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.
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