Some long-time readers of this blog might remember a post I did some time ago in which I did my own ranking of presidents.
Well, lately C-Span commissioned a ranking of presidents by professional historians, which they and others seems wont to do on a fairly regular basis. My reaction-you could do a Family Feud audience survey on the rankings of American presidents that would be as valid as this most recent one of historians commissioned by C-Span. Really, it's all over the place. If you can make heads or tails of the criterion by which they judge former chief executives, please explain it to me.
Sure, there are some surprises, such as Reagan's listing in the top ten, at in fact the number ten spot, but for the most part, it's about what you would expect. Or, well, maybe not, if you are going for possibly the most important criterion of all-objectivity.
It is ludicrous in the extreme for, for example, John F. Kennedy to be placed in the top ten at number six. It is just as ludicrous, if not more so, for Woodrow Wilson to be in the top ten at number nine. Richard Nixon's spot is pretty well where you would expect it to be, in the lower numbers, though granted perhaps a tad higher than he deserves as well at number twenty-seven. In the meantime, here we have John Adams at number seventeen. Abe Lincoln is at the top of the list, where he usually is. Historians tend to automatically put him there without really giving it a lot of thought.
So why exactly do I single out these presidents-Kennedy, Wilson, Nixon, Lincoln, and Adams? Well, it is because all of these presidents had one very important thing in common. More than other chief executives, they tampered with civil liberties. In some cases-hello, Mr. Lincoln-they suspended them altogether. This, to a historian, should be of the utmost concern, and certainly worthy of some note.
Adams did it with the passage of the hated Alien and Sedition Acts which sought to curtail freedom of speech and the press, particularly as it applied to criticisms of his administration. Yet, he gets a pass, despite the fact that this is to all intents and purposes the defining event of his administration.
Lincoln did it as a wartime measure, under the guise of national emergency, by also curtailing press freedoms and by suspending habeas corpus. He gets a pass today, and perhaps this is understandable, but he sure didn't get a pass by a great many of his contemporaries, who skewered him mercilessly over the issue.
Wilson went after anyone who openly spoke against America's involvement in world War I. Yet, he gets a pass, probably because of his domestic economic reforms, but mainly no doubt due to good intentions in helping form the League of Nations, practically the only one of his Fourteen Points in the aftermath of the war to be adopted by the European community. Even at that he failed (thankfully) to convince Congress to allow the US to join the first major international body. He also failed at restraining the excesses of the victorious allied nations of the Triple Entente.
Kennedy-what can you say, other than this man was little more than a common criminal who used the CIA in an illegal manner to overthrow regimes not to his liking, engaging in assassinations and attempts at such. And that's not all. Acting on the urgings and encouragement of the Attorney General, his brother Robert-who has over the years morphed from a savage, ruthless punk into a personage nearly as deified as his presidential brother-wiretapped anyone whom they deemed a potential threat, including but not limited to Martin Luther KIng Jr. They also violated the civil liberties of alleged Mafia figures, including one man whom they kidnapped and forcibly threw out of the country without a trial or hearing.
Yet, he gets a pass because so many middle-aged, and for that matter younger and older historians get all misty-eyed (and in some cases they probably get a woody to boot) over the myth of Camelot-which, by the way, doesn't say a hell of a lot for their historian credentials.
Nixon-maintained a secret enemies list, spied on his enemies, and even corrupted the Justice Department in order to prevent investigation and prosecution of individuals involved in the Watergate break-in.
Strangely, he has jumped up nine notches from the last presidential rankings. Why is that? Well, he founded the EPA, which is all the rage these days amongst the chattering classes who want to do something about global climate change, he paved the way for normalizations of relations with China, and he did finally do something about that pesky Vietnam War, after all. But we've always been aware of those things. Did professional historians just now catch on to their historical significance? I find that hard to believe.
What I don't find hard to believe is the ranking of George W. Bush at number thirty-six in the rankings. Granted, he doesn't deserve to be anywhere near the top ten, and maybe not even in the top twenty-but 36? I ranked him at eighteen, and though this is tentative, and there is hopefully nowhere for him to go but down-36? This is obviously not an objective poll, for a variety of reasons, one of the most important to do with the subject of this post-the record on civil liberties.
One of the most valid and yet as far as I'm concerned still the most obviously and unfairly exaggerated complaints of Bush Jr.s tenure of office, is the way the Bush Administration abused civil liberties. Bush's enemies point to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and, most especially, to the passage of the Patriot Act as the defining moments of his presidency in terms of abuse of office and the usurpation of powers by the executive branch.
Or at least, that used to be the case. Now, the major complaints against him remain most of the other same old stuff he has always been roundly criticized for-the war in Iraq, the deficit, out-of-control spending, America's standing in the world, torture of terrorism suspects, etc. Added to all of this lately is of course the current financial meltdown, which he only deserves, by the way, a significant and yet still relatively small amount of the blame for.
The point to all this being, I have an idea you are going to hear less and less about his alleged abuses of civil liberties, such as they are. After all, there is a new game in town, a new face of hope and change who is, I have an idea, ready and willing to step into the same federal infrastructure George Bush inhabited and, in some cases, built and expanded. Thus far, the most far-ranging vision Obama has truly exhibited in earnest is his sudden change of heart and decision to support the Telecommunications Bill that granted immunity to phone companies charged with illegally wiretapping customers as a service to the federal government. Obama's most vociferous supporters questioned his about-face on this, and even displayed concern, and criticism. For a day or two, that is, before they decided they would just shut the hell up about it.
You might infer from this that the prospect of the Unitary Executive suddenly doesn't seem like such a horrible one after all.
Thus you have men whose presidential terms are marked by such abuses high in the rankings, and in the case of Adams, you have a relatively high ranking and respected president whose presidency is all but solely defined by it. Well, and by The Adams Chronicles, a favorite amongst historians, and no this is not a facetious statement. Suspiciously close to father John in the rankings, just two notches below him is son John Quincy Adams, another well-intentioned president who accomplished absolutely nothing of note, whom these same historians nevertheless inexplicably placed at number nineteen. So who is the sole occupant of the number eighteen position, between the Adams father and son?
George H. W. Bush.
It's almost like by their putting Bush Senior between them, they were childishly saying-
"Hey Bush Junior, you ain't nowhere near as good as your dad, like John Quincy was almost as good as his. Your dad's at number eighteen. You're eighteen too-eighteen notches below him that is, nyahh, nyaah, nyaa."
Bill Clinton, another president with some minor criticisms for abuses of civil liberties of his own (he too supposedly maintained an enemies list and was alleged to use the power of the Treasury Department to harass enemies by engaging in unfounded tax audits) amongst his myriads of other short-comings, also raised inexplicably in the ranks, from somewhere in the twenties to number fifteen.
The idea of presidential rankings has justifiably been compared to a parlor game. Recently, a group of historians were invited to contribute to another such function. Any qualified historian could participate, but from all of those who seemingly rushed in excitedly to engage in this bit of academic posturing, it seems this was the result pertaining to the standing of one George W. Bush-
Asked to rank the presidency of George W. Bush in comparison to those of the other 41 American presidents, more than 61 percent of the historians concluded that the current presidency is the worst in the nation’s history. Another 35 percent of the historians surveyed rated the Bush presidency in the 31st to 41st category, while only four of the 109 respondents ranked the current presidency as even among the top two-thirds of American administrations.
Only between one and two percent of these professional historians ranked the presidency of Bush a success. Most of the ones who ranked him a failure but did not rank him at the very bottom, nevertheless ranked him in the bottom five, along with Buchanan, Pierce, Harding, and Andrew Johnson, whom they apparently hate for not razing the south in the aftermath of the Union victory in the Civil War. In fact, it seems as though one of the typically lower ranking presidents, Millard Fillmore, had to be unceremoniously booted from his well-worn position from the bottom five. He is typically blamed for inflaming passions between southern secessionists and northern abolitionists who wanted to contain the spread of slavery, and thus creating the conditions that led to the Civil War. But, they already have Buchanan and Pierce to hate for that, one more is just overkill. Make room for Junior.
Yes, I am being somewhat facetious, but serious too. I think that is exactly how these people think. If we can't justify putting him at the very bottom where he belongs, because we need to maintain the appearance of objectivity, let's at least make sure we tag him in the bottom five. Unfortunately for this cabal, the majority of the barely more moderate participants assured Junior would average out to 36, though still in merely the bottom ten.
Me, I placed Bush in my rankings at number 18 for a reason. I placed him one notch under John Adams at 17 and one notch above John F. Kennedy at 19 (I put Kennedy this high solely for his work promoting the space program). I placed Clinton, Wilson and Nixon at 28, 29 and 31 respectively. Lincoln I placed at number 2, second only to George Washington. This is because when I went to work doing my rankings, I set about being as objective as possible, and in all these cases I have listed in this post, one thing stood-all these presidents had problems adhering to the highest of standards when it comes to the the enforcement of and protection of civil liberties. In all regards they failed the test miserably, and only in the case of Lincoln was this ameliorated by extreme conditions which arguably warranted his policies in this regard. Even at that, it served to put him below Washington in my rankings.
The other two groups were both lowered significantly in my own rankings due to their policies in this regard. The gap between the two is explainable as a matter of greater accomplishment, integrity, and/or political or other hardships endured during tenure of office both by those within the higher ranked group, and those who fell in between the two groups.
Still, of course, it's a parlor game, with little meaning, other than as an exercise in either partisanship or, in my case, objectivity. If I were to do my list over, it would be different in some regards. Reagan would go from eleven to nine. Coolidge would probably be somewhere between twenty and thirty, but still not as high as he could have been had he not allowed his adherence to ideology to prevent him from doing just a couple of things differently. FDR would be lowered, but still in the top ten. Same with cousin Teddy. Jackson would go down from an already low twenty-four to an even lower thirty something ranking, as would partner-in-crime Van Buren, whom I last put just a notch above Clinton at twenty-seven. Clinton would also go down, Nixon would go up, etc. Harding would rise higher, maybe even into the top twenty. See, it is really too subjective to ever qualify as objective, something you can only aim for, but will find exceedingly difficult to achieve.
Two things I'm pretty sure of though that would remain the same were I to do my rankings over.
George W. Bush would probably stay at eighteen, or maybe just a tad lower.
George H.W. Bush would probably stay at thirty-six, or thereabouts.
Well, there is a third thing.
Professional historians are mostly full of shit.
Of course, so are most presidents, who are after all politicians deep down? Are they all basically the same, maybe different only in some cases by small degrees? Maybe, maybe not. Whatever the case, you might appreciate the following video montage of each president morphing into his successor, in order from first to last.
If nothing else, it could be a good way to teach your kids the presidents in the right order.
