MayerBlog: The Web Log of
|
|
|
Rating the U.S. Presidents III
It’s time for another annual tradition on this blogsite: my observance of the President’s Day pseudo-holiday by rating the presidents of the United States. As I explained in my original post (“Rating the U.S. Presidents,” February 13, 2004), my rating system differs from others in deemphasizing “leadership” per se and instead emphasizing fidelity to the Constitution. I do use the same six categories as other rating systems – “Great,” “Near-Great,” “Above-Average,” “Average,” “Below-Average,” and “Failures” – and then (with some exceptions) arrange the presidents chronologically within each category. “Great” presidents are those who set significant and lasting precedents of fidelity to the Constitution, presidents who quite literally either established or “saved” the American system of limited, constitutional government. In this category I put only three presidents – the trilogy of presidents who are memorialized on the Mall in Washington, D.C., quite appropriately, in my opinion: Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. In rating them as “great,” I’m not claiming they were perfect; they were human beings, limited by flaws in their own character as well as the circumstances of their times, and so they can justly be faulted for several things they did as president. Washington, for example, signed into law the unconstitutional bill chartering the First Bank of the United States, ignoring his Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson’s written opinion on the bill’s unconstitutionality and instead following his Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s contrary advice. (Generally, Washington as president went wrong when he followed Hamilton’s advice rather than Jefferson’s, in part because Hamilton was a protégé who could easily influence his mentor.) Jefferson, although extraordinarily scrupulous about respecting the “chains of the Constitution” (as I discuss below and in my book on Jefferson’s constitutional thought), exercised extraordinary powers in enforcing the Embargo – his ill-fated attempt to avoid war, which only postponed the inevitable (the War of 1812) to his successor, Madison’s administration. And Jefferson did disregard his usually strict view of federal powers to support certain projects he favored, such as the Lewis & Clark expedition and the National Road. Finally, Lincoln, as the first and only president to preside over a civil war in the United States, certainly stretched federal government powers, almost to the breaking point. Nevertheless, as discussed more fully below, he does not warrant the severe criticism that certain libertarian scholars have given him, calling him “tyrant” or “dictator” and erroneously claiming that the modern regulatory/welfare state began with the Civil War. Rather, I maintain, Lincoln did indeed save not only the Union but also the Constitution itself, from the most formidable internal threat it has ever (yet) faced. “Near-Great” presidents are those who were remarkable for their fidelity to the Constitution. In this category, too, I put only three: Jefferson’s fellow Republicans from Virginia, James Madison and James Monroe, and Grover Cleveland, whom I call “the last Jeffersonian president” and “the last good Democrat to hold the office,” for the reasons discussed below. “Above-Average” presidents are those who were generally consistent in following the Constitution or who, although they had a mixed record, did no lasting damage to it and whose positives clearly outweigh their negatives. In this category I have three additional 19th-century presidents (Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and James Polk, all Democrats from the radical wing of Jeffersonian Republicanism) and the two best presidents of the 20th century, Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan. (Reagan, for all his failures – generally speaking, his failure to act according to his limited-government rhetoric – nevertheless deserves great credit for helping end the greatest external threat to national security the United States has yet faced, Soviet Communism.) “Average” presidents – the category with the largest number of presidents (seven from pre-Civil War America, four from the late 19th century, and four from the 20th century) – are those with mixed records – whose positives and negatives weigh about equally – who nevertheless did no lasting damage to the Constitution. “Below-Average” presidents – another large category, with ten presidents (three from the 19th century, six from the 20th century, and our current President, from the 21st century) – are those with mixed records whose negatives outweigh the positives and thus who did damage to the Constitution. Finally, I rank as “Failures” those presidents who did the most lasting damage to the Constitution or to the rule of law – presidents who were remarkable for their reckless disregard of the limitations that the Constitution places on their powers as president or on the powers of the federal government generally. Thus, these are the presidents who set dangerous presidents for the abuse of governmental powers that have undermined the Constitution and even, more generally, the rule of law. These presidents were all from the 20th century, ranging from two early-century presidents – Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson – through FDR, LBJ, and Richard Nixon, to the last 20th-century president, Bill “Slick Willy” Clinton, who I rank as “the worst president – and the worst man to hold the office of president.” I regard as the single most harmful development in U.S. constitutional history – the development that, in my view, unquestionably did the most damage to the Constitution and to the American constitutional system of limited government – the rise of the modern regulatory “welfare state” of the 20th century. (And I disagree with those scholars – some of whom are discussed in the Lincoln section, below – who see the Civil War as the significant watershed in U.S. history, for I see the Civil War as having done essentially no damage to the Constitution and to the American system of government, including federalism, compared to the damage done with the rise of the regulatory/welfare state, starting during the so-called “Progressive era” in the early 20th century. It was this development that practically destroyed the foundational principle of the U.S. Constitution, that it created a national government of limited powers, enumerated in the Constitution.) Hence, those presidents who contributed to the rise of the 20th-century regulatory/ welfare state are also those presidents who did the greatest damage to the Constitution; and each of the presidents whom I rank as either “Below Average” or “Failures” was responsible for significant additions to, or growth in, the modern regulatory/welfare state. Many of these same presidents were also guilty of abusing their executive powers and therefore violating another foundational principle of the Constitution, the separation of powers, by intruding on the legitimate powers of the other two branches of the national government as well as the legitimate powers of the state governments. Within each category, the presidents are ranked generally in chronological order. Exceptions are where I’ve grouped two or more presidents together as “tied”: that is, with identical, or near-identical, records justifying their inclusion in that category, in my view. (Perceptive readers might notice that I’ve named only 42 presidents, while there have been 43 presidents so far in U.S. history. Why the discrepancy? Because Grover Cleveland, who served two nonconsecutive terms in the late 19th-century, is counted twice, as both the 22nd and the 24th President of the Untied States.) Before giving the ratings (and discussing each president in the appropriate category), I need to elaborate somewhat on my rating of two of them, Abraham Lincoln and George W. Bush. Notwithstanding criticisms from many of my fellow libertarians about my rating of Lincoln as “great,” I’m keeping him in that category, for the reasons discussed below. And, after having rated both the current President Bush and his father, the elder George Bush (the 41st president), as “average” in my previous rating, I’ve decided to downgrade both to the “below-average” category. That change, too, requires some explanation – partly, in anticipation of arguments from fellow libertarians and others who might consider Bush rather a “failure.” As explained below, that would be giving him too much credit.
Abraham Lincoln: Why He’s Great
Abraham Lincoln, who traditionally has been revered as not only one of America’s greatest presidents but also as a kind of second “father” of the country – the man who, as president during the crisis of the Civil War, presided over the rebirth of the United States – in recent years has been attacked by some writers, including some libertarian scholars, for being a “dictator” or a “tyrant.” For example, Jeffrey Hummel, in his provocative libertarian history of the Civil War, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men (1996), has argued that the war destroyed two of the principles of the American Revolution, the “revolutionary right of self-determination” and “decentralized government,” and thus that Lincoln, in effect, help originate the modern American nation-state (what some call “Big Government”). And economics professor Thomas DiLorenzo, in his ironically titled book The Real Lincoln (2002), has presented an extreme (and ahistorical) iconoclastic view of Lincoln as both a “dictator” and father of the 20th-century regulatory/welfare state. These criticisms are not justified. They are based on shoddy history – what some historians call “lawyers’ history,” which picks and chooses from the historical evidence only those pieces that support the author’s thesis – and they overlook the essential truth about Lincoln’s presidency: that he faced a crisis unlike any other faced by any president in U.S. history, a formidable internal rebellion or insurrection that not only threatened the legitimate authority of the U.S. government but also threatened the very existence of the republican system of government. To understand why Lincoln had to fully utilize the powers of the presidency and of the federal government generally – and, yes, to bend some of the rules of the Constitution even to the point of almost breaking them – one must begin with the premise that underlay all of Lincoln’s actions. This is the premise ignored by Professor Hummel’s book but which nevertheless is one of the foundational principles of American government: that in a republican government, the reasonable will of the majority must prevail and, thus, the minority must acquiesce in the legitimate decisions of the majority. Thomas Jefferson, in his First Inaugural Address, called this a “sacred principle,” because he recognized it was essential to the preservation of republican government (and indeed a corollary of the foundational principle he stated explicitly in the Declaration of Independence, that government derives its legitimate powers from the consent of the governed). Lincoln, who frequently stated that his political principles flowed from those of Jefferson (which is why Lincoln’s political party used the same name, “Republican,” that Jefferson had used for his party in the 1790s), also understood this principle well and explained, in both his First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861) and his special July 4, 1861 address to Congress, why the secession of Southern states jeopardized this principle and, with it, all republican government. The Southern states that claimed to secede from the Union in 1860-61, following Lincoln’s election as president, had no “right” to do so. The notion that any state might secede from the Union whenever it was sufficiently unhappy with the policies of the national government – a notion advanced first by Northerners (by the Federalist delegates from New England states at the Hartford Convention in 1815) and then threatened by South Carolinians in the 1832-33 Tariff Crisis, a famous prelude to the Civil War – was a controversial view in early American political and constitutional thought. Always a minority view, it was amply rebutted by evidence from early American political and constitutional history showing that the United States of America was founded as a “perpetual” and “indivisible” union of the people of the several states – the view Lincoln expounded in his 1861 addresses and subsequently confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in its decision in Texas v. White (1869). As Lincoln explained in 1861, secession leads inevitably to either anarchy or despotism: “If a minority . . . will secede rather than acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease. . . . If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority.” (That indeed was how the state of West Virginia came into being: the pro-Union majority of the western counties of Virginia seceded from the secessionists who controlled state politics.) Nor could the Southern secessionists justify their action as an exercise of the legitimate right of revolution, under the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Among the key principles of the Declaration is the important corollary to the right of revolution: that it is justified only when “a long train of abuses and usurpations” show a clear design to impose tyranny upon a people. Southerners had no legitimate grievances about the policies of the U.S. government, either its past policies (which were perceived by most people in the Northern states as largely favorable to the interests of Southerners and particularly Southern slaveholders) or the policies expected under Lincoln’s administration or the new Republican majorities in Congress. Nor did Southerners have any valid complaints about the legitimacy of Lincoln’s election. (Indeed, as scholar Harry Jaffa has noted, if there were any serious improprieties in the 1860 elections, they were more likely to be in the South, where Southern Democratic candidates ran effectively unopposed.) Those Southern states that attempted to secede from the Union in 1860-61 did so because they believed Lincoln’s election (and the election of Republican members of Congress) threatened to thwart their scheme to use the power of the national government to impose slavery on all parts of the U.S., including not only the western territories but even those states that had abolished it – exactly what Lincoln had warned about in his famous “House-Divided Speech” of 1858. Southern secessionists not only sought to preserve slavery, but to expand it. They were upset with the results of the 1860 elections because they thwarted their nefarious designs. The real motive behind Southern secessionism can be seen if one carefully studies the Confederate Constitution, adopted in Montgomery, Alabama in March 1861. The Confederate Constitution explicitly protected slavery, prohibited Congress from passing any law denying or impairing slaveholders’ “property” rights (and required Congress to protect slavery in the territories), and effectively precluded any state from abolishing slavery by requiring each state to recognize slaveholders’ rights of “transit and sojourn” with their slaves. To be sure, the Confederate Constitution also had some laudable features, including a single six-year term for the president, a presidential line-item veto, prohibitions on the use of tariff laws for protectionism, and limits on porkbarrel spending (particularly, for “internal improvements,” or roads and canals subsidies, so popular in the North). But most of these laudable features were reforms suggested by four decades’ experience with government under the Constitution (many, like the line-item veto, are reforms still thought good ideas today) and not reflective of any peculiarly Southern constitutional views; moreover, with regard to those that were pecularily Southern (such as opposition to protective tariffs or internal improvements), the hypocrisy of the Confederates was evident, for example, in the provision allowing internal improvements for river and harbor projects (which were popular in the South). Lincoln, who as president took the oath to support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States, was duty-bound to regard Southern secession as an unlawful rebellion or insurrection – a vast criminal conspiracy against the Constitution and the laws, seeking to overthrow them – that must be suppressed with all the powers the U.S. government had at its disposal. What was at stake was not only the Constitution and the laws of the United States, but also that great experiment in the republican form of government that the U.S. represented to the world in the 19th century. As Lincoln so eloquently put it in his July 4, 1861 address (anticipating what he would later say at Gettysburg), “Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled – the successful establishing and the successful administration of it. One still remains – its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.”
(Emphasis added). Southern secessionists, by firing on Fort Sumter and by declaring war on the United States in the Confederate Congress, were indeed the beginners of the Civil War. In waging the war – in putting down the insurrection – Lincoln indeed aggressively used the powers of his office, often pushing the envelope through unprecedented uses of presidential power that did, unfortunately, abridge Americans’ civil rights in many ways, as Mark E. Neely, Jr. documents in his book The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (1991). Some of these actions – such as his order suspending the writ of habeas corpus, or his support of the draft law passed by Congress in 1863 – Lincoln based on plausible, albeit broad, interpretations of presidential or Congressional power under the Constitution. (Congress, which explicitly has the power to suspend habeas corpus during insurrections, retroactively sanctioned Lincoln’s orders through its Habeas Corpus Act of 1863. And military conscription was based on a broad reading of Congress’s power to “raise and support armies”—the same rationale used by the Confederate Congress, when it imposed conscription on the South a year before the U.S. Congress did. Of course, the post-war Thirteenth Amendment, by abolishing “involuntary servitude” as well as slavery, arguably made military conscription no longer constitutional.) Other actions – such as Lincoln’s order of a naval blockade of Southern ports (upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Prize Cases (1863)), as well as Lincoln’s most famous action as president, the Emancipation Proclamation – were based on Lincoln’s broad interpretation of his powers as commander-in-chief. They, too, were arguably within legitimate constitutional bounds. Less justifiable were the restrictions the Lincoln administration imposed on freedom of speech and the press (abridging the First Amendment rights of Confederate sympathizers in the North) and the trial of civilians in military courts (found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, in its post-war decision Ex parte Milligan (1866)), which Lincoln justified as militarily necessary. “Are all laws but one to go unexecuted, and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated?” Lincoln asked (in reference to habeas corpus) – practically an admission that some of his policies did violate the letter of the Constitution. If Lincoln did indeed bend the law, even to the pointing of breaking, he did so under a theory of extraordinary executive powers in times of emergency, in order to defend the very existence of the nation and its system of laws – a theory, sometimes called “executive prerogative,” that even Thomas Jefferson (despite his generally remarkable constitutional scruples) had believed in. (Jefferson, after his retirement from the presidency, discussed the theory as a justification for the Louisiana Purchase, about which he remained uneasy long after his retirement – even though, as I have argued, the Purchase did not really compromise his constitutional principles.) Unlike other chief executives who claimed to use extraordinary powers in response to various crises (other wartime presidents, chiefly Wilson, FDR, and the current President Bush come to mind), Lincoln faced a genuine crisis that has not been equaled in American history. His greatness, as president, in large measure comes from the fact that he rose to that crisis and defended the Constitution while remaining as faithful to it – to its spirit, if not its letter – as much as possible. His record during the extraordinary crisis of the Civil War stands in marked contrast to the record of most other presidents who, with far less at stake, have been all-too-willing to disregard their oath to support and defend the Constitution.
George W. Bush: A Great Disappointment, but Not a Failure
Although some readers of this essay might consider it appropriate to classify the current President Bush with his fellow Texan, LBJ, as a “failure,” I have placed both of the Bushes – the current President and his father, George H.W. Bush – in the “Below-Average” category. It’s no secret that I have regarded Bush’s presidency as a great disappointment – for the reasons I explained in my New Years’ entry, “2006: Prospects for Liberty” (Jan. 4) – and so I do consider Bush a “failure,” in many respects. But it’s easy to overreact when one is so disappointed. (It’s also difficult being objective about Mr. Bush in the current political climate, when he is so vilified by Bush-haters in the political left, in Big Media, and even by many of my libertarian friends, who see Bush as personifying all that they detest in either the Republican Party or in government generally.) Considering Bush’s overall record – both the positives and negatives of what he’s done so far in office and is likely to do over the next three years – I’ve concluded that categorizing him as a “failure” would give him too much credit. Like his father, the 41st President, the current President Bush has a mixed record, with the negatives outweighing the positives, and which therefore, on balance, has damaged the Constitution and the limits it imposes on the powers of the national government. As I wrote on January 4, Mr. Bush’s wholly positive achievements are relatively few, essentially just two: first, “the federal tax cuts, which have yet to be made permanent and to be deepened, as they need to be, to help counter the massive injustice of federal taxation”; second, some wise judicial appointments (including the two justices who have been confirmed for the Supreme Court). Mr. Bush also should be given credit for responding to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. and the general threat that Islamic terrorism poses to national security – a positive, in comparison to his predecessors’ policies of either ignoring or appeasing Islamic terrorism – but he must be faulted for overreacting: for committing the U.S. military to policing Iraq, for expanding the federal bureaucracy, and for needlessly curtailing Americans’ civil liberties. Similarly, he should be credited for his political courage in proposing Social Security reform through partial (and quite modest) privatization, but he also must be faulted for failing to push real reform of either Social Security or Medicare. Instead, on the negative side, he pushed through Congress the Medicare prescription-drug program, the greatest expansion of the welfare state since Nixon’s presidency. That is but one of many important negatives that truly mar Mr. Bush’s record, including: the misguided “No Child Left Behind” law (which exacerbates the federal government’s unconstitutional control over education in the United States); the McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulatory law (which further unconstitutionally abridges freedom of political speech); his failure to even attempt to control the mushrooming of federal spending, including such outrageous pork-laden legislation as the “farm bill” of Mr. Bush’s first term, the “energy bill” of the past year, and the planned federal bailout of the costs of rebuilding New Orleans; his support of the unconstitutional Congressional attempt to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case in Florida courts; and his disastrous choice of Harriet Miers, an incompetent crony, as his first nominee to succeed Sandra Day O’Connor as Supreme Court justice. Bush’s presidency nevertheless must be assessed in comparison with that of his predecessor, Bill “Slick Willy” Clinton, who was the greatest failure – as both a man and a president – ever to occupy the White House. In virtually every category where Bush can be faulted, he merely has continued the failed policies of the Clinton administration. Bush’s expansion of Medicare can be seen as a watered-down version of one aspect of Clinton’s plan to nationalize health care (diluted, admittedly, with some market-oriented reforms – such as expanding health savings accounts – that were anathema to Clinton’s plan to fully socialize American health care). Bush’s controversial “domestic surveillance” program, in which the NSA uses warrantless wiretaps to intercept communications with Al Qaeda operatives, had a precedent in the Clinton administration’s “Echelon” program, which used the NSA to randomly eavesdrop on U.S. telecommunications to find various possible violations of federal laws, including drug laws, and thus posed a far greater danger to all Americans’ civil liberties. Even Mr. Bush’s commitment of U.S. troops to fight the war in Iraq, despite all the criticisms it may warrant, was at least for a justifiable purpose – what Mr. Bush and his advisers genuinely believed was in the interest of U.S. national security – compared to Clinton’s effort in 1998 to initiate war against Saddam Hussein’s regime, merely to distract from Clinton’s own legal problems in the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit and the emerging story of his cover-up of the Monica Lewinsky affair. Both Bush and Clinton misused their presidential veto power, although in opposite ways. Bush thus far has failed to use his veto at all, even for the legitimate purpose that the Framers of the Constitution intended for the veto: as a shield against unconstitutional legislation. The principal example of Bush’s failure to use the veto is the McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulatory law, which Bush not only failed to veto but also (remarkably) signed into law, despite doubts about its constitutionality; he deferred to the Supreme Court, which also failed to do its duty under the Constitution and upheld the law despite its clear abridgement of First Amendment rights. Clinton, in contrast, abused the veto power by its excessive use, for purely political purposes: he would veto bills he disliked purely on policy grounds, thwarting the policy decisions – and thus the legitimate exercise of Congress’ legislative powers – made by the Republican majorities in Congress. Thus, Clinton continued – though on a far grander scale – the tendency of modern presidents, since FDR, to abuse the veto power by using it as a purely political tool. Under Clinton’s aggressive use of the veto power, the rule of the Constitution (which requires only a simple majority in both houses for Congress to pass legislation) was effectively changed to a super-majority requirement (the two-thirds vote necessary to override a presidential veto); like today’s Senate Democrats’ abuse of the filibuster, Clinton’s abuse of the veto power violated the principle of separation of powers and usurped the legitimate powers of another branch of government. (For more on this, see my 1996 essay, “Clinton Vetoes Undermine the Constitution.”) Thus, although Bush has misused (by failing to use) the veto power, his misuse has been much less egregious than Clinton’s abuse of the power. Mr. Bush also should be credited with restoring some dignity and honor to the office of the president, an office that was tarnished by Slick Willy’s tawdry use of the office for sexual gratification. Under Mr. Bush, at least the White House has returned to its proper role as residence and office for the president and his staff – and not the whore house that it had become under Clinton. (Incidentally, notwithstanding efforts by Clinton himself or his cronies to whitewash the story of his presidency, additional evidence of its corruption and of the various ways it undermined the rule of law continues to be revealed. For example, in January the longest-ever probe by an independent counsel (a 10-year investigation) ended with prosecutor David Barrett’s stinging report on how the Clinton administration thwarted his investigation of former Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros. “An accurate title for the report could be `What We Were Prevented from Investigating,’” wrote Barrett. “It would not be unreasonable to conclude . . . that there was a cover-up at high levels of our government.” That cover-up involved the Clinton Justice Department and the IRS trying to “shield Cisneros from independent counsel scrutiny for tax offenses” stemming from his payments to a former mistress. (Cisneros pleaded guilty in 1999 to lying to investigators about those payments, and Clinton pardoning him in 2001, just before leaving office – one of many last-minute pardons granted by Clinton.))
The Revised Ratings
And now, with no further ado, here’s the revised ratings list of the U.S. Presidents, in the six categories, ranging from “Great” to “Failures”:
The “Great” Presidents
· George Washington: He carefully exercised his powers as president, aware that he was setting precedents, the most important of which was the precedent of stepping down after two terms. · Thomas Jefferson: As I have argued in my book The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson and in various articles (see especially my essay on Jefferson in The Presidency: Then and Now, edited by Phillip Henderson), more than any other president since Washington, Jefferson took seriously constitutional limits, particularly the separation of powers. Thus, as president, he respected Congress’s war power (in waging the Barbary War, the first U.S. foreign war). He replaced the State-of-the-Union address to Congress with a written annual message (a tradition that lasted until Wilson’s presidency in the early 20th century); he also refused to issue presidential proclamations declaring days of prayer or thanksgiving, because he viewed the First Amendment religion clause as (in his famous words) “a wall of separation between church and state” (a constitutional scruple which, unfortunately, few of his successors have shared). And he even came close to jeopardizing his greatest success as president – the addition of the Louisiana Purchase territory to the U.S. – because he proposed a constitutional amendment (although an amendment was not necessary, even under Jefferson’s strict theory) “to set an example” against broad interpretation of federal powers under the Constitution. (I know of no other president who so valued constitutional fidelity.) · Abraham Lincoln: He not only saved the Union – the peculiar status of the United States as a nation comprised of states – but also republican government, by enforcing the rule that the minority must acquiesce in the legitimate decisions made by the majority, a rule necessary for republican government to survive. Although he did so at horrible costs – the bloodiest war in American history, accompanied by expanded governmental powers and curtailed civil liberties – Lincoln did not violate the Constitution lightly. (Indeed, given the extraordinary crisis faced by the nation during his presidency, what was remarkable was the degree to which he generally adhered to the limits imposed by the Constitution on his office and national powers generally.)
The “Near-Great” Presidents
· James Madison and James Monroe (tie): Jefferson’s successors – and fellow Virginia Republicans – they each earned kudos for using the veto power to kill unconstitutional legislation, particularly “internal improvements” bills (bills to build roads or canals, the paradigm “porkbarrel” projects of the time). Madison’s additional claim to greatness as president was his leadership during the War of 1812, arguably the American war that did least damage to the Constitution; but detracting from his greatness was his decision to sign into law the bill chartering the Second Bank of the United States – a position contradicting his opposition to the First Bank in the 1790s – because (he rationalized) the American people had tacitly consented to the broadening of Congressional powers. Monroe shared with Jefferson a stricter interpretation of federal powers, requiring explicit amendment (not mere tacit consent) to go beyond those enumerated in the Constitution – the correct interpretation. · Grover Cleveland: The last Jeffersonian president (and the last good Democrat to hold the office), he aggressively used the veto power against private bills and other unconstitutional legislation. In vetoing a bill in 1887 that would have appropriated $10,000 to aid drought-stricken farmers in Texas, he uttered the memorable words, “though the people support the Government; the Government should not support the people.” He cut taxes as well as spending, he supported the gold standard, and he opposed protective tariffs.
“Above Average” Presidents
· Andrew Jackson: Although he pushed the envelope in his exercise of presidential powers (earning the nickname “King Andrew” to his Whig opponents), he deserves great credit for vetoing the bill rechartering the Bank of the United States on constitutional grounds, thereby not permitting Chief Justice John Marshall’s over-broad interpretation of federal powers (in McCulloch v. Maryland) to constrain the president’s exercise of his duties under the Constitution. · Martin Van Buren: Notwithstanding the fact he was the first professional politician to serve as president, he was remarkably consistent in his adherence to limited-government Jeffersonian principles. · James Polk: He realized the United States’ “Manifest Destiny” by waging war against Mexico, after Congress officially declared it; and believing a two-term presidency promoted corruption, he served only one, as he had pledged he would. · Calvin Coolidge: The greatest president of the 20th century because he did the least damage to the Constitution. “Silent Cal” earns bonus points for being a man of few words (although they include another one of the most profound truths uttered by an American president: “The business of America is business”), and for his lack of political ambition in declining to seek an additional term. · Ronald Reagan: Although his rhetoric was splendid (“Government is not the solution; government is the problem,” he declared in his first Inaugural Address on January 20, 1981) and promised a conservative revolution, Reagan’s administration disappointed those of us who hoped for real reforms actually cutting the size of the federal government. Rather, he succeeded only in reducing the rate of growth in domestic spending. But he did get Congress to significantly cut income tax rates, resulting in greater freedom for productive Americans (the freedom to keep the wealth we earn) and the economic boom of the 1990s. And (his greatest legacy) by rebuilding U.S. military strength and by standing up to the Soviet Union, he won the Cold War – bringing about the collapse of Soviet communism and ending the greatest threat to national security (and world peace) of the 20th century.
“Average” Presidents
· John Adams and John Quincy Adams: The first father-son team to serve (in single terms, 25 years apart) in the White House, each had a mixed record as president. The elder Adams, on the negative side, signed into law the blatantly unconstitutional Sedition Act of 1798; but on the positive side, he eventually stood up to the Hamiltonian Federalists and avoided war with France, leaving eight years of peace and prosperity to his successor, Jefferson. The younger Adams began his presidency under a cloud which never fully dissipated: the 1824 election was decided by the House of Representatives, under circumstances that led to the charge of a “corrupt bargain” with Henry Clay, which helped contribute to Andrew Jackson’s success in 1828. On the positive side, his administration coincided with one of the greatest “feel-good” moments in American history: the 50th anniversary of American independence (and, significantly, the day both his father and Jefferson died). · William Harrison and James Garfield: One died of pneumonia a few weeks after his inaugural, the other murdered by an assassin, both had very brief terms – and thus did very little damage to the Constitution. · Chester Arthur, Millard Fillmore, Benjamin Harrison, Rutherford Hayes, Franklin Pierce, Zachary Taylor, and John Tyler (tie, in alphabetical order): These unremarkable, unmemorable mediocrities typify the “average” American president. · William Taft: The heftiest president, his chief contribution to the presidency (presiding over a comparatively conservative interlude between the two “Progressive” presidencies of TR and Wilson) was overshadowed by his post-presidency service as Chief Justice of the United States. · Warren Harding: As my friend Brad Smith pointed out in a August 2, 1993 article in the Columbus Dispatch, Harding does not deserve the bum rap he’s been given by historians who associate him only with corruption and scandals (Teapot Dome pales in comparison to Watergate or “Clintongate”). His administration returned the U.S. to “normalcy” – among other things, greater economic freedom and prosperity, civil rights protections, and lower taxes – after the draconian wartime presidency of Wilson. · John Kennedy: On the plus side, he got Congress to cut income tax rates (thereby reducing somewhat the injustice of steeply progressive taxation) and he led the U.S. through the Cuban missile crisis without starting World War III. But on the negative side, he committed thousands of American military advisers to South Vietnam – and thus got us sucked into that conflict. Were it not for the premature end of his presidency due to his assassination, he would be remembered as an unremarkable one-term president, the last president before the “Goldwater Revolution.” (OK, OK – can’t I indulge in some wishful thinking?) · Gerald Ford: Although he restored honor to the presidential office in the wake of Nixon’s resignation, as well as acted wisely in refusing to bail New York City out of bankruptcy (“Ford to N.Y.: Drop Dead,” as the New York Post headline sourly announced), his administration continued the disastrous fiscal policies of his predecessor – resulting in a significant inflation problem, which Ford thought he could solve by having Americans wear buttons reading “W.I.N.” (“Whip Inflation Now”). On the positive side, his administration coincided with another landmark “feel-good” event: the American Revolution Bicentennial celebrations of 1976. (And disco!)
“Below Average” Presidents
· James Buchanan: His acquiescence to the secession of Southern states left his successor, Lincoln, with the greatest crisis ever faced by an American President – a crisis that Buchanan helped precipitate by his inappropriate reference, in his inaugural address, to the Supreme Court’s upcoming Dred Scott decision. His presidency was marked by his utter failure to take responsibility for his actions, or inactions – and his too-ready tendency to pass the buck to others. · Andrew Johnson: Politically inept and dominated by his biases (including racial prejudice and class-envy), he openly defied Congressional Reconstruction policies through unprecedented use of the “bully pulpit” and aggressive use of the presidential veto power – prompting Congress to impeach him and almost remove him from office. · Ulysses Grant and Dwight Eisenhower (tie): Great generals in wartime, mediocre presidents in peacetime. Grant presided over an administration in which corruption was rampant; Eisenhower’s main claim to fame was the Interstate Highway System, which continues to be one of the biggest pieces of “pork” in American history. · William McKinley: By getting the U.S. involved in the Spanish-American War, he transformed American foreign policy – ending American exceptionalism and turning the U.S. into yet another imperial power. · Herbert Hoover: Conventional wisdom blames him for the Great Depression because of inaction; but in reality he did contribute to the Depression, for the opposite reason – as Murray Rothbard has shown in his book America’s Great Depression, the disastrous government policies of the New Deal actually begun under Hoover, a so-called “Progressive” Republican who believed in government/business “partnership,” not laissez-faire. The principal differences between Hoover’s New Deal and FDR’s was that Hoover’s relied on cooperation rather than coercion of business, and Hoover did not blatantly disregard the Constitution – which saves him from being a failure, like FDR. · Harry Truman: Although he successfully ended World War II (and saved thousands of American lives through his courageous decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan), he acted unilaterally in getting the U.S. involved in the Korean war, the first of a series of U.N.-sanctioned “police actions” to which presidents have committed U.S. troops without prior authorization by Congress, thus eviscerating Congress’s war power. And by attempting to seize steel mills to forestall a national strike during the war, he blatantly acted outside the law – an action that the Supreme Court thankfully declared unconstitutional. · Jimmy Carter: His disastrous regulatory policies resulted in the energy crisis of the late 1970s; his disastrous foreign policies resulted in the resurrection of draft registration and the Iranian hostage crisis. One of the most incompetent presidents in U.S. history, his principal achievement was making possible Reagan’s election in 1980. · George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush: The second father-and-son team to serve in the White House (separated only by the eight years of disastrous Clintonism), each of them had (or has had thus far) at best a mixed record. The elder Bush doomed his own presidency by reneging on his “No new taxes” pledge and by repudiating his predecessor, Reagan, with his promise of a “kinder, gentler” nation (which fed Democrat propaganda about cold, cruel “Reaganism”). Sadly, his most popular action as president was also his most unconstitutional, committing U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf region, and warring upon Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, without prior Congressional authorization. He also signed into law the unconstitutional Americans with Disabilities Act, which pushed federal government regulation of the workplace to ridiculous lengths. The younger Bush, to his credit, showed courageous leadership in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, by abandoning the policies of his predecessors, who either ignored or appeased the threat of Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately, with bipartisan support in Congress, Bush overreacted to the threat: in foreign policy, he committed the U.S. military not only to overthrow the lawless regimes of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq but also to help rebuild Iraq; and in domestic policy, he supported policies that needlessly curtailed Americans’ civil liberties, expanded the federal bureaucracy, and practically ruined air travel. His other positive accomplishments – tax reduction and a proposal to reform Social Security through partial privatization – were undercut by his negatives: failure to follow through on either tax reform or Social Security reform, expansion of the federal welfare state by adding prescription-drug coverage to Medicare, and expansion of the federal government’s unconstitutional role in education. And, like his father, he signed into law a major piece of legislation that he knew to be unconstitutional: the McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulatory law, which abridges First Amendment freedom of political speech.
“Failures” as President
· Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson (tie): These so-called “Progressive” politicians, one a Republican and the other a Democrat, were political rivals whose policies (in terms of their disastrous impacts on the Constitution) were virtually indistinguishable. They supported significant expansion of federal regulatory powers through the creation of such agencies as the FDA, FTC, and Federal Reserve System; and they demagogued against “big business” by abusing antitrust laws. TR espoused a theory of unbridled presidential power as “steward of the people” that turned on its head the Constitution. Wilson led the U.S. into a European war that did not concern the U.S. and during wartime exercised virtually dictatorial powers. · Franklin Roosevelt: His unbridled political ambition led him to seek reelection not once, nor even twice, but an unprecedented three times, thus destroying Washington’s two-term tradition until it was restored by constitutional amendment after FDR’s death. His blatant disregard for the Constitution led him to expand government even further than TR and Wilson, with his so-called “New Deal” programs which destroyed American capitalism in the name of saving it (and which, as shown by Jim Powell’s splendid book, FDR’s Folly, actually worsened the Great Depression). And when the Supreme Court stood in his way by declaring his programs unconstitutional, he proposed a “court-packing” scheme that shocked even his fellow New Dealers. · Lyndon Johnson: His misnamed “Great Society” program (which should have been called “Huge Government”) resulted in the greatest expansion of the welfare/regulatory state since FDR’s New Deal. He signed into law the unconstitutional Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the legislation creating the Medicare program. And he turned the American military presence in South Vietnam into a full-fledged war that eventually resulted in the useless deaths of tens of thousands of young American men. · Richard Nixon: He escalated the Vietnam war, imposed wage and price controls without any constitutional authority to do so, and expanded the welfare/regulatory state as much as LBJ – and all this before Watergate. With Watergate, he abused the powers of his office to cover up a third-rate burglary, which was done by his subordinates as political dirty tricks to further his reelection. Two bright spots prevent his presidency from being a complete failure: he did end the military draft (as the Vietnam war wound down); and by resigning before impeachment, he demonstrated not only a sense of shame (unlike Slick Willy) but also duty to the office he held (again, unlike Clinton). · Bill Clinton: Hands down (or perhaps I should say, “Pants down”), the worst president – and the worst man to hold the office of president. Before his first term ended, he already was presiding over the most corrupt and scandal-ridden presidency in American history (see my 1996 essay, “Clinton Presidency: The Most Corrupt”). With “Monica-gate,” the scandal that led to his impeachment and trial during his second term, he abused the powers of his office to cover up his use of the presidency for sexual gratification; and he personally committed the felonies of perjury and obstruction of justice to cover up that affair in order to avoid liability in a sexual-harassment suit brought against him because of his prior abuse of the office of Arkansas governor, also for sexual gratification. His legacy has been not only the growth and abuse of government power but also the virtual destruction of the rule of law in America. (See James Bovard’s “Feeling Your Pain”: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years and The Rule of Law in the Wake of Clinton, edited by Roger Pilon.)
| Link to this Entry | Posted Wednesday, February 15, 2006 | Copyright © David N. Mayer |
|