US Presidents

Beginning just as the Cold War finally came to an end, the 1990s were supposed to bring peace, prosperity, and optimism to the United States. Thinking about all that has happened since – the 9/11 attacks, interminable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the global financial crisis, violent unrest and democratic institutions under threat – it is tempting to look back on the decade as a short-lived golden age. But there has been a growing recognition among scholars and commentators that the roots of America’s contemporary woes can be found in the dark undercurrents of the fin de siècle. Strong economic growth and rapid technological advances had masked growing discontent and rage about inequality, immigration, and globalisation.

Since crossing paths nearly two decades ago, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have forged one of the more potent partnerships in modern American politics – winning three of the last four presidential elections between them – and have built an enduring friendship. It is all the more remarkable for its rarity. The pressures of the White House, overlapping ambitions, and competing loyalties have soured the relationship between most presidents and their deputies (think of Richard Nixon’s notorious bitterness towards Dwight Eisenhower or the froideur between Al Gore and Bill Clinton). 

Lerone Bennett Jr, bestselling author of Black history, ruffled feathers with a 1968 article in the glossy monthly magazine Ebony. ‘Was Abe Lincoln a White Supremacist?’ the piece’s title asked provocatively. The title of Bennett’s later book on the topic proclaimed that Lincoln was Forced into Glory. Mainstream media either ignored or denigrated Bennett’s work, but his insights about Lincoln’s racism paved the way for a host of historical works that have revised our understanding of who should be credited with ending slavery in the United States.

Barack Obama has written the best presidential memoir since Ulysses S. Grant in 1885, and since Grant’s was mostly an account of his pre-presidential, Civil War generalship – written at speed, to stave off penury for his family, as he was dying of throat cancer – Obama’s lays some claim to being the greatest, at least so far. This first volume (of two) only reaches the third of his eight years in the White House.

On 4 November 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States. The former radio announcer, Hollywood actor, and governor of California (1967–75) beat Jimmy Carter by four hundred and forty electoral college votes. No contender had beaten an incumbent by that much since 1932, when in the midst of the Great Depression Franklin D. Roosevelt triumphed over Herbert Hoover. And much like FDR’s victory, Reagan’s win in 1980 permanently altered the course of US politics. The welfare state that had existed under both Democratic and Republican presidents was diminished, if not entirely dismantled. The religious right, previously a nonentity in American politics, gained major clout. And the economic tenets of neo-liberalism, dismissed as fringe ideas in previous decades, took centre stage.

Gareth Evans diagnosed the affliction of leaving government as relevance deprivation syndrome. For those who worked in the Obama administration, leaving the White House must have presented deeper maladies: the bewildering success of a reviled political opponent and a profound sense of missed opportunities. Two recently released memoirs by former Obama staffers grapple with this reality in very different ways.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is consistently ranked alongside George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as one of the greatest presidents of the United States. His greatness rests on two pillars. Elected in the midst of the Great Depression, he permanently changed how Americans viewed government: as a force that would ...

Richard Nixon remains one of America’s most intriguing presidents (1969–74). Intelligent, shrewd, and possessing a keen sense of the public mood, Nixon represented the ideal presidential model. His grasp of foreign policy has been unmatched by his successors, and his domestic policies represented the last hurrah of ‘New Deal'...

Competing with Middle Eastern wars, terrorist attacks, and presidential tweets, Asia still tends to receive less attention than it merits. Furthermore, while geopolitical tectonic-shifts are occurring in the Indo-Pacific, it can be difficult to step back from daily headlines to assess the current transformation in its entirety. In Easternization, Gideon Rachman ...