The Presidents: Winners and Losers


Today is Presidents’ Day.   I have read 15 presidential biographies and it is my default position when it comes to books or television.  Friends who know this frequently ask me who my favorite President is.  That is a difficult question.  Harry Truman was probably the most likeable.  George Washington was the most admirable, Lincoln the most complex, and Wilson the smartest.   Chester A. Arthur actually earned some grudging admiration from me as a man who rose above his, “political hack” background upon ascending to the Presidency.  He was an example of how the office itself can cause a person to transcend his own weaknesses and rise to the occasion. 

That being said, I am going to devote today to a little study of our Presidents.  The easiest way to tackle this is to group the Presidents by ability.

The top tier of Presidents, which are almost universally acclaimed as indispensible leaders, shapers and saviors of our Union orbit in a rarified atmosphere of their own: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Harry S Truman are all in this, “A” list.  Of these, I consider Theodore Roosevelt to be the most interesting, and his cousin, Franklin, the most overrated.

            The B list includes Presidents also frequently agreed upon as exceptional for their own time, if not all time.  John Adams, James Madison, James Monroe, John Q. Adams, Andrew Jackson, James Knox Polk, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson are all in this category.  I consider Adams and Eisenhower to be consistently underrated.  But Lyndon Johnson is my favorite.  He inherited the Viet Nam mess and an unfinished, unfocused Civil Rights movement and used his daunting strength of character to deal with both. 

            The C list is a gray area of meager or questionable accomplishment.  It includes Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush.  In this group, it is easy to see a bias toward men who have been out of office long enough to gain historical perspective.  Kennedy was a weak President who gets most of his standing through the emotional investment of his modern era assassination.  It was his decisions that led to our unhappy presence in Viet Nam.  George H. W. Bush keeps rising in popularity as time passes and truth keeps bubbling to the surface. 

            The D list consists of those who may have had some redeeming value, but clearly found the Presidency too much for their nature, mind or morals.  This list includes Martin Van Buren, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, Calvin Coolidge, and Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

Finally, we have the, “F” list; those absent or deeply flawed men who hurt more than helped their nation.  Some of them never had a chance to show their better selves, others had no better self to show.  William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Warren G. Harding fill this unhappy position.

You may notice that I have left our last two Presidents off this list.  You need time to judge a President, and both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have not had enough of either.  But, not to be called a coward, I will tell you where I think they will end up.  Fifty years from now, George W. Bush will be in the B list, Obama will be in the D list.

Respect the office if not the man, and keep the faith. 

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