US Presidents are not usually remembered: Truman, Reagan and Trump will be

'In fact, perhaps Obama’s most consequential act was to roast Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011, a humiliation which supposedly spurred the real estate mogul to stand for president. I saw one person on Twitter liken it to a 21st century Sarajevo assassination.' (Ed West on January 29, 2025.)

Obama was also consequential because on his watch Victoria Nuland overthrew Yanukovych and provoked the invasion of Crimea and, in the longer term, the invasion of 2022. His Iran deal and the way he handled Russia after she conquered the Crimea in 2014 look good now - not so the way he handled Libya, though Hillary and Samantha Cameron are maybe more to blame.

It's great that he kept out of Syria - but he should not have drawn a red line about using chemical weapons. 

By the way, why have we heard no more about that since Assad fell?

He was fortunate in his successors.

Few American presidents are consequential. 

Truman, Johnson, Reagan, Bush the Younger for very bad reasons and Trump.

However Johnson is forgotten and so will the Bushes be (schoolchildren will mix them up - same name, went to war with Iraq).

Kennedy is remembered for now and almost started World War Three but was not president long enough to achieve anything much. USAID was his monument and it has been torn down. 

Nixon went to China and ruined Cambodia and Laos.

It occurs to me writing this that US foreign policy has been a catalogue of disasters from FDR onwards.


Hoover looks very good now and had he still been in the White House in 1940 Pearl Harbor would not have happened - possibly England and France might not have gone to war.