Experts like visible activity rather than effective, and in this case, constitutional and quiet competence. To paraphrase the great Thomas Sowell when someone asked him if he would run for elective office, his response was to the effect, how would anyone vote for him when his campaign slogan would be “ vote for me, I’ll leave you alone”. I tried a version of that 3 times in my township and lost. But then I live in a town with a 35 year history of total Democrat elective office holders. I suppose my fellow citizens like the idea of high taxes and intrusive government. When asked they deny it but still vote for it. The “ experts” could be my neighbours. Just a comment on “experts”. One of my graduate students commented after a visiting lecturer, “ an expert is an ex or former or has been and a spert is a drip under pressure”. Ever since that time ever I have been introduced as an expert I demure and say I’m just a person knowledgeable in my field. And so the people voting on the “ best” presidents are “experts”.
Very entertaining and informative piece, Professor Graboyes. Thank you for the very interesting comparisons of the various Presidents.
As someone who spent 6 years in grad schools studying Economics, I do not feel unqualified to comment on the social sciences. It saddens me to have to include History in the same intellectual dung heap as Psychology and Sociology, but I do.
History, especially as it is practiced now, is no more a science than the various Studies programs. These “best of” ranking endeavors are equally unserious, like Apple’s recent albums ranking.
There’s a bit in a Heinlein novel, FRIDAY, where the government of California noticed people with Bachelor’s degrees earned more than those without, so they passed a law that gave every high school grad a Bachelors’s. And this was from 1982!
Hey!! Jimmy Carter made homebrewing legal again. Finally got to start drinking great-tasting, but not horribly expensive beer. Actually I drank a lot of free, great tasting beer because a friend of mine is one of the very best brewers in Michigan. His beers routinely beat the great microbreweries in contests.
As for presidential scholars, no matter their ideology, they're obviously biased towards examining presidents who "do things", whether those things are good or not. How do they rank William Henry Harrison? Better than Trump?
And I'm old enough to remember when Eisenhower was denigrated because "nothing happened" during his 8 years. I could use a little nothing happening about now.
These rankings are like giving Obama a Nobel Peace Prize for . . . existing? Or Paul Krugman an Economics Nobel as "a kick in the shin" for GW Bush.
Besides there is no real metric that they use. It's an Academic Mean Girls Club.
Carter may have given us homebrewing, but indirectly gave us Billy Beer. So you have to consider that. I had a mean girls-type reference in my draft but needed to cut some verbiage. I may publish a brief, separate piece on the stuff I left on the cutting room floor.
Until the final moments of editing, I had a section comparing it to a high school popularity contest. But I needed to cut some space. I may publish a brief piece with some of the things that were cut.
Thanks again for the kind words about Warren G. Harding. The rankings make good press for a few days but I would take exception though that airline deregulation was a good accomplishment of the Carter Administration. I read Schlesinger's hagiography of Andrew Jackson which glossed over the "Trail of Tears". But I think Barbara Tuchman is the best historian of the 20th century. My degrees are in Journalism and Business, so what do I know?
Why aren't you fond of the airline deregulation? I also could have rolled in questions about whether Carter was a constructive or obstructive force at Camp David. By some accounts, he repeatedly interfered to the detriment of Israel, but that Anwar Sadat ignored his meddling. I was pleased that the Nobel Committee did not include Carter in that particular award.
The whole deregulation of the 1980s has ended badly for the everyday consumer. At first it was exciting to see new airline entrants like PeoplExpress, etc. But United was allowed to merge with Continental, Southwest bought AirTrain, etc. TWA was ruined by Carl Icahn. And then there is the deregulation of the public utilities at the state level in Ohio. Natural gas is cheaper than ever but the fees to deliver it have increased. I preferred the old days when Public Utilities Commissions set utility rates and you didn't have to shop for a natural gas and an electric supplier. Jimmy Carter certainly had his faults which you nailed perfectly. He was an engineer and engineers come at problems with a particular mindset.
I once read the Red Air Force's official history of the Great Patriotic War, a.k.a. the Second World War. I thought nothing could excel it for bad historiography but the American Political Science Association has managed to do it.
Why is Fillmore so low in EVERY group? He was the key to passing the Compromise of 1850, which delayed a Civil War by a decade (until Roger Taney and the Supreme Court ignored the Constitution and threw out decades of carefully crafted political compromise). He settled the border dispute between Texas and New Mexico territory. He was responsible for the locks at Sault Ste. Marie and the railroad from Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico. His one Supreme Court justice, Benjamin Curtis, dissented from Taney's opinion in Dred Scot v. Sanford. He dispatched Mattew Perry's flotilla to open trade with Japan. He gained a favorable settlement with Portugal over claims dating to the War of 1812. He avoided a reopening of hostilities with Mexico and laid the groundwork for the Gadsen Purchase. Calebrisi and Yoo praised him as a faithful executor of the nation's laws.
Great questions! His association with the Know Nothings probably didn't do his reputation any good. He wasn't really a follower of the party and was nominated while overseas. If I recall correctly, he came in second to TR in terms of percentage vote for a 3rd party. Ross Perot was nipping at his heels in 1992.
In terms of popular vote you may be correct. In terms of electoral votes, John Bell won more on the Constitutional Union ticket in 1860 (39 vs 8, or 12.8% vs 2.7%). George Wallace won 8.5% of the electoral votes in 1968. Strom Thurmond won 7.3% of the electoral vote in 1948.
Of course, it is debatable if he was actually a "third party" candidate in the strictest sense in 1856. Fremont was running as the first candidate of the new Republican party, while Fillmore was nominated by the American Party, which had run candidates before.
Yes, I did mean popular votes. And your second paragraph makes an interesting point. The American Party's prior outing (the 1852 election) attracted negligible support, but in 1856, they could have become the primary opposition to the Democrats. One might say that that election retroactively relegated the Know Nothings to the status of failed third party, but things could have turned out otherwise.
"Trump is undeniably, deliberately, and virulently polarizing."
Pound sand. If anything, he's the opposite. Speaking hard truths no one else will speak isn't "polarizing." Trump tried tirelessly to work with the democrats and build racial bridges. The Left decided to label him "divisive" out of the gate and this idiot bought into it.
If you wish to restate your point without hurling epithets in my direction (or in any other commenter's direction), I'd be more than happy to discuss your rather interesting points. I do not, however, waste my time with those who are incapable of civil discourse.
. Trump polarizes people in his OWN party, much less the rest of the electorate. An honest evaluation, rather than the gut reaction from a cultist in his personality cult, would come to the clear conclusion that he is a polarizing figure - and intentionally, as his crude insults of those who disagree with him reveals.
Dear Mr Graboyes: I see we are going to disagree about much of what you wrote. The bashing of Wilson is fine, though I note that Andrew Johnson is hurt that you ignore his racism in favor of Wilson. All the conflict between Johnson and the Radical Republicans in Congress that climaxed in Johnson's impeachment happened because of Johnson's racial policies.
What I object to is the praise of Harding. First:
"Harding’s appointees (e.g., Calvin Coolidge, Charles Evans Hughes, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Andrew Mellon) mostly strove to stay out of Americans’ hair"
The notion that Herb Hoover Secy of Commerce and UnderSecy of Everything Else as he was popularly known wanted to stay out of Americans's hair is grotesque. No one was more adept than Hoover at staying in the headlines. His every urge was to exhort his fellow citizens to follow his advice. That his advice was often sound doesn't stop Hoover from being a born nanny and nag. Even an otherwise respectful profile of Hoover by Kenneth Roberts "The Hooving of Hoov" in the SATURDAY EVENING POST of 11 March 1922 comments on this 'nudging" as Cass Sunstein.
Harding's Atty Genl, Harry Daugherty is far worse. His attempted frame up of Senator Burton Wheeler for Wheeler's inquiry of the Harding scandals is bad enough. You mention Harding's commutation of Eugene Debs's prison sentence without also mention that Daugherty yelled and screamed against it, and succeeded in delaying the commutation until December 1921, while Harding had wanted to do so promptly after being inaugurated. H. L. Mencken wrote a fine column on this topic "Who's Loony Now?" on 27 December 1921, collected in A CARNIVAL OF BUNCOMBE edited by Malcolm Moos, Mencken also noted a speech Daughtery gave to the American Bar Association at this time in which Daugherty claimed that the political crime Debs was convicted of was no different than any other sort of crime, e.g. picking someone's pocket.
But the worst failure of Harding (and this applies with lesser force to Coolidge) are his foreign policy attempts. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 was seen as popular at the time. By 1941 with Japan on the march and the US Navy trying to catch up from the years of privation under Harding-Coolidge-and Hoover not so much. Admiral Harold Stark was wise when he told Congress in 1940 when a big naval appropriations bill was being considered, "Dollars can't buy yesterday." That wisdom was never more apparent than in the first half of 1942.
Worst of all was the Harding-Coolidge financial policy concerning war debts and reparations. Harding ran for office in 1920 on an "America First" platform. None of this League of Nations stuff for America! Coupled with that was a determination to "protect" American industry with high tariffs. Result: thew Fordney-McCumber tariff of 1922, which erased all of Wilson's lowering of tariffs in the Udnerwood Act of 1913, and added plenty more for good measure.
So far, that policy was self consistent. But the issue of European war debts to the US, tripped it up. Harding (and even more so Coolidge) insisted that these debts to America be paid in full. The 1920s are a long history of plans and attempts to get the money, all ending in failure. No wonder. American wanted the money in either gold or dollars. But the US was sitting on two thirds of the world's gold supply at the end of WWI (See LORDS OF FINANCE by Liaquat Ahmed on this topic) so it was dollars that were needed. The only way for Europe to get those dollars was to sell to America. But the high tariffs of Harding and Coolidge made that damn near impossible.
There was an alternative. If America insisted on high tariffs, she could also have written of the war debts. Try selling the notion to America that all the billions we sent to Europe during the war were not collectible and were going to be written off. What an uproar that would have caused!
So America kept trying to collect, its debts, while making it difficult for Europe to earn the dollars needed to pay. This is not superior statesmanship; it is short term domestic politics blinding the long term foreign consequences. The war debt/reparations controversy damaged democracy in Europe and was a great talking point for HItler. It created a wave of anti-Americanism that was not helpful. Churchill, not generally thought of as anti-American, certainly became so during this period. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he had to come up with the dollars to pay America. That was a never ending struggle that left him sour in the 20s. Fortunately once Europe mostly defaulted on its war debts, the strain ceased. But the after effects were felt. Churchill as Prime Minister had to face the horrifying spectacle in the fall of 1940 that Britain would run out of dollars to pay for its war orders and could not raise any more. That's the Harding-Coolidge legacy in foreign affairs, sufficient to keep both those presidents down at the bottom of the rankings.
Even when I don't agree with you, it's always fun and instructive to read your posts. Keep your flag flying high!
-- Good point on Andrew Johnson, though I don't think he was as far out of the mainstream as Wilson was. Johnson mostly prevented improvements. Wilson reversed prior improvements.
-- Good point on Hoover. He, of course, started the New Deal. He just forgot to trademark, and FDR ran off with the IP. (Both should be embarrassed.) But I'm not sure the busybody President Hoover was in full bloom during the Harding Administration. His tendencies were there. (I believe Coolidge disparaged him as "Boy Wonder.") But he was somewhat restrained.
--I'll stand by it on Coolidge, Taft, and Mellon. More restrained than predecessors or successors. I probably should have used that wording rather than "mostly."
--I agree that Daugherty was awful. Coolidge certainly agreed.
--I agree that the Naval Treaty ended terribly. The impressive thing about it was the extent to which Harding could forge a bipartisan consensus. The bad thing was that that broad coalition agreed to a time bomb (alluded to in my parenthetic qualifier).
--I'll have to spend time going through your international finance remarks.
--While agreeing with much of what you say, I'll still argue that the Harding/Coolidge years were far more libertarian than the TR/Wilson years (Taft was somewhat anomalous) or the FDR years.
If you want to call me prolix, I must blush and admit to it.
"...Hoover. He, of course, started the New Deal."
Good point. But if you and I went up to him and congratulated him on this, we'd quickly be running for our lives, while the mild-mannered Quaker chased us with a bloody hatchet yelling "I did not! I did not!"
"For all of his considerable flaws, I have no doubt that he[FDR] belongs in the Top Five."
I'd go farther putting him in the top three, while heartily regretting that so much of his experimentation a) went wrong and b) persisted to this day. the Rural Electrification Administration persists to this day as the Rural Utilities Service.
Maybe we could get Herb to dispatch it with his bloody hatchet...
By the way, you might have noticed that it did not surprise me that Republican or Conservative respondents would rate FDR higher than Reagan, even though one can make a strong case (as Amity Shlaes did in THE FORGOTTEN MAN) that FDR's meddlesome economic policies were what deepened and lengthened the Great Depression. I can also look past FDR's upper-crust antisemitism, his blocking the S.S. St. Louis, and his failure to bomb the railways into Auschwitz. As problematic as those things are/were, they don't negate the fact that he was the most remarkable wartime leader in US history. It took Lincoln 2-3 years to assemble a General Staff capable of beating the Confederacy. Roosevelt picked the right Generals and Admiral right from the start and provided them with the tools, the support, and the leeway to do what needed doing. Without his leadership, it's quietly likely that the Axis Powers would have won. The premise of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE was quite plausible--that a Roosevelt assassination in 1933 would have would fatally weakened the Allies' ability to defeat Germany and Japan. For all of his considerable flaws, I have no doubt that he belongs in the Top Five.
Perhaps you give FDR too much credit for success in WWII. Most of the European war took place on the Eastern front. The German fate was sealed at the battles of Stalingrad & Kursk long before the Americans, Canadians & British landed at Normandy. 80 percent of European casualties occurred on the Eastern front. FDR got a huge boost from the communist sacrifices. Most historians don’t like to mention this. Instead it is popular to heap praise on FDR & “the greatest generation “ of Americans.
Thanks, I give the Soviets a great deal of credit for damaging the Nazi war machine. (And I credit Hitler for making the same idiotic blunder that Napoleon made a century earlier.) But without the Americans, I suspect the Nazis would have survived--diminished but still dangerous and destructive. And I'm not sure the war cult in Japan would have been diminished at all. Concerning WWII, I'll tip my hat to FDR and most certainly will express thanks for the American military.
Thanks! I always had a bit of flair for titles. This article had something of a reference to a long-ago title I came up with. The company was starting an in-house newsletter and I submitted the winning title—The Cageliner. :)
This is one of the better dissections I've seen of these ridiculous presidential rankings. There should be a separate category for "defamed presidents" which would include Coolidge, Hoover, Grant, Harding (probably), and Taft for sure. On the quote attributed to Israeli PM Begin, there is some debate as to exactly what was said in the closed door session--Historian Tevi Troy mentions this in his WSJ article on November 19, 2020, "When Biden met Begin." https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-biden-met-begin-11605828020. It certainly sounds like Begin.
I'm a political scientist (I'm not part of the section of the APSA that took part in it, in part because I didn't want to pay the extra amount of money it would add to the cost of my APSA membership), and this ranking is just embarrassing.
For those of us not of a leftist persuasion, but not that knowledgeable on the subject for presidents that predate us but weren’t one of the first 4, can you give us your ranked list? I’d gladly settle for groupings of 5 if you don’t want to be pinned down to an exact ranking.
I really don't have a ranking order. I could probably devise one, but it would likely change significantly, were I to sit down a week later and go through the same exercise. I can give you data on specific dimensions of the presidents. I would likely put Lincoln first and Wilson last. Buchanan, Pierce, and Andrew Johnson would be down near the bottom. Washington, FDR, and Reagan would be near the top. I would drop WH Harrison and Garfield altogether, as their service was too short to evaluate. I might be able to group the rest into, say, three, four, or five tiers. I might try that sometime.
Actually, I sat down and put them into five buckets. Worked pretty easily. I might ponder it for a bit, moving a couple of them, and then publish it. -- Bob
If you could put next to each president their party affiliation and the ranking the “esteemed panel” gave them, I for one would find it helpful in best understanding how bad/biased they were.
Experts like visible activity rather than effective, and in this case, constitutional and quiet competence. To paraphrase the great Thomas Sowell when someone asked him if he would run for elective office, his response was to the effect, how would anyone vote for him when his campaign slogan would be “ vote for me, I’ll leave you alone”. I tried a version of that 3 times in my township and lost. But then I live in a town with a 35 year history of total Democrat elective office holders. I suppose my fellow citizens like the idea of high taxes and intrusive government. When asked they deny it but still vote for it. The “ experts” could be my neighbours. Just a comment on “experts”. One of my graduate students commented after a visiting lecturer, “ an expert is an ex or former or has been and a spert is a drip under pressure”. Ever since that time ever I have been introduced as an expert I demure and say I’m just a person knowledgeable in my field. And so the people voting on the “ best” presidents are “experts”.
Great comments.
Very entertaining and informative piece, Professor Graboyes. Thank you for the very interesting comparisons of the various Presidents.
As someone who spent 6 years in grad schools studying Economics, I do not feel unqualified to comment on the social sciences. It saddens me to have to include History in the same intellectual dung heap as Psychology and Sociology, but I do.
History, especially as it is practiced now, is no more a science than the various Studies programs. These “best of” ranking endeavors are equally unserious, like Apple’s recent albums ranking.
After many decades in the academe, I use the following formula:
<blank> Studies = revenue streams for diploma mill (un)higher educational corporations (colleges and universities).
“If printing money would end poverty, printing diplomas would end stupidity.”
—Javier Milei
There’s a bit in a Heinlein novel, FRIDAY, where the government of California noticed people with Bachelor’s degrees earned more than those without, so they passed a law that gave every high school grad a Bachelors’s. And this was from 1982!
Like most "scholarly" things it's a conclusion in search of a justification.
Hey!! Jimmy Carter made homebrewing legal again. Finally got to start drinking great-tasting, but not horribly expensive beer. Actually I drank a lot of free, great tasting beer because a friend of mine is one of the very best brewers in Michigan. His beers routinely beat the great microbreweries in contests.
As for presidential scholars, no matter their ideology, they're obviously biased towards examining presidents who "do things", whether those things are good or not. How do they rank William Henry Harrison? Better than Trump?
And I'm old enough to remember when Eisenhower was denigrated because "nothing happened" during his 8 years. I could use a little nothing happening about now.
These rankings are like giving Obama a Nobel Peace Prize for . . . existing? Or Paul Krugman an Economics Nobel as "a kick in the shin" for GW Bush.
Besides there is no real metric that they use. It's an Academic Mean Girls Club.
Great article though.
Carter may have given us homebrewing, but indirectly gave us Billy Beer. So you have to consider that. I had a mean girls-type reference in my draft but needed to cut some verbiage. I may publish a brief, separate piece on the stuff I left on the cutting room floor.
LOL. I drank one Billy Beer, mostly just to stick it to Jimmy. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't good, either. Kind of Meh-minus.
Thank you, Professor; entertaining and educational on many levels. That kind of survey is like a junior high popularity contest.
Or, there was a frequent joke back in the Cold War Olympic days: "Scoring for the U.S. gymnast: 9.5, 9.3, 9.6, 9.5, and 5.3 from the Russian judge."
Until the final moments of editing, I had a section comparing it to a high school popularity contest. But I needed to cut some space. I may publish a brief piece with some of the things that were cut.
Thanks again for the kind words about Warren G. Harding. The rankings make good press for a few days but I would take exception though that airline deregulation was a good accomplishment of the Carter Administration. I read Schlesinger's hagiography of Andrew Jackson which glossed over the "Trail of Tears". But I think Barbara Tuchman is the best historian of the 20th century. My degrees are in Journalism and Business, so what do I know?
Why aren't you fond of the airline deregulation? I also could have rolled in questions about whether Carter was a constructive or obstructive force at Camp David. By some accounts, he repeatedly interfered to the detriment of Israel, but that Anwar Sadat ignored his meddling. I was pleased that the Nobel Committee did not include Carter in that particular award.
The whole deregulation of the 1980s has ended badly for the everyday consumer. At first it was exciting to see new airline entrants like PeoplExpress, etc. But United was allowed to merge with Continental, Southwest bought AirTrain, etc. TWA was ruined by Carl Icahn. And then there is the deregulation of the public utilities at the state level in Ohio. Natural gas is cheaper than ever but the fees to deliver it have increased. I preferred the old days when Public Utilities Commissions set utility rates and you didn't have to shop for a natural gas and an electric supplier. Jimmy Carter certainly had his faults which you nailed perfectly. He was an engineer and engineers come at problems with a particular mindset.
If you have read and appreciate Barbara Tuchman, you know a lot.
I once read the Red Air Force's official history of the Great Patriotic War, a.k.a. the Second World War. I thought nothing could excel it for bad historiography but the American Political Science Association has managed to do it.
And let's not forget that Woodrow Wilson was president of the APSA. :)
The greatest folly is allowing any fool to declare himself "expert."
Why is Fillmore so low in EVERY group? He was the key to passing the Compromise of 1850, which delayed a Civil War by a decade (until Roger Taney and the Supreme Court ignored the Constitution and threw out decades of carefully crafted political compromise). He settled the border dispute between Texas and New Mexico territory. He was responsible for the locks at Sault Ste. Marie and the railroad from Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico. His one Supreme Court justice, Benjamin Curtis, dissented from Taney's opinion in Dred Scot v. Sanford. He dispatched Mattew Perry's flotilla to open trade with Japan. He gained a favorable settlement with Portugal over claims dating to the War of 1812. He avoided a reopening of hostilities with Mexico and laid the groundwork for the Gadsen Purchase. Calebrisi and Yoo praised him as a faithful executor of the nation's laws.
Great questions! His association with the Know Nothings probably didn't do his reputation any good. He wasn't really a follower of the party and was nominated while overseas. If I recall correctly, he came in second to TR in terms of percentage vote for a 3rd party. Ross Perot was nipping at his heels in 1992.
In terms of popular vote you may be correct. In terms of electoral votes, John Bell won more on the Constitutional Union ticket in 1860 (39 vs 8, or 12.8% vs 2.7%). George Wallace won 8.5% of the electoral votes in 1968. Strom Thurmond won 7.3% of the electoral vote in 1948.
Of course, it is debatable if he was actually a "third party" candidate in the strictest sense in 1856. Fremont was running as the first candidate of the new Republican party, while Fillmore was nominated by the American Party, which had run candidates before.
Yes, I did mean popular votes. And your second paragraph makes an interesting point. The American Party's prior outing (the 1852 election) attracted negligible support, but in 1856, they could have become the primary opposition to the Democrats. One might say that that election retroactively relegated the Know Nothings to the status of failed third party, but things could have turned out otherwise.
Based on the rest of the survey, I'd guess it's because he has an odd first name.
:)
"Trump is undeniably, deliberately, and virulently polarizing."
Pound sand. If anything, he's the opposite. Speaking hard truths no one else will speak isn't "polarizing." Trump tried tirelessly to work with the democrats and build racial bridges. The Left decided to label him "divisive" out of the gate and this idiot bought into it.
If you wish to restate your point without hurling epithets in my direction (or in any other commenter's direction), I'd be more than happy to discuss your rather interesting points. I do not, however, waste my time with those who are incapable of civil discourse.
. Trump polarizes people in his OWN party, much less the rest of the electorate. An honest evaluation, rather than the gut reaction from a cultist in his personality cult, would come to the clear conclusion that he is a polarizing figure - and intentionally, as his crude insults of those who disagree with him reveals.
Fanatics camouflaging their partisanship with scholarly titles
Not very effective camouflage. :)
Dear Mr Graboyes: I see we are going to disagree about much of what you wrote. The bashing of Wilson is fine, though I note that Andrew Johnson is hurt that you ignore his racism in favor of Wilson. All the conflict between Johnson and the Radical Republicans in Congress that climaxed in Johnson's impeachment happened because of Johnson's racial policies.
What I object to is the praise of Harding. First:
"Harding’s appointees (e.g., Calvin Coolidge, Charles Evans Hughes, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Andrew Mellon) mostly strove to stay out of Americans’ hair"
The notion that Herb Hoover Secy of Commerce and UnderSecy of Everything Else as he was popularly known wanted to stay out of Americans's hair is grotesque. No one was more adept than Hoover at staying in the headlines. His every urge was to exhort his fellow citizens to follow his advice. That his advice was often sound doesn't stop Hoover from being a born nanny and nag. Even an otherwise respectful profile of Hoover by Kenneth Roberts "The Hooving of Hoov" in the SATURDAY EVENING POST of 11 March 1922 comments on this 'nudging" as Cass Sunstein.
Harding's Atty Genl, Harry Daugherty is far worse. His attempted frame up of Senator Burton Wheeler for Wheeler's inquiry of the Harding scandals is bad enough. You mention Harding's commutation of Eugene Debs's prison sentence without also mention that Daugherty yelled and screamed against it, and succeeded in delaying the commutation until December 1921, while Harding had wanted to do so promptly after being inaugurated. H. L. Mencken wrote a fine column on this topic "Who's Loony Now?" on 27 December 1921, collected in A CARNIVAL OF BUNCOMBE edited by Malcolm Moos, Mencken also noted a speech Daughtery gave to the American Bar Association at this time in which Daugherty claimed that the political crime Debs was convicted of was no different than any other sort of crime, e.g. picking someone's pocket.
But the worst failure of Harding (and this applies with lesser force to Coolidge) are his foreign policy attempts. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 was seen as popular at the time. By 1941 with Japan on the march and the US Navy trying to catch up from the years of privation under Harding-Coolidge-and Hoover not so much. Admiral Harold Stark was wise when he told Congress in 1940 when a big naval appropriations bill was being considered, "Dollars can't buy yesterday." That wisdom was never more apparent than in the first half of 1942.
Worst of all was the Harding-Coolidge financial policy concerning war debts and reparations. Harding ran for office in 1920 on an "America First" platform. None of this League of Nations stuff for America! Coupled with that was a determination to "protect" American industry with high tariffs. Result: thew Fordney-McCumber tariff of 1922, which erased all of Wilson's lowering of tariffs in the Udnerwood Act of 1913, and added plenty more for good measure.
So far, that policy was self consistent. But the issue of European war debts to the US, tripped it up. Harding (and even more so Coolidge) insisted that these debts to America be paid in full. The 1920s are a long history of plans and attempts to get the money, all ending in failure. No wonder. American wanted the money in either gold or dollars. But the US was sitting on two thirds of the world's gold supply at the end of WWI (See LORDS OF FINANCE by Liaquat Ahmed on this topic) so it was dollars that were needed. The only way for Europe to get those dollars was to sell to America. But the high tariffs of Harding and Coolidge made that damn near impossible.
There was an alternative. If America insisted on high tariffs, she could also have written of the war debts. Try selling the notion to America that all the billions we sent to Europe during the war were not collectible and were going to be written off. What an uproar that would have caused!
So America kept trying to collect, its debts, while making it difficult for Europe to earn the dollars needed to pay. This is not superior statesmanship; it is short term domestic politics blinding the long term foreign consequences. The war debt/reparations controversy damaged democracy in Europe and was a great talking point for HItler. It created a wave of anti-Americanism that was not helpful. Churchill, not generally thought of as anti-American, certainly became so during this period. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he had to come up with the dollars to pay America. That was a never ending struggle that left him sour in the 20s. Fortunately once Europe mostly defaulted on its war debts, the strain ceased. But the after effects were felt. Churchill as Prime Minister had to face the horrifying spectacle in the fall of 1940 that Britain would run out of dollars to pay for its war orders and could not raise any more. That's the Harding-Coolidge legacy in foreign affairs, sufficient to keep both those presidents down at the bottom of the rankings.
Even when I don't agree with you, it's always fun and instructive to read your posts. Keep your flag flying high!
WOW! Long one.
-- Good point on Andrew Johnson, though I don't think he was as far out of the mainstream as Wilson was. Johnson mostly prevented improvements. Wilson reversed prior improvements.
-- Good point on Hoover. He, of course, started the New Deal. He just forgot to trademark, and FDR ran off with the IP. (Both should be embarrassed.) But I'm not sure the busybody President Hoover was in full bloom during the Harding Administration. His tendencies were there. (I believe Coolidge disparaged him as "Boy Wonder.") But he was somewhat restrained.
--I'll stand by it on Coolidge, Taft, and Mellon. More restrained than predecessors or successors. I probably should have used that wording rather than "mostly."
--I agree that Daugherty was awful. Coolidge certainly agreed.
--I agree that the Naval Treaty ended terribly. The impressive thing about it was the extent to which Harding could forge a bipartisan consensus. The bad thing was that that broad coalition agreed to a time bomb (alluded to in my parenthetic qualifier).
--I'll have to spend time going through your international finance remarks.
--While agreeing with much of what you say, I'll still argue that the Harding/Coolidge years were far more libertarian than the TR/Wilson years (Taft was somewhat anomalous) or the FDR years.
"WOW! Long one."'
If you want to call me prolix, I must blush and admit to it.
"...Hoover. He, of course, started the New Deal."
Good point. But if you and I went up to him and congratulated him on this, we'd quickly be running for our lives, while the mild-mannered Quaker chased us with a bloody hatchet yelling "I did not! I did not!"
"For all of his considerable flaws, I have no doubt that he[FDR] belongs in the Top Five."
I'd go farther putting him in the top three, while heartily regretting that so much of his experimentation a) went wrong and b) persisted to this day. the Rural Electrification Administration persists to this day as the Rural Utilities Service.
Maybe we could get Herb to dispatch it with his bloody hatchet...
Many thanks for your kind words.
By the way, you might have noticed that it did not surprise me that Republican or Conservative respondents would rate FDR higher than Reagan, even though one can make a strong case (as Amity Shlaes did in THE FORGOTTEN MAN) that FDR's meddlesome economic policies were what deepened and lengthened the Great Depression. I can also look past FDR's upper-crust antisemitism, his blocking the S.S. St. Louis, and his failure to bomb the railways into Auschwitz. As problematic as those things are/were, they don't negate the fact that he was the most remarkable wartime leader in US history. It took Lincoln 2-3 years to assemble a General Staff capable of beating the Confederacy. Roosevelt picked the right Generals and Admiral right from the start and provided them with the tools, the support, and the leeway to do what needed doing. Without his leadership, it's quietly likely that the Axis Powers would have won. The premise of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE was quite plausible--that a Roosevelt assassination in 1933 would have would fatally weakened the Allies' ability to defeat Germany and Japan. For all of his considerable flaws, I have no doubt that he belongs in the Top Five.
Perhaps you give FDR too much credit for success in WWII. Most of the European war took place on the Eastern front. The German fate was sealed at the battles of Stalingrad & Kursk long before the Americans, Canadians & British landed at Normandy. 80 percent of European casualties occurred on the Eastern front. FDR got a huge boost from the communist sacrifices. Most historians don’t like to mention this. Instead it is popular to heap praise on FDR & “the greatest generation “ of Americans.
Thanks, I give the Soviets a great deal of credit for damaging the Nazi war machine. (And I credit Hitler for making the same idiotic blunder that Napoleon made a century earlier.) But without the Americans, I suspect the Nazis would have survived--diminished but still dangerous and destructive. And I'm not sure the war cult in Japan would have been diminished at all. Concerning WWII, I'll tip my hat to FDR and most certainly will express thanks for the American military.
Great post, but particularly very clever title!
Thanks! I always had a bit of flair for titles. This article had something of a reference to a long-ago title I came up with. The company was starting an in-house newsletter and I submitted the winning title—The Cageliner. :)
This is one of the better dissections I've seen of these ridiculous presidential rankings. There should be a separate category for "defamed presidents" which would include Coolidge, Hoover, Grant, Harding (probably), and Taft for sure. On the quote attributed to Israeli PM Begin, there is some debate as to exactly what was said in the closed door session--Historian Tevi Troy mentions this in his WSJ article on November 19, 2020, "When Biden met Begin." https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-biden-met-begin-11605828020. It certainly sounds like Begin.
Thanks! Tevi's a friend of mine. I'll have to ask him about this.
I'm a political scientist (I'm not part of the section of the APSA that took part in it, in part because I didn't want to pay the extra amount of money it would add to the cost of my APSA membership), and this ranking is just embarrassing.
Excellent way to save money! Thanks for the public soul-cleansing. :)
Nice piece. Very informative.
For those of us not of a leftist persuasion, but not that knowledgeable on the subject for presidents that predate us but weren’t one of the first 4, can you give us your ranked list? I’d gladly settle for groupings of 5 if you don’t want to be pinned down to an exact ranking.
I really don't have a ranking order. I could probably devise one, but it would likely change significantly, were I to sit down a week later and go through the same exercise. I can give you data on specific dimensions of the presidents. I would likely put Lincoln first and Wilson last. Buchanan, Pierce, and Andrew Johnson would be down near the bottom. Washington, FDR, and Reagan would be near the top. I would drop WH Harrison and Garfield altogether, as their service was too short to evaluate. I might be able to group the rest into, say, three, four, or five tiers. I might try that sometime.
Actually, I sat down and put them into five buckets. Worked pretty easily. I might ponder it for a bit, moving a couple of them, and then publish it. -- Bob
Wonderful. Thank you.
If you could put next to each president their party affiliation and the ranking the “esteemed panel” gave them, I for one would find it helpful in best understanding how bad/biased they were.
Thanks. I need to tweak the list a bit, but it's a nice exercise.