Presidents' Body Counts: The Twelve Worst and Four Best American Presidents by Al Carroll - HTML preview

Appendix:

The Best and Worst Ex Presidents

* Most former presidents simply lived out the remainder of their lives quietly and retired, occasionally giving speeches, writing books, or going into other businesses. Since many were already elderly, this is quite natural, not controversial. It is not reasonable to expect men in their seventies or older to do more than enjoy their final years, especially since many already had a lifetime of public office.

* Obviously some presidents never retired at all. Harrison, Lincoln, McKinley, Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, and Kennedy all died or were killed while in office. Reagan was already suffering from Alzheimer's his last two years in office and thus obviously should not be considered for either best or worst ex president. Some like Polk and Lyndon Johnson did not live long after leaving office, less than six months for Polk and under three years for LBJ. Ford had  actually planned to retire from Congress when he was appointed vice president and then became president.

* Judging an ex president by the same criteria as a president, who lived or died by their actions or had their lives greatly improved, leads to a slightly longer list of best presidents. Strictly by looking at lives lost there is a far shorter list of worst presidents, and so the ones listed here were mostly simply very unethical. Obviously the lack of access to the power of the presidency means they have far less power to harm others. They cannot go to war, dictate the enforcement of laws, or sign laws, though because of their former position they could still influence all three. The stature of having been president does mean they still have enormous power to do good should they choose to. For the younger (in their fifties and sixties) ex presidents the question then becomes, why did they choose to do nothing? Truman, for example did little while living almost two more decades.

* The best ex presidents were or are:

* 1. Carter 2. Hoover 3. John Quincy Adams 4. Clinton 5. Teddy Roosevelt 6. Jefferson.

* The worst ex presidents were or are:

* 1. Millard Fillmore 2. John Tyler 3. GW Bush 4. Richard Nixon 5. George Bush Sr.

* After leaving office, Carter became the greatest humanitarian ex president of all time, and one of the greatest humanitarians in US and world history. He founded the Carter Center, dedicated to peacekeeping, mediation, human rights, and ending global hunger, poverty, and disease. The Carter Center has monitored 95 elections in 37 nations. Their fair monitoring and other mediation efforts likely prevented or helped to prevent thirteen coups or civil wars. Carter himself directly prevented two wars. In 1994 he negotiated an agreement in Haiti that led to the dictatorship stepping down, avoiding a US invasion under Clinton. In 2007 he helped prevent a war between the two Koreas.

* The Carter Center has one of the greatest records of any organization in fighting diseases, including malaria, mumps, rubella, measles, and lymphatic filariasis. Even more dramatically, Guinea worm disease dropped from 3.5 million cases per year in 1986 to almost zero today thanks to the center. The center also worked to end malnutrition by helping over 8 million farmers in Ghana use better farming techniques, seeds, and fertilizers. Carter also founded Habitat for Humanity which has built 400,000 homes, helping over 4 million people in sixteen nations worldwide acquire, reconstruct, or preserve homes.

* Jimmy Carter has likely saved millions of lives. Carter should be compared to figures like Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, or Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross. It is doubtful there are more than fifty other individuals in all of human history who saved a comparable number of lives as Carter. Probably no other non-scientist or non-doctor has a comparable record. One cannot argue with results, and those who despise Carter, again, are mostly those who confuse being a threatening bully with being a great nation.

* Herbert Hoover dedicated much of his remaining life to feeding the hungry of Europe during and following World War II. This was a lifelong pattern. During and after World War I he led efforts that fed over 10 million European children. During World War II Hoover founded and led relief efforts for the hungry of Finland and Poland. After World War II he led relief efforts that fed 3.5 million German children.

* Hoover also chaired a commission to improve government efficiency, wrote books, and strongly opposed both Communism and the Korean War. Along with Carter he was truly a dedicated passionate humanitarian. Scholars debate how responsible he was for the Great Depression, but he was clearly one of the greatest ex presidents.

* After leaving the presidency, John Quincy Adams became a congressman for the next seventeen years, the most vocal and persistent critic of slavery in all of Congress. When pro slavery congressmen passed a gag order to stop all petitions against slavery, Adams defied them again and again and again. He took pride in being the strongest thorn in the side of slave owners for almost two decades.

* Clinton, together with his wife, founded the Clinton Foundation devoted to both disease prevention and poverty relief. The Clinton Foundation has helped 750,000 AIDS patients get treated. The Clinton Global Initiative claims to have helped 400 million people worldwide. Some of those claims are greatly overstated. Many of the projects and pledges gathered by the CGI were already planned or would have happened anyway. But Clinton used his stature to get commitments and gather people together. The CGI works to end global warming, helped over 3 million people get access to green energy, helped over 5 million children get medical equipment, and treated over 30 million people for diseases.

* Teddy Roosevelt went on to become a leading voice in progressive causes for the rest of his years. In 1912 he founded the Progressive or Bull Moose Party, the most successful third party since the Republican Party. Roosevelt actually got more votes than the Republican candidate Taft, but Democrat Woodrow Wilson won. Though the Progressives broke up by next election, many of their ideas became law, including recalls, referendums, primaries, income tax, direct election of senators, votes for women, and the eight hour workday. Teddy Roosevelt's Progressives were a big influence on the New Deal of his cousin, Franklin.

* Jefferson spent his final years founding the University of Virginia. He designed the curriculum and even the buildings. UV was the first US school of higher learning with innovative academic specializations and the library at its center rather than a church. It had no chapel in its early years.

* The worst ex presidents did not cause anyone's deaths during their time after office, but their actions as the worst presidents often did affect their ex presidencies. The list below also includes unethical and immoral men for other reasons.

* Millard Fillmore became the only ex president to prominently support terrorism. He ran as the candidate for the American Party, better known as the Know Nothings, anti-Catholic bigots and anti immigrant nativists. (See Section Five.) The Know Nothings killed at least 50 Catholics and often attacked churches, schools, and monasteries. To put it in perspective, try to imagine an ex president today running for a third party founded by the Ku Klux Klan or Black Liberation Army.

* John Tyler holds the dubious distinction of being the only former president to ever outright commit treason. That does not mean treason the way some conspiracy minded types use the word to mean “things I disagree with.” He collaborated with the enemy and betrayed his country. Tyler became part of the Confederate government after being elected to the Confederate Congress, though he died before he could take office. Jefferson Davis himself spoke at the memorial, and Tyler was given an elaborate funeral by the Confederacy.

* Richard Nixon, far from the claim of supporters that he “suffered,” lived an extremely well off and enviable life since being forced out of office in disgrace, even getting paid $7 million for the David Frost interviews. Nixon spent his remaining years trying to convince journalists and commentators of his foreign policy skill, and the less knowledgeable or perceptive fell for his claims. Nixon accepted a full pardon from Ford and thus holds the dubious distinction of being the only US ex president to admit to thirteen criminal felonies. For the far more serious crime he committed, illegally bombing Cambodia, de facto genocide, charges were dropped. (See Section One.) (There is a ludicrous claim online that Clinton was pardoned for draft dodging. Clinton did avoid the draft, but he did so legally.)

* GW Bush has done little since retirement but paint, give speeches, and hide out from war crimes charges. There are large parts of the world he cannot travel to. Bush has the unenviable distinction of being the first ex US president to face criminal indictments, one that Obama will likely share in 2017. Bush had to cancel trips to Switzerland and Canada for fear of being arrested. The Center for Constitutional Rights and European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights have briefs prepared to prosecute Bush for torture should he visit any of the 147 nations who signed the Convention Against Torture.

* GW Bush has also spent some time devoted to his very surreal presidential library. Where Carter and Clinton devoted their centers to charity, and his father George Bush Sr. has a conventional presidential library, the Bush Center is yet one more conservative think tank that sponsors, along with fairly conventional conservative positions, a golf tournament. One truly has to be a highly sheltered member of the elite to imagine either conservatism or golf need ex-presidential help. Even more than Nixon, GW Bush holds the record for lying the most openly, blatantly, and consistently of all ex presidents. His lying has been far less successfully received than Nixon’s.

* George Bush Sr., after a lifetime as an oil businessman, congressman, ambassador, vice president, and president, went back to being a businessman. The manner in which he did it was clearly unethical but unfortunately is not yet illegal. He is the only ex president to take ever advantage of classified security and intelligence briefings to make money and aid his investments. Imagine the public outcry were any other ex-federal employee to use classified information to become even wealthier.

Other Works by Al Carroll

Medicine Bags and Dog Tags:

American Indian Veteran Traditions From Colonial Times to the Second Iraq War

As far back as colonial times, Native individuals and communities fought alongside Europeans and Americans against common enemies. This is the story of Natives whose military service defended ancient homelands, perpetuated longstanding warrior traditions, and promoted tribal survival and sovereignty. Drawing on archival records and oral traditions, this work offers the most complete account of Native veterans to date and is the first to take an international approach, drawing comparisons with Native veteran traditions in Canada and Mexico. Debunking the “natural warrior” stereotype as well as the assumption that Natives join the military as a refuge against extreme poverty and as assimilation, the reasons for enlistment are connected to the relative strengths of tribal warrior traditions within communities. This is a look at how the American military influenced American Indians and how, in turn, Natives influenced US military tactics, symbolism, and basic training.

Survivors: Family Histories of Colonialism, Genocide, and War

A collection of immigrant students and American Indian students recounting their family members' lives surviving colonialism, border wars, civil wars, genocide, and revolutions. These include accounts from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Greece, Iran, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Peru, Poland, Puerto Rico, Rwanda, South Africa, South Korea, and Vietnam, and three Native accounts, Navajo, Pawnee, and Quechua.

Coming Works

Ira Hayes and the Monument at Iwo Jima:

The Meaning of His Life in Native Memory and White Stereotype

Famed as the Native flag raiser at Iwo Jima, Ira Hayes' life has been the site of competing narratives for the meaning of his time in service, post service adjustment, and early death. This book examines his portrayal in media accounts, monuments, Hollywood films, and popular songs. Native honorings of Hayes include memorials, his image on Navajo Nation medals, the American Legion post on the reservation, a powwow, and Native artists' paintings. A look at both Anglo-American stereotypes and how Native representations either contest or ignore those same stereotypes.

Confederate Tyranny:

The Fearful World of a Confederate Victory

An alternate history novel. It is 1864. The Confederate Secret Service will win the Civil War the only way the Confederacy could hope to win…by terrorism! Almost 150 years before 9-11, Confederate agents carry out biological warfare on northern cities. For three generations, the Confederacy’s ever tightening dictatorship uses terror and repression against Blacks, Natives, Mexicans, Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Germans, Cajuns, and women to stay in power. But the day of reckoning is coming. The Confederate alliance with “our beloved brother Adolf” will bring disaster.

A People's History of Texas

A history from below; The Texas You Were Not Taught About, Arabs, Asians, Atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, and Pagans in Texas; The Long Indigenous History of Texas; The Texas Republic, the Alamo, and the Texas Rangers as Myth; The Unknown Radical History of Texas; The History of Sex in Texas; The Far Right in Texas; The Future of Texas, Ending Redneck Texas and the Cowboy Myth.