Presidential Greatness
Oliver’s got a link to one of those embarrassing “greatest president ever” surveys. What makes it so damn embarrassing is the fact that Reagan and Clinton top the list. The breakdown by party affiliation is even worse with the dueling results that shout “Oh yeah? Well, our president’s the best”. It’s nice to see that there’s a little more sanity among those who don’t have a partisan axe to grind :
I’m a bit of a history buff, but only in a “smart enough to sound stupid” sorta way. So instead of trying to come up with my own list, here’s a what I think of some of the contenders above :
Bill Clinton - I like Bill Clinton a lot. Of the guys on the list, I think he probably had the most potential to be a great President, but we all know how that one ended up. Maybe if he’d been able to pull off universal healthcare he’d be topping more lists, but he was way too embattled to get much done and too accommodating to force his agenda through Congress unscathed. Ronald Reagan - Maybe if conservatives had spent more time reading the newspaper at their Invisible Hand circle-jerks they’d remember the explosion in the homeless population, the S&L scandal, the 1987 stock market crash, the recession that followed his term, and the Iran-Contra scandal. Seriously, he was no hero. Franklin Roosevelt - If forced to name a favorite, he’d probably be my pick for the top spot. This list of New Deal programs alone makes him my pick for the top spot. Abraham Lincoln - My favorite Republican President. The party should could use more like him these days, huh? Dwight Eisenhower - How the hell does he rate worse than Nixon? I’m shocked that more Republicans don’t hold Ike in high esteem. John F. Kennedy - A martyr President. Yawn. If he’d lived long enough to take the blame for Vietnam, I doubt he’d be on this list at all. At least he was openly supportive of the civil rights movement. Richard Nixon - I’ll say it again…how the hell did he get on this list? My only thought is that maybe the survey respondents were so stupid that they couldn’t even name 10 presidents. George Washington - I think the obviousness of choosing the first President as the best obscures how great a President he really was. Although it was a losing battle, his fight against the formation of political parties should put him in the top five of anyone’s list.
Also worth noting is that 1% of Democrats named George W. Bush as the greatest President. In other news, a new survey shows that 1% of Democrats are completely retarded.
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I guess I’m the same sort of history buff you are. I’d put Lincoln at the top, maybe in a tie with FDR.
I’d rate Washington very highly. It’s tough to divorce any one aspect of his life from his overall importance to the founding of this nation. Suffice it to say, for all his faults he was a formidable force, and no less so as president.
JFK should go lower — the sad truth is he was just figuring out how to be president when he was assassinated.
TR should go higher, but I’m not sure by how much.
Eisenhower gets short-changed a lot. He’s a more compelling figure than his passing resemblance to Mr. Peanut would lead you to think.
As for Reagan, future generations will ask “What the fuck were they thinking??” That’s after they get done asking that question about George W. Bush.
But that’s just me…
Comment by Roddy McCorley — February 18, 2005 @ 4:28 pm
I think George Washington was the greatest. Imagine how much better this world would be if every victorious hugely popular revolutioanary war general just decided to give up power after 8 years instead of trying to become a life long dictator.
Comment by sydney — February 18, 2005 @ 10:00 pm
Fuck Lincoln. He should have let the goddamn South secede and form InbredJesusLand. Sure, he freed the slaves, but it was mostly a tactical move aimed at weakening the South, not any sort of deep-seated moral urge. What’s that famous quote where he clearly says that if he could preserve the Union without freeing any slaves, he’d do it? Something to that effect.
So thanks a lot, Abe. Now we have a bunch of Confederate sympathizers, loud as hell and proud of being anti-modern and anti-science, who are still voting their century-old resentment against them damn Yankees, only now their leaders have access to weaponry far more destructive than muskets and cannons.
Comment by damian — February 19, 2005 @ 5:50 am
Yo, damian. Under your plan, you still get to keep Santorum, Lieberman and Kenneth J. Blackwell.
Comment by dez — February 19, 2005 @ 10:55 am
The thing about Lincoln is that GWB, in his waging of the War on Terror, actually is acting in much the same vein as Lincoln did (diminishing civil liberties, turning the war into one of higher principle, fighting a war that few initially supported, etc…) Lincoln, however, had the privilege of fighting the Civil War and not a War on Terror.
I think Regan benefits from the same advantage that Clinton gets: people’s inability to separate their like for the President from his contribution to our country’s legacy. But what’s the deal with noone ever giving credit to my favorite Prez: Jefferson! Even Richard Nixon gets more votes than Jefferson. Bah!
Comment by E-Rock — February 19, 2005 @ 1:05 pm
Yeah, Jefferson (and Madison, to a large extent) gave us separation of church and state, without which we’d probably already be a theocracy.
Hey, I think I just answered E-Rock’s question without even trying…
Comment by sebastian — February 19, 2005 @ 3:46 pm
Word to E-Rock for calling Lincoln out on his rather intense violation of all kinds of rights and laws and just generally being pretty intense. If we were alive in Lincoln’s time we probably wouldn’t like him.
On the other hand, Lincoln may have been our first gay president. Which just goes to show something. I think I just heard a shooting outside my house.
Comment by Joe — February 19, 2005 @ 5:11 pm
Kennedy was no great shakes except for one thing: during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he and his brother just may have saved the world by avoiding nuclear war with the USSR.
With Taylor, Nitze, Lemay and the others howling for immediate bombing and invasion of Cuba, with events rapidly spinning out of control, the Kennedys were sufficiently secure, smart, and tough not only to remain immune to the groupthink but also to work the situation to a peaceful conclusion. Amazing, really, considering that they were just a couple of young guys in a roomful of very senior type-A personalities who were used to having their own way. Imagine Dubya in that situation.
Doesn’t make Kennedy one of our greatest Presidents, but for that two weeks in October, 1962, we were very fortunate to have a President who actually had a mind of his own and the guts and maturity to stand firm in a moment of extreme testosterone-fueled irrationality.
Comment by Jonathan — February 19, 2005 @ 5:20 pm
Well, I guess it was a matter of time before we had an abolitionist President, so in a way I can understand why people would think Lincoln was overrated. It helps that he was one of the most articulate Presidents we’ve ever had and that he’s got that great “pulled himself up by his bootstraps” quiality that Americans love so much.
Not that it’s an excuse for Lincoln’s curtailment of civil liberties or anything, but half the Union Army switched sides during the civil war. I definitely don’t approve of some of what he did, but when most of your best officers and soldiers end up being traitors, I can understand a guy getting a little paranoid. What’s Bush’s excuse?
I forgot I was gonna mention Jefferson. He’s definitely one of my favorite founding fathers, but his presidency itself was pretty ho-hum. The most notable thing that happened during his term was the Louisiana Purchase, but I’ve never been a big fan of manifest destiny (though the term doesn’t technically apply here). The most interesting thing about his Presidency to me is the campaign that proceeded it. It’s unthinkable that someone labeled an “athiest” could get any votes these days, yet Jefferson was elected twice.
Comment by greg — February 20, 2005 @ 12:35 am
That’s the thing about Lincoln, though. He wasn’t technically an abolitionist President until he got into the thick of things. He was very much a moderate on the issue of abolition until he got into the middle of a big war. And at the time, he wasn’t really considered to be all that eloquent a President. You know the story of the Gettysburg Address and how underappreciated it was at the time. To be honest, though, it was Lincoln’s willingness to do the things he did that makes him my second favorite President.
Comment by E-Rock — February 20, 2005 @ 7:03 am
These top tens always really show that most people have a hard time naming 10 presidents much less have any inclination how to critically compare the merits of each. The campaign to remember Reagan as the greatest president began before he left office and was firmly in place by the time of the announcement of his diagnosis with Alzheimer’s. People always favor the recent past in any of these surveys - like the AFI top 100 movies of whatever. Being another armchair historian I must kibitz and say that John Adams has my vote as greatest president ever.
Comment by Joshua — February 21, 2005 @ 3:04 pm
It should be noted that Nixon helped usher in Medicare/Medicade. I think he gets negative points because he’s just such an unlikable person. That said, he doesn’t belong in the top 10, if for no other reason than how he and Kissenger handled Vietnam.
TR should definetly be on the list. Kennedy’s on there because of how inspiring a figure he was, something that really hasn’t come along since then. I don’t think any president since has managed to successfully challange America in the way he did.
Comment by JoeF — February 21, 2005 @ 4:13 pm
There’s a lot to be said for Woodrow Wilson; I might even put him in my top ten. One of the great political philosophers of our day, and if memory serves was instrumental in bringing about the UN’s predecessor.
And I agree that Lincoln was a good president, but you can’t compare Republicans/Democrats of yesterday with those of today. Everything changed when FDR became president. Sure, there’s still stragglers like Zell Miller, but for the most part the old party affiliations died out long ago.
I guess that wasn’t really necessary to say, but I wanted to say it!
Comment by ChrisV82 — February 22, 2005 @ 8:01 am
Also, I think Kennedy and his attorney-general brother would have done great things had John not been assassinated when he did; Bobby and LBJ did not get along.
With what did happen, however, Kennedy isn’t as great as we like to remember. He was a hot stud, though, I think we can all reach a consensus on that.
Comment by ChrisV82 — February 22, 2005 @ 8:02 am
I think FDR ranks among the best; he fully understood that, despite his personal fortune, unless the rest of American had jobs and a safety net, all the money in the world in a few hands could not save us. Moreover, he was a “modern” president in that he was most likely NOT a racist, though he could have done lots more. He and Eleanor made Black folks think they actually cared, and maybe they did. (Now if he could have only desegregated the military….) Any president who owned slaves, gave birth to mulatto children, or sat idely by while African Americans were lynched is no hero to me. A president who ignores the rights of 12% of its population is an asshole, even if he poses for pictures with certain “acceptable” negroes, or even puts some in his cabinet.
Comment by fullnelson — February 22, 2005 @ 10:31 am