Ranking Presidents

 

It is usual in February and March to think and hear talk about ranking presidents. To me there are only three good answers as to the greatest – Washington, Lincoln, or a tie between them.

There were others who did great things while in the office – Jefferson with the Louisiana purchase, Reagan with the Cold War, FDR with World War II – and a number more who would qualify as good presidents. But Washington and Lincoln stand out. One during his administration set the standard for the office and did more than anyone else to make sure that the earlier victory in a revolution for the principles of liberty led to a stable constitutional republic based on those principles. A person only has to look at the outcomes of other revolutions around the world to see how rare and great an accomplishment that was. The other saved that republic in its greatest crisis and corrected its worst fault. (I believe they were not only the greatest presidents, but also the greatest men to hold the office.)

A t the other end of things, there is the question of who is the worst president in the country’s history. These days a lot of people would say Donald Trump. He is bad enough, but without knowing what will happen in the rest of his term, it is too early to put him at the bottom of a list that includes James Buchanan and Woodrow Wilson.

However, if one were to judge only on the basis of character as revealed in public behavior and demeanor, there is a strong argument that he qualifies as the worst human being to hold the office. And that  does not require waiting a couple of years to see how things go.

Obama 3.0?

When he left the White House, President Truman moved back to Missouri and lived with his wife in a house  which had belonged to her family – the same house they had live in after they had married.   President Eisenhower, who had spent most of his adult life in the army, retired to a farm in Gettysburg, near the nation’s most famous battlefield. Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and both Bushes returned to their home states after their presidencies.  While some of these men remained somewhat active in politics after leaving office,  none tried to continue a career as a politician.  Each seemed able to walk away and find other things to become the main interests and activities of their remaining lives.

If some  reports in the press are true, Barack Obama intends to remain in Washington after leaving office and resume a career as a political activist, perhaps functioning as a spokesman for the opposition during the next administration.  If so, besides being an undignified spectacle of an arrogant narcissist who cannot give up the spotlight and accept that his time in it has passed, it would be pathetic. For it would indicate that for this man there is nothing in life to replace politics and the desire for power and no meaningful home to go back to.  It would also be yet more evidence the nation will be well rid of him in a few weeks. 

Lèse-majesté ?

In the last few days  leftist supporters of President Obama have been extremely agitated over two things they see as insults to their favorite – Rudy Guiliani’s questioning whether Obama loves the United States and Benjamin Netanyahu’s giving a speech to the congress challenging Obama’s plan for an agreement with Iran on its nuclear weapons program. 

Yet Guiliani’s comments are both reasonable and reflective of what millions of Americans have already decided on their own.  Given the man’s self proclaimed Marxist background, his rather obvious festering racial resentment, his penchant for dwelling morbidly and joyously on the nation’s sins (past and present, real and imagined), and his apparent utter dismissal of the notion there might be something exceptional about a nation founded on principles of individual rights and limited government and without the lingering burdens of a feudal or despotic past, it is quite rational to conclude he probably does not care much for this place.

Neither was it inappropriate for Boehner to invite Netanyahu to  speak or for Netanyahu to accept the offer and say what he thinks about the threat from Iran. I don’t know if the danger is as great as he claims, but there is clearly some danger.  He may have an incentive to overstate it, but Obama and company seem so eager to reach an agreement that it is sensible to assume they are likely to understate it, particularly given Obama’s rather obvious affection for all things Islamic and his almost as obvious distaste for Israel.  There is nothing unreasonable about having suspicions as to whether people such as Obama, Biden, and Kerry either understand the interests of the United States or are willing to put  those interests first.  Netanyahu has done all of us a favor by stimulating controversy and demands for evidence any agreement will be a good one.

Still  the leftists are infuriated, some even besides themselves, over this.  There are obvious conjectures as to why. Insecurity over whether Obama really does like the United States would account for outrage over someone daring to ask the question. Religious-like devotion would account for anger among the faithful  over anyone seriously questioning their leader’s  actions or pronouncements.

Some are even falling back on the old cliché that people must always respect the office of the presidency. Leaving aside the way these same leftists treated the hapless George W. Bush, there is no imperative to respect the office. It is just another political position which can be filled by good people or bad ones.  One should respect Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt in the awful summer and fall of 1940, Ronald Reagan during the cold war, and  others who did good things at various times. However there is no reason to respect the office as such, and certainly no reason to respect people such as Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy  Carter, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama because the held or hold it. It is a truism of management that a good boss sometimes can make a difference, but a bad one always can. That holds  true for presidents as well.