Ten Presidential Rankings the Historians Get Wrong

The latest major effort to rank the presidents is the 2024 ranking by the Presidential Greatness Project, in which historians were asked to rank each president on a scale of 0 to 100. I will discuss ten instances in which the historians' ranking differs from mine.

1. Abraham Lincoln. Historians consistenty get Lincoln wrong. They list him at #1, while I have him at #34.

For the life of me I cannot understand the near-universal adoration of this warmonger of a president. He took us into a horrible Civil War, a war in which 620,000 Americans were killed, and many thousands moroe had their limbs brutally sawed off on the battlefield. The Civil War was by far the deadliest war in our history. The total of dead is the highest of any war, and the 2.4% of the population who perished is by far the highest. By contrast, World War II saw "only" .3% of the population lose their lives.

Perhaps the misguided historians don't understand that it was Lincoln who started the Civil War. I suggest they read First Blood, by Pulitzr Prize winner W. A. Swanberg. Swanberg presents a detailed account of the full story of Fort Sumter. He describes how the South bent over backward to give the North every chance to withdraw peasefully from the Fort, but Lincoln was too obstinate to do so, depsite the fact that almost his entire Cabinet favored withdrawal. When the Confederacy sent a delegation to Washington, DC to try to resolve the standoff, Lincoln simply refused to even meet with them. He had no interest in peace.

We hear much complaining these days about President Trump going to war with Iran without Congressional approval. The unauthorized use of executive power has been a trend for many years, but it all began with that first wannabe dictator, Abraham Lincoln. In The Imperial Presidency, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. describes how Lincoln repeatedly acted without Congressional authorization: "Lincoln delayed the convocation of Congress from April 12, 1861, when Fort Sumter was fired upon, until July 4 lest rigid constitutionalists on the Hill try to stop him from doing what he deemed necessary to save the life of the nation. In his 12 weeks of executive grace, Lincoln ignored one law and constitutional provision after another. He assembled the militia, enlarged the army and navy beyond their authorized strength, called out volunteers for 3 years service, spent public money without congressional appropriation, suspended habeas corpus, arrested people 'represented' as involved in 'disloyal' practices and instituted a naval blockade of the Confederacy."

Schlesinger goes on to say that "Throughout the war, even with Congress in session, Lincoln continued to exercise wide powers independently of Congress. He asserted the right to proclaim martial law behind the lines, to arrest people without warrant, to seize property, to suppress newspapers, to prevent the use of the post office for 'treasonable' correspondence, to emancipate slaves, to lay out a plan of reconstruction. His proclamations, executive orders and military regulations invaded fields previously the domain of legislative action. All this took place without a declaration of war by Congress."

Perhaps the historians are crediting Lincoln with ending slavery. The fact is that the Emancipation Proclamation freed no slaves. It was simnmply a war tactic designed to demorialize the South. The Proclamation by its terms did not free the slaves in the four Northern states which allowed slavery: Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri. And it freed no slaves in the Confederacy, as those states had seceded and Lincoln had no authority over them. And besides all that, it was not something that could be done with an executive order, any more than President Trump can abolish birthright citizenshiop by an executive order.

I am always amazed when I hear people talk about the Civil War as "accomplishing" the abolition of slavery. They sound like they think we'd still have slavery today but for this terrible war. The fact is that slavery was abolished throughout the Western Hemisphere by 1888, when the last holdout, Brazil, abolished it. Slavery was dying at at the time and would not have lasteed long had Lincoln simply allowed the seven seceding states to go in peace. Note my reference to only seven states; the other four seceded only after Lincoln decided to wage war on the South. Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee would have remained in the Union, and we would now be without only Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina, which would mean we'd be better off than we are now with those backward, redneck states in the union.

2. Lyndon Johnson. The historians inexplicably have LBJ at #9, while I have him at #37.

Johnson deserves credit for many pieces of progrsssive legislation on domestic issues, but to me this is far outweighed by his horrible blunder in taking us into the Vietnam War. His "War on Poverty" was also a failure, so perhaps an appropriate epitaph for Johnson would be, "He fought two wars and lost them both."

3. Martin Van Buren. I have him at #6, while the historians have him at #32.

Van Buren was one of the ablest presidents in our history. He fought valiantly against a horrible depression, known as the Panic of 1837, which was caused by the disastrous economic policies of his predecessor, the awful Andrew Jackson. Despite all the turmoil caused by the economic crisis, Van Buren was still so popular that he was nominated without opposition by the Democratic Party in 1840. He lost the 1840 general election after a flukish campaign featuring a "log cabin myth" perpetrated by the lightweight Whig candidate, William Henry Harrison.

And then in 1844 he had a majority of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention pledged to him, but failed to secure the nomination only because the convention had adopted an absurd "two-thirds rule", requiring that the nominee get 2/3 of the votes. This ridiculous rule remained in place in the Democratic Party until FDR abolished it in 1936.

Van Buren would have had the 1844 nomination had he pandered to the Southern wing of the party by endorsing the annexation of Texas. He refused to support annexation, because he knew that adding another slave state would only exacerbate the growing sectional tensions. And so, the Van Buren report card consists of all "A's": good moral compass, good people person, and an able administrator. Why the historians don't value these qualities is a mystery to me.

4. Rutherford B. Hayes. I have him at #5, the survey has him at #25.

Hayes' guiding principle was that "He serves his party best who serves his country best", and he followed that principle throughout his presidency. He promised upfront that he would only serve one term, because he felt that a sitting president shouldn't have to be worried about re-election. And he fought the machine politicians and the spoils system, making significant progress toward civil service reform. His presidency was a welcome change from the scandal-ridden Grant administration. And he helped unify the country by withdrawing the federal armed forces from the South. He was a highly respected elder statesman in retirement, which he used to work toward education reform and prison reform. All in all, he was one of our very best presidents. The historians show their ignorance when they fail to recognize this.

5. Chester Alan Arthur. For me he's #10, for the historians #34.

Arthur's presidency was not a particularly distinguished one, but it has been said that he "has done well...by not doing anything bad". And so, in the spirit of Roger Ebert, who once said that a good movie is one with "three good scenes and no bad ones", I give Arthur high marks.

The 1883 Pendleton Civil Service Act was a major piece of legislation which had been much needed for many years. Arthur not only signed the Pendleton Act, but he vigorously implemented its provisions.

Arthur vetoed an anti-immigration act which would have outlawed immigration from China for 20 years, and he worked with Congress to fashion a less draconian bill. In addition, he modernized the navy which when he took office consisted of mostly obsolete ships from the Civil War era.

6. Andrew Jackson. The historians have in recent years dropped him 12 places, down to #21, but they stil have him too high. For me he's at #36.

Jackson's forcible removal of Native Americans to Oklahoma is one of the sorriest chapters in U.S. history, violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the Supreme Court's decision in Worcester v. Georgia. After that opinion was rendered Jackson is reported to have said, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it." Whether Jackson actually said this or not is not the point; the point is that this accurately represented his viewpoint. Quite a conflict between the judicial and the executive branches of government could have ensued had other Presidents been as nasty and full of ill will as Jackson was.

Jackson's misguided economic policies regarding the National Bank totally wrecked the economy, leaving his successor, Martin Van Burn, to clean up the mess. Jackson, the only president ever to be censured by the Senate, certainly belongs in the National Hall of Shame, not in the top half where the historians put him.

7. James Monroe. Historians seem unable to rank any President as "great" unless there was some great crisis that he had to confront during his presidency. Hence, they rank Monroe only 18th. However, a closer examination of his presidency shows that he was a great president. He tried hard to be president of all the country, appointing Cabinet members from each sector, and visiting each sector while in office, no small feat given the difficulty of travel in those days.

His Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, served for the entire 8 years, and is widely regarded as the best Secretary of State ever. Similarly, his Vice-President, Daniel D. Tompkins, gets less recognition but as governor of New York was widely recognized for making important progressive reforms in such things as humane treatment of prisoners and humane treatment of native Americans. Monroe's presidency was aptly known as "The Era of Good Feelings". He deserves my #4 ranking, behind only Washington, Jefferson, and Teddy Roosevelt, and not the historians' #18.

8. James Madison. The last three on my list all have the same 13-position difference between my list and the historians, so they're actually tied for 8th through 10th.

James Madison deserves great credit for his work on the Constitution, but he was decidedly mediocre as a president. He took us into the War of 1812, which was a completely misguided venture which accomplished absolutely nothing. The Congressional vote to go to war against Britain was only about 60%, which was way too low to be the basis for a national war effort. (This shows a serious flaw in the constitution; i.e., if a peace treaty must have a 2/3 vote, why in the world wouldn't a vote to go to war require at least that great of a majority?) So great was the opposition to the war that it provoked a serious secession movement in the New England states.

Madison's handling of the war was completely inept. The burning of the capital is certainly a prominent black mark on his war effort, but an examination of the entire war reveals that it was mismanaged throughout.

For a detailed discussion of the war I recommend Donald R. Hickey's The War of 1812: The Forgotten War. Hickey concludes that "A combination of Federalist opposition, Republican factionalism, and general public apathy undermined the entire war effort....A strong president might have overcome some of these problems, but Madison was one of the weakest war leaders in the nation's history...Cautious, shy, and circumspect, Madison was unable to supply the bold and vigorous leadership that was needed."

I have him in the middle, at #24, but the historians oddly have him at #11.

9. Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter was the most inept president in our history not named George W. Bush. It is fine to campaign as an outsider, but once you achieve power you have to know how to use it. This Carter never figured out how to do.

Carter never did learn how to get along with Congress, and his communication skills were so poor that he was equally inept when he tried to go over the heads of Congress to the public. The Democratic whip, John Brademas, got a huge, unforgivable snub when Carter came to his home state of Indiana and gave a speech without recognizing or thanking either him or Senator Birch Bayh, both of whom were sitting right behind him on the platform. Brademas complained that "I was on Nixon's enemies list, but he never treated me that way."

Journalist David Brinkley thoughtfully summarized Carter's problems with these observations: 1) He had no base in the Democratic party and few friends in the federal government, making it difficult for him to achieve his purposes; 2) Despite his intelligence, he had a vindictive streak, a mean streak, that surfaced frequently and antagonized people; and 3) He became so absorbed in detail that he never was able to articulate a coherent public policy, foreign or domestic.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. says Carter was a "narcissistic loner" whose 1976 election was a mistake. Schlesinger says that the 1980 election was "the only time in my life that I voted for anyone but a Democrat for president".

In Ronald Kessler's book Inside the White House, the author writes that the Secret Service considered Carter the "least likable" of all the modern presidents. Kessler goes on to say that "If the true measure of a man is how he treats the little people, Carter flunked the test. Inside the White House, Carter was often abrupt and surly." An Air Force One flight engineer says that "Carter came into the cockpit [only] once in the two years I was on with him. But Reagan never got off or on without sticking his head in the cockpit and saying 'Thanks, fellas', or 'Have a nice day.'"

The journalist Philip Terzian emphasizes the mass firing of half of Carter's cabinet in mid-1979. Terzian says that "The message in his hasty cabinet execution was the product not of Carter's convictions but a panicked distillation of competing ideas. Whatever Americans expect in a president, at that moment they ceased to find it in Jimmy Carter. The man who had moved from virtual obscurity to the White House seemed visibly to shrink into irrelevance, even pathos--and the key to his legacy of failure was revealed."

The crowning blunder of Carter's presidency was when he ignored the advice of his intelligence people and let the Shah of Iran into the U.S. His intelligence people had told him that our embassy in Iran would be in jeopardy if he did this, and the embassy did in fact end up getting overrun and the hostages taken. Carter's excuse for his decision was that the Shah needed medical treatment that he could only get in the U.S. I accepted this explanation at the time, but later it came out that the Shah could have received the same treatment in Mexico City, since the U.S. doctors were willing to go there to treat him. So, the President who promised he would never lie to us, had lied to us. A tragic, though fitting, end to a horrible presidency, a presidency totally undeserving of the historians' #22 ranking.

10. Gerald Ford. Gerald Ford was "the calm after the storm", providing the steady leadership which the nation needed after the turbulence of the Nixon Watergate years. His pardon of Nixon was absolutely the right thing to do; the alternative would have been for the nation to wallow in the aftermath of Watergate for many years to come.

David Gergen's Eyewitness to Power has an interesting section on the Ford presidency, which Gergen served in. Gergen says that the pardon was the right thing to do, but that the execution was flawed, because Ford had done nothing beforehand to prepare the public for the possibility of the pardon being issued. As a result, it appeared "incomprehensible, possibly corrupt, and certainly impulsive."

The other main problem with the Ford administration, according to Gergen, lay in his failure to have a strong chief of staff during the first two years of his administration. Ford wanted to be his own chief of staff, a fateful decision which crippled his administration until corrected during his last six months in office. The metaphor frequently used was "spokes on a bicycle wheel", meaning that everybody of Cabinet level reported directly to the president, rather than through a chief of staff. Gergen documents how this approach led to many problems, including with the pardon of Nixon.

I agree with Gergen's overall evaluation, which is overwhelmingly positive. Ford restored decency to the White House, made truth-telling of the highest importance, and assembled a top-notch cabinet (the "finest cabinet in the past 30 years"). Gergen calls Ford a "well-centered man", who didn't need to be president to satisfy his inner soul. He deserves my #14 ranking, and not the historians' #27.

President Trump's Primetime Adress on the Iran War

The presidential primetime TV address has been an important part of the fabric of American life for many decades. And so, when President Trump announced he would be giving a primetime speech last week, I started hoping for something special, something in the grand tradition of such speeches. My mind went back to the memorable past speeches--Kennedy's Cuban missile crisis speech in 1962, Reagan's speech after the 1986 Challenger disaster, Nixon's resignation speech in 1974, Johnson's 1965 speech urging passage of the Voting Rights Act, and many others.

But what did we get? We got a repeat of the same old lies that Trump has been feeding us for lo these many months. There was nothing poetic, nothing appealing to our better angels, nothing inspiring at all. Trump told us that Iran's military had been destroyed, and yet in recent days it waa able to shoot down two of our planes. He told us nothing new, provided none of the rationale for the war in Iran that he should have provided at the start of the war. As a result, his popularity rating has plunged to 35%, a new low.

I sensed that something was wrong as soon as the broadcast started, when, instead of sitting in the oval office behind his desk, as with past such speeches, Trump was walking toward the podilum. Actually, not so much walking as waddling, swaying back and forth as he slowly approached the podium. He looked old and decrepit. His speech was delivered without passion, as if his heart wasn't really into it. His statements since show that he is treating this as somne sort of game, talking of bombing Iran "back to the stone ages". He is threatening war crimes by destroying Iran's insfrastructure, this after he told Iranian dissidents that he "has their back", and "help is on the way". So this is how he "helps", by destroying their country? Just so sad, and so dangerous.

"Young Man in a Hurry", by Gavin Newsom

This book, the first one published in 2026 that I've read, is Gavin Newsom's autobiography. Newsom goes into great detail about his ancestors, with most of the info about them having been learned in preparation for this book. Indeed, his subtitle for the book is "A Memoir of Discovery", alluding to all he had learned about his ancestors.

Before reading this book Newsom impressed me as too brash and too flaky to be a viable presidential candidate. Now, after reading the book, I would substitute "driven" to describe him. He has always been driven to succeed, starting a successful wine business in his native San Francisco in his 20s and working night and day to make it highly successful. Newsom attributes his drive to his dyslexia, but he never really explains how his dyslexia caused him to be driven. I would have liked to have seen some discussion about what dyslexia is and how one overcomes it, but Newsom doesn't go into this.

The book ends with Newsom taking office in 2019 as California's next governor, succeeding Jerry Brown. While he was governor-elect, President Trump invited Newsom to accompany him and Brown on a tour of the devastating wildfires in California. Newsom relates how Trump tried to bond with him, giving him a private tour of Air Force One, and showing off all the fancy equipment on the plane. After Newsom later bad-mouthed Trump in his inaugural address as incompetent and corrupt, Trump called him and asked "Are we good?" After satisfying himself that it was "just politics", Trump, secure in their friendship, happily hung up.

My cynical side says that Newsom is still too brash to get elected president, but I think he has helped himself by publishing this book. My cynical side also says Emanuel and Shapiro are too Jewish, Buttigieg is too gay, and Pritzker is too fat, for any of these to be electd president in 2028. This leaves Kentucky governor Beshear as the best Democratic candidate by default.

After hearing an interview with Newsom recently, I think the nomination question is going to come down to whether most Democrats buy into his "you have to fight fire with fire" approach. Newsom says that Democrats are too concerned with being "right", and not concerned enough with winning the battles with the right wing. Whether Democrats agree or not will determine his nomination prospects.

The Baltimore CFL Colts

About thirty years ago or so I acquired a sweatshirt with "Baltimore CFL Colts" on it. I have been asked about this several times recently, so I decided to look into the history behind this football team. And an interesting history it has proven to be!

The Baltimore Colts NFL franchise moved to Indianapolis under the cover of night in 1984. This sounds bad, but the owner had a good reason. He had been trying to get the city of Baltimore to build him a better stadium for 10+ years, without success. Amid rumors of the move, the Maryland legislature had passed legislation authorizing the city of Baltimore to acquire ownership of the team through eminent domain. With the governor poised to sign this absurd legislation the next day, the Colts' owner moved all assets to Indianapolis that night.

The city of Indianapolis had been trying to attract a major league sports team for years, to the extent that they had built a new domed stadium, called the "Hoosier Dome" (later known as the RCA Dome before it was demolished in 2008). The Indianapolis mayor sent 15 moving vans to Baltimore to facilitate the move of the Colts, and offered various financial incentives for the Colts to move. This was in line with the tenacity which characterized Indiana towns at the time for convincing businesses to move to the state. A "60 Minutes" story at the time covered this.

After the move, the city of Baltimore tried for a decade to acquire another NFL team, either through a franchise move or an expansion franchise. Failing this, they finally, in 1994, settled for a franchise in the Canadian Football League. The team was to be called the "Baltimore CFL Colts", which is what is on my sweatshirt. But hours before the team's first game, the NFL obtained a court injunction prohibiting any use of the "Colts" name.

This resulted in the owner being stuck with tons of merchandise which now could not be sold. My then-wife's friend Bill, a one-armed carpenter who was from Baltimore, had a brother back in Baltimore who was in the sports memorabilia business. I now surmise that his brother got stuck with a bunch of these sweatshirts and was giving them away, leading to Bill giving us one. (1994 must have been a horrible year for Bill's brother. Not only did he get stuck wth CFL Colts merchandise which could not be sold, but he was also victimized by the baseball strike in 1994. He had paid a pretty penny for the right to sell Baltimore Orioles merchandise outside of the new Camden Yards ballpark, only to have the last part of the seaosn cancelled, along with the entire postseason.)

After the Court injunction took effect, the new CFL team became known as the "Baltimore CFL Club" for the 1994 season, and then was known as the "Baltimore Stallions" for the 1995 season, a season in which they won the Grey Cup. In 1996 the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore, and the CFL team went out of business. Again there was a court injunction which prohibited the new team from calling itself the Browns, and so they chose the name Ravens, the only major league team in any sport to be named for a poem. (Edgar Alan Poe was a Baltimore native.) In 1999 Cleveland obtained an expansion franchise, which was called the Browns even though it had no connection to the previous Browns franchise.

This story illustrates the problem of franchise moves in major league sports. What you get is cities competing against each other for the "privilege" of hosting a major league franchise. The result is that the taxpayers lose, and the franchise owners win.

Major League Baseball had ten franchise moves in the 20-year period of 1953-1972, while the NFL had only one during this period (the Cardinals moving from Chicago to St.Louis in 1960). Faced with relentless criticism from Howard Cosell and others, baseball got its act together and since 1972 has had only one franchise move (the Montreal Expos to Washingotn in 2005). Meanwhile, the NFL "took up where baseball left off", to quote Cosell, and had nine moves duirng the period of 1982-2000.

The floodgates for the NFL opened with the landmark anti-trust case which it lost to the Oakland Raiders in 1982. At issue was the NFL By-Law 4.3, which required that any move required approval from 3/4 of the owners. Al Davis wanted to move his Raiders to Los Angeles, but the other owners voted 22-0 againat him, with five abstentions. (Davis was notoriously unpopular among the owners, seen as a renegade.) When litigation arose between Davis and the NFL, teamed with the city of Oakland in opposing the move, Davis took it to a jury trial and got a favorable verdict. The Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict, and the Supreme Court declined to consider the case.

Although Cosell opposed the shameless moving of franchises to greener pastures, as a former lawyer he understood that Rule 4.3, which allowed the owners to block a move without giving any reason whatsoever, was an illegal restraint of trade in violation of anti-trust laws. This resulted in a serious rift between Cosell and NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, who was too dim-witted to understand that you can argue that someone had a right to do something, while still disagreeing that doing that thing was a good idea.

Oddly, the NFL has never amended Rule 4.3. But what has happened is that the owners have been giving approval routinely in recognition that litigation would go against them if they arbitrarily withheld their approval for proposed moves. So, when the issue came up with the Colts in 1984, the owners gave the Colts' owner blanket permission to move to any city of his choosing! He chose Indianapolis, which the Colts still call home.

Findlay Bridge for 2/27/26

Five full tables, meaning each hand was played five times.

Board 1. Our 4S was set by one, for middle board.

Board 2. Our 4S was again set by one. All our competitor pairs made part scores, so we simply overbid.

Board 3. This time they made 4S. Same result at two other tables.

We scored 3 points vs. Ann & Nancy.

Board 4. We bid 4H, making 6. One pair bid the slam, while another bid 3NT, making 7. I felt at the time that we sould have been in NT, & I was right.

Board 5. We set 3NT by one, tying for top board.

Board 6. The set our 4H by one, for middle board.

We scored 6.5 points vs. Clarence & Teresa.

Board 7. They made 4S. Three other boards made 5, so good defense on our part.

Board 8. They played 5D, making 6. Three of the opposing pairs did not even bid the game, so we tied for bottom board.

Board 9. Ron made 1NT, one of three times he had to play this difficult contract. One of our opponents suggested I should have used a transfer bid to get us into 2S, but I had only one Ace and 6 spades. When we opened the scoresheet, we saw that the other boards had gone down at 2S, so my critic had to sheepishly eat his words!

We scored 6.5 points vs. Bill & Ralph.

Board 10. We played 4H, making 5. Same result at 3 other boards.

Board 11. We set their 3NT by one. Same at 2 other boards, while the other 2 got set by two (or perhaps by one doubled).

Board 12. We made 1NT, but only tied for bottom board as 3 others made 2 or 3.

We scored 4 points vs. Jim & Kathy.

Board 13. We bid & made 3H. Only one competitor pair, Jim & Kathy, bid and made the game.

Board 14. We set 4H by one. Same result at 2 other boards.

Board 15. We bid & made 4S. Problem was that 3 other boards made 5!

We scored 4.5 points vs. John & Ken.

Board 16. They bid & made 6S. Same result at 3 of the other boards.

Board 17. They bid & made 4H. We tied for bottom board.

Board 18. They played 1NT, making 3. We got bottom board.

We scored a woeful 2 points vs. Mike & Arlene.

Board 19. An odd hand indeed. I doubled their 4S bid, but they inexplicably went on to 6, which I also doubled, and we set them by one. The scores were all over the place, with no ties. Had they made the 6S they would have scored 980 points. But had they simply redoubled after my first double, they would have scored 1,080 points for making 5. So, going on to 6 was a huge blunder for them. Perhaps they didn't notice that I had doubled?

Board 20. We went down one at 1NT.

Board 21. We played 3NT, making 4.

We scored 7 points vs. Ruth & Gene.

Board 22. We played 4s, making 6 when they failed to cash one of their winners. All the other boards made only 5.

Board 23. This is my favorite hand of the day. When they foolishly failed to stop at 3NT and continued on to 5D, I doubled, based on holding 4 trumps to the Q and and an outside AQ. We set them by 2 for 500 points, but even without the double we would have had top board. Two pairs played 3NT & made 4.

Board 24. We bid 3H, making 4. I was kicking myself for not going to game, but we got top board anyway!

We scored 12 points vs. James & Tim, undisputed first on all three hands!

Board 25. We bid 2C, making 4. The top board bid 3NT, making 4.

Board 26. We set their 2NT contract by one, tying with 2 others for top board.

Board 27. We set their 3C by one, for second-top board.

We scored a healthy 8 points vs. Ed & Linda.

"Five Bullets", by Elliot Williams

The title of this book refers to the five bullets which subway rider Bernhard Goetz used to shoot four black youths who requested (or demanded) money from him in 1984. Williams adroitly explains all aspects of this case which so captivated the nation at the time.

Williams describes the relevant background for the case, which is that crime in New York City was rampant in the 1980s, due in large part to the crack cocaine epidemic. Indeed, a chatgpt check reveals the conclusion that "The homicide rate in New York City today is roughly 4 to 13 times lower per capita than in 1984." This is an incredible reduction; it's the difference between night and day. So, we learn that the incident of 1984's "subway vigilante" has to be understood in the context of its unique place and time.

The incident in question happened on December 22, 1984. One of the youths leaned in close to Goetz and asked how he was doing. Goetz replied "fine"and avoided eye contact. A little while later the youth asked for, or demanded, five dollars. When Goetz saw "the smile on his face and the shine in his eyes", he snapped. He unloaded the five bullets into the four youths.

After the shooting, Goetz left the subway and fled the state. Nine days later he walked into a police station in Concord, New Hampshire and turned himself in, giving a complete statement of the incident.

In January prosecutors asked a grand jury to consider four counts of attempted murder against Goetz, but the grand jury refused to indict, choosing to indict only on some minor gun charges. In March prosecutors were permitted to reopen the grand jury on the basis of new evidence coming to light. The "new evidence" was that two of the four youths were now willing to testify.

After hearing eight days of testimony, it was time for the grand jury to apply the law to the facts. The issue was whether Goetz's use of violent force was "reasonable". New York law at the time did not define this term, leaving two possible interpretations. The subjective test would look at whether the defendant sincerely felt threatened at the time he used force. The objective test would look at how society would expect a normal person to have behaved in the same situation. Neither approach was palatable to the prosecution, so the prosecutor presenting the case steered a middle course between the two possible interpretations.

The second grand jury then indicted Goetz on all requested counts, but the presiding judge threw out the indictment, adopting more of a subjective standard. He concluded that the reasonableness of Goetz's actions depended on how he felt at the moment, not on how anyone else in his shoes would have acted. The state appealed, and in July of 1986, more than a year later, the appellate court by a 7-0 vote reinstated the indictment. The appellate court found that a "reasonable belief" contained both a subjective and an obective element.

The case finally went to trial, with jury selection taking four months. On April 27, 1987 the trial itself got started. On June 16, 1987 the jury returned a verdict of acquittal on all of the assault and attempted murder charges.

It is interesting that the jury selection process took more than twice as long as the presentation of evidence, and indeed, this was the most important part of the trial. The selection proess was quite nuanced. Normally the defense will strike any prospective jurors who have been victims of a crime. But here, the defense lawyers sought to portray Goetz as a crime victim, rather than a crime perpetrator, and so they permitted six crime victims to sit on thejury, with three of those crimes happening on the subway.

The landmark case of Batson v.Kentucky had just been decided, prohibiting prosecutors from striking black prospective jurors simply because of their race. But nothing would have prevented the defense lawyers from doing so. However, the defense lawyers judged that blacks were just as fearful of crime as whites were. Plus, it would have been a bad look to strike all the blacks from the jury pool. Consequently, two blacks were permitted to serve on the jury.

In concluding remarks, Williams expresses doubt that the case would come out the same way today. He points out that "The country is objectively much safer today than it was in 1984....Moreover, society overall is more willing today to try to understand people, their backgrounds, their motivations, and their behaviors. Today Goetz's victims would not have been reduced to caricatures; Goetz's oddities would have been regarded with concern, not eye rolls."

There is a principle in torts law that "you take your plaintiff as you find him." So, if you are out driving and get rear-ended, the other driver is responsible for all of your injuries, even if those injuries are more than what would be considered "normal" due to a special condition you have that makes you more vulnerable to being rear-ended. This principle was applied by the Goetz jury, in that they considered Goetz's idiosyncrasies in finding him not guilty. They took into account that he had been a victim of a prior mugging, and that the doorman at his apartment building had also been so victimized. The four youths who accosted Goetz are responsible for the consequences of their actions. They picked on the wrong guy.

"Five Bullets" is a highly readable and important book which examines the troubling issue of vigilantism in American life. There are frequent references to "Death Wish", the 1974 Charles Bronson movie which explores these same themes. There are no easy answers, but it is an issue which merits further exploration.

Findlay Bridge for 2/20/26

A total of 5.5 tables. We finished at 49%.

The unusually high number of players made for some awkward scoring. Nine pairs had to sit out a round, while two played every round. And each pair had one or two other pairs who they didn't get to play. The result was that sores had to be adjusted: our score of 47 points was adjusted to 52.88 to adjust for us having to sit out a round.

In our 24 hands, there were only 3 games bid and made, 8 part scores bid and made, and 13 sets. Here are the specifics.

Board 1. We went down 2 at 3H doubled, for bottom board.

Board 2. We got top board as our opponents stopped at 3S, while the other opponent pairs all bid and made 4.

Board 3. They bid and made 4C, as did 3 other boards. One pair made 5.

Total of 5.5 points vs. Tim & James, the eventual winners.

Board 4. They bid 2NT, making 4, for top board.

Board 5. They bid 4H, making 6. Same with 2 other boards, while 2 only made 5.

Board 6. We set their 4D by 2, for middle board.

Total points of 3 vs. Bob & Greg.

Board 7. We bid & made 4S, tying for top board.

Board 8. They bid 3NT, making 6. We tied with 2 others for bottom board.

Board 9. They bid 3C, making 4. The other competitor played & made 3D for top board.

Total of 6 points vs.Dennis & Brent.

Board 10. We set 5D doubled by one. Our competitors all got the bid, either making a part score or going down.

Board 11. They set our 2H bid, but our -50 was good for top board!

Board 12. We went down 2 at 6H, tying for bottom board. We used the new 1430 system after 4NT.

Total of 8.5 points vs. Bruce & Johanne.

Board 13. We set 3S by 2, for middle board. The top board bid & made 4H, getting rewarded for their aggressive bidding..

Board 14. They bid 2D & made 4. One competitor pair scored a rare 550 points by making a 3NT doubled game.

Board 15. We set their 4S by one, for 2.5 points.

Total of 6.5 points vs. Mike & Arlene, the eventual second-place finishers.

Board 16. We set 3NT by 3, for top board. Good defense!

Board 17. We played and made 3S, again for top board. Good declarer play by Ron.

Board 18. We set 3S by one. Same result at 3 other boards, while the 4th made a part score.

Total of 9.5 points vs. Ken & Ruth.

Board 19. They played 2D, making 3. One board played 2NT, getting top board due to the extra 10 points.

Board 20. We played 3S, making 6! Only one of our competitors bid & made the game.

Board 21. We went down one at 2D.

Total of 5.5 points vs. Ann & Nancy.

Board 25. We went down one at 3D.

Board 26. We set their 3NT. Our competitor pairs all got the bid, 3 making a game and one going down. We didn't bid enough!

Board 27. We went down 2 at 3H.

Total of a paltry 2.5 point vs. Dave & Gary