I have a job, uh, even though the life of a college adjunct is not very fun. Um, it is something which, you know, a lot of people, their jobs are at risk or have been endangered. So I'm thankful for that. And then I am so thankful for the 11 pounds of joy. That's sitting in my lap right now. He's my dog, Harvey. We adopted him. It'll be a, we've had him, but almost two years in January in January, it'll be two years. And, um, he's a rescue dog and he's just hilarious. Um, he is a very vocal participant in my zoom lectures for classes and students right now. So I love Harvey. Um, and then if I want to add a fourth one, the fourth one is we have vaccines on the horizon. I am thankful that
Speaker 0 00:05:39 Yeah, in a broad sense, that's really, really simple,
Speaker 1 00:05:42 Right? I am, I am thankful that modern scientific method and inquiry and, and all of that has generated several options for this. And we can kind of see a little bit of a twinkling light at the end of the tunnel now,
Speaker 1 00:05:59 But today, well, we will talk about the topic and then we can talk about the weather real quickly. Uh, I mean, one of the reasons I brought up kind of things that you're thankful for us, uh, I mean, maybe there's a way to approach today's topic is things to be thankful for. We're going to talk about who we think the worst presidents in us history are up to 1976. You can't go past 1976, um, for any number of reasons. Um, I like to call, if we could go up to the current moment, it would be fairly low hanging fruit. So that's all I shall say about that,
Speaker 0 00:06:42 But the reason why we chose 1976, we were both in agreeance with it. And that's because as historians, I think we need to have a little bit of distance between things in order to really fully analyze them and look back and say, what were the pros and cons to all these different moments. And, um, you know, we call anything that you were alive for as is journalism and not really history. Um, but just because you can't, you can't, um, offer the same analytical, uh, thoughts toward an event when you're so close to it, right. In the same way that we, we look through things. Although I wouldn't say that I'm always really fascinated when people are like, I wonder what historians would say right now about this moment. It's like, well, we're here. We can comment on things that are happening actually do exist. Um, but for the purposes of, of what we're doing, and in a lot of times in class, like, I like to keep a little distance between things that are happening at the moment. Uh, and then, you know, to be able to analyze them in the ways that we do. So we chose 1976 as a good cutoff point to really look, um, from a historical lens and also were 19th century us historian. So we have a lot to say about 19th century U S presidents, right?
Speaker 1 00:08:03 I guess, although two of my presidents are 20th century.
Speaker 0 00:08:07 Yeah. My, my president's 20th century to, I guess the, what I realized though, when I was preparing for this, because people ask me this question all the time, do you see we're police officers? And what, the question that they always got asked was, have you ever shot somebody all the time? And my parents were always like, no, and I hope I never have to. That was always their, their response. Um, but for me it's, every time I meet someone, who's the worst president, who's the worst president to come up with someone. And it's very mean girls. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:08:50 Like they see you sitting in the cafeteria and they come over next to you. Like, so who's the worst precedent. Well, it's
Speaker 0 00:08:56 Funny because a lot of people have someone in mind and they want you to say that person. And if you don't, they're just like ready to argue with you. And it's like, you know, really you could argue for like all of them, there is a strong argument to be made for almost every single president. They're just a lot about things that have happened.
Speaker 1 00:09:17 I mean, I don't know about that. Like I, I mean, it's, I suppose. Um, but yeah, it is interesting how we're always asked this question about who the worst precedent that is today. We're kind of, kind of give our views on this and kind of give a little clarity maybe for people who, um, want to bandy about that title for more contemporary figures and things. And just so you kind of understand how bad things have gotten before. I mean, that's, that's, that's what I think we can do as historians during times of crisis and upheaval and stuff is provide a little bit of perspective.
Speaker 0 00:09:58 You can say, Hey, something awful has happened like this before don't worry. Or we can say worse things have happened. It was resolved after a civil war.
Speaker 1 00:10:10 Well, yes, that's, that is true. Um, so it is a lovely day here in Southern California. It is absolutely lovely outside. It's not too cold. And I remember cold for us in Southern California is anything below 65 degrees. Um, it's not too cold today. Sunny, nice sit nice out in Mississippi in Oxford.
Speaker 0 00:10:35 It is so beautiful out today. Took a nice morning walk. It was crisp out this morning. It was probably in the forties, but very sunny. So it felt really nice. And now this afternoon, it's in the mid sixties, sunny, very pretty out of clear as can be, not a cloud in the sky lovely day.
Speaker 1 00:10:58 So it's a lovely day to take down the executive branch.
Speaker 0 00:11:01 Lovely to talk about horrible presidents. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:11:04 All right. Well let's uh, Oh, I, I hear somebody coming
Speaker 0 00:11:07 <inaudible> cause I didn't tell you. I was.
Speaker 1 00:11:28 Can I do that? I think it's hilarious. So, so Hillary, who's our first candidate for worst president of all time
Speaker 0 00:11:35 From me or from you when you, Oh gosh, my first,
Speaker 1 00:11:41 This is like a reverse beauty pageant for bad precedent.
Speaker 0 00:11:44 Okay. Well I think I'm going to save my, my really controversial one. Um, but I think, you know, one that we always go, um, is Johnson is as being the worst. Cause he just so Donaldson, I'm sorry. Yes. Andrew Johnson just completely messed up reconstruction purposefully.
Speaker 1 00:12:11 Right.
Speaker 0 00:12:14 So when I ask, when people come and ask me, who's the worst president, you have to be careful what you say and to who you say it because in the South now where I live, they don't want to hear you say that Andrew Johnson was about president. They don't, they don't like to hear that. Um, they, they think that that's not right. Um, so of course he assumes the presidency because he was the vice president at the time that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Um, he was a Democrat running with, uh, Lincoln on the national ticket. Um, and he wanted to have a really quick resolution to the civil war ending. Right. He wanted just to come back together, let's forget it ever happened. We're just going to ignore all this stuff. And he really very much was against the radical reconstructionist that you had. Um, during the, during the time who wanted to implement like a radical reconstruction, I'm thinking like that he, uh, Stephens. Um, and so he totally missed this opportunity to actually address the issues that were happening in the South. Um, and when I say issues that sound so, you know, he, he had, he had an opportunity to address, address systemic racism and slavery, and he had an opportunity to, um, yes, bring the nation back together, but also to curtail the South from the, the path that they were on toward just implementing Jim Crow and all these different things. So I think Andrew Johnson was terrible. And of course we know that he was also impeached,
Speaker 1 00:13:52 Right? I mean, CNP CRM Peachland episode for more about Andrew Johnson's impeachment, but here's the thing. I mean it's yes and no, because in one way I think Johnson is simply continuing. What Lincoln had already indicated was his plan for the post civil war us, which was quick reconciliation and reintegration of the South into the nation
Speaker 0 00:14:18 Can, could have been swayed a little more toward a bit of a radical reconstruction though. You don't think,
Speaker 1 00:14:23 I don't know. I mean, it's, that's the thing is I think Lincoln wanted to bring the country together so much. He would have been willing to sacrifice the rights of freed enslaved peoples at that altar. I don't know. I mean, we'll never know, I mean, this is right. This is, you know, it's, we'll never know what Lincoln would have done if he had not been assassinated, but I, on some level, I think Johnson does carry out at least part of Lincoln's vision, which was quick reintegration of the South. Um, I think Lincoln would have run a foul of the radical Republicans in Congress as well. I think they would have been dissatisfied with decisions he made, but
Speaker 0 00:15:06 I do who's radical on either end is always going to be upset with the decisions of a centrist. But what I would say is I think that he could have been swayed a little bit, particularly with the surrender because of its surrender. I think if that would have it's again, it's hard to play. What if, but I think after that unconditional surrender takes place, I think to rebuild the nation, I think that there could have been some sway in the direction of more of a radical approach to reconstruction and an occupation of the South.
Speaker 1 00:15:40 Right. I, yeah. I mean, it's, Johnson's a smarmy guy anyway. Um, he is this up and calmer. He wants to be part of the elite in Tennessee, but he's not really, he hates the planner class, the class that owned the most, the largest number of enslaved peoples. But at the same time he tries to Curry their favor. Um, so he's just kind of a really gross human being, I think.
Speaker 0 00:16:10 Yes. Well not so why he was on the, the vice president ticket, right. He was never intended to be president really. And he wouldn't have been, I don't think he would have been elected in just a normal election. And oftentimes, I mean, I mean, you could still make the argument now that like the vice-president is someone you just kind of want to get out of the way. Is that, is that true?
Speaker 1 00:16:33 I mean, generally speaking, yes. Although as you find out with once Lincoln's assassinated, this person who was never intended to be president suddenly becomes president, but I mean, he was put in there too. It was a unity ticket. It was to bring Democrats on board so that, you know, moving forward, there can be a general consensus about who was supposed to lead the nation. Um, it was also a little bit of an olive branch to people who resided either in border States or in a state like Tennessee that was under union control,
Speaker 0 00:17:11 But that's exactly the problem, right? These all have branches, they're all have branches for white people, right? Like we're past all of branches when we're talking slavery. And that was always, the problem was like, we're going to just kiss and make up, but we're going to ignore the actual issue here. And that is how do we, um, free slaves and then integrate, um, former slaves into our society and into our economy and give them the same opportunities and education and whatever else that we offer, how are we going to do that? And they were just like, literally let's just forget. Right? Like let's just keep being friends with white people. And that's, that was always the, to me, the undertow, an issue of, um, well of reconstruction in general, but the failure of Johnson and maybe it's not fair to place it on him because he was the vice president. Right. But he didn't go forward with any sort of plan that would have that really did help. I mean, the reconciliation, I would say is still, it's still tenuous. I don't think that there ever has been a full reconciliation.
Speaker 1 00:18:21 Right. Right. Well, I think so to add a little bit of academic credibility to our project here, I, I want to introduce in 2010, the university of London school, advanced study kind of polled, uh, about 50 British academics who specialize in us history and politics about who they thought was the, where the best presidents who they thought were the worst presidents. Um, and this, this kind of panel of experts comes up with five criteria that they use to kind of judge this. So they tried to quantify it and create kind of hard data. So the five categories are vision and agenda setting, domestic leadership, foreign policy leadership, moral authority, and then positive historical significance of their legacy. And they weighted these equally, equally as well. And each of the categories, each president was rated from one, not effective to 10, very effective. And it's an interesting thing to think of if we apply this to Johnson. So his vision and agenda setting, he has no vision, right?
Speaker 0 00:19:37 Because he wasn't expected really to have a vision like that. It was a unity ticket. And so he was just going to kind of go along to bring everybody on board. So no, he, he fails there,
Speaker 1 00:19:48 Um, foreign policy leadership, not that the country is in the midst of a civil war. It's not an outward looking moment. Morally
Speaker 0 00:19:58 Could consider foreign policy as being dealing with the South.
Speaker 1 00:20:01 I mean, yeah, you could, you definitely could. But I would put that under domestic leadership, I think, and any is a failure, domestic leadership. So he ranks pretty low, their moral authority and I mean, not high, not low, just kind of whatever. And then positive historical significance of their legacy is very low. Right? One of the lowest, where does he rank on this list? Um, where does he rank on this list? I only have the ones loaded up that I wanted to talk about. I knew you were going to own, of course now I can't find that he's pretty low. Uh, Johnson is pretty low, but the interesting thing is this, these are British academics who study there and say a lot of the things that we kind of automatically tend towards. Um, he is one of the bottom five. Um, a lot of the things we kind of value, they don't necessarily put as much, much value in because they kind of do these five categories. Um, but, uh, I, I do hear somebody else coming. So I've got a candidate for worst president in us history and he's from the other side of the civil war. So, um, yeah. Uh, James Buchanan from Pennsylvania, the only president from the Keystone state
Speaker 0 00:21:35 Often considered the worst,
Speaker 1 00:21:38 Worst, worst
Speaker 0 00:21:41 Argument to be made there.
Speaker 1 00:21:43 I mean, I think if you pull most us academics who's yeah.
Speaker 0 00:21:47 And I that's the list I looked at and I think it's funny, like we are asked this question all the time, but we're asked this question in a very official capacity where like they go around and ask different history departments and then they're ranked and all this, I, I discovered this, um, when I was researching for this episode, but he does often rank within the top three. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1 00:22:10 Yeah. Um, I mean, here's the thing is, so why is he ranked so poorly, so low on the list? He basically does nothing to stop successor succession of the South. I mean, people in the South have said, if Abraham Lincoln is elected in 1860, they're going to succeed from the nation and blah, blah, blah. You can't, it does nothing to stop this. You can backs the Supreme court and the Dred Scott Case, which pay sickly, CEDS, enslaved people. Aren't really people before the law. Um, and he joins with Southern leaders to try to get, uh, Kansas admitted as a slave state.
Speaker 0 00:22:57 And that is at the crux of the issue where the civil war ends up being fun and comes to this head because of the, the disagreement over whether new States admitted into the union should be admitted as slave States or not. And that has to do with representation in government. And it has to do with, you know, the expansion of land of course, and territory. Um, and just, what, what route is the country going to take? Is this country going to be a free country or is it going to be of country that enslaves people? And on the one hand there's people saying, no, we're trying to usher that out. That's not something we want to do. And B Canon's like, well, I'm in, is this like, you know, it's, it's like he sets the tone in this really awful way. And
Speaker 1 00:23:46 He, I mean, he angers obviously, um, Republicans, he is a Democrat kangaroos Republicans, but he also alienates Northern Democrats because they actually Northern Democrats don't want Kansas as minute as a slave state. Um, I mean, this is where we start to have the whole discussion of free soil, um, which is what the Republican party is increasingly shifting to. But even Northern Democrats want wage labor to be kind of the focus of the country going forward. So Buchanan does doesn't help this at all. He actually,
Speaker 0 00:24:22 Currently voters do say no, that temp Kansas is going to enter as a free state, but he was in support of it. Not right
Speaker 1 00:24:31 After a lot of violence. I mean, it's bleeding, Kansas for a reason. He, um, he does nothing to kind of tamp down on that violence and what, so what I find it's interesting is right before he leaves office. So this is before inauguration has changed. So this is when an aggravation happens in March. Um, there was, uh, a constitutional amendment call that would shield domestic institutions. And that's what they call it from of the States, including slavery from the constitutional amendment process, basically that there would be no way you could abolish things like slavery via constitutional amendment or by action by Congress. That's pretty horrifying.
Speaker 0 00:25:30 That is horrifying. And again, leading up to this moment of where the tension just couldn't be dissolved.
Speaker 1 00:25:37 Yeah. I mean, it's, he does nothing to, to kind of help it now. I mean, the guy, here's the thing. If we go back to our criteria, so is domestic leadership is non-existence existence, his foreign policy leadership. There's not a lot of it. He is foreign minister to Russia back earlier before he was president. Um, what is that? I mean, what's his foreign policy leadership ranking probably middle. He had no vision, his moral authority. I mean, here's the question, Buchanan's our only bachelor president.
Speaker 0 00:26:16 That's an interesting point. Right. So what does that say about us moral authority? Where are you going to comment
Speaker 1 00:26:22 In the middle of the 19th century to not be a father, a head of a household with a wife and children that you kind of exercised your kind of Protestant patriarchal rights on? I think that was suspect for a lot of people.
Speaker 0 00:26:42 I don't agree. I think that's awful to suspect somebody of being, not a good person, cause they're not married, but
Speaker 1 00:26:48 No, I think it's awful too, but I'm saying in the context of the mid 19th century, I think it's people
Speaker 0 00:26:53 Did. It was a little suspect,
Speaker 1 00:26:55 Right? I think people wondered whether this person could be father to the nation, if he's not even father to a family of his own. Um, and then, you know, positive historical significance is pretty trashy for him. I mean, it's, there's a reason he's low. Um, he's just, what could he have done to stop the civil war? Maybe not anything who knows, but he didn't even try to do anything. And he actually we'll see,
Speaker 0 00:27:28 Could have been taken at that time. Right. Yeah. And it's the constant ignoring, ignoring, ignoring. That was the issue that, that finally, you know, created this crisis where it's just ignored. And I think that he could have been one of these people who took a firm stance at this crucial moment and then just didn't and it ushered in the war in a way that it was inevitable because there was no leadership.
Speaker 1 00:27:55 Well, and he also seemed to throw fuel onto the fire, right? Like by supporting that core when a Mim, uh, by not intervening with keeping violence out of Kansas, but instead encouraging Kansas to be brought in as a slave state. I mean, he just seemed to make things worse. Um, yeah. I don't know. Is he the worst president? I mean maybe
Speaker 0 00:28:28 According to a, the list he's always top five.
Speaker 1 00:28:31 Yeah. He's definitely top five, but in many I've seen, he's always ranked as the worst. But what I find interesting though is when he was elected, he actually pledged that he was only going to serve one term and he actually did not run for reelection. He stepped aside for Breckenridge, his vice-president.
Speaker 0 00:28:50 He had met really
Speaker 1 00:28:53 Well. I don't know. I mean, it's, I try to see good in everyone. Um, I don't know. He's stuck in a really crappy place. That's the problem like to be elected? I don't know if I'm a defending him as much as I'm saying to become president, uh, in like 1856. Oh, what a horrible, horrible, I mean, Franklin Pierce is president before you you've got Polk before that. I mean, what an awful, awful Polk is awful as well. And then you're followed by Abraham Lincoln, a guy who regularly is in the top five of the best presidents regularly. Number one, although the British academics rank FDR, number one,
Speaker 0 00:29:45 I have a lot to say about that.
Speaker 1 00:29:48 Um, yes, because yeah, like, eh, but I mean, I think it's, it is telling that our worst guy is basically the worst guy because of the things he doesn't do mostly.
Speaker 0 00:30:04 Let's see, that's exactly the point to me. You are the worst. If you're not doing something because you have been elected by people in the country to lead the country through really horrible times. And if you just kind of sit there and do nothing, of course, people are not going to look back on you kindly particularly with something to me, the moral stance of it, right where there's something so morally egregious happening and he just stands by and does nothing. And as a matter of fact, like you said, kind of throws a little bit of fuel onto the fire, but for the most part stands back. That to me is a really huge issue. Where of course I would rank somebody high as being bad because you know, people who, there are a lot of people, presidents who have done a lot of things that are awful, but they're doing something like this guy is just not doing anything. He's not taking this firm stance that needs to be taken at the moment. So, no, I don't envy the president in 1856, but I do think it could have been a really pivotal moment. And it wasn't because he sat and did nothing.
Speaker 1 00:31:09 Okay. Well, I mean, why don't you take us then to a, a president who does stuff that you, that you believe makes him the worst.
Speaker 0 00:31:22 This is super controversial. And I would love to have a discussion with anybody.
Speaker 1 00:31:28 I do not. I do not know what Hillary is going to say right now.
Speaker 0 00:31:34 I think that FDR is the worst president ever. And I know that he is often ranked as the best president ever. And it blows my mind. And I got super anti FDR when I was teaching the world war II class, where it was a concentrated United States in the second world war class. And I started the class during the depression era. And it particularly because I was talking about, um, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. So I start there and then I go forward and I'm looking at us foreign policy. I'm looking at the U S economy. I'm looking at all this stuff. And FDR is often applauded as like, yay. He got us out of the depression. Number one. No, he didn't. Number two. He was a complete tyrant. This man was president for 12 years. That's no, no, no, no. You don't get to be president for 12 years.
Speaker 0 00:32:39 That bugs me. He was elected four times. He was elected in landslides. But this is at a period where we're talking about like dictators all over the world who are like, we're in charge forever. And he's doing it too. That's not even the most egregious thing though. I cannot get over the fact that this man was turning away, refugee boats of Jewish people fleeing Eastern Europe. And they're coming to the shores of the United States seeking refuge. And he turns them away. No, no go back. And some of those people end up dying in concentration camps. Then when we do get into the war, he has executive order 966, which puts Japanese Americans in concentration camps in the United States. If there's one thing, this country is about, it's about the protection of property, whether you agree or not with how capitalistic that is. It's about protection of property. These Japanese Americans had their property strip from them, had all of their assets, stripped from them, were taken and put in the middle of nowhere in concentration camps at the behest direct behest of this executive order from FDR. And everyone's like, yay, best president ever blows my mind. I've been ranting for, I don't even know how many minutes I really don't like him. Jeff, please.
Speaker 1 00:34:12 Wow. There's a lot to unpack there
Speaker 0 00:34:16 Or to unpack.
Speaker 1 00:34:18 I mean, let's start with like the economic thing. So I agree like FDRs new deal and his second new deal really don't stop the great depression. The only thing that stops the great depression is when we get to full employment and restricted consumer purchases during world war II. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:34:37 Yes. It's the board that brings back the economy. Now I will say there were some good social welfare programs that were developed during his administration, but I would argue that a lot of those have to do with allowing women into his cabinet,
Speaker 1 00:34:52 Right? Frances Perkins. Yes. Um, secretary of labor, right? Yeah. I'm not a very good 20th century historian. Um, I mean, I think so. I mean, there's that, that, that he, you know, his economic policies during the great depression, in fact, a lot of economic historians look at the first new deal and say that they may actually prolong the great depression a little bit, some of his policies at the same time, he is doing something which is unlike his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, who had been convinced by his act bias kind of economic experts, the best course of action was for him to do very little, that the economy would eventually correct
Speaker 0 00:35:39 The tax cuts for the rich kind of stuff. Right. I mean, that was his approach. And you know, there there's criticism that comes at FDR from the left and the right and the right prizes FTR, because there's this huge expansion of federal government power. Um, and so, yeah, and the left likes that, but the left criticizes FDR because of his, um, racist policies of, you know, putting Japanese people in concentration camps, et cetera. Um, so he gets criticism from both sides, but the economic part is really interesting. And I wonder this list, that what you said, the British people came up with, um, w w w how does he rank on their list? Like, what are those rankings like argument in favor?
Speaker 1 00:36:28 So they put him number one, envision agenda setting. He does have a vision, um, number one in domestic leadership and number one foreign policy leadership. But you notice how they're phrasing it, it's leadership. And this is so here's the one thing I would defend FDR about is he is good at using, using the new mediums of radio, which is still a pretty new medium when he becomes president to get out there and constantly has his fireside chats, which is basically him talking to the nation every week and kind of calming people's nerves that we will get through this. And he was present. And I think that's why so many people have so many positive associations with him is he was not a president in absentia, right?
Speaker 0 00:37:17 It was a great speaker. People were very soothed by the fireside chats and all of that. There's no doubt. I mean, he was well-liked in for a lot of reasons. I cannot get past the concentration camps when we're so critical of what was going on overseas. And we're going over and saying, you know, we're going to get involved in the second world war and we're going to free all these people. And we are then putting our own people in concentration camps. I can't get past it. And to say that he had good domestic policy after doing that, it's, it's one of the most disgusting things we've ever done in us history.
Speaker 1 00:37:53 It's, it's a pretty reprehensible act. I would like to make a distinction because every time I teach U S history, the second part, which is kind of the 20th century, when world war II, I always get students who conflate the interment camps. The Japanese-Americans are put in with the concentration camps. The Nazi regime in Germany is using. And I, and I say, okay, there are some similarities, but there are also some very stark differences.
Speaker 0 00:38:21 There's not, there's not a death camp, but they're not the actual term concentration camp means to concentrate of the population in one place. And that term concentration camp ends up having the connotation of Holocaust because of what happens in those concentration camps, with the final solution, being that people there's mass murder, there's not mass murder happening here, but it doesn't take away from the fact that they are literally camps of concentrated individuals in remote locations. They're these camps are in like the desert. They couldn't grow anything. The weather was so harsh. The conditions were so harsh. They were stripped of everything they owned and thrown into these camps. And to me, that's the most un-American thing. I, my mind is blown by it. And you're right. It's not the same as the Nazi concentration camps trying to say, well, we're not as bad as Nazis. That's a pretty low bar.
Speaker 1 00:39:22 No, it is a blow Barb. And this isn't to kind of excuse what we do in that. I, and I know you and I have talked about this issue before, and I will bring this up, and this is not to excuse the concentration camps or anything like that. Does that executive order unintentionally or intentionally. And I don't think it doesn't intentionally protect some Japanese Americans from violence that probably would have been enacted on them.
Speaker 0 00:39:50 I've heard that I've heard
Speaker 1 00:39:53 And we'll never know. Right. We will never know actually what would have happened. Now we know there are some places where Japanese Americans aren't in turn in Hawaii, it's impractical in Hawaii,
Speaker 0 00:40:04 Right? Because there are so many Japanese Americans in Hawaii
Speaker 1 00:40:07 And you know, it is definitely a black spot on American history. It's a stain on history, but at the same time, does it undermine <inaudible> ability to first just shepherd us through the great depression, even if he doesn't like solve it, shepherd us through that, and then get us through the war, a war, which even though we're fighting from a supposedly morally a superior position, it's a hard war. And he actually does get us through it and maintains a sense of unity across the country. For the most part. I mean, does that, does that override the bad?
Speaker 0 00:40:50 It doesn't to me, I mean, yeah, there are some really positive things he does. And, and the one that you mentioned is it's clutch, right? Having people feel a sense of unity, having people come together for the fireside chat, um, listening to his speech after Pearl Harbor, right? I mean, I've talked to my grandma's. She remembers hearing that it was it's like seared into her mind. Uh, so there are some important things there, but what about the I'm president for 12 years? Nonsense that kills me. It kills me. The only reason he stopped being president was because he died when he have precedent. You know, it blows my mind
Speaker 1 00:41:29 When I teach the 1930s and forties, I teach as an era of global totalitarianism and authoritarianism. And I surprise students because I argue FDR is an authoritarian and a totalitarian. And just like Churchill tries to be just like, Stalin is just like, Hitler is just like, Mussolini is just like, um, Franco is, he is a totalitarian leader. He's an authoritarian. I mean, you look at his executive orders, you look at the way he expects things to happen. Because I think at that point, that's how people thought you solved this kind of global economic meltdown. And then this looming war,
Speaker 0 00:42:10 How does it make it into these lists as being so great? I mean, I'm not, I used him because I was being obviously controversial. And there are a lot of presidents who did a lot of really bad things. I wanted to make the argument because my mind is blown that he's always listed in the top three of best presidents, because one Thai American,
Speaker 1 00:42:35 His UK pole ranks in number one, firmly number one.
Speaker 0 00:42:40 Oh, that is like so much sentiment over the second world war, that special relationship. But it's like, you don't really know what was going down here domestically. Like cool. He sent over old ships for y'all to use, you know, but like domestically, what was going on here was quintessentially. un-American stripping people of their property and their businesses and entering them. I can't. And I know, you know, you say, well, he did this, this, this, and this that's good. And that those are all true. But to me, that is too steep of a Hill to climb, to say that that still puts him in the top five. I guess if I were to really be honest about it, I wouldn't say he's the worst. I would just get so bent out of shape, thinking that he gets listed as the best. It's so weird to me, because in a way I almost feel like the best presidents are the ones we don't know much about. Cause it's like, well, they didn't cause that much damage and ones that we know a lot about. They either did something really, really great emancipation proclamation, 1862, or they did something really, really bad. Right. And so to me, it's like the best ones are the ones where like just kind of milk toast, you know, they didn't really do much.
Speaker 0 00:43:54 Do you want me to introduce my controversial gut, please? I'd love to hear it. I'm very excited
Speaker 1 00:44:06 Music for FDR, sorry. Um, this one's pretty controversial. And for whatever reason, my students always ranked this president as one of their favorites and they are just, and they just are mystified that I disagree with them with them. Uh, John F. Kennedy,
Speaker 0 00:44:26 Definitely an argument to be made. I know why I like him.
Speaker 1 00:44:32 Why do they like him? He's hot. He's come on. He's young. Um, he has a glamorous wife, uh, you know, he initiates the vision to go to the moon, the kind of creation of NASA and this kind of famous ask, not what you, what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country and all of that, uh, I rank him one of the worst, uh, because he almost gets us all killed.
Speaker 0 00:45:09 Right. We're like we could have just been wiped off the map.
Speaker 1 00:45:14 Yeah. I mean, it's so the Cuban missile crisis. So here's the thing. So Kennedy comes in as president and first of all, I mean, it's, we've just gotten over election and people are kind of talking about things. The 1960 presidential election was such a shit show
Speaker 0 00:45:35 To sing, like, say like, Oh, this has been the worst selection of her. And all
Speaker 1 00:45:39 1960 Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon has a legitimate gripe that that election was stolen from him. Um, the Kennedys, the Kennedys and an Chicago, particularly Illinois.
Speaker 0 00:45:57 Yeah. I can buy you a, I can buy you a victory. I can't buy you a landslide.
Speaker 1 00:46:01 Right. And then, I mean, in Illinois, I mean, it's, it's, we joke all the time that the, the motto in 1960 in Illinois was vote early and vote often. Um, and your next thing carries this graduate. I mean, there's an argument you can make that Kennedy's father stealing the election in 1960 creates the monster. That is Richard Nixon.
Speaker 0 00:46:31 Yeah. I mean, there's a definite like vendetta situation, right?
Speaker 1 00:46:34 Oh yeah. I mean, I think here's this guy who, who realizes the election stolen from him, but I, so that aside let's just ignore that. And like,
Speaker 0 00:46:43 It was all a fine on a selection and just Cuban missile crisis alone. Right.
Speaker 1 00:46:48 Right. Well, I mean, Kennedy comes into office and he's already kind of handed some bad situations, uh, Cuba and the United States. It's very tense because there's been a kind of a communist revolution that's happened in Cuba. Um, and actually early on in his presidency, he kind of backs this group of Cuban dissidents to go kind of retake Cuba. And it ends up being this horrible, uh, kind of tragedy of errors called the Bay of pigs. Um, you know, Cuba becomes like this big focus of Kennedy and, you know, here's the thing as domestic issues aside Kennedy's foreign policy is horrible. I mean, he surrounds himself with a cabinet of Hawks.
Speaker 0 00:47:41 He's a total Warhawk. Yeah, yeah. Advocate of cold war, um, rhetoric and yeah,
Speaker 1 00:47:49 And he's got, you know, cabinet members who are encouraging this idea of brinksmanship this idea that you take the Soviets to the brink of war and make them blink first and the Soviet move, the whole Cuban missile crisis thing. And I do think we need to do it an episode on the Cuban missile crisis, but, or maybe the U S and Cuba, maybe we should do that. That'd be really awesome. Um, our long history with Cuba, but, you know, the United States had put, um, ballistic missiles, nuclear missiles in a Turkey, Turkey bordered, the Soviet union. And this was considered very provocative. And the Soviets respond by moving nuclear missiles into Cuba and, you know, Turkey, adjoins, Russia, or the USSR, Cuba is 50 miles away from Florida, 75 miles away from Florida. And it's considered very provocative. And there's this whole thing. There's a standoff that starts to develop over this. And Kennedy's listening to all these people who are telling him, don't back down on this. You have to stand firm against the Soviets. And everything that we can see from this incident seems to indicate Kennedy's advisors were willing to push him to a war.
Speaker 0 00:49:19 Well, and that's, what's interesting is he now gets applauded as well. He prevented world war three from happening, but the way I see it as he provoked world war three of the potential for world war three, and then ended up backing away from it. And so it wasn't so much that he prevented it, cause it was like, Oh, he was really cool headed, but it's like, no, he went into it as a Warhawk. And as like really gung ho I don't think that he prevented it as much as he deescalated a situation that he,
Speaker 1 00:49:49 He provoked. Well, here's the thing. So the UN here's the key piece of evidence I use the UN starts to intervene. So this is October of 62 because everybody globally realizes if the USSR are in the United States, go to nuclear war, it's the end of all of us globally. So the U S the UN starts to get involved. And the secretary general of the UN in kind of late October asks both parties to reverse their decisions and enter a cooling off period, Nikita Khrushchev. The head of the union agrees Kennedy doesn't. I mean, again, it's that brinksmanship idea. And I would argue, it's actually Nikita Khrushchev realizing this is not worth ending the war world over as he turns the Soviet ships around and decides to not do this to not pursue this.
Speaker 0 00:50:51 Right. Right. They would say, Oh, Kennedy had the cool head. It's like, well, he might've had a kind of a cool head too
Speaker 1 00:50:59 Well. And the whole thing is, is Kennedy at the time is under the influence of painkillers. He had chronic conditions. He had developed before the war and during the war, um, he was on these painkillers. We don't know how with it, he was at the time,
Speaker 0 00:51:15 How many people during this time period who were on these painkillers, sleeping, they would have speed. And then they'd have an upper and a downer. I mean, the, the way that people in this time period in the 1960s were popping pills is insane. And we could talk about, I can have an episode on that. No doubt. But yeah, I mean, he was so, um, so many people during this time, famous people were so influenced by the drugs that they were taking to either stay awake or go to sleep, or to prevent their pain, that you can't even, it's hard to even say like where their minds were at that time. And it's wild to think about now. Like, could you imagine if your president was a drug addict, his son?
Speaker 1 00:52:07 Yeah. I mean, it's it's so we've got that. So we've got the foreign policies don't even get us started about Vietnam. So Kennedy could have dialed down kind of commitments. We had tentatively made with the French about Vietnam, but he doesn't, he actually starts to, to build up, um, however, towards the end of his presidency, before he was assassinated, Kennedy does withdraw order with the withdrawal of a thousand troops from Vietnam. Uh, something that Lyndon Johnson reverses pretty early in his presidency, but I mean, go domestically. And, and this is, it sounds very crass, but John F. Kennedy does more for the civil rights movement as a result of his assassination than he does during his presidency.
Speaker 0 00:52:56 Well, and that's often why people are very hesitant to criticize him. Right. He's assassinated. It was tragic, horrible, awful thing. Right. And so people were often really like reticent to say something negative about him, but it is, it's the it's as assassination that sort of, um, is that watershed moment that, that ushers in, um, more support or, um, movement towards civil rights. But would you say that that's why people don't really want to say bad about him?
Speaker 1 00:53:28 I think people are hesitant to say anything bad about him because, because of the assassination, but also because he's young, he's fairly good looking
Speaker 0 00:53:38 And joke earlier, right? Like, Oh, cause he's hot. He is an attractive president and he is young, but really one of the things to me that makes him a bad president is his womanizing, that he is far more interested in going off and having sex with every single woman. He can find including Russian spy as he was bringing into the white house, that I feel that his sexual appetite was a danger to the country and him being on these drugs and having pillow talk, you know, I mean, that was a thin fear and the secret service would sneak him in and out of the white house and sneak women in and out and all that. I mean, I feel like he was a very dangerous person as the leader of this country because he was a womanizer. I found that to be, um, a real, real issue with him. I mean, obviously from a gender perspective of him just being, um, misogynistic, but then also from a national security perspective where, um, him not being faithful to his wife really opened the door for a lot of, um, for a lot of problems for the country's national security.
Speaker 1 00:54:46 So moral authority we'd argue, he ranks really, really low
Speaker 0 00:54:50 Moral authority is, is practically nonexistent from this, from the stealing of the election. Right. First and foremost, using all this money. Right. I mean, he comes from all this money, you know, we don't talk about privilege and class and whiteness. I mean, this guy is the Zenith, right. Education wise class wise, family wise. Right.
Speaker 1 00:55:13 Ignoring the fact that his father had entertained Nazi-ism
Speaker 0 00:55:20 Yeah, well not
Speaker 1 00:55:24 Right. I mean, it's, it's, there's this whole mythology about JFK. I think that cloud's kind of a rational, sober discussion of, of what did he accomplish and what did he not accomplish? And I mean, he has these meetings, he does meet with Martin Luther King jr. Right. He does meet with them and talk with them
Speaker 0 00:55:43 One, arguably his brother was far more well positioned to do good. Right.
Speaker 1 00:55:50 I think Bobby does a lot more good for the country
Speaker 0 00:55:55 Doing good, but he was also assassinated. Right. So, yeah.
Speaker 1 00:56:01 Yeah. Um, do you have a final one you want to bring up here?
Speaker 0 00:56:08 I don't have a final one. I think that that's, and there's so many, I've argued, I've argued Jackson before and that's that one's really low-hanging fruit too, because we have Jackson in our, which episode did we talk about?
Speaker 1 00:56:24 I know we talked about it
Speaker 0 00:56:25 In one of our episodes. Um, I think that that's kind of low-hanging fruit, but it's also difficult to say that any president in the 18th and 19th centuries was good because so much of what they did. And so many of their policies were motivated by such things that we look at now and just like, wow, that was really awful. So it's hard to say, but I like it when we get into the 20th century ones. Cause you can kind of hold them to the fire a little bit more right.
Speaker 1 00:56:53 More, but that's okay.
Speaker 0 00:56:55 I dunno. That's trying to treat history. Like it's an upward trajectory of progress, which we know we've talked about a lot. Isn't the case, but I'm glad that we had a cut off though at 76 because it would have just gotten up.
Speaker 1 00:57:11 Would it have gotten ugly? What I want to do is I would love to be, I would love to be a fly on the wall a hundred years from now to see a historians discuss 2020.
Speaker 0 00:57:25 I've seen all these jokes, like, you know, you're going to have like entire classes devoted to the year 2020, and you're going to go through it month by month, day by day. I believe it. I mean really, because that happens in certain periods. You know, when I teach the second world war, I mean, you can go through it month by month. And it's just like this happened, this happened, this happened, you can analyze so many really significant events. And it's the same with this year. What is the Chinese proverb? May you live in interesting times?
Speaker 1 00:57:58 I, I truly hope 2021 is a fairly boring year. It's not going to be come on. I would like it to be mundane. Um,
Speaker 0 00:58:06 The first six months of it or not going to be. So I read an article New York times recently, and I would recommend that everybody reads this about the 1918 flu pandemic and
Speaker 1 00:58:17 Going into Thanksgiving. It's interesting to talk about that. That's a great segue. That's our topic for next week, right? Yes it is.
Speaker 0 00:58:27 So we're going to talk about the pandemic in 1918 next week and talk about what it looked like. Cause it started in March too. And they're like, Oh, these are unprecedented times. Well actually they're not. They're very precedented as a matter of fact. So we'll talk about this.
Speaker 1 00:58:42 We'll talk about the pandemic. And I think we're going to talk about some of the legacies of the pandemic as well. Like kind of how it does and doesn't change public health policy,
Speaker 0 00:58:50 Spoiler alert. There were anti maskers in 19 eight.
Speaker 1 00:58:54 Oh yes. There are certainly were, there were also people saying you better not stop me from going home for the holidays. That's right.
Speaker 0 00:59:01 That's right. I'm a special case.
Speaker 1 00:59:04 Yup.
Speaker 0 00:59:05 You had a happy Thanksgiving because you'll be listening to this after Thanksgiving, but I hope everyone's staying.
Speaker 1 00:59:11 Oh, I don't know. It'll be up. It'll be up tonight. Jeff. You're such a champion. Yeah. Thanks buddy. I'll be next week. <inaudible>.
