Deconstructing memes: Why are people sanitizing US Presidents pre-2025?

There is a new meme on social media, which has a picture of former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, all of them with their spouses.

The text on the meme reads: Great photo of Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden with the Obamas, Bushes and Clintons in Chicago today. This is America! Not what is currently in the White House.

The meme originates from @AMONEYRESISTS, also known as Andrew-#IAmTheResistance, who I would identify as a liberal and most likely a Democrat, which certainly explains a great deal about this particular meme.

Before deconstructing the content of this meme, it is important to note that this picture was taken at the grand opening of the Obama Center. I would also suggest that people read the article on Black Agenda Report entitled, The Obama Center is a Monument to the More Effective Evil. This article is a good introduction to my post.

Before I begin I want to acknowledge that the current iteration of the Trump Administration is oppressive, vile, corrupt and repressive in so many aspects. The Trump administration has started a war, it uses ICE to terrorize immigrants, it used public policy that has private benefits for the wealthy, it punishes poor families and has no tolerance for public criticism.

I think it is also important to state up front that the people pictured in this meme are also individuals who continue to carry tremendous privilege, will never have to worry about their needs being met, get full time protection and charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for speaking engagements.

The rest of this post is not about the individuals, rather it is about what happened during their respective administrations. This post is not about their speaking ability, their fashion sense or their family life, rather it is about the policies that were adopted during each of their administrations.

I personally could care less about how former presidents carry themselves or how much they find each other agreeable, since none of that really matters when it comes to what kind of policies their administrations adopted, which means how those policies impacted people, particularly those most vulnerable in this country.

Clinton Administration –  According to the Economic Policy Institute 43,600 jobs had been lost or displaced in Michigan – and about 700,000 in the United States – due to the rise in the trade deficit with Mexico alone since NAFTA was enacted in 1994.

During the Clinton Presidency there was a growing movement against globalization that culminated in the WTO protest in Seattle in 1999, along with the growing militant environmental movement. In addition, the prison industrial complex grew during the Clinton years, where Black and Brown people were disproportionately incarcerated, which was complimented by the 1994 Crime Bill (which increased police funding) and the 1996 bill Clinton signed that fundamentally ended welfare.

Omnibus Counter-Terrorism Act of 1995: Proposed by the Clinton administration in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, this bill sought to establish broader federal jurisdiction over international and domestic terrorism. While some early wiretapping expansions were rejected by Congress at the time, many of the core concepts for tracking terrorists were later incorporated into the 2001 PATRIOT Act.

On the foreign policy front, Clinton continued to provide billions to Israel, maintain the economic blockage against Cuba, began the expansion of NATO, sent the US military to Haiti, bombed Sudan and the former Yugoslavia, attacked Somalia, and bombed Iraq regularly, along with imposing economic sanctions on Iraq, which resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. 60 minutes reporter Lesley Stahl asked, “We have heard that a half a million children have died… That’s more than died in Hiroshima. And… is the price worth it?” Albright responded: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it”.

George W. Bush Administration – after 9/11, 2001, the Bush Administration used the so-called war on terror to engage in state terrorism, bombing Afghanistan and occupying it for more than two decades, despite the fact that Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11, 2001. Then in 2003, under false pretenses, the US invaded Iraq, killed more than 1 million people, including Saddam Hussein, re-wrote Iraq government policy and secured Iraqi oil for the global oil cartels. See the book, War Without End: The Iraq War in Context, by Michael Schwartz.

The Bush Administration continued to provide billions in military aid to Israel and Saudi Arabia, continued the economic blockade on Cuba, continued to demonize Iran, expanded US military bases in Colombia and promoted economic and political warfare against Venezuela.

On the domestic side the Bush Administration, with Congressional approval, adopted the USA Patriot Act, which gave power to the federal government to increase domestic surveillance, to lock up people of Arab descent or those who identified as Muslims, and criminalized dissent, even non-violent protests. Under the Bush Administration the Department of Homeland Security was created, which also included the creation of Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement (ICE), which was designed to criminalize and terrorize immigrants.

Lastly, the cost of the Bush Administration’s so-called War on Terror meant that domestic spending was cut significantly, thus widening the wealth gap and seeing more and more people subject to poverty.

Obama Administration – The Obama Administration authorized over 540 drone strikes in countries including Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process. His administration continued massive US military aid to Israel, was complicit in the coup in Honduras, increased US troop numbers in Afghanistan, conducted war in Libya and created the US military command post in Africa known as AFRICOM.

The Obama Administration invoked the Espionage Act more than all his predecessors combined. Who did he target? Heroic whistleblowers like Thomas Drake, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. He used it as a pretext to target reporters such as James Rosen, Wikileaks and the Associated Press.

The Obama Administration authorized Shell to conduct limited exploratory oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska in 2015. He consistently bragged in interviews he made America the oil producing nation of the world.

The Obama Administration signed into law Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act. Under this provision, the executive branch has the authority to detain Americans indefinitely. The Obama administration tried to assuage the fears of Americans by telling them they never intended to use this provision. I am sure it was a coincidence after the provision was signed into law, Obama violated his campaign promise to close Guantanamo Bay.

After the 2008 economic crash the Obama Administration bailed out Wall Street not main street, plus he never adopted Comprehensive Immigration Reform, even when the Democrats controlled Congress. Police killings of civilians, particularly Black civilians, increased during his administration as did the wealth gap. It is no surprise that the Movement for Black Lives and Occupy Wall Street were both created during the Obama Administration.

Biden Administration – The Biden Administration increased the US military budget to nearly $1 trillion, maintained the economic blockade against Cuba, continued efforts to undermine Venezuela, provided billions in military aid to the Ukraine after the Russian invasion and provided more military aid to Israel than any previous US President and this was after Israel began their genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in 2023.

The Biden Administration continued many of the same anti-immigration practices than begun under the Trump Administration, plus the Biden Administration deported several million undocumented immigrants.

Despite the Movement for Black Lives calling for the defunding of policing, the Biden Administration increased federal funding for policing. The number of civilians killed by policy went up every year during the Biden Administration, averaging over 1200 per year.

The Biden Administration did not impose taxes on Billionaires or millionaires, the cost of rent nationally increased during the Biden years as did the cost of owning a home. The Biden Administration did not increased the federal minimum wage or eliminate student debt, which were both promises he made while campaigning in 2020. Lastly, the Biden Administration criminalized the student-led anti-genocide protests across the US, choosing instead to label student protests and a form of anti-semitism.

The items listed under each administration was just a sampling of the harm that was done during each of their administrations, both domestically and around the world. This level of harm demonstrates how the above meme sanitizes previous administrations while demonizing the current Trump Administration.

Each of the previous administrations included here started wars, had massive military budgets, detained and deported millions of immigrants, saw an increase in the wealth gap, did not get us any closer to reducing greenhouse gases, we didn’t see a reduction in mass incarceration, nor a reduction in poverty for working families.

All of the four administrations listed above embraced neoliberal economic policies that were devastating to working class families and provide more benefits to members of the capitalist class. One could argue that things are worse under the current Trump Administration, but saying things were better under previous administrations is disingenuous and it denies the real harm that those administration perpetrated domestically and internationally.

Comparing administrations is not a contest, rather we should all be providing honest and critical assessments of each administration in regards to the harm they caused and their failures to deliver on campaign promises. In fact, I would argue, as many other left writers do, that the Trump Administration has been able to achieve the level of repression and structural inequality precisely because of the policies of the previous administrations policies.

It is a dangerous game to play when we yearn for the days of George W. Bush, where Wall Street wrecked havoc on working people, further criminalized dissent and killed over 1 million Iraqi citizens. It is a dangerous game to play when people year for a recent Democratic President, especially since the wealth gap continued to grow, where mass incarceration was high, where police violence, institutionalized racism and the arrest, detention and deportation of millions of immigrants was normalized.