Talk Elections

Peacetime presidents are becoming rare. The last one was Carter, and he was almost 40 years ago. Is it possible for another peacetime president?

Of course, the last true peacetime president was Hoover, and that will never happen again.

Carter's "peace" was based on continuing aid to brutal regimes, meaning he was funding war even if not actively participating.

I guess no one wants to guess if a peacetime president will happen again, like Carter?

Typically speaking being a "peacetime President" isn't something you choose.

And possibly never had

Johnson could have chosen not to start the War in Vietnam.
Nixon could have left in a much more timely manner.
Reagan could have chosen not to invade Granada.
Bush the Elder could have chosen not to fight Iraq.
Bush the Younger could have chosen not to simply go after Al Qaeda, and nothing else.
Obama could have left Iraq and Afghanistan within his first year in office.

I had no idea the US invaded Spain!

Carter was president during the war on drugs.

I suppose that along that logic you can say that Calvin Coolidge was president during the war on Christmas.  Frankly I think that including the War on Drugs is nitpicking - considering how, if you do include it, the last peacetime president becomes Kennedy - but if you exclude him, Hoover.

Hopefully not.

Well does "peacetime" include any moment in a presidency or requires that the entire presidency be peaceful from start to finish? Because if it's the latter Kennedy doesn't count regardless (Bay of Pigs). There's also the fact that we had 16,000 personnel in Vietnam by the time he was killed.

None of this is that simple and you know it.

Hmm...I felt that including Kennedy was somewhat dubious but i nonetheless included him because at the time it really felt like peacetime.  Nonetheless I see your point.

Highly unlikely.

Carter's "peace," as you call it, was a period where not one bullet was fired, not one rocket launched by an American servicemen.  That overseas funding you're talking about went into the realpolitik strategy of ensuring peace in other nations.  Like it or not, democratic countries are more violent than their modern authoritarian counterparts.  With Carter we had more peace than with any modern neoliberal.

No, there were several peacetime presidents:
John Adams
John Quincy Adams
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore
Franklin Pierce
Andrew Johnson
The Gilded Age Presidents
Theodore Roosevelt
William Taft
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
Jimmy Carter.

I'll limit "ever" to my lifetime, and I have to doubt it. We now view it as our obligation (post WWII) to meddle, intervene, and manipulate the politics of lesser developed countries and countries with turmoil regardless of the problems we create and the resentment that we foster. There may well be windows of peace in relative terms, but especially with what's been stirred up in the Middle East, I don't see actual peacetime in my life. Comparative to the 2000s, I view the '90s as relative peacetime, even though it really wasn't. If we could return to that I would be happy.

And this is all sadly true. I would add that Somalia and Panama were totally unneeded as well.


The 1990s were the most peaceful post-WWII decade, but even that had the pointless Gulf War that  indirectly caused 9/11.


I've never heard even the neoconservatives claimed world peace was the goal of these policies.

Aside from that list, there's also Ford, Harding, and Eisenhower, who were only of the list because they were president at the very end of a war. (Harding would be true peace and the other two relative peace)

Not  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine–American_War)quite. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moro_Rebellion)

Depending on what you call the Quasi-War, John Adams doesn't count either.

Here's where I got the information:

http://www.heptune.com/preslist.html

Strangely, Hayes, B. Harrison, Ford, and Clinton are on neither the peacetime nor wartime list. Where would they go?

It seems pretty simple to me.

Notice how China, a very powerful nation, doesn't feel the need to intervene everywhere.  Neither does Russia or India.

Isn't China basically illegally occupying Tibet as well?

Probably right around the time there's peace in the Middle East.

What do you mean? He's not on either list.

As for Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, and Ford?

They intervene near their borders.  They aren't intervening in conflicts in South America though.