History of the Soviet Union (1953–64)
Khrushchev anxiously awaited the results of the 1960 United States presidential election, preferring Kennedy to Richard Nixon, whom he took as a hardline anti-communist cold warrior, and openly celebrated the former's victory on November 8. In truth however, Khrushchev's opinion of Kennedy was mixed. He knew that the new president was from a wealthy background and Harvard-educated. On the other, Kennedy was the youngest elected US president at 43 and gave off the impression of inexperience and "a boy wearing his father's pants" that Khrushchev assumed he could pounce on and dominate. If however Kennedy was that weak, there stood the possibility that he could merely be a puppet of "reactionary" forces and the US military-industrial complex. Almost immediately after the polls closed on Election Day, Khrushchev attempted to barrage the president-elect with proposals and the hope of improved US-Soviet relations, specifically turning the clock back to the accommodating diplomatic atmosphere of President Roosevelt's time. However, Khrushchev was informed that he was acting too quickly and it would not be possible to have a formal summit with Kennedy until he took office in January, and even then, arranging such a meeting would still take time.
Presidency of George H. W. Bush
Despite his defeat, Bush climbed back from low election day approval ratings to leave office in 1993 with a 56% job approval rating. Bush's oldest son, George W. Bush, served as the country's 43rd president from 2001 to 2009. The Bushes were the second father and son pair to serve as president, following John Adams and John Quincy Adams. By December 2008, 60% of Americans gave George H. W. Bush's presidency a positive rating. In the 2010s, Bush was fondly remembered for his willingness to compromise, which contrasted with the intensely partisan era that followed his presidency. Polls of historians and political scientists have generally ranked Bush as an average president. A 2018 poll of the American Political Science Association’s Presidents and Executive Politics section ranked Bush as the 17th best president. A 2017 C-Span poll of historians ranked Bush as the 20th best president.