Rating the presidents: being a great president requires the right opportunities, the right choices, and the right historian

National Review, Oct 27, 1997 by Walter A. McDougall

Being a great President requiresthe right opportunities, the right choices, and the right historian.

Mr. McDougall, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986.

No sooner had Bill Clinton won re-election than he reportedly began to fret about his "place in history," thereby inspiring a Doonesbury series in which a clutch of historians is invited to the White House for an Arkansas sales pitch. Lyndon Johnson was more methodical. While doing research at the LBJ Library (itself a monument to ego of pharaonic proportions), I discovered that Johnson had commanded all federal agencies to compile voluminous accounts of the great deeds done during his tenure, the better to elevate his standing in history. That was enough to suggest to me that perhaps the best first cut to make is between those of our Presidents who cared about their place in history and those who did not.

Retrospective rating of American Presidents is wonderful sport for historians, if only because reputations are the only things over which we exercise power. So it was that when the Intercollegiate Studies Institute asked me to serve on a panel ranking the Presidents I promptly said yes. I have always envied the baseball writers who get to vote each year on which players deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, and then write columns explaining their ballots. How much more fun to pass judgment on all 41 Chief Executives in American history! The Institute's purpose was undoubtedly to obtain results at variance with Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s periodic polls, which invariably lionize such Presidents as FDR, Truman, and Kennedy, and discount the achievements of such Presidents as Eisenhower and Reagan. But being a gentleman as well as a scholar I endeavored to muzzle my own politics and rank the Presidents by objective standards. First, was the President a political success insofar as most Americans at the time applauded his performance? Second, did the President address the pressing issues and challenges faced by the nation in his day and win approval for his solutions? And third, did those solutions, in retrospect, promote the security, prosperity, and liberty of the American people? The last, of course, is a matter of interpretation, but the first two criteria tend to balance any bias introduced in the third.

The principle behind these criteria is historicity. Our schools and media ought to encourage students and citizens not to judge historical actors (e.g., the slave-owning Jefferson) according to present-day ideology, conventional wisdom, or cant; to do so is ahistorical, unfair, and arrogant. They ought instead to help people imagine the times, places, and circumstances in which historical figures found themselves, and so identify the constraints upon them and the limited choices they faced before rendering a verdict on their leadership. What cannot be properly discounted, however, is the "normalcy" factor: Clinton's nemesis. The President who had the misfortune to govern in times of repose had no chance to prove his mettle. Perhaps he could have been great -- we may even suspect that he would have been great -- but we can hardly credit him for surmounting crises that never occurred (unless we have reason to think that he prevented a crisis). Thus, while everyday people pray, "Put me not to the test" -- a truer rendering of "Lead me not into temptation" -- the President obsessed with his "place in history" whispers, "Bring on the dragons that I might slay them."

Now, at the risk of raising the dead and the hackles of readers, here is one historian's ballot:

George Washington -- Great. Truly the "indispensable man" and "modern Cincinnatus," he defined the office of the Presidency in terms of its limits as well as its powers, and is more responsible than anyone else for translating the theoretical wisdom embodied in the Constitution into pragmatic, enduring reality. His Farewell Address is still the greatest state paper in American history.

John Adams -- Below Average. As a patriot, diplomat, and political philosopher he deserves his place among the greatest of the Founding Fathers. As a one-term President following Washington, however, he pales. His quasi-war with France and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were his most famous -- and dubious -- accomplishments.

Thomas Jefferson -- Great. A radical ideologue with too loose a tongue in the 1790s, he performed as President with statesmanlike skill and bipartisanship, and kept his eyes fixed on national, not factional, interests. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase was a coup, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition a triumph of vision. He practiced libertarianism at home and "no entangling alliances" abroad, and placed his stamp on the emerging Democratic Party.

James Madison -- Failure. He and Hamilton were the brightest stars in a galaxy of brilliant political philosophers. But compared to Jefferson he appeared weak and indecisive. He almost ruined New England with his anodyne Non-Intercourse Act (economic sanctions against the European belligerents in the Napoleonic wars), was duped by Napoleon into resuming trade with the French Empire, and bungled into the silly War of 1812.