Accidental greatness

Some leaders may have been great but never dealt with a crisis or never had a chance to see their reforms through.

But what leaders landed in a leadership position during the 20th century and before, and ended up being lauded as great in historybooks, despite not actually being the accomplishers?
 
JFK - LBJ acheived more but JFK often gets the credit.

Yes. Sort of agree. LBJ benefitted politically from JFK´s murder, I don´t think they´d have been able to push through all those reforms without that.

Who else?

I thought this thread would inspire lots of controversial debates.
 
Ronald Reagan

He is revered for arresting inflation, more or less as promised. In reality, long term economic cycles were primarily responsible. The rampant growth in real estate development and petroleum resourcing dropped to stasis. That development would have happened independently of the presidency.
 
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Ronald Reagan

He is revered for arresting inflation, more or less as promised. In reality, long term economic cycles were primarily responsible. The rampant growth in real estate development and petroleum resourcing dropped to stasis. That development would have happened independent of the presidency.

What about his acts in the Cold War?
 
What about his acts in the Cold War?

That issue is debatable. I used to cite Reagan's role in ending the Cold War as uniquely pivotal in shaping the last years of the century. But a democrat re-elected as a hero in 1984 could have duplicated the feat. In any case, the winner of 1980 was destined to win honor no matter what.
 
Ronald Reagan

He is revered for arresting inflation, more or less as promised. In reality, long term economic cycles were primarily responsible. The rampant growth in real estate development and petroleum resourcing dropped to stasis. That development would have happened independent of the presidency.

Margaret Thatcher. She's Reagan, but with a grasp of high theory--and her happy coincidences are North Sea oil, Arthur Scargill, poorly trained Argentinian fighter pilots, Labourite navel gazing, the city of London, council flats which fetched a nice price on the market, etc.
Oh, and the ability to say it's all in keeping with Monetarist policy one year versus Milton Who? the next.
 
I already said that had Grover Cleveland run for a third term in 1896*, he would be considered one of the top US presidents in the period. In particular, the absence of a Spanish-American War would have forced the USA to achieve "greatness" through other means and his legacy would had not been buried under that of McKinley and Roosevelt (wich, perhaps, would have never achieve real prominence, or at least not enough to be as remembered today).

*That would make him incumbent president till 1901, so he fits the forum. :D
 
I second Reagan. The economic recovery post Carter was the result of Paul Volcker's policies, not Reagan's. The deficit was the result of Reagan's policies.

JFK - LBJ acheived more but JFK often gets the credit.

Yes. Sort of agree. LBJ benefitted politically from JFK´s murder, I don´t think they´d have been able to push through all those reforms without that.

Who else?

I thought this thread would inspire lots of controversial debates.

JFK support is more of what he could have done if he had lived. And many people around him said he would have been a great president if he had lived out the rest of his term and won in '64.

Also, the murder wasn't necessary for the reforms. If JFK lived, LBJ could have been used as an asset to pull off the reforms with his Southern friends as much as LBJ would use himself as an asset in the OTL.
 
Some leaders may have been great but never dealt with a crisis or never had a chance to see their reforms through.

But what leaders landed in a leadership position during the 20th century and before, and ended up being lauded as great in historybooks, despite not actually being the accomplishers?

The charismatic Nasser of Egypt strikes me as a leader of this type. Highly praised by the Arab nationalists and revered by the Egyptians, he recklessly seized the Suez Canal in 1956 bringing down on his head simultaneous invasions by Britain, France and Israel. Only an ultimatum by the United States forced those 3 nations to pull back from attacking Egypt and overthrowing Nasser. The Suez Canal remained nationalized but it was not due to Nasser by any means.

Then Nasser’s bullying and provocations led to his second, much larger defeat by Israel in 1967 in which Egypt’s Sinai peninsula was occupied by the Israelis who were now also dug in on the east bank of the Suez Canal.

Nevertheless, Nasser remains a hero in Arab history books and, even in the West, he is acknowledged as a widely emulated prototype and example of a populist nationalist hero.
 
Actually Reagan's tax cuts spurred the recovery. And his military build up and other policies did break the Soviet Empire. No Democrat nor probably any other Republican could have duplicated that feat.
 
Reagan's tax cuts led to nothing but the deficit at the latter end of the 80's and the quick burning up of Volcker's economic recoveries which would have led to a stable economy in the years to come had Reagan not interfered. Volcker lowered inflation with his policies and ended the stagflation crisis. And though his policies that did this contributed to the recession that existed for a short period in the early 80's (a fact I think he believed would happen before it got better), they ensured that the situation turned around from this divit quickly and strongly to a stable and successful economy. Reagan just took credit and left Bush to take the blame for the deficit and economic troubles from his own policies when Reaganomics came to a head in the late 80's.

And his military policy did nothing to the Soviets that finally led to their collapse. The USSR was already in dire economic straits long before Reagan and couldn't keep up with the US in terms of military build up. And that was nothing to do with Reagan, but was the result of a combined international effort against the USSR for decades. The USSR also only collapsed because of years corruption eating away at the system, and even then there was no assurance that it was going to fall, and only finally did so after Gorbachev democratized the nation at a hastened pace which led to destability. Had he perhaps done that slower, the USSR would still exist today. So the fall of the Soviets was nothing to do with Reagan. It was to do with the entire free world, and that free world working against the Russians for roughly three decades, and decades of Presidents from both parties working against the Soviets. And the defining thing that led to the fall of the USSR was Gorbachev's own policies. You could have had any President go into office, from any party and the Soviets would have gone the coarse they did.
 
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