The first president I remember as a child was President John F. Kennedy. Of course, the big news was his assassination. I was in school at Burbank Elementary when the mother of a classmate came to give us a ride home. We were all terribly upset. We had no idea what would happen.

So, the next president I knew about was Lyndon Baines Johnson. My family were all conservative Democrats back then (when there were conservative Democrats) and we liked LBJ. He was from nearby Texas and that seemed to be a plus.

When Johnson ran for president in 1964, he ran a powerful TV commercial showing a young girl with a flower with the background of a nuclear blast in the background. It painted Republican Barry Goldwater as an extremist and warmonger and it got LBJ the victory.

The Johnson victory in 1964 was the last time a Democrat carried Oklahoma.

In 1968, LBJ, architect of the “Great Society,” saw the handwriting on the wall and declined to run for a second term. Republican Richard Nixon, the former vice president under President Eisenhower, ran against Democrat Hubert Humphrey, a certified liberal.

Nixon won and in 1972, Sen. George McGovern, a far-left liberal, got clobbered by Nixon. Nixon won 49 states. McGovern couldn’t even carry his home state of South Dakota (he’s from Mitchell, S.D.)

McGovern was a pilot during World War II and afterwards, he became famous for his ability to debate. His fatal political mistake was his outspoken opposition to the War in Vietnam and his plan to raise taxes. He lost a bid for re-election to the Senate in 1980.

In 2006, Dakota Wesleyan University dedicated the George and Eleanor McGovern Library and Center for Leadership and Public Service in Mitchell. In 2008, McGovern wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Post calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush.

Nixon was forced to resign because of the Watergate mess and House Speaker Gerald Ford, a Republican, became president. Ford pardoned Nixon and many blamed that decision for Ford’s defeat by Democrat Jimmy Carter, the governor of Georgia, in 1976.

Carter was a liberal but he was a member of the Southern Baptist Convention and he seemed genuine about his faith. He was inept as a president and the rest of the world knew it and took advantage of it. He just about wrecked the economy and inflation soared while he was in office.

Carter became even more progressive after leaving office.

Ronald Reagan, a Republican who was once a Democrat, was elected 1980. He was re-elected in 1984 over Democrat Walter Mondale. Mondale only carried his home state of Minnesota and Washington, D.C.

Reagan, a former movie star and governor of California, was perhaps the most conservative president in the 20th Century. He cut taxes, rebuilt the military that suffered under Carter, and restored America’s image overseas. His efforts to revitalize America forced the eventual demise of the USSR and the demolition of the Berlin Wall, which separated free West Germany from communist East Germany.

George Herbert Walker Bush, vice president under Reagan, was elected in 1988 and served one term. He lied about raising taxes after his famous line, “Read my lips – no new taxes.”

Democrat Bill Clinton, governor of Arkansas, beat Bush and served two terms. In 1998, he was impeached for lying about his sexual escapades. He was acquitted in the Senate.

At that time, I thought Clinton was the worst president in my lifetime – even worse than Carter.

Then George W. Bush, the son of the former president, defeated Vice President Al Gore in 2000. I was very optimistic that the younger Bush would follow in the footsteps of Reagan and restore America’s greatness. Instead, Bush operated like a tax-and-spend Democrat and got America into endless, meaningless wars in the Middle East.

Then came Barack Hussein Obama, America’s first black president. He was schooled in liberalism and disdained Biblical Christianity. He announced that America was no longer a Christian nation. He lied about his support for the Homosexual Agenda and after he was safely elected for a second term in 2012, he endorsed the legalization of homosexual marriage. He also tried to destroy the nation’s health care system with Obamacare.

I thought he was the worst president in my lifetime, worse even than Clinton.

I didn’t know what to think when Donald Trump was elected in 2016. I was overjoyed that Hillary Clinton was defeated. I felt that God intervened in that election on our behalf.

Trump is not perfect was he was the right leader for the right time in our history. He cut taxes. He embraced the Nation Israel. He brokered peace in the Middle East. He built a wall on our southern border. He renegotiated trade deals with Canada and Mexico. He made NATO start paying their fair share for defense. And he made the Chinese communists back down on trade inequities.

Trump battled the legalization of abortion – something no other president has ever done.

Now we have Democrat Joe Biden, the plagiarist whose family has sold influence to the Chinese.

 America is staring at four years of decline while Biden locks down the nation, raises taxes and pushes us toward a world government.

It’s official. Biden can be the worst president in my lifetime. But the Bible tells us to pray for our leaders and I will. Maybe, just maybe, God will work a miracle and straighten our country out.