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Great Presidents That Suck

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I was discussing a point the other day on HackerNews about infrastructure. My conversation companion made a point about how history clearly shows "X, Y, and Z"

Ah. If only it were that simple.

History doesn't show jack squat. History is just a recollection of various people's memories -- most of which disagree. The history you learn in school or through reading a book (My companion used Stephen Ambrose, who is an excellent historical writer) is just opinion. "School" history is a cartoon -- it's the simplest version of events that people who have political power can agree on. "Popular Book" history is a more fun -- mainly because you only have one writer and popular books have to be interesting.

None of it is true, though. Or rather none of it is complete. Never use just a couple of sources to form an opinion about history. It's much more nuanced than that. That's why formal education in history as a teenager can screw up your mind so bad -- at the end of the day it's the professor who is picking the material, guiding you, and grading you, so it's single-source. Worse still, it's single-source with an "expert" telling you how you're supposed to think! (Same goes for other "soft" sciences, by the way, but I digress)

I'll demonstrate the problem with a rundown of presidents that I thought were great when I was in school but on later inspection I think suck.

    President Lincoln
  • Abraham Lincoln
    • The Spin - "Honest Abe". Freed the slaves. Held the Union together. Wise and kind. Was responsible for the winning the greatest struggle that the United States ever faced.
    • The Suck - As a recent presidential candidate pointed out in the debates, every other nation on earth managed to eliminate slavery peacefully except the United States. While both sides were geared up for war and itching for a fight, Lincoln played right into the turmoil. Asking Robert E. Lee to raise troops to fight his own brother Virginians was the type of thing that split the army and caused further hatred. Giving up most of the federal forts in the south peacefully and then holding his ground with the last two virtually guaranteed a fight there. I won't say he lured the south into starting the war -- they would have tried something else for sure -- but he was in a unique position to help make things better and instead made them worse.


      He cared nothing for the slaves in relation to his greater objectives. He was more interested in his personal power as president and for the precedent dissolving the union would hold. He famously said:

      "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause."

      Later on, sure, we got all kinds of speeches about how great the cause of the union was, and how we were doing God's work. But that was only when it became politically expedient.

      And let's not even start on all of the ways he bent the constitution. Suffice it to say that people yelling about how bad the recent Bush Administration was sound like uniformed louts to me. Lincoln arrested senators for talking against the war, he disbanded the Maryland legislature when it looked like they were going to vote for succession, he supervised a draft system where rich people could simply pay their way out of national service. Torture? Ever spend the night in a federal prison during the Civil War? While the South got the blame for Andersonville, the show trial around Andersonville was just a gambit to keep the North's atrocities out of the newspapers.

      But the worse thing that Lincoln did was the ideas the war left us: that if our fellow citizens are doing something immoral we have the right to take up arms and force them to think the way we want. It led to reconstruction, which was a failure. It led to the concept that the Federal Government has absolute sway over the states -- basically a repeal of the 11th amendment. It led to legalizing morality. When people ask what the federal government is doing making laws about toilet construction, abortion (pro or con), the construction of pillows, or the average mileage of a new truck -- thank Mr. Lincoln.

      He's the one that started blurring the lines between national government and local government, and that's a bad thing, as we see later.


  • President Wilson
  • Woodrow Wilson
    • The Spin - Brilliant college professor who became president, creator of the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations, architect for the way the modern diplomatic world works
    • The Suck - As a strong supporter of Hegelism, Wilson believed that as nations evolve, old ideas grow and are replaced. This meant if the constitution wasn't working, we needed something new. Wilson was perfectly willing to redefine the constitution to whatever the current generation thought was "fair".


      This is a big deal. Up until Wilson, the founding principles of the country were thought to be like empirical laws: good principles for government no matter what the age. Wilson, as the founder of modern liberalism, thought otherwise. America was a "movement" that lived in all of our hearts. I'm not saying Wilson disregarded the Constitution -- he just felt the country could outgrow it. -- "Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself. "

      For a liberal, Wilson was a staunch segregationist. Under his watch, most of the federal government started segregating jobs into white jobs and black jobs. He ran in support of immigrants when it suited him, but in the end betrayed the Irish at Versailles.

      Here's my favorite. Want to know how we got an income tax? The country ran just fine without one for a long time. But Wilson brought in the progressive income tax in 1913. This was "just until the crisis was over". We all know how that ended. Or rather, we all know that it didn't end.

      His solution to world peace was a miserable disaster -- something that felt good and sounded good but was a farce. In addition, the settlement at the end of WWI left Germany in a state that was neither defeated nor independent. It led directly to WWII.


  • President Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • FDR
    • The Spin - Savior of the country. Single-handedly defeated the Great Depression. Led the nation in the great fight of World War II. A great leader and also a great friend of the little guy. Founder of social security. Gave us fireside chats. His personal life showed great courage
    • The Suck - Just another in a long line of rich guys slumming it in Washington in an effort to be legendary. Almost the first American Emperor -- he was elected a record five times and it wasn't until he tried to pack the Supreme Court with justices in favor of his causes that Congress finally woke up and passed the 22nd Amendment, which limited how long a president could serve (but not a Congressman! Heavens no!)


      FDR picked up where Lincoln and Wilson left off, reasoning that if the country was in a great crises, he could try about anything he thought might work. If the federal government was responsible for events at the local level, then the federal government had the authority to act directly at the local level.

      But wait, it gets better! By hard-coding in the age at which benefits could be collected, FDR set up a social security system that as lifespan increased, the system would become less and less solvent. Nothing like making a huge promise to generations of Americans that has a built-in self-destruct mechanism.

      FDR pioneered the idea of electing people for personal monetary reasons. The president was the guy who took care of you -- he provided jobs and was always looking after your best interests. There's no doubt that FDR meant well, but up until FDR we really didn't look at electing presidents as something that would change how much money we had in our wallets. You didn't elect somebody who would then pay you back for it.

      And let's not forget Yalta. FDR sold out the allies and lost half of Europe to Stalin. Was it a shrewd move? Chuchill didn't think so. Stalin thought FDR just wanted it all to go away. FDR was in his final days and it showed. For whatever the reason, hundreds of millions lived in squalor and oppression for decades and FDR played a big part in that.


  • President Kennedy
  • John F Kennedy
    • The Spin - Hero of WWII. Visionary and prophetic. The president who stood up to the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Young and vigorous, he was the man who dreamed of a new America. A tax-cutter, JFK was the one who gave us Camelot. Creator of the Peace Corps. Father of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
    • The Suck - JFK had something seriously wrong with him -- both physically and mentally. Physically, he had bad back problems. They haunted him his entire life.


      First the politics. As best as I can discover, JFK got us into Vietnam. This young idealistic man was viewed as a lightweight punk by Khrushchev. Coming back to the room after his first meeting with the Soviet leader, Kennedy decided he had to do something to prove that he was no lightweight. He decided on a major escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, from 1,000 to 16,500 "advisers". Wiki will tell you that JFK had planned to pull out of Vietnam, but this is a case of political revisionism. JFK was stuck in the same quagmire that LBJ was in. He was just the first president to throw fuel on the fire.

      He abandoned a CIA-trained force invading Cuba. There's nothing like getting a bunch of people, training them up to go overthrow their communist country, promising support, sending them off to war, and then abandoning them on the beach as they get shot to pieces. That's the kind of thing that just leaves a wonderful taste in your mouth.

      It's impossible to talk about JFK without talking about his personal life. The president who commissioned a "Presidential Commission on the Status of Women" was a notorious womanizer. But saying Kennedy is a womanizer is like saying the M-1 Tank is a nice gun. JFK was the Mick Jagger of presidents. Peter Lawford walked a fine line between friend and pimp for JFK. The stories are legion.

      What people do in their own time is none of my business. But being president is not working at Burger King. You don't punch a clock. You are on-duty at all times. And we're not talking about a few dozen women -- the count probably goes into the hundreds. Yes -- hundreds. At some point, you're not having a personal life, you're having a personal problem. The Secret Service was concerned at the quality and background of these women who visited JFK -- most all of them were not vetted. If you're the inventor of the Atomic Bomb and want to see the president they'll go through your affairs with a fine-toothed comb. But if you've got a great set of legs and boobs, you can walk right in.

      We know now that some were spies for foreign powers. Some were famous actresses. Some were the wives of powerful businessmen. Some were secreting drugs into the White House. Yes, JFK was smoking weed in the White House and secreting girls around when Jackie (his wife) wasn't looking. Sounds funny if you're 16, but when you're 40 you'd think you'd grow up, get discrete, learn to moderate, something.

      It could be part of his drug addiction, who knows? Kennedy had a "doctor" that would come by and give him "vitamin shots". The shots were mostly methamphetamine. That's crank. Kennedy was so looped up on drugs at times that he had a hard time standing. The womanizing itself got old and boring, but he'd try to liven it up by trying to seduce married women at various parties while their husbands were otherwise occupied.

      It's a lifestyle more suited for Caligula than an American President.

      By the way, the trend today is to call anybody that points out Kennedy's problems as a "Kennedy-hater" as if I could care one way or another about some guy that died before I was ever born!

      It was a mess, and it became a national security issue. When people say Bill Clinton was skank -- it was amateur hour compared to JFK.

      And then he was shot. More than anything, I think this is what gets Kennedy that special place in people's hearts. Young guy with dreams who was gunned down at an early age. But I'm not writing a soap opera. JFK was such a personal disaster that it puts him in a league all his own.


  • President Reagan
  • Ronald Reagan
    • The Spin - The Gipper. The Great Communicator. Ended the Cold War. Showed that lowering taxes brought in more revenue. A sincere and compassionate man who genuinely liked the little guy. Believed that simple government with limited powers was better than complex government with increased powers. Genuinely likable, even by his enemies.
    • The Suck - This one hurts to write, but there it is. I like Reagan -- I really do. He was personable and smart. He believed in lower taxes and a balanced budget.

      The problem is, when faced with a choice between lower taxes and a balanced budget, Reagan chose lower taxes. This was a great tactical choice -- lower taxes usually stimulate the economy more. The Democratically-controlled Congress would give him his tax cut, but they weren't about to start cutting social programs. They would fight on that one. So Reagan took the easy way out. He wasn't about to gamble his popularity on trying to cut grandma's social security check. But it meant that now the Republicans had given up on balanced budgets.

      Up until that time, and for a little bit afterwards, the Republicans were the ones for a balanced budget and the Democrats didn't care one way or another. Sure -- both parties would talk a good game on balancing the budget, but it was the Republicans that really meant it. After Reagan, however, Republicans were left with a dilemma: if Reagan was so great and he ran the debt up, what's the importance of keeping the debt low, anyhow?

      For a brief moment in the 90s, the Republicans in the House had a hissy-fit over balancing the budget and threatened to shut down the government. Clinton won that battle, balancing the budget for a year or two but teaching a more important lesson: nobody cares about what debt you are leaving for 40 years down the road. If you try to fight on budget issues, the voters will punish you right now.

      This lesson -- run the debt up on programs to keep you elected -- was wonderfully applied by the Republicans for the last several years, and now it seems the Democrats are moving up to the next level. The idea being that if the Republicans can run up $4 Trillion, they can easily run up 8.

      Reagan isn't responsible for the huge national debt, but he was the final major actor that threw up his hands in the fight against an entitlement nation. For that, he sucks.



Am I wrong about any of this? Probably so. I'm also probably right. That's the whole idea: history is about comparing various sources, comparing fairly solid facts with supposition about how people felt. Some things stand on fairly solid ground. For instance, there's no doubt the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor early in the morning on December 7th, 1941. Some things don't, like the role of government intervention in either extending or fixing the Great Depression. Understand that there's a spectrum, and beware of those who might gloss over the details.

This doesn't get you off the hook from making value choices! My oldest son and I were talking about the national debt the other day and he basically said something like "I don't understand the history of all of it" and threw up his hands and gave up. Danger Will Robinson! Danger! If you're supporting doubling the national debt over the next ten years you damn well have a freaking obligation to learn about the history of the national debt! Ignorance of important events is not an excuse -- it's simply a new requirement from life that you must fulfill as best as you can.

So the next time some yahoo (like me) begins a statement with "history clearly shows" --- question it. If it's me, it's probably right. But those other guys? They could tell you anything!

UPDATE: If you're interested in stretching your mind a bit, take a look at how Lincoln was viewed by those who opposed him. You don't have to buy into everything that said -- simply contrast this author with everything else you've read. Quite eye-opening.

7 Comments

Outstanding! A truly important post. The tendency to chisel history into stone & lock it in an impenetrable ideological fortress is a dangerous tendency that needs to be broken. It doesn't matter whether we agree or disagree with each point you make here. The service you have provided with this exercise is enough.

I'll never forget the first time I heard someone (a Dem, no less) speak critically of JFK -- that although he's historically represented as a saint, his belligerent & wreckless handling of the Soviet Union could have easily caused a nuclear war.

Sacred cows make the _best_ hamburger!

I really enjoyed reading this! It sure seems like FDR and Woodrow Wilson have been reincarnated in the person of Barack Obama.

You haven't gone back far enough. George Washington allowed the illegal Constitution to stand even though it wasn't in the power of the Continental to form it, they were just commissioned to improve the Articles of Confederation (where the south got it's name).

Andrew Jackson was the worst president IMO. I would call him a war criminal.

Of course our leaders are exempt from answering to the Haig, so nothing will ever change. Send our people to die while killing their people over something that a few did. Was Iraq about WMD or was it payback for Saddam trying to have G H Bush whacked?


Nice armchair quaterbacking you did here. You could pick apart any historic figure if you didn't study all the history. You have to take in all the facts. All the other people and events that were in place at that time. Noone stated that history was fact. Its a historical account...which means its someones telling of the what happened based all the information...sprinkled with (hopefully unbiased) their opinion. What you did here is read a litttle and sprinkle it with all your biased opinion...ignoring the events taking place at the time...ignoring politics...ignoring other powers in play.
Thank god this is a blog and not something any1 will read seriously.

Thanks for the comment, Brett,

Yes, it's armchair quarterbacking. Not afraid to admit it. Any form of history is going to be interpretive -- such is the nature of history.

I'm glad you found the material worth responding to. Sorry you feel that the quality was lacking, but you pays your money and you takes your chances. Better luck with the next blog you read.

I'm a huge admirer of FDR and I just wanted to let you know that he was elected four times and served for 12 years until his death in 1945.

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This page contains a single entry by DanielBMarkham published on April 15, 2009 12:48 PM.

CrossFire Charts: Measuring Agile in Matrixed Environments was the previous entry in this blog.

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  • Salaina: I'm a huge admirer of FDR and I just wanted read more
  • DanielBMarkham: Thanks for the comment, Brett, Yes, it's armchair quarterbacking. Not read more
  • BRETT GROSSmann: Nice armchair quaterbacking you did here. You could pick apart read more
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  • SubAstute: Outstanding! A truly important post. The tendency to chisel history read more

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