Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Periodic Presidents 9: Laid-Back Presidents
This column is hard to label. This clearly is an interlude series, similar to the Regressive or the Gap Presidents. I chose "laid-back" because it seems that these three Presidents, Milliard Fillmore, Calvin Coolidge, and George H. W. Bush, led the country in a low-key way. These Presidents are in stark contrast to Column 10, the Popular Presidents, when all sorts of things started to happen. In fact, sometimes the laid-back President follows the Popular president, and sometimes preceded him. These Presidents presided over a Third Turning, when people are busy doing their thing while important problems don't get solved. When a Laid-Back President is in office, a major crisis is 5-10 years away. These Presidents could have faced the crisis head-on but it was hard, and more comfortable to let things go by.
Milliard Fillmore succeeded Zachary Taylor when Taylor died in office. Taylor is not in the table because he did not serve long enough. A lot of things happened in his administration, most of them concerning slavery. The Fugitive Slave act was passed, resulting in the Underground Railroad, as large numbers of runaway slaves followed the Drinking Gourd. The compromise of 1850 was reached, which gave a piece of the pie to both pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was clear that the nation was splitting along pro and anti slavery lines, and Fillmore could have done something about it, even at the risk of civil war. Civil war happened anyway ten years later.
Calvin Coolidge became President when Popular President Harding died. He presided in one of the most boomingly prosperous periods of our history, the Roaring Twenties. The horse was put to pasture as large numbers of people were able to buy automobiles. The stock market kept on going up and up and up with no end in sight, and people risked their fortunes buying on margin to get more and more of the money. He was definitely low-key as he kept a lot of thoughts to himself, and even went into depression once or twice. He kept the economy roaring by cutting taxes several times. Hence he was not addressing the main problem, which was that the entire economic system was fragile and one cataclysmic event could send everything into a tailspin. But he got out of the Presidency before that could happen.
George H. W. Bush followed Reagan, after one of the worst stock market crashes in our history, the one of 1987. The economy had been going full steam, encouraged by Reagan's tax cuts and by the development of computers. He kept things going as they were, and a let down occurred, a recession that eventually cost him reelection. In the meantime he did send 200,000 troops to Kuwait to stop Iraq's Saddam Hussein's takeover of that country in Persian Gulf War I, after carefully building up a multinational coalition. But not even 90% post-war prosperity could prevent the downturn of the economy and the downfall of his Presidency.
Next: The Popular Presidents, who engaged in some rather unusual pursuits.
Milliard Fillmore succeeded Zachary Taylor when Taylor died in office. Taylor is not in the table because he did not serve long enough. A lot of things happened in his administration, most of them concerning slavery. The Fugitive Slave act was passed, resulting in the Underground Railroad, as large numbers of runaway slaves followed the Drinking Gourd. The compromise of 1850 was reached, which gave a piece of the pie to both pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was clear that the nation was splitting along pro and anti slavery lines, and Fillmore could have done something about it, even at the risk of civil war. Civil war happened anyway ten years later.
Calvin Coolidge became President when Popular President Harding died. He presided in one of the most boomingly prosperous periods of our history, the Roaring Twenties. The horse was put to pasture as large numbers of people were able to buy automobiles. The stock market kept on going up and up and up with no end in sight, and people risked their fortunes buying on margin to get more and more of the money. He was definitely low-key as he kept a lot of thoughts to himself, and even went into depression once or twice. He kept the economy roaring by cutting taxes several times. Hence he was not addressing the main problem, which was that the entire economic system was fragile and one cataclysmic event could send everything into a tailspin. But he got out of the Presidency before that could happen.
George H. W. Bush followed Reagan, after one of the worst stock market crashes in our history, the one of 1987. The economy had been going full steam, encouraged by Reagan's tax cuts and by the development of computers. He kept things going as they were, and a let down occurred, a recession that eventually cost him reelection. In the meantime he did send 200,000 troops to Kuwait to stop Iraq's Saddam Hussein's takeover of that country in Persian Gulf War I, after carefully building up a multinational coalition. But not even 90% post-war prosperity could prevent the downturn of the economy and the downfall of his Presidency.
Next: The Popular Presidents, who engaged in some rather unusual pursuits.
