Life after death

a) Assume you die and go to a special heaven reserved for historians. (This essay requires a leap of faith!)
Upon arrival, you are summoned before the history judges and told that whether you can stay depends on how
well you defend the right to be in History Heaven of Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan,
George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. Make the case.
(Remember that any good defense anticipates the points that will be raised in opposition and deals with them.)
While you MUST argue that all of them should be there, you MUST also rank them in terms of most deserving
to least deserving of a spot. Your answer should address, where relevant, each President as a person (e.g., his
character), and his approaches to domestic policy; foreign policy; national security; and party politics.
b) Your brilliant and beloved cousin, Rufus, has invented a time machine that will enable people to travel to the
past. Imagine that his time machine carries you, with your head full of knowledge acquired in History 166D,
back into the United States of 1974-2020, and you can vote in the Presidential elections of 1976, 1980, 1984,
1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and the 2020 California primary. Like real past voters, you
don't know how things will turn out. You have the knowledge a well-educated person would have as of the day
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of the vote in that particular year. You have to decide how to vote in 2000, for example, without knowing that
9/11 will occur afterwards. Do you vote for the Democrat or Republican candidate on each occasion (in the
election of 1992, you also have the option to vote for third-party candidate Ross Perot, and in the election of
2000, you have the option to vote for third-party candidate Pat Buchanan or Ralph Nader, instead of the
Democrat or Republican); how do you vote, if you do; and why? Your vote, when cast, should go for whomever
you believe was the better--or, in the case of 1992 and 2000, best--choice at the time. Given the domination of
politics by the Democrats and Republicans (and given the fact that the prompt only enable you to vote for a
third-party candidate in 1992 and 2000!), like many, you may sometimes hold your nose and vote for the lesser
evil or boycott elections altogether. At other times, you may support a particular candidate enthusiastically.
Explain why you have decided to follow your course of action. And when you do choose to vote for one
candidate over the competition, what is it, exactly, that makes you consider him or her superior to the other? To
answer this question successfully, you must take into account who was running; what the candidates stood for,
insofar as they stood for anything in terms of domestic policy, foreign policy, national security, and any other
important pressing contemporary issues; party politics; and indicate why you come out as you do.
c)A 2019 New York Times editorial observed, "Political scientists have found that our nation is more polarized
than it has been at any time since the Civil War. One in six Americans has stopped talking to a family member
or close friend because of the 2016 election. Millions of people organize their social lives and their news
exposure along ideological lines to avoid people with opposing viewpoints. What's our problem?" And some
historians see the period since 1974 as witnessing a “clash of cultures” in which Americans stopped speaking
the same language and became polarized. They maintain that during this period “traditionalists,” who favored
cultural conservatism (on issues such as abortion, gay rights, busing and affirmative action --just to raise a few
issues that emerged before the midterm by way of example! There have been so many that you can discuss!)
engaged in pitched battle with “non-traditionalists” who embraced the expansion of all Americans’ rights and
sought to modernize lifestyles. How, and how well, does the “clash of cultures” theme describe the period from
1974 to 2020? Have Americans become increasingly polarized over time? Or has the degree of polarization
waxed and waned and, if so, why? Finally, is there any theme that would better describe the period than the
"clash of cultures" and, if there is, why is it superior?