What presidents have you changed your mind about the most?

[??????????]

Richard Nixon is really underrated because of that damn Watergate scandal, but he did truly great things.

I will be the first to say that Nixon did a number of positive things, but Watergate canceled those things out, sorry.

The idea that Watergate "cancels out" all the good things that Nixon did as president is just a horrible belief. Does Monicagate cancel out everything good Clinton did?

[dazzleman]

Most people either love Nixon or hate him.  I am ambivalent.

I think Nixon was an incredibly cynical man.  I believe he was capable, to a degree, of selling out or damaging the national interest for political advantage, and that he quite possibly did this with the 1972 SALT Agreement that was announced at the May 1972 Moscow summit.

Nixon reversed the strategic shift against the US in the mid-cold war period with his opening to China, which was a great move.  He also pursued detente toward the Soviet Union, with mixed results.  Though it could be said that some of the detente policies, by forcing the Soviets to open the door even a crack to outside information and influence, set up the downfall of their regime 15 years later.

I do believe that many of Nixon's harshest critics are absolute hypocrites, who are every bit as dishonest and dirty as he was.  Certainly, the sainted JFK was clearly not a saint, and LBJ was at least as corrupt as Nixon.

Overall, I used to be a Nixon lover, when I looked at things in a more black-and-white fashion, and now, while not a Nixon hater, I am somewhat ambivalent about him.  What really affected my thinking on Nixon was the unfolding of the Clinton presidency.  In so many ways, Clinton was the mirror image of Nixon, with a sunnier disposition and the backing of the media.  Only even Nixon, in the final analysis, had some regard for the national interest, and was willing to put the national interest ahead of his own ego, while Clinton never was.

[A18]

Richard Nixon is really underrated because of that damn Watergate scandal, but he did truly great things.

I will be the first to say that Nixon did a number of positive things, but Watergate canceled those things out, sorry.

The idea that Watergate "cancels out" all the good things that Nixon did as president is just a horrible belief. Does Monicagate cancel out everything good Clinton did?

What's with this (insert word)-gate stuff recently? Watergate was just the name of the Democratic headquarters that was broken into, correct?

[dazzleman]

Richard Nixon is really underrated because of that damn Watergate scandal, but he did truly great things.

I will be the first to say that Nixon did a number of positive things, but Watergate canceled those things out, sorry.

The idea that Watergate "cancels out" all the good things that Nixon did as president is just a horrible belief. Does Monicagate cancel out everything good Clinton did?

What's with this (insert word)-gate stuff recently? Watergate was just the name of the Democratic headquarters that was broken into, correct?

Yes it is, but the practice of using -gate as a suffix for any scandal began immediately after Watergate.  There have been many examples - Monica-gate, Contra-gate, etc.  I can't think of others right now, but many have been used.

[Beet]

While Reagan conservatism had something going for it, which has led my view of him to tremendously improve, I completely despite Nixon conservatism.

I'm ambivalent about Nixon only because he usually subsumed his conservatism in the name of economic and political reality and did what it took to further U.S. international policy and his own domestic career. Generally I approve of most of the steps that he took in office policy-wise, but I'm disappointed that he opposed busing, that he took too long to withdraw from Vietnam while failing to provide that government with true stability, and that he vetoed the comprehensive child care act of 1971.

[??????????]

While Reagan conservatism had something going for it, which has led my view of him to tremendously improve, I completely despite Nixon conservatism.

I'm ambivalent about Nixon only because he usually subsumed his conservatism in the name of economic and political reality and did what it took to further U.S. international policy and his own domestic career. Generally I approve of most of the steps that he took in office policy-wise, but I'm disappointed that he opposed busing, that he took too long to withdraw from Vietnam while failing to provide that government with true stability, and that he vetoed the comprehensive child care act of 1971.

You agree with busing? Hilarious. You know that's a form of racism, to say the least.

[dazzleman]

While Reagan conservatism had something going for it, which has led my view of him to tremendously improve, I completely despite Nixon conservatism.

I'm ambivalent about Nixon only because he usually subsumed his conservatism in the name of economic and political reality and did what it took to further U.S. international policy and his own domestic career. Generally I approve of most of the steps that he took in office policy-wise, but I'm disappointed that he opposed busing, that he took too long to withdraw from Vietnam while failing to provide that government with true stability, and that he vetoed the comprehensive child care act of 1971.

You agree with busing? Hilarious. You know that's a form of racism, to say the least.

I can't believe anybody with functioning brainwaves could still believe in busing.  Aside from the fact that it's blatantly unconstitutional, whatever the sainted courts may say, it failed miserably in its objectives, across all fronts.  Despite, or more likely in part because of, busing, there is a greater degree of black/white separation in education today than ever.  Busing destroyed every school system in which it was instituted, and resulted in the flight of middle class whites from urban areas.  A person who cares about helping blacks would oppose busing if he had a brain in his head, because busing has resulted in blacks being more isolated, and more bereft of good educational opportunities, than ever before.  Busing was one of those utopian ideas that didn't work because it didn't take human nature into account.

[Beet]

While Reagan conservatism had something going for it, which has led my view of him to tremendously improve, I completely despite Nixon conservatism.

I'm ambivalent about Nixon only because he usually subsumed his conservatism in the name of economic and political reality and did what it took to further U.S. international policy and his own domestic career. Generally I approve of most of the steps that he took in office policy-wise, but I'm disappointed that he opposed busing, that he took too long to withdraw from Vietnam while failing to provide that government with true stability, and that he vetoed the comprehensive child care act of 1971.

You agree with busing? Hilarious. You know that's a form of racism, to say the least.

I can't believe anybody with functioning brainwaves could still believe in busing.  Aside from the fact that it's blatantly unconstitutional, whatever the sainted courts may say, it failed miserably in its objectives, across all fronts.  Despite, or more likely in part because of, busing, there is a greater degree of black/white separation in education today than ever.  Busing destroyed every school system in which it was instituted, and resulted in the flight of middle class whites from urban areas.  A person who cares about helping blacks would oppose busing if he had a brain in his head, because busing has resulted in blacks being more isolated, and more bereft of good educational opportunities, than ever before.  Busing was one of those utopian ideas that didn't work because it didn't take human nature into account.

Actually, segregation declined from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, but increased since the 1980s. From 1955 to 1974, the Supreme Court gave federal district courts authority to oversee desegregation of schools. However, in the landmark 5-4 case Miliken v. Bradley, the Court majority, made up of four Nixon-nominated justices (Rehnquist, Burger, Blackmun, Powell) plus a regular concurrence by Potter Stewart, reversed itself and stripped courts of their authority to order desegregation across district lines. Hence from 1974 onwards, desegregation momentum was basically destroyed in the North. There was desegregation within cities but not between cities and suburbs, which in itself incentivized greater white flight to the suburbs. Hence the situation you have today, where the South is actually less segregated than the North. The Miliken decision primarily affected northern cities such as Detroit. Since 1991, with its momentum and thus effectiveness gone, the courts began to end busing. Clearly these post-Miliken policies have done nothing to help northern cities such as Detroit. Had Nixon appointed more liberal judges, we could have a very different situation today.

[Erc]

My hometown is a predominantly white community (83.5 % white, 5.1% black).

Right next door is a predominantly black community (24.4% white, 62.2% black).


The schools aren't segregated de jure, so nobody views the system as being wrong, per se.  As noted, there's still the 5.1% of black students here, and the 24.4% of white students there (although many of them may go to private schools after the 5th grade).  It's just that we're a generally rich community with high property taxes (which are used to fund our good schools), and that's a generally poor community with lower property taxes--so not many blacks can afford to live out of the northern reaches of town.

If you tried to implement busing here, you'd have a revolt on your hands.  Parents here pay high property taxes to have good schools with good students.  If they started bringing in black students from Mount Vernon (for things other than vocational training, which they might have done in a rather sequestered location until space considerations forced us to kick them out 5-6 years ago)--the school would become ridiculously cramped, class sizes would increase, the all-important test scores would fall, and the current students would be hurt as well--as the newcomers would disrupt classes, be bad influences on the current students, bring in crime, violence, and the like.  Before anyone accuses me of racism, let me say that this is simply what would happen when you bring in the products of the terrible neighboring school system into the good one next door.

The current students who could afford it would be pulled out for private schools, or they'd just move further north to other white communities.  Property values would fall (although they'd still be far too high for black families to afford moving here).  Remaining families would stage a tax revolt, cutting property taxes to a minimum, which would essentially kill the public schools entirely.  The good teachers would start leaving, attracted by higher salaries elsewhere, causing property values to fall further--and the town experiences the same degentrification process that happened in the neighboring town 50 years earlier.

Black families can finally start moving in, but by this point it's only marginally better than the next town over, and just as 'segregated'.

[dazzleman]

Actually, segregation declined from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, but increased since the 1980s. From 1955 to 1974, the Supreme Court gave federal district courts authority to oversee desegregation of schools. However, in the landmark 5-4 case Miliken v. Bradley, the Court majority, made up of four Nixon-nominated justices (Rehnquist, Burger, Blackmun, Powell) plus a regular concurrence by Potter Stewart, reversed itself and stripped courts of their authority to order desegregation across district lines. Hence from 1974 onwards, desegregation momentum was basically destroyed in the North. There was desegregation within cities but not between cities and suburbs, which in itself incentivized greater white flight to the suburbs. Hence the situation you have today, where the South is actually less segregated than the North. The Miliken decision primarily affected northern cities such as Detroit. Since 1991, with its momentum and thus effectiveness gone, the courts began to end busing. Clearly these post-Miliken policies have done nothing to help northern cities such as Detroit. Had Nixon appointed more liberal judges, we could have a very different situation today.

I'm well aware of the Miliken decision.  Your reasoning implies that busing would have been successful if only it had been ordered across district lines in the north.

Aside from the constitutional implications of federal courts effectively obliterarting local jurisdictional lines that were not set up for the purpose of discrimination, I think this reasoning follows the classic liberal mentality that if you give a patient a little bit of poison and he starts to get sick, the answer is to give him more.

As a result of the busing order that ultimately led to the Miliken decision, George Wallace handily won the 1972 Democratic primary in Michigan.  That's an indication of how busing would have been received.  Do you really believe that parents in the affluent suburbs around Detroit would have sat by and allowed their kids to be bused into a war zone for school?  They would have moved, pulled their kids out of public school, resorted to boycotts and violence if necessary, as was done in other places, most notably Boston.  But you can sure they would have seen to it that busing failed miserably in that case too.

It is a liberal fantasy to think that busing would have succeeded if only it had been allowed to breach district lines and grow into the suburbs.  That would only have spread the ugly cancer caused by busing to ever broader areas, without achieving integration, or, as if that matters to those who pushed busing, better education.

Cities like Detroit would have been far better off had busing never been inaugurated in the first place.  There would have been less reason then for the productive middle class to leave, taking its income and tax base with it.  Busing was not the only thing that helped destroy our cities in the 1960s and 1970s (high taxes to support welfare, softness on crime, etc. were also big contributors), but it gave a major push.  People are very emotional about how their children are educated, and don't want them educated in a war zone.

The fact is, the so-called integration that resulted from programs like busing was temporary and transitional.  It never took, like a plant that is artificially planted in barren terrain, lives a little while, then dies.  There was no chance it would ever work, because it doesn't address the real issues.

The Supreme Court was simply recognizing reality, and to some extent wealth and power, when it effectively excluded suburbs in the north from busing in 1974.  Busing was a bad idea anywhere it was used, and the implications of spreading it forcibly to affluent suburban areas on a broad basis were too fearsome to really contemplate.  Suffice to say, many of the nation's most wealthy and powerful citizens lived in those suburban areas.  They would never have accepted forced busing, and it would have spawned a very ugly backlash, possibly a crisis for the courts.  The Supreme Court decision in the Miliken case was in some sense a recognition of the reality of the failure of busing, and in another sense an act of self-preservation, and recognition that the courts would be too far out on a limb if they ordered busing under the circumstances of that case.

[J. J.]

Jerry Ford has really increased in my eyes, both policy-wise and as a person. 

Interesting... how come?

A lot his appoints turned out to be excellent, e.g., George H W Bush, Dick Cheney, Powell had an early appointment.

Economically, he looked like a disaster, until 1978 and the Carter debacle.

[dazzleman]

Jerry Ford has really increased in my eyes, both policy-wise and as a person. 

Interesting... how come?

A lot his appoints turned out to be excellent, e.g., George H W Bush, Dick Cheney, Powell had an early appointment.

Economically, he looked like a disaster, until 1978 and the Carter debacle.

I agree.  I was always partial to Gerald Ford.

Many people don't understand that good economies and bad economies take years to build up.  Ford inherited an economic mess that dated back to LBJ, but that Nixon had cynically contributed to with his manipulation of the economy through price controls, among other things.

Ford did what he thought was right in most cases, even if it hurt him politically.  Allowing Henry Kissinger to go to Africa and declare US policy toward minority white regimes to be unrelenting opposition, on the eve of the Texas primary, is a prime example of this.  So was the Nixon pardon, though I've said elsewhere that I think the damage done by the pardon could have been a lot less had the public relations aspect of it been handled differently (read: better).

Within 15 months of taking office, Ford was in a full-blown campaign for his own nomination and election.  And he did not inherit the presidency under the most auspicious of circumstances.  I think God was smiling upon us when he gave us Gerald Ford as president under such circumstances.  He had to face his first national election as an incumbent president during a very tough and troubled time, with really few to none of the problems being of his own making.

I hope that history will look kindly on the Ford administration.

[Jake]

Clinton has gone up in my eyes.  Most likely because he's stayed out of the news.

[dazzleman]

Clinton has gone up in my eyes.  Most likely because he's stayed out of the news.

What are you smoking?

I think that's true of a lot of people, but I suspect that will change based on what happened with Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan left office very popular, but by the time he was out of office for 4 years or so, his reputation was sagging significantly.  Several uncomplimentary books had come out, suggesting that he knew nothing when he was president, and that he was basically just acting the role. 

A similar thing happened with Eisenhower.  In 1964, after he was out of office for 4 years, he looked like an irrelevant old man who had done nothing as compared, in comparison to the dynamic Kennedy administration.  It was only in light of later events, such as the upheaval over Vietnam, race riots, etc. that people came back to appreciating what DIDN'T happen during Ike's tenure in the relatively placid 1950s.

Likewise, Reagan's reputation increased the longer he was out of office.  The perception of his accomplishments grew, most particularly the winning of the Cold War, while at the same time, the importance of his weaker points, the worst of which was the big budget deficit, shrunk in scale as the country effectively outgrew those deficits.

In Clinton's case, we had a rough four years after he left office, and that induces a certain sense of nostalgia for the Clinton years, even among Republicans, because of their relative placidity.  However, I believe that Clinton's reputation will move in the opposite direction of Reagan's and Eisenhower's as the years go on, and his accomplishments appear more and more ephemeral, and the scope of his neglect of major looming problems becomes more and more clear.

[Beet]

...
The Supreme Court was simply recognizing reality, and to some extent wealth and power, when it effectively excluded suburbs in the north from busing in 1974.  Busing was a bad idea anywhere it was used, and the implications of spreading it forcibly to affluent suburban areas on a broad basis were too fearsome to really contemplate.  Suffice to say, many of the nation's most wealthy and powerful citizens lived in those suburban areas.  They would never have accepted forced busing, and it would have spawned a very ugly backlash, possibly a crisis for the courts.  The Supreme Court decision in the Miliken case was in some sense a recognition of the reality of the failure of busing, and in another sense an act of self-preservation, and recognition that the courts would be too far out on a limb if they ordered busing under the circumstances of that case.

Your entire argument is based on busing being impossible because of massive resistance, which is supposed to come from the social and economic problems of the cities. But there was also massive resistance, even more massive resistance than busing, to integration in the first place. Remember Little Rock 1957, all the murders and burnings through the '60s, etc. ? Wallace not only made it to the ticket but carried those states by big margins. The statewide school system was even shut down but an entire year in Arkansas while teaching was done through the television. Obviously there was a huge, bigger struggle in the South than was ever seen in Detroit or even Boston. Certainly it was a highly fearful issue where certain parents responded in a knee-jerk fashion to racial stereotypes. Yet because the government had the will to enforce integration in the South, it eventually succeeded, now works, and is no longer challenged.

Too bad a similiar thing didn't happen in the North, where it would have been easier. The problem was that by the time integration in the North became a serious issue, a mighty backlash was already developing against the civil rights movement. It would have taken less will to push through integration in the North than in the South. And that might have made a big difference in the cities.

One major reasons why some school districts are better than others in this country is that some districts are home to families of high SES, which influences many things, including the funding of the school district through property taxes. This divides up the education system into the equivalent of thousands of tiny principalities. With cross-district busing in the North, the vested interests of the wealthier school districts and the poorer school districts would have been combined, achieving political will to improving the poorer school districts in the country. With suburban families interested in urban revival and success, rather than fleeing from urban problems, political will to seriously tackle urban problems may have come much earlier and saved the cities, and our country, from much suffering. According to your hypothesis, people left the cities partially due to busing in the cities, but if this was a significant factor, you would have seen white families moving out of the deep south after integration there, which did not occur. In fact, population migration was determined primarily by economic factors; whites do not have a problem sending their children to racially diverse schools so long as the SES status and educational performance of the schools is good. By rejecting school integration in the North, the Milliken decision halted the process of higher SES suburban classes taking an interest in improving the educationary background of lower SES urban classes, whatever their race, hence contributing to the bifurcated society we have today.

Also note: I prefer a privatization of much of the school system to busing by far, but within the public system I prefer busing where necessary, and also based on SES distinction rather than race alone.

[dazzleman]

I guess you are much more optimistic than I about the ability of outsiders, effectively, to change inner city culture.

Keep in mind that in the south, despite the presence of a legalized structure of segregation, in many ways blacks and whites were much closer socially, economically and culturally than they were in the north.  In fact, in a sense, this is what made a legalized structure of segregation necessary to keep the two apart, whereas in the north, blacks and whites were completely isolated from each other, as effectively as in the south or maybe more so, without even the necessity to erect a legalized structure to keep them apart.

So in reality, I think you could be wrong about integration in the north being easier than the south.  The cultural gap between the inner cities and the suburbs is such a huge chasm that I think it has to be narrowed before any real intercourse between the two can be achieved.  As I said, this chasm is probably bigger even than the chasm that existed in the south during segregation.

Part of the issue is also practical.  In the north, government is more localized, rather than regional, by cultural tradition.  The smaller, municipal based school districts, are a reflection of this, while the south has county-based school districts that cover a bigger area.  Municipal districts are a cherished tradition in the north, allowing parents to feel a close connection to their children's school.  The effective obliteration, and its replacement with a system that buses suburban children into violent inner city neighborhoods (which never really took place in the south) would never be accepted, and is wrong.

You are effectively saying that it is up to higher socio-economic group people to go in and clean house for those at the lower levels.  I really don't think that works.  I also think it's unconscionable to make children bear the whole burden for problems created, and left unsolved by, adults.

I think the most damning indictment of forced integration in urban areas is that those most opposed to it are those who have had a taste of it.  The most anti-black I have seen are those who have had contact with blacks under these circumstances.  It had exactly the opposite of the intended effect.  Some of my older cousins attended a high school that was in the process of integration in the 1960s.  There was no real resistance to the integration itself, but the new school was plagued with violence and problems, caused mainly by lower SES urban black students.  Eventually, white flight made the school virtually all black, and today it is plagued by violence and is so bad that blacks with any other options make sure to avoid it.  And all my older cousins who went to that school effectively chose lily-white school districts for their own kids.

I think the whole integration thing can only work when the cultural gap between blacks and whites has been narrowed.  Part of the reason it succeeded, to a degree, in the south is that that cultural gap was never so great as in the north.