Major Contributions, Essay Example

What were some of the major contributions of, important events faced by, or decisions made by the postwar presidents — Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon? Who was the best? Who was the worst? Why? Explain.

After the second World War U.S. became the world’s leading country and began to be involved in world’s problems, especially when Soviet Union was involved in one event they would join simply to be a rival. America was also challenged domestically with many things including the economy, ethnic relations, etc. Throughout these timelines different presidents reacted differently to events: some overreacted and some under reacted.

Harry Truman served as president from 1945-1953. Throughout those eight years President Truman had two crucial issues that happened within that time frame the Korean War and McCarthyism. For the former, Truman was the commander-in-chief to sign the agreement for intervention in 1950 which came to be quite disastrous for America and Americans as well since many Americans themselves did not want to intervene and go to another war after the break from the Second World Car. This brought division in the country and did not affect the country positively. The second issue that he had to deal with was the issue of McCarthyism which turned America upside down and was in a way a way to hunt people down. Truman himself was against that but in contrast to signing the declaration of intervention, which was an overreaction, now he was under reacting with McCarthyism and let McCarthy and many others use and abuse many people who at them turned out to be innocent.  In sum, these were the two major issues that Truman was faced with and one can say with certainty that Truman was not the best in the list of presidents of the postwar period in United States.

Eisenhower, in comparison to Harry Truman was relatively much better than him. Despite the fact that Eisenhower was a conservative, hence, would in reality act less, he actually ended up making some wise decisions throughout his Presidential term from 1953-1961.  For instance, after United States fought a futile war in Korea, Eisenhower came to a conclusion that the war did not produce anything and in fact was counterproductive for the country so he withdrew the troops as soon as he got elected to office. When it comes to McCarthyism one is even more confused yet feels appreciative for the fact that he acted objectively and not to save his party but was working for his country. He discredited Joseph McCarthy and stopped the harassments that were aimed at innocent  men and women. Overall, one can say that Eisenhower was clearly a nice and definitely wise president.

Even though many people like to see John F. Kennedy as the star of his time and a successful president, the record proves otherwise. Kennedy did not really change the domestic and foreign policy of America. In other words,  America experienced a period of stagnation during President Kennedy’s term as president.  If one looks more critically, it can be said that he actually failed when it came to foreign policy since the Bay of Pigs turned out to be a complete failure.

President Johnson, had a controversial time at the White House. He was the first president to recognize the rights of the African-Americans and officially sign it into a law to have people of black color be as equal as the white man. But on the negative side, President Johnson increased the troops in Vietnam and made an enormous blunder out of it.

President Nixon was one of the worst presidents in America. Even though he had experience as vice-president, his Watergate scandal was so disastrous for his name that it overshadowed everything that he has ever done.

In sum, one can conclude that Eisenhower was the best president of all these.