Presidents

= Presidents of the United States  = = = =Harry S. Truman~HST= [|Biographical Information] == ====Truman, otherwise known as HST was the president right after the WWII. He wasn't very popular as a child, but that changed once he became president. He was very surprised when FDR asked him to be vice president and then when FDR died he became the president. He was a very plain man and never dishonest. His honesty was actually a legendary trait that he was known for. He lived off his salary and did not use his position as president to earn extra money. An example of this would be that he bought his own postage stamps instead of getting them free because he was president. He also thought knowing about the past would help him get through the times. When Truman was president he created a few plans to help other nations. The first one that he proposed was the Truman Doctrine. This is when he said that he would give money to any country that was endangered with the control of communism. He didn't want the USSR to expand any further and to make other countries communist as well. The first two countries that he helped were Greece and Turkey, giving them $400 million to help break away from Russia. This caused the beginning of the Cold War. Another decision that he made was the Marshall Plan. This Plan was to give aid to poor nations to help them rebuild the damage that had been caused from war. The final plan that he made was the Point Four. This gave aid to developing countries. When it was time for the election many thought that Truman would lose to Thomas E. Dewey. Everyone from the start thought Dewey would win, so it was a big shock to America when Truman won for a second term.==== = = = = =Dwight D. Eisenhower~Ike= [|Biographical Information] ==== Dwight D. Eisenhower, otherwise known as Ike, became the president after Truman. He became president during the 1950's, which was a glorious time. Many of the Americans were living in suburbs and having many luxuries that they didn't think they could ever have. Before Ike became the president he had been a supreme allied commander in Europe during WWII. This made him very popular throughout the American people. Ike was a conservative and his advisers were business men. He thought a president should be a strong moral leader and believed in a behind the scenes leadership. Americans were ready for a change from all the democrats. They needed a republican. When he became president the American people thought that he should act quickly and when he didn't he was labeled as lazy. He wanted to end the Korean War because he didn't want war in China. When the Korean war ended it showed that America was going to stand up to communism. President Eisenhower saw danger in the future for America.====

=John F. Kennedy~JFK= [|Biographical Information]

John F. Kennedy, JFK, became the president after Ike. He was the youngest president to ever be elected to office. When Kennedy grew up he was very rich, but he didn't use it to his advantage. He was trained to serve and country and achieve the best he could for America. Once elected into office he had many ideas to help America progress forward in the economy. He had very big dreams that all Americans could share. He intended for the nation to reach for greatness within itself. He was determined to be an active, good president and one who would inspire the nation. Later in his term he had to deal with the Cuban Missile Crisis. This is when in Cuba, Russia allied with them and set up many nuclear missile stations. They said that they would help Cuba under attack from the U.S. They would help them by launching the missiles into the U.S. This was bad because the missiles could reach all over the America and could attack any one of the major cities. Kennedy's cabinet told JFK that he needed to attack right away and take over Cuba. This would mean that they wouldn't have to worry about a nuclear bomb threat. JFK's final decision was not to attack. For one he stated that too many people would get hurt and die. He was also worried about not finding all of Cuba's missiles. If they missed one then they still had a chance that they would be attacked. People were frustrated that JFK wasn't doing anything so his popularity went down. But, in reality his decision was the right one since Cuba had Russia for backup. Some people called his ideas socialists and feared changed especially in the field of civil rights. With the election coming up, JFK decided that he needed to go to Texas. Texas at the time was having political problems and he felt that if he could solve the problems then Texas would vote for him. People warned him not to go because many hated him there, but he went anyway. He interacted with the people, which many thought was good, but didn't really realize the danger. When he was driving in his car, with the bullet-proof windows rolled down, he was shot in the head. JFK died on November 22, 1963.

=Lyndon Baines Johnson~LBJ=

[|Biographical Information]
LBJ became the president after JFK. This new president was very big. He had a big voice, a big body, a big ego and an ambition that was colossal. He not only wanted to be a great president, he wanted to be the best. He wanted to be a great president that was actually the best there could be. Worked for goals with lots of energy and political savvy. He also saw that if you helped the handicapped and the poor then it would enrich the whole nation. Growing up LBJ was a very bright, but rebellious student. He always wanted to be a leader but got into a lot of trouble. Politics fascinated him, considering his father was into politics. He didn't have the money to go to collage so he had to earn the money for himself. He would always works hard and get he job done, plus he would do it very well. He didn't think that some day he would actually become president. When he worked in Washington, before he became president, the old timers were very impressed with what he did and also his goals. He brought electricity to the farmers in Texas Hill Country. He he was a senator he usually got what. This is because he know how to trade, maneuver and twist arms. When he became president he got Kennedy's programs passed and his own he extended the New Frontier and the New Deal. His great vision when he became president was the **Great Society.** He imagined a place where there was no poverty, where all children were well schooled, where health care was birthright, where jobs and job training was attainable by all and that everyone had equal rights. If he could make this happen he would be the greatest president ever to live. He could do this though because he had the ability to get it done. When it time for the reelection he wanted to be elected president because of what he accomplished. He did and became very popular in the people's eyes because of his vision of the Great Society. Even though this was good for America he was leaving out some important details and lied about the fact the Vietnam attacked an innocent American ship. He kept telling the blacks to be patient and that the time would come when they had rights. He had passed a civil acts bill where he banned segregation. He also later on became involved with the war in Vietnam.

=//__Richard Milhouse Nixon__//= [|Biographical Information] Nixon became the president after LBJ. Nixon was the type of kid who never got his clothes dirty. He didn't have a lot of money growing up, but he still manged to do very well in school. After he graduated from high school he went to serve in the U.S. Navy during WWII. Later on he found that politics seemed to interest him. He was elected to the Senate, but he played some nasty tricks. He was said to have two faces, the Richard face and the Dick Nixon face. On one side, people found that they agreed with many of his ideas and that he was very capable of being president, but the other was a liar and wasn't very good. When we was elected president he said he was going to stop we war in Vietnam, but they ended up fighting for five years. He drops more bombs in Vietnam, even though he said that he was a peacemaker. He was a peacemaker in one way because he was the first president to go to China and Moscow to help them with communist. Nixon was the type of president who did what he wanted without thinking about others. He thought he could do anything because he was the president, and that the laws didn't apply to him. As president, he used a lot of dirty tricks, but the worst of all was the Watergate Scandal. The Democratic headquarters was in an apartment of the Watergate Hotel. Nixon asked for spies to rent a room next to the headquarters to listen in on them. This would help Nixon because he would be able to prepare for the questions that they were going to ask him. He was able to hear what they were thinking about him being president, and what their next move might be. Later on when it was discovered that Nixon was listening and spying on the Democrats. They prepared to have him impeached, but he chose to leave instead. Overall, he was a liar just so he could gain power for himself and continue with his presidency.

=__//**Gerald Ford**//__= [|Bibliographical Information] == Gerald Ford was the president after Nixon. He was the replacement for the vice president, but then shortly later he became the president when Nixon resigned. When he became president he put his hard work into the two big issues of Watergate and Vietnam. He tried to heal the Watergate ordeal and the fighting in Vietnam. When he was president he managed to get everyone out of Vietnam. His wife **Betty Ford** was also well known. She spoke out openly on controversial subjects such as women's rights. When Ford tried again for president he lost the election.

=__//**James Earl (Jimmy) Carter**//__= [|Biographical Information] Jimmy Carter became the president after Ford. He was honest and very determined. He was also soft-spoken and religious. He knew about civil rights and some of the other ideas based on economics, but he was a outsiders when it came to dealing with the government in Washington. He didn't really fit in, in Washington. When he was president the price of gas and oil went up. He couldn't get any of his bills passed because he didn't know what do to. Even though he did have many set backs in Washington he was a good peacemaker. During this time there were many tensions in other countries. He helped make peace with the two countries of Egypt and Israel. He also helped protect the natural environment. When he ran for reelection he was defeated. His loss probably had to do with the fact that he didn't know what his was doing in Washington.

=__//**Ronald Reagan**//__= [|Biographical Information] Ronald Reagan became the president after Carter. He was a great communicator and he used TV like no other president before. He was a nice jolly, funny man. He fit right in with the other presidents, except he didn't take himself too seriously. He attacked anti-poverty groups. He said that it was an interest to us all to help the poor, but do so they had to tax the rich, meaning that it now was a government responsibility. Reagan created the "Regan Revolution" in which it was suppose to help the poor and help the rich get richer meaning that America was going to be better. His administration changed things. Before Reagan was president he was a movie maker than the governor of California. He wanted to reduce the size of the government. He had a lot of ideas on decreasing money spending but increasing military build but. Balancing the budget was one of his key goals. Reagan chased a large tax cut that was suppose to help the people, but it reduced the about on money that was being put into poverty programs. He gave LOTS of money to support the build up of the military. This money was only really being spent on military programs that it meant that less money was going into programs that were helping everyone. This led to public corruption because of the fact that there wasn't enough money being made by businesses because they didn't know what to do because there was less guidance, considering not that the government was watching over them. The federal government grew very large during the Reagan year because they were doing less. Reagan talked to the Russian Leader about communist and this led to an historic event of a arms-control agreement. He then went to Germany and said, "Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall." With that said the wall was taken down in 1989. He was anxious to become the peacemaker in the Cold War, but he would have to wait. He did end the arms race with Russia that had been costly for both nations.

=__//**George Bush Sr.**//__= [|Biographical Information] George Bush became the president after Reagan. He had promised no new taxes, but went back on his word and raised them again. The economy then started to turn sour in the U.S. and not a lot of good things were happening. Currently in Iraq a new dictator was taking over, his name was Saddam Hussein. They were becoming very aggressive, and were trying to take over Kuwait. But, Bush was able to stop the aggression by sending troops. This resulted in the Persian Gulf War. He also began to help poor countries. He asked his troops to give food to Somalia because they were so poor and many were starving to death. The only problem with they missions was the fact that they killed many innocent people in Somalia and they still were going to have problems with Iraq. The big question during Bush's presidency was we weren't sure it we should try to help other countries and risk the chance of being in another war or if we should just keep to ourselves so others could follow our example.

=**__//Bill Clinton//__**= [|Biographical Information] == Bill Clinton was the 42nd president after George Bush. He was the first democratic president in 12 years. Clinton was a small-town bot from one of the poorest states. He showed the world that you could have not the best childhood, but you could make it very far. Every since he was little he wanted to be president. He got married to a women named Hillary, becoming an incredible political partnership. Clinton had a horrible childhood, but he still managed to excelled in school. He found that church was very important. Clinton turned out to be one of the most conservative democratic presidents ever. But because of this conservative nature it was the first time in 30 years that the country had a surplus. He did many things to help the nation such as cutting welfare, adding more prisons and police, putting more of a fight against drugs, and many other things. He wasn't able to thought get health insurance for all Americans or change the way you paid for political campaigns and he wasn't able to do much for public schools. Because of this, the gap between the rich and the middle class became larger and larger. He did many international things while being president in which he helped many other countries. He did though throw away his chance of being a great president. The republicans used someone that was independent outside the politics in the executive branch had to be investigated. This was called the whitewasher. What they found out was that Clinton had a pretty intimate relationship with a women who worked in the White House. They went very far in describing the details, but when asked if this was true he said it wasn't. Because he lied to the nation, Bill Clinton was impeached. Citizens then made it clear that they did not believe that private behavior was a constitutional matter. Congress soon followed, but Clinton later on was not found guilty of the high crimes and the misdemeanors that the Republicans said he committed.