Here is a thoughtful review of my new book Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster by A.J. Rice.
“Why Trump the Peacemaker Won’t Win the Nobel Prize,” by A.J. Rice, American Greatness, September 15, 2020:
In this age, when it has become fashionable to hate the land of our birth and our forefathers, Robert Spencer’s new book is a bracing reminder that America has indeed been great—and can be great again.
How should we rate and rank America’s presidents? It’s not just an academic question or one for documentaries. How we rate our past presidents tells us much about the present and probably more about the future. Robert Spencer has come up with a whole new way of rating America’s presidents that deserves wide consideration. His new book, Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster, is a must-read for students of America’s present and past.
As I said, it’s not an academic question. It’s on the table today and every day. A Norwegian politician named Christian Tybring-Gjedde has just nominated President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. The nomination shocked the establishment. But should it? It wouldn’t if they rated America’s presidents the way Robert Spencer recommends.
“I’m not a big Trump supporter,” Tybring-Gjedde explained. “The committee should look at the facts and judge him on the facts—not on the way he behaves sometimes. The people who have received the Peace Prize in recent years have done much less than Donald Trump. For example, Barack Obama did nothing.”
He’s right. Obama campaigned saying he would get American troops out of Iraq but he triggered more wars than he ever stopped. His drone strikes killed innocent civilians. He allowed ISIS to rise up, and turned Libya into a post-apocalyptic wasteland like something out of Mad Max. Obama also set Iran farther down the path toward obtaining nuclear weapons, while he lavished them with billions in untraceable cash.
How does enabling an extreme autocracy and its violent terrorist proxies, Hizballah, foster world peace? The Nobel committee never should have granted Obama that prize and should hang their heads in shame now.
Historians and the media continue to judge Obama a success, though. He won the Nobel Peace Prize, they say. The lens through which people like this view his and other presidencies may not be the right one to use.
The fact that Obama was even considered for the Nobel so early in his presidency, never mind that he won it, highlights the fact that the Nobel Peace Prize today is so hyperpoliticized that it is essentially meaningless. The Nobel Peace Prize was once rewarded for truly extraordinary achievements that brought about real and lasting peace. Think of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin first establishing peace between their warring countries, and then being honored with the Nobel in 1978. Their countries have remained at peace with each other ever since. That Nobel prize honors real peace.
Obama winning it is more akin to the “everybody gets a trophy” mentality that is ruining our country. Now the Nobel Peace Prize is given to those who share the far-Left views of those who award it, while those who stand apart from the Left’s ideological camp and yet actually work effectively to bring peace are ignored. Trump, accordingly, though he has been nominated has no chance whatsoever to win the Nobel Peace Prize, no matter how transformative his efforts to bring about the accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates are on the one hand, and between Serbia and Kosovo on the other hand, have been.
Just recently, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain announced they will allow Israeli airliners to cross their airspace, knocking down a restriction that had been in place for more than 70 years. They did this because of the Trump-negotiated Israel-UAE peace deal. Trump has built up an astounding record as the first president in decades to not involve America in a new war. But the Nobel committee is likely just to look the other way. Maybe they’ll hand Joe Biden the prize, just because.
We simply take it for granted that the gatekeepers of worldly honors are all working from far-Left perspectives, such that only Leftists are ever recognized for their contributions, no matter how spurious. This is true not just of the Nobel Prize Committee, or of European honors and awards; it is also true in the United States. The Oscars just turned themselves into quota-obsessed nose counters and will not even consider a movie for its Best Picture honor unless it meets certain arbitrary race- and gender-based criteria. As Mark Steyn noted recently, this marks the death of art in film if it stands.
The Left’s pollutive perspective has infiltrated virtually every conceivable field, even, or perhaps especially, our understanding of who we are as a people, and who we should be. As the Left steps up and more openly demonizes American heroes and paints American history as an unbroken record of racism and oppression, there is an increasingly urgent necessity for a sober, balanced view of American history, one that does not bow to the Left’s sacred cows or takes the likes of the New York Times’ biased word for it.
This is where Robert Spencer and his new book come in. Spencer’s indispensable book provides needed facts and context in the field of presidential politics, and offers a refreshingly patriotic overview of the entire trajectory of American history.
There is much more. Read the rest here.
Relic says
poor tenant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pl7yWDxpDg
David says
Strange that Abby didn’t find out about Margaret Sanger 8 years earlier. I wonder if she ever watched an abortion. Oh yes, she did.
gravenimage says
‘Robert Spencer’s new book is a bracing reminder that America has indeed been great—and can be great again’
……………..
Thank you A.J. Rice.
Rod says
Do we need Spencer to remind us that America has been great? Of course not! Americans have in the past behaved magnificently and earned the respect and admiration of millions around the world. That, of course was long before the stupidities of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and lunatic idea of a massive wall and the shattered international treaties with the apparent objectives of isolating America and treating friends and allies as rivals or enemies.
Current events make the sad decline of the once revered USA to its present shameful chaotic state seem tragic by contrast. To believe that America can be great again calls for a degree of optimism for which sadly there is today precious little justification.
According to a survey by the Pew Research Center –
Favorability toward the US in the UK, Canada, France, Japan and Australia is the lowest it has been in at least two decades, the survey found.
Trump’s personal ratings slumped further in the annual index, with respondents in the UK, Spain, France and Germany giving him ratings comparable to the lowest points of former President George W. Bush’s tenure and significantly below the highs of Barack Obama’s administration.
Great again? How? When?
David says
Any Trump-slump is due the massive Anti-Trump Left-wing propaganda. It is all a personal attack.
What Highs of Obama’s administration? Like giving billions of dollars to Iran to help finance their nuclear weapons program? Like drone strikes in Afghanistan, killing many innocent people? I guess you know Iran didn’t even sign the Treaty?
Rod says
With Trump in plain view abandoning so many standards of decency, his racist messages to white supremacy, his insults to fallen soldiers, his lies, his idiotic pretence to medical expertise, the long growing list of alleged sexual assaults – why do you talk of Left-wing “propaganda”? We see him, live, on our TV screens. He is what he is. It’s not propaganda, it’s a coarse, self-obsessed, dishonest, preposterous bully, parading himself for the world to see and judge.
Sadly, David, the world has judged, and America’s reputation has been judged accordingly. Not your fault, perhaps, but why did you elect this fool?
Obama’s record? Widespread civil unrest and street violence? No. Nationwide demonstrations? No. International disapproval? No. Widespread disagreements between state and central administrations? No. Presidential actions disallowed by the courts? No. Continuing numerous resignations of highly placed public officials? No. An incredible number of White House advisors fired, replaced, fired, replaced, etc? No. Record wild-fires out of control? No. A leader who is a figure of fun around the world? No.
Before 2016 the USA looked to the world like a well-functioning administration.
And now? Looks like continuing ever worsening chaos.
gravenimage says
The idea that the enemies of America trying to tear her down is the fault of someone who stands for and defends her values–which “Rod” grotesquely distorts–is just appalling calumny.
gravenimage says
“Rod” has sneered at the idea that America has any greatness ever since he has been here. And of course he would find the idea of standing against those like Pol Pot and the Taliban and to try and protect ourselves against violent drug gangs to be disgusting. So telling.
Giacomo Latta says
Antifaman,
Do I detect just a step to the right on your part? Current events? The use of street violence by your ilk to try and destroy what is still the greatest democracy in the world, possible only because there has always been a tolerance for self-criticism that does not even exist in other democracies? Well, if your side wins then true, America will never be as great as it once was again. As far as ”favorability toward the US in the UK, Canada …”, do these countries no longer wish to trade with the US? Whoa! Citations please from even the looniest of left-wing rags. Canadians without a political bent feel a kinship toward the US regardless who or what is president or running congress or the senate. I know because I have worked there (US). France and Germany are already so thoroughly mired in political correctness that just name me the subject and I can tell you how they’ll bleat.
Why does the drop in Trump’s popularity bother you if you don’t wish to make America great? Highs of Barack Obama’s administration? Subtract the weed from the White House of his time and what highs are there? The march of Iran toward being a member of the nuclear bomb club? The abandonment of faithful ambassadors in Libya to a dreadful death? Destroying private sector-based health care just because it is private? Eight whole years to accomplish things and to protect American lives everywhere and yet nothing except the elimination of a certain Al-Qaeda operative? I’ll let you cheer that although I doubt if you will.