Credit, Blame, and Some of Both (Updated)

Every president wants to take credit for anything good that happens during his presidency and blame anything bad that happens during his presidency on his predecessors. The truth is somewhat more complicated.

Consider the Vietnam War, for example. During the 1970s protesters called it “Nixon’s War” but Truman was the first president to send troops to what was then called “French Indochina” which Eisenhower expanded to 1,000 and Kennedy expanded to 16,000. Within a few years of becoming president Johnson had increased that number to 150,000 and by the end of his presidency he had expanded that to more than 500,000.

Was this escalation a knock-on effect of Truman’s original military involvement—in other words inevitable once the original commitment had been made, did it become Nixon’s war when he became president, or should the 58,000 dead Americans be blamed on Johnson? Your answer may be a political one than a conclusion based on the facts.

Or consider the U. S. relationship with China. Nixon began the process of opening up a relationship with China which, ultimately, led to a collapse in U. S. manufacturing employment in the early Aughts. Was that an inevitable consequence of the start of more normal relations in 1971, was it George W. Bush’s fault because it happened on his watch, or were Bill Clinton’s overly optimistic granting of Most Favored Nation trading status and sponsorship of Chinese membership in the World Trade Organization have serious, deleterious knock-on effects for us?

I’ve been struggling with a way of depicting this but let’s consider some important issues of the last dozen years in the context of the last four presidents in tabular form.

Issue	Clinton	Bush	Obama	Trump
Dot com boom	Clinton had very little to do with it.				Almost entirely a consequence of capital investments in the 1980s and 1990s.
Afghanistan War		Would any president have occupied Afghanistan? Or was that a product of Bush’s insouciant optimism?	The casualties resulting from his surge are on Obama’s head.		Any president sitting on 9/11/2001 would have engaged in military action against Afghanistan.
Iraq War		I’m not certain this was inevitable. This is on Bush.	The rise of DAESH is mostly on Obama.
Great Recession	The repeal of Glass-Steagal was a contributing factor.	Lax enforcement was a factor.			Alan Greenspan kept interest rates too low for too long.
Recovery		Just about everything that resulted in the end of the recession had been done by the end of Bush’s term.	The ARRA may have contributed to preventing a “double dip”. Inaction by the Obama Administration contributed to the shallowness of the recovery.	Trump policies may have contributed to an improved recovery.	I’m not convinced yet that the improving pace of recovery is anything other than a continuation of trend.
Chaos in North Africa			Obama’s intervention in Libya has resulted in a lot of chaos in North Africa and is a major cause of mass migration from North Africa into Europe.
High health care costs	Clinton’s bungling of health care reform didn’t help.				High health care costs were a foreseeable consequence of the health care reforms of 1965. These were abetted by more than a decade of Congressional inattention and present Congressional cowardice.
Child migrants			Obama Administration policies resulted in an enormous increase of child migrants.	Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy has certainly been terrible optics, particularly for those who already oppose Trump but, perhaps, not as much for those who support him. It’s cruel but both Bush and Obama had separated children and parents as well, just on a different scale. Right about now it looks like an “own goal”.
North Korea	Clinton negotiated the “Agreed Framework” with North Korea, failed to implement it, didn’t detect that North Korea had violated the agreement and obtained intel from Pakistan, and failed to respond. More than any other single president he’s responsible for letting North Korea get nuclear weapons.	Bush failed to revive the Agreed Framework and took no action to prevent North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons. North Korea detonated its first nuclear weapon on his watch.	More inaction	Trump has done more to engage with North Korea than any of his predecessors since Clinton. What will come of it remains to be seen.	If North Korea attacks us or our allies with a nuclear weapon, it will constitute the gravest foreign policy failure in U. S. history and Clinton should but will not get the blame
Russia	Clinton interfered with Russian elections and more than any president since went out of his way to antagonize Russia. A wave of NATO expansion that actually made us less secure was instigated by Clinton. And I haven’t even mentioned bombing Serbia.	Bush continued the destabilizing expansion of NATO.	Obama’s attack of Libya, in violation of the UNSC resolution from which both Russia and China abstained, allowing it to go forward, further poisoned relations between the U. S. and Russia. And then there’s Ukraine.	If Trump “colluded” with Russia in the 2016 election, he’s a villain. If not, he’s a victim.	The deterioration of U. S.-Russian relations is a bipartisan catastrophe.
Syria		Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a major factor in destabilizing Syria if, for no other reason, because of significant increase in its Sunni Arab population, a result of Iraqis fleeing the carnage in Iraq.	Obama’s “red line”, the inexcusable aiding of Al Qaeda in Syria, and illegal war in Syria are among his errors in Syria.	Trump appears to be continuing and expanding his predecessor’s errors in Syria.

Not everything a president takes credit for is a result of his actions; not everything he’s blamed for is his fault. It is rare that something good that happens on a president’s watch can be completely attributed to his actions.

Every president deals with the consequences of his predecessors’ actions and failures to act as well as the new challenges that arise during his presidency. How he deals with these things is significant.

Update

I’ve added some additional issue facing us to my table.