Copyright © 2026 OyList. All Rights Reserved.
Share
Items24
1
Abraham Lincoln
Born
Lincoln announced the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, weeks before the midterm elections, knowing many Northern voters had backed a war for the Union, not for abolition. Republicans lost a number of House seats and governorships that November, and Democrats campaigned openly against emancipation. He issued the final proclamation on 1 January 1863 anyway, opening the Union army to Black soldiers, nearly 180,000 of whom served. It led directly to the Thirteenth Amendment.
More about Abraham Lincoln2
Harry S. Truman
Born
Truman made two deeply unpopular choices in four years. His 1948 executive order to desegregate the armed forces angered Southern Democrats so much that some walked out to run Strom Thurmond against him. In 1951 he sacked General Douglas MacArthur for publicly challenging the administration's Korea policy, and his approval rating sank to around 22 per cent, among the lowest ever recorded. Both decisions now look like the right ones: a desegregated military and the principle of civilian control.
More about Harry S. Truman3
Charles de Gaulle
Born
Brought back to power in 1958 largely by those who wanted Algeria kept French, de Gaulle moved step by step towards Algerian self-determination and independence in 1962. Settlers and parts of the army felt betrayed; generals attempted a putsch in 1961 and the OAS terror group tried repeatedly to assassinate him. Mainland voters backed him in referendums, but around a million settlers left Algeria and the harkis who had fought for France were largely abandoned to reprisals.
More about Charles de Gaulle4
Willy Brandt
Born
Brandt's 1970 Warsaw Treaty effectively accepted the Oder-Neisse line, giving up claims to former German lands where millions of expellees had once lived. The expellee organisations and much of the opposition called it a surrender, and defections over it nearly brought down his government. His kneeling at the Warsaw Ghetto memorial was criticised by many West Germans at the time. Ostpolitik eased contacts across the Iron Curtain, and its border settlement was confirmed in the 1990 reunification treaties.
More about Willy Brandt5
Gerald Ford
Born
A month into his presidency, Ford granted Richard Nixon a full pardon for any crimes committed in office. His approval fell from about 71 to 50 per cent almost overnight, his press secretary resigned, and the decision is widely thought to have cost him the 1976 election. He argued that a trial would have consumed the country for years. Opinion shifted later; Ted Kennedy, an early critic, praised the decision in 2001. The debate over whether former presidents should face prosecution has since returned in force.
More about Gerald Ford6
Jimmy Carter
Born
Polls showed most Americans opposed giving up the Panama Canal, yet Carter pushed the 1977 treaties through the Senate with a single vote to spare, and several senators who backed them lost their seats. The canal passed to Panama in 1999 and has been run efficiently since, though the second Trump administration has revived questions about it. His appointment of Paul Volcker to the Federal Reserve, whose high interest rates hurt Carter's re-election, is the other unpopular choice now credited with ending double-digit inflation.
More about Jimmy Carter7
Anwar Sadat
Born
Sadat's 1977 visit to Jerusalem and the 1979 peace treaty with Israel got Egypt the Sinai back but cost it its place in the Arab League, which suspended Egypt for a decade, and made him a target at home. He was assassinated by Islamist army officers in 1981. The treaty has held for more than forty years through wars in Lebanon and Gaza, and it underpins large American aid to Egypt. Critics argue his opening also came with growing repression and an economy that benefited a narrow elite.
More about Anwar Sadat8
Indira Gandhi
Born
The cautionary entry. In 1975, after a court voided her election, Indira Gandhi declared a state of Emergency: elections were suspended, opponents jailed, the press censored and a forced sterilisation drive carried out. When she called elections in 1977, voters threw her out in a landslide. The lasting effect is the opposite of what she intended: the Janata government's 44th Amendment made it much harder to declare an emergency, and the period remains a touchstone in Indian arguments about civil liberties.
More about Indira Gandhi9
Roger Douglas
Born
As finance minister in New Zealand's 1984 Labour government, Douglas floated the dollar, ended farm subsidies, corporatised and sold state enterprises and introduced a goods and services tax, none of which Labour voters had been promised. The reforms are credited with ending a sclerotic, heavily regulated economy, and the GST and Reserve Bank model have lasted. They also brought high unemployment and inequality, split the party, and the voter backlash helped bring in proportional representation in 1996.
More about Roger Douglas10
Margaret Thatcher
Born
Thatcher took many unpopular decisions, but the Community Charge is the clearest case where unpopularity was a sound verdict. The flat-rate poll tax, introduced in Scotland in 1989 and England and Wales in 1990, charged a duke and a dustman the same, prompted mass non-payment and a riot in Trafalgar Square, and contributed to her removal by her own MPs that November. Its lasting effect was council tax, a property-based replacement still in use, and a lesson about policy designed against all advice.
More about Margaret Thatcher11
Leszek Balcerowicz
Born
On 1 January 1990, Poland's first non-communist government freed prices, cut subsidies and made the złoty convertible under Balcerowicz's 'shock therapy' plan. Hyperinflation was crushed within months, but output fell sharply and unemployment, unknown under communism, soared past 15 per cent. 'Balcerowicz must go' became a slogan. Poland went on to grow faster than any other post-communist economy for three decades, while the towns left behind by closed state farms and factories became fertile ground for later populism.
More about Leszek Balcerowicz12
George H. W. Bush
Born
Having promised 'Read my lips: no new taxes' in 1988, Bush agreed a 1990 budget deal with a Democratic Congress that raised taxes and cut spending, along with pay-as-you-go rules requiring new spending to be paid for. Conservatives revolted and Pat Buchanan's primary challenge weakened him before his 1992 defeat. Many economists credit the deal, extended in 1993, with laying the ground for the late-1990s surpluses. Republicans took the opposite lesson, and few have broken a tax pledge since.
More about George H. W. Bush13
Manmohan Singh
Born
As finance minister in 1991, with India weeks from defaulting on its debts and its gold already pledged abroad, Singh devalued the rupee, cut import tariffs and dismantled much of the 'licence raj' of industrial permits. The left, parts of his own Congress Party and business groups protected by the old system attacked it. Growth accelerated for the next two decades and the reforms were kept by every later government. Critics point to farming and labour rules that were left untouched and uneven gains across regions.
More about Manmohan Singh14
Yitzhak Rabin
Born
Rabin, a former army chief of staff, signed the Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat in 1993 and a second agreement in 1995 that handed parts of the West Bank to the new Palestinian Authority. Many Israelis opposed it bitterly, the Oslo II deal passed the Knesset by a single vote, and in November 1995 he was assassinated by an Israeli opponent of the process. The Palestinian Authority he helped create still exists, but the final settlement Oslo was meant to lead to never came.
More about Yitzhak Rabin15
Paul Martin
Born
Canada's 1995 federal budget, delivered by Finance Minister Martin, cut programme spending by around a fifth over three years, slashed transfers to the provinces and reduced unemployment insurance. Provinces passed on the pain to hospitals and schools, and the cuts remain resented in parts of the country. The deficit was gone by 1998 and debt fell steadily for a decade, helping Canada weather the 2008 crisis. He also led the 1997 increase in pension contributions that put the Canada Pension Plan on a sustainable footing.
More about Paul Martin16
John Howard
Born
Two Howard decisions infuriated parts of his own coalition. After the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 he forced through national gun laws and a buyback of around 650,000 firearms, wearing a bulletproof vest under his jacket to address gun owners in rural Victoria. Two years later he took a goods and services tax to an election and nearly lost. Australia has not had a mass shooting on the scale of Port Arthur since, and the GST remains the main source of state revenue.
More about John Howard17
Gerhard Schröder
Born
With German unemployment above 4 million in 2003, Schröder launched Agenda 2010: shorter unemployment benefits, the Hartz IV merger of jobless support with welfare, and looser rules on hiring and firing. Weekly protests followed and his Social Democrats lost members, regional elections and finally the 2005 federal vote. Unemployment then fell for over a decade, though economists still argue how much of that was Hartz and how much wage restraint and exports. The SPD replaced Hartz IV with the Bürgergeld in 2023.
More about Gerhard Schröder18
Tony Blair
Born
Included as a reminder that defying public opinion is not proof of being right. Blair took Britain into the 2003 invasion of Iraq despite the largest protest march in British history and a Commons rebellion by 139 Labour MPs. The weapons of mass destruction cited never materialised, and the Chilcot Inquiry found in 2016 that the case had been presented with unjustified certainty and peaceful options had not been exhausted. The war's consequences, in Iraq and in British trust in government, are still felt.
More about Tony Blair19
Mario Monti
Born
Appointed to lead a technocratic government in November 2011 as Italian bond yields neared 7 per cent, Monti raised the pension age through the Fornero reform, reintroduced a tax on first homes and cut spending. Yields fell and Italy avoided a bailout. The price was a deep recession, and a botched pension transition that left thousands of 'esodati' without either work or pension. His new party won barely a tenth of the vote in 2013, and anti-austerity movements gained ground.
More about Mario Monti20
Yoshihiko Noda
Born
Noda staked his premiership on doubling Japan's consumption tax from 5 to 10 per cent to fund social security for an ageing population. The 2012 law split his Democratic Party, dozens of MPs defected, and his party was routed in the election that December, returning Shinzo Abe to power. Abe's governments kept the plan, raising the tax in 2014 and 2019, and it now funds a large share of pensions and healthcare. Noda himself returned to front-line politics as leader of the main opposition party in 2024.
More about Yoshihiko Noda21
Angela Merkel
Born
Merkel's 2015 decision to keep Germany's borders open to refugees, around 890,000 of whom arrived that year, began popular and quickly became the most divisive choice of her chancellorship. It boosted the Alternative for Germany into parliament in 2017 and pushed later governments, including her own, to tighten asylum rules. Studies a decade on show most of those who arrived are now in work. The rise of the far right it fed is just as much a part of the outcome.
More about Angela Merkel22
Alexis Tsipras
Born
In July 2015 Greek voters rejected the creditors' bailout terms by 61 per cent in a referendum Tsipras had called. A week later, with banks shut and capital controls in place, he signed a third bailout on harsher terms to keep Greece in the euro. His party split and his finance minister resigned. Greece left the bailout programme in 2018 and has since regained investment-grade credit status, but its economy remains smaller than before the crisis, and Syriza lost power in 2019 and has not recovered.
More about Alexis Tsipras23
Juan Manuel Santos
Born
Colombian voters narrowly rejected Santos's peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas in an October 2016 referendum. He renegotiated some terms and had the revised deal approved by Congress instead, which opponents called a betrayal of the vote. More than 13,000 FARC members disarmed and the group became a political party. The deal won him the Nobel Peace Prize, but implementation has been uneven, hundreds of former combatants and social leaders have been killed, and dissident groups have returned to arms.
More about Juan Manuel Santos24
Emmanuel Macron
Born
Macron's 2023 pension reform raised France's minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 despite months of strikes and polls showing most of the public opposed. Lacking a majority, his government used Article 49.3 to pass it without a final vote. The decision fed the political instability that followed, and in October 2025 a new prime minister proposed suspending the rise until after the 2027 election to survive no-confidence votes. It is a recent case whose lasting effect is still unsettled.
More about Emmanuel Macron
