President Donald Trump has labeled the coronavirus crisis a “wartime” situation against “an invisible enemy.” How have other presidents coped in similar situations and in actual military conflict? On this day that commemorates allied victory in Europe over the Nazis in WWII, let’s break it down.

Wilson: As odious as it is, one has to give America’s worst president, Democrat Woodrow Wilson, props for his handling of the Spanish flu. That virus ravaged the world killing millions. But Wilson, also at the tail end of WWI, kept his cool and did not shut down the nation. In WWI itself, though there are those who have questioned if we backed the right side, Wilson acquitted himself decently until the Versailles peace conference in Paris after the war when, with his starry-eyed 14 points, he acted like the savior of mankind. His arrogance was met with disdain abroad and political defeat at home. As French Premier Georges Clemenceau said of Wilson, “Fourteen points? The Good Lord only gave us ten.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Democrat dilettante who kept the Great Depression going years after it should have ended, Franklin Roosevelt was more successful as a wartime president. He nudged the U.S. toward a two-front war and some think he invited the attack on Pearl Harbor so America could enter the war and achieve geopolitical supremacy. But like Wilson, he bungled the peace. At the Yalta peace conference, much to Churchill’s chagrin, an enfeebled FDR gave away the Eastern European store to Soviet dictator Stalin. His successor did a better job.

Truman: Taking over from FDR when the four-term incumbent died soon after his fourth inauguration, Democrat Harry Truman wised up to Stalin quick and faced him down around the world. From the Berlin airlift to Greece, America defended democratic allies. But he came into his own in Korea. When the North Koreans attacked the South in the summer of 1950, Truman led the U.N. military response. It would have turned out better than a stalemate, but show pony General Douglas MacArthur got too close to the Yalu River and that brought the Chinese into the war. The Chicoms surprised us at the Chosin Reservoir and, although U.S. forces fought with amazing valor, they pushed us back to the initial border. But the point of the thing, keeping South Korea free, was achieved.

Johnson: Lyndon Johnson is a tragic figure, almost Shakespearean. Disdained by the Democratic cultural and intellectual establishment, he became president upon the murder of John Kennedy. He then tried to launch his big-spending social program “The Great Society” at the same time he tried to fight the Vietnam War. Both programs ended in a horrible defeat that cost the lives of many innocent people in America and in the formerly free-ish South Vietnam and Cambodia.

Trump: Presiding over a wartime mobilization that is the closest thing we’ve seen to all out war since WWII, he has done what any president in wartime has strived to do: he has worked well to keep this nation safe. Against internal political opposition that pales in comparison to what his predecessors had to go through, he has kept the faith and fights every day for a victory in this war. Most of America fights right along beside him.

This piece was written by PoliZette Staff on May 8, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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