Republican Presidential Succession
You already know everything I’m about to tell you. But I haven’t seen anyone lay it out this plainly as a progression. Let’s face it: Republicans have been electing crazier and crazier Presidents throughout my lifetime. And I’m a Boomer, ok?
When I was born, 1955, Ike (Dwight D. Eisenhower) was President. I was pretty small then, just a baby, really, so I don’t know that much about Ike. He was a five star general in WWII, and I guess a pretty decent President. Perhaps not the sharpest knife in the drawer, although he was first in his class at West Point. In his outgoing Presidential address, he warned us against the Military-Industrial complex. I heard that originally it was to be the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex, but he simplified it.
Next up, Richard Milhous Nixon. “Nixon,” it is practially a swear word, an obscenity. The second POTUS in history to be impeached, except he wasn’t actually impeached because he had the horse sense to resign first. A bad guy, a bad President, no respect for the law, no respect for the Constitution. A long-time Commie/Ruskie hater. (Take that, Trump!) But, you know, a really smart guy, and he did some good things: opened up relations with China, signed Title IX that banned sex discrimiation in education, established the Environmental Protection Agency. Another good aspect of the Nixon Presidency: The Republican party was not yet in the tank. Nixon’s impending impeachment was a bi-partisan project, and it was Republican Senator Barry Goldwater who went to the White House and told Nixon it was time to go.
Gerald R. Ford doesn’t count because he wasn’t elected, and he doesn’t fit my narrative. He served nearly a full term, taking over after Nixon resigned. A pretty normal guy, normal politician, normal President. Most notable acheivement: being portrayed as a clumsy bumbler by Chevy Chase at the very beginning of Saturday Night Live. But you know who was elected, and who could have has Ford’s term? Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, a really corrupt crook accepting cash bribes in the basement of the White House. Such a bad guy that they cut a deal letting him off the hook if he would quickly resign, just to keep him out of the Oval Office. He kind of fits my thesis.
But my thesis really picks up with Ronald Reagan. A Hollywood actor, and not a good one. The Great Communicator, a skill which he used to help prevent America from getting universal health care, before he entered politics. As a two-term California Governor beginning in 1967, Reagan sent police and the National Guard in to deal with Berkeley student protests with truncheons and tear gas. (Hey, at least they didn’t shoot to kill students like they did in Ohio.) Our oldest serving President, he was completely out of his mind with Alzheimer’s by the end of his second term. Too cuckoo for Coco Puffs to be held accountable for trading arms to Iran to illegally fund the brutal Contra dirty war in South America. But the Republican party covered up his dementia and kept him in office anyway, because they guy could still hold a pen and sign those conservative bills. Sound familiar?
I’ve also got to skip George H. W. (later “Pappy”) Bush because he doesn’t fit my script. I actually liked GHWB when he ran for President in the primary against Reagan, and then became Reagan’s running mate. But he was a bad guy, too. Up to his ears in Iran-Contra, though, thanks to Assistant Attorney General William P. Barr (sound familiar?), he skated on it. Bush got a lot of credit for building the international coalition that kicked Iraq out of Kuwait, but many think that war was a mistake (and certainly an atrocity), and that the Bush administration essentially green-lighted Saddam Hussein to go into Kuwait in the first place. Also, H.W. Bush was the father of W. Bush, and we come to him next.
George W. Bush, commonly known as simply “W.”, one of the most unlikely Presidents. Failed at pretty much everything he ever tried to do. Oldest child of George H.W. Bush and Barbara (née Pierce) Bush, his smarter and more successful younger brother Jeb was supposed to be the dynastic President, but somehow it fell to George first. Technically, I could leave W. out of my Presidential succession because he wasn’t actually elected, he was appointed by the Supreme Court in a ruling that will go down in history as the Court’s worst ruling ever. There were a bunch of shenanigans calling into question the legitimacy of the election to his second term as well. But I won’t leave him out, because he fits my thesis perfectly. Where Gerald Ford was portrayed as a bumbler on SNL, W. actually was a bumbler. Not so much physically, although early in his first term he did prove unable to eat peanuts and watch TV at the same time without almost choking to death. But, where Reagan was The Great Commuicator, W. could often barely get a sentence out. Some of his most famous speaking fails include “new-cular” for “nuclear,” “Is our children learning?” and “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me … you can’t get fooled again.” He was a weak President, giving unprecedented power to his Vice President Darth Vader … I mean, Dick Cheney (who embraced the comparison to Darth Vader; I mean, how evil can one be?) And he presided over what will go down in history as the worst U.S. foreign policy decision of all time, the disastorous war in Iraq that cost at least a hundred thousand lives and destabilized the Mideast through to today. Just a terrible, terrible President. Oh, and the pirmary goal of his second term was to kill (privatize) Social Security, but fortunately, being George W. Bush, he of course failed.
Finally, we get Donald J. Trump. You know all about it, I won’t go into it here. So look at the progression of Republican Presidents in my lifetime:
- Eisenhower (good)
- Nixon (crook)
- Reagan (dementia)
- W. Bush (can’t get fooled again)
- Trump (not my President)
Ye gods! From good to bad to worse. And yes, I can already see it getting even worse the next time: Right now, we are being told that the leading candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination after Trump are: Trump! Donald Jr. and Ivanka! Ye gods!
But the Presidents are not the problem, they are symptoms. The Republican Party is the problem. They Presidents got crazier because the Republicans got crazier. From the party that told Richard Nixon it was time for him to leave, to the party that stole a Supreme Court nomination from President Obama, and is in the tank for Trump. From the party of Eisenhower and Goldwater to the party of Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, and Mitch McConnell. Today, if you are Republican, you may think you are a good person, but you are supporting racism, white supremacy, and anti-constitutionalism. Please stop.
Just for contrast, let’s list the progression of Democratic Presidents in my lifetime:
- John F. “We will go to the moon” Kennedy
- Jimmy “Peanuts” Carter
- Bill “Hot pants” Clinton (yes, impeached, but for what?)
- Barak “The black guy” Obama
- Elizabeth “I have a plan for that” Warren (okay, I get ahead of myself)
To this list, but for Replublican election chicanery and a bum Supreme Court ruling, we could add Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hilary Clinton. By all accounts, all eight of these figures are very, very smart people, and not a cray-cray among them. Out of the list of five Republican Presidents, only Nixon the crook was smart. (Maybe Ike too.)
It makes me proud to be a Democrat. Execpt, I am not a Democrat. (I’m Green but I voted for Hilary because I’m not crazy.) Because, again, the problem is not the Presidents, it is the Democratic Party. Because, despite electing admirable Presidents, they have not been an effective political or governing party, and they continually fail to stymie the crazy Republicans. But I’ll save that for another day, another essay.
P.S. In November 2020, Vote Blue. No Matter Who.
