Presidential Quiz

Which presidents did the following?

  1. Refused demands from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA to send troops to attack new countries. He had been the leading voice for global decolonialization in the Congress before becoming President.
  2. Carried out a back channel communication with the Russian leader via private channels because he didn't trust the State Department communication systems.
  3. Urged the US space program be merged with the Russian effort (a unified rocket program could not cause a war with rockets).
  4. Called for scattering the CIA into a thousand pieces.
  5. Appointed a former CIA director to a panel to supposedly investigate the CIA's most important domestic operation.
  6. Coups in Brazil, Dominican Republic, Indonesia.
  7. Pushed a nuclear treaty that claimed nuclear power ambitions could be kept separate from nuclear weapons development, the cover story for continued nuclear technology proliferation.
  8. Created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), signed the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act
  9. Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) with the Soviet Union.
  10. 55 mph (90 kph) speed limit to reduce oil consumption, prodded by rising oil prices.
  11. Ended nuclear reprocessing due to proliferation problems. (Reprocessing makes building a nuclear bomb very easy).
  12. Presidential Directive 59: a long nuclear war was US nuclear strategy.
  13. Gave a State of the Union speech that threatened nuclear war over the Persian Gulf oil fields.
  14. This President shifted from beginning his administration with a major nuclear weapons buildup to calling for moving to "zero nuclear weapons" in a summit meeting with the Soviet Union leader, although the permanent bureaucracy quickly scuttled that last effort.
  15. Which President's father co-founded Planned Parenthood?
  16. Removed about seven thousand "tactical" nuclear weapons from Europe (short range rockets and bombs that could not reach Russia)
  17. Abolished federal highway speed limits and did not raise the fuel efficiency standards for cars (we got SUVs instead).
  18. Signed NAFTA treaty after campaigning for office against export of US jobs.
  19. Signed Anti Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the precursor to the USA PATRIOT Act
  20. Gave us genetically modified "frankenfood"  and repealed 1958 Delaney Clause (which had prohibited carcinogenic food additives).
  21. Who put wind turbines at Guantanamo military base?
  22. Which president was the first in US history to claim the right to assassinate Americans, without any due process, anywhere in the world?
  23. Who brought nuclear attack codes to Nobel Peace Prize ceremony?
  24. Who got the first new construction of nuclear reactors since Three Mile Island?

 

Vice Presidential question

Which two Vice Presidents had the same policy toward Iraq: breaking up the country into three new states based on ethnicity, which would also make it easier to control the oil.

 

Most difficult question

Which three Presidents and a Presidential candidate (who won in Florida and Ohio but wasn't given the job) are cousins dating to the early aristocracy in Massachusetts in the 1700s?

 

The pattern of the answers is historical sequence.

Kennedy: 1-4

Johnson: 5-7

Nixon: 8-10

Ford: 11

Carter: 12-13

Reagan: 14

Bush the First: 15-16

Clinton: 17-20

Bush the Lesser: 21

Obama: 22-24

Vice Presidential: Cheney and Biden

Most difficult: Bush Senior and Junior, Obama, Kerry