RATING THE PRESIDENTS
BY JON NELSON
When I was a child back in the 1960s, many of the history books rated the presidents according to the five standards of: great, near-great, average, below-average, and failure. As with all human endeavors, it is extremely difficult to consider all the issues facing a president during his term and summarize his administration with a single, all-encompassing adjective. In addition, our perspectives and understanding of history change with time, and many presidents are now rated very differently than they were half a century ago. Having said all that, I am going to try to synthesize all the knowledge I have attained as a history student and teacher, and use these admittedly outdated standards to rate the men who have served our country. I have been tempted to add another category, above average, but decided instead to include those men in the near-great category, although I’m not convinced they are deserving of that lofty term. I freely admit that my rankings will rankle many students of history as well as most historians, and many other people in America. I fully expect that these ratings will stir up quite a hornet’s nest. That being said, here they are:
Great
Near-great
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
Chester Alan Arthur
Grover Cleveland
Harry S. Truman
Average
James Monroe
John Quincy Adams
William Henry Harrison
John Tyler
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore
James Garfield
Benjamin Harrison
Theodore Roosevelt
William Howard Taft
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
John F. Kennedy
Gerald R. Ford
Jimmy Carter
Bill Clinton
Barack Obama
Below average
John Adams
James Madison
Martin Van Buren
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Rutherford Hayes
William McKinley
Warren G. Harding
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Lyndon B. Johnson
George H.W. Bush
Failure
Andrew Jackson
James K. Polk
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Ulysses S. Grant
Woodrow Wilson
Richard M. Nixon
Ronald Reagan
George W. Bush
Donald Trump
Two things stand out. One is the fact that I have not nominated a single man to the rank of “great.” However, perhaps the most surprising aspect of this list is the numerous men who have previously been considered “great” or “near-great” whom I have delegated to the bottom of the heap. While going into prolonged dissertations on each man would make this missive unreasonably long, a few explanations are in order here. To wit:
John Adams: The Alien and Sedition Acts and the XYZ affair were both poorly managed by Adams and his administration. Under the first, Freedom of the press came under attack, and those declared to be “undesirables” faced deportation under these Acts. The XYZ Affair was an embarrassment to the Adams Administration and led to an undeclared war at sea with France.
James Madison: Basically powerless during the War of 1812, Madison was uninspired and uninspiring as the head of a great nation. Madison’s greatness was as author of the Constitution, but he should have quit while he was ahead.
Andrew Jackson: The man whose portrait adorns our twenty dollar bill was totally undeserving of being president. An avowed racist (as admittedly most men of his time were), Jackson ignored Native American requests and pleas as he sent them hundreds of miles from their native homes through the wilds of the west. Even though a cholera epidemic was raging, Jackson and his administration refused to slow down the forced emigrations. In addition, his ignorance of financial affairs resulted in the Panic of 1837; Americans of his time rightly ridiculed his ridiculous anti-bank sentiments. If all this were not enough, the Peggy O’Neal scandal rocked his administration to its core. It is unfathomable why this terrible man should be honored in any way. If anyone is deserving of the title of “failure,” it is Andrew Jackson.
James K. Polk: Polk provoked a war with Mexico by staging an “incident” that occurred, he claimed, on American territory.
Abraham Lincoln: Played politics with American lives by appointing some of the worst commanding generals this country has ever seen. The New York Draft Riots of 1863 came about because of his stupid policy of allowing men to “buy” their way out of service. In addition, Lincoln suspended Habeus Corpus during the Civil War and imprisoned countless individuals without benefit of trial. This alone puts him in the category of dictator, the only man against whom this charge can be leveled. That is, until the administration of Donald Trump.
Woodrow Wilson: Here, I will not delve into Wilson’s war record, which has caused most contemporary historians to re-evaluate his presidency; few today rate him as the “near-great” president of my youth. I am focusing here on Wilson as a man. The supposedly brilliant Wilson, who had previously served as president of Princeton University and who had authored several academic books, was an uncompromising racist. When his aides had arranged a meeting between him and Booker T. Washington, the leading black educator of the day, Wilson said in effect that: “I will not receive that nigger in the White House.” Around the same time, the movie Birth of a Nation premiered, which basically glorified the Ku Klux Klan. After viewing the movie, Wilson gave it his heartiest endorsement, which resulted in a huge resurgence of the Klan; the KKK was bigger and more powerful in the 1920s than at any other time in our history. If this were not enough, Wilson approved attacking Mexico not once, but eleven times. No wonder Pancho Villa is revered as a hero to this day by the Mexican people!
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Roosevelt’s alleged “New Deal” was nothing more than the same policies that had been instigated by his much-maligned predecessor, Herbert Hoover. The New Deal did not bring us out of the Great Depression, the war economy did. In fact, 1937 was the worst year of the entire depression era, a fact conveniently overlooked by Roosevelt supporters. Roosevelt was a politician, but never a statesman. Statesmen would not have looked aside while Hitler was paving the way for World War Two. A statesman would never have stood idly by while our allies in Europe were under assault by Nazi thugs. And a statesman wouldn’t have cozied up to “Uncle Joe” Stalin. Clearly, Roosevelt was as unprincipled a man as ever occupied the White House.
Bill Clinton: Under Clinton, the economy, for the last time, was robust; we had a multi-billion dollar surplus by the time he left office. However, this accomplishment fades when one considers the unnecessary wars his administration got us into, wars which invariably found us on the wrong side. To cite but one example, while the genocide in Rwanda was taking place, the Clinton administration took no action, even though it was well aware of what was taking place.
George W. Bush: An adequate summation of the crimes and misdeeds of the Bush administration would fill a book, indeed several books (this has already been done by many distinguished scholars). Besides ignoring all the warning signs that led up to 9/11 and beginning a non-winnable war with Iraq and Afghanistan, the once-prosperous economy took a nosedive during his eight years as chief executive. The economy has not been the same since. Many people called him the worst president ever. Then, Donald Trump came along.
Donald Trump: Despite all the evidence of his corruption, his complete lack of qualifications to serve as president, and his total lack of judgement, Trump won the electoral college and became president. Those who still support him are becoming scarcer and scarcer and invariably resort to the same three words as a defense: “Yes, but Hilary…” This will not cut it any more. Under Trump, our country faces the destruction of our environment, the destruction of our public school system and countless other threats that would have been unthinkable a mere generation ago. This man is a national disgrace, and the Republican totalitarians in Congress are aiding him in turning the American Republic into a fundamentalist Christian third-world country. This is what America has become. Stay tuned for future developments.
Categories: Political Affairs