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

Ed West on January 29 2025:

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.

Yes Obama was not consequential but the way he handled Russia in 2014 and Iran looks good now - not the way handled Libya for which Hillary and Samantha Cameron are more to blame.

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, both invaded 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 . 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.