Confronting the Presidents: No Spin Assessments from Washington to Biden

by Bill O'Reilly

Theodore Roosevelt is a man of his times and does not believe in the equality of races.

By the end of Theodore Roosevelt’s second term, America’s position as a global power is on the rise.

America’s sixteen great battleships—all painted white—are being sent around the world as a show of force.

The purpose of the journey is friendly, visiting other nations in a...

America is a world power with a navy that can go anywhere...

Says the president, “A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car. But if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.”

the president believes two terms are enough for any man, thinking that only a dictator would wish to stay on longer.

But Theodore Roosevelt never loses track of what is happening in America—and what he hears infuriates him. President Taft is reversing many of Roosevelt’s progressive measures, favoring corporate power over the needs of working people.

little over a year after leaving office, he begins campaigning for a return to the presidency. He becomes a fierce advocate for labor. This leads to Roosevelt’s departure from the Republican Party in 1912, when Taft once again wins the nomination. Teddy Roosevelt then forms his own Progressive Party—nicknamed the “Bull Moose Party”—as an alternative, all but ensuring that the Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson, wins the presidency over the divided Republicans.

Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency defined a new era where protections were mandated for working people.

He signs a bill increasing protective tariffs, pleasing America’s large corporations. Then he calls for a new constitutional amendment to permit the collection of income taxes. Taft also allows public lands to be used for coal mining, in direct opposition to Theodore Roosevelt’s land preservation vision.

This division will forever change the course of the Republican Party. A good many Republicans were progressive. But Taft is now defined as a man who believes in conservative values. Roosevelt is portrayed as a liberal, closer in ideology to the Democrats.

Theodore Roosevelt, who destroyed Taft’s second-term bid, summed up his onetime friend succinctly: “Taft, who was such an admirable fellow, has shown himself such an utterly commonplace leader, good-natured, feebly well-meaning, but with plenty of small motive; and totally unable to grasp or put into execution any great policy.” Roosevelt’s sour opinion of Taft, however, will be nothing compared to what he thinks of Woodrow Wilson.

Woodrow Wilson is a man who does not do well alone.

He needs female companionship. He has three daughters and no sons. The loneliness of the White House soon overwhelms him. He contemplates suicide, telling his physician he “could not help wishing … someone would kill him.”

Joseph Wilson is a racist and passes that along to his son.

He will revive segregation in the federal government after six decades of integration, denying employment to men of color.

Daughters Jessie and Eleanor follow.

He has a second stroke just one month after taking office but refuses to acknowledge it, instead calling the pain on the left side of his body “nephritis.”

He spends just four hours a day in the office, sleeps nine hours every night, and puts in as much time as possible on the golf course.

he is one of the most popular sitting presidents in history.

This is incredible because Warren Harding has a secret life. He conducts numerous extramarital affairs and three years ago fathered a daughter out of wedlock. The public has no idea.

The one thing that binds these men together is their placing personal needs before those of the nation.

For the first time ever, physical appearance is a factor in electing a president because women have just been given the right to vote.

The president promises a “return to normalcy” but does not state what that means.

America in 1922 is a country besieged by European immigrants who flock to the United States to escape the devastation of World War I. It is also a time when the first mass media outlet, radio, is becoming commonplace. Popular music, news, and comedy entertain the American public. Moving pictures without sound are becoming more popular. But it is the pursuit of alcohol that begins to dominate the culture.

The Eighteenth Amendment, ratified in January 1919, makes the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of ...

Harding also protects free speech by pardoning Eugene Debs, a socialist who spoke out against World War I and was convicted of sedition.

When news of the Teapot Dome scandal breaks, the American public is furious.

Many historians consider Warren Harding to be one of America’s worst presidents.

They oppose the flood of immigrants coming from Europe and the large number of black people moving north to find work. The Klan also opposes the country’s growing number of Catholics and Jews.

Their goal is to “keep America for Americans.”

President Coolidge is wary of the Klan.

he welcomes Jews, black people, and Catholics into...

what it means to be an American: “Once our feet have touched this soil, when once we have made this land our home, wherever our place of birth, whatever our race, we are all blended in one common country. All artificial distinctions of lineage a...

The president’s advantage is that Democrats control the House and Senate, giving him enormous power.

In what will become known as his “First Hundred Days,” Roosevelt signs bills creating jobs, protecting farmers, and inventing two enormous public works projects—the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Civilian Conservation Corps—designed to put Americans back to work. In all, a record seventy-seven new laws are passed during the president’s first three months in office.

It is President Truman alone who makes the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Another A-bomb is set to fall on Tokyo, but the president orders all further use of nuclear weapons halted.

“I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important,” he states. “The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”

JFK needs white southern votes to win reelection but cannot afford to ignore black voters.

It was John Kennedy who promised that America would have a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, which happened. He founded the Peace Corps and initiated sources of government spending that led America out of a recession within a month of taking office. His handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, where he forced Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev to back down, showed that the inexperienced statesman who blundered at the Bay of Pigs had matured. It is also known that John F. Kennedy had many progressive social issues he wished to pursue in his second term. He did not believe he would be reelected if he veered left too early. Also, Kennedy planned to pull American troops out of Vietnam.

History has not been kind to Lyndon Johnson. The disastrous Vietnam War divided Americans and ushered in a distrust of government that persists to this day. But Johnson’s “Great Society” created Medicare and other federal safety nets that continue to benefit the vast majority of American citizens. In the end, Lyndon Johnson was a larger-than-life figure with a foggy moral compass who hurt the nation more than he helped it. And his legacy made it possible for another polarizing leader to achieve the pinnacle of power. Without the presence of Johnson, there would have been no President Richard Nixon.

Now, looking at bad news almost everywhere, Jimmy Carter has few answers, even though the Speaker of the House, Democrat Tip O’Neill, calls him “the smartest public official I have ever known.”

cutting government funding for entitlements while lowering taxes for the rich.

Reagan also increases defense spending,

Ronald Reagan is a prolabor Democrat, and Franklin Roosevelt is his political hero.

But his views shift during the 1950s. In 1962, he formally registers as a Republican and, two years later,

campaigns for Arizona senator Barry Goldwater’s p...

Governor Reagan must immediately deal with a budget shortfall. So, he violates his campaign promise by raising taxes. Most Californians let it go. Cigarettes, gasoline, liquor, and corporate profits are all levied. The deficit soon disappears. Reagan also signs gun control and proabortion legislation, not exactly conservative positions.