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Friday, April 28, 2006

The Problem with Lists of the Worst Presidents

You might have heard that Sean Wilentz has come out with a story in Rolling Stone arguing that George W. Bush may be the worst president ever. Jay Cost explains why Wilentz's method of arguing is specious and weak. Wilentz sets up three criteria for judging presidents.
This is why I was so aggrieved to read Wilentz's piece. He is a great historian who should know better than to devolve into the idle speculations of the history buff - but that is exactly what he does.

This becomes evident with a careful reading of his eighth paragraph. Wilentz gives three criteria for differentiating the good president from the bad. These are: (1) did they divide or unite the nation? (2) did they govern erratically or "brilliantly"? (3) did they leave the nation more or less secure? I shall take these as they are given - but I will say that I have serious objections to all three (particularly the second, which seems to present a false dichotomy and, with "brilliant," uses a word so hackneyed that it is almost bereft of meaning).
I'd just like to focus on the first question for a minute. The presidencies have left the country quite divided. We became bitterly divided during Washington's presidency, though he did his best to resist the emerging partisanship. Andrew Jackson was bitterly divisive and seemed to relish his fights with the newly-created Whig Party, a party that united groups who hated Jackson. Weak antebellum presidents sought to paper over the deep divisions that separated the country over the expansion of slavery into new territories. Both Pierce and Buchanan tried to appease Southerners on the slavery issue. Would that make the rate higher on trying to unite the country than Abraham Lincoln who would "accept war rather than let it perish?" Gee, what could be more divisive than that. Sure, he tried to bring the country together with a relatively soft Reconstruction plan and pleas to "bind up the nation's wounds," but let's not forget the anger with which the South had received Lincoln's offer of a lenient Reconstruction plan to welcome them back into the Union. They would find out how much worse Reconstruction could be under Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans, but at the time, during his presidency, I don't think you can describe the country as united. Even in the North, the Union was deeply divided between Republicans and Democrats. Would Wilentz dock Lincoln on that criteria? Or what about Harry Truman campaigning on the "do nothing Congress" and demagoguing the GOP? Was he uniting the country? Truman instituted loyalty checks in the federal government? Was that uniting us? Where does Wilentz put Truman on that criteria?

You know, it takes two to tango. The country can't be united if one group bitterly resists any attempt to bring the country together. That should not be the criteria on which to judge presidential greatness. Sure, we can come together in a crisis such as Pearl Harbor, but in the daily swing of things, we're a country that is divided ideologically because people believe different things. People have different views on the best way to attack the nation's problems. That is why they belong to different parties. Do we want a president who ignores these differences and just tries to pretend that everyone agrees on the best way to fight terrorism or strengthen the economy? Jay Cost is exactly right about what a silly exercise this was for Sean Wilentz, not to even get into judging a presidency while it is going on. Think of how our assessments of the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan have changed in the last 20 years. We can wait a bit for time to tell us if the war in Iraq was a terrible misadventure that deepened the problems in the Middle East and heightened the threats from terrorism or whether it was the turning point that changed the situation that we were facing regarding terrorism and these rogue nations. Serious historians should recognize the need for that time to pass.

UPDATE: I didn't have time before to address Wilentz's second and third criteria, but Jay Cost has some thoughts on the silliness of evaulating a president's governance as erratic or brilliant. I have a few minutes to offer some more thoughts. Of course, these terms represent value judgments and, if one despises George W. Bush, chances are you are not going to be able to be able to even conceive of the idea of his being brilliant. Is that necessarily the term you think of for those presidents usually regarded as great? Did George Washington govern brilliantly? It's not the adverb I would have chosen although I have usually put him in second place when I have been asked to evaluate presidents.

And trying to evaluate if the president left the country more or less secure while he is still in office is fatuous. Just think of what we've learned about Clinton's presidency in terms of leaving the country less secure since he left office. Think of what we learned after Reagan's presidency afterwards when we could evaluate it in terms of knowing that the Cold War would end a year after he left office. Think of what historians might have thought of Truman and leaving the country more or less secure if they'd tried to evaluate his presidency in 1950 in the beginning of the Korean War? And did FDR leave the country more or less secure? Sometimes, it doesn't depend on what the president does but what others do. Pearl Harbor happened on his watch. I don't argue that he knew about it ahead of time, but was he taking a needlessly aggressive stance towards Japan when he placed an embargo on certain goods? Or was he guilty of not making it clear how the United States would respond if attacked? He died after Yalta - did that agreement do anything to exacerbate the Cold War? Did the decision to rein in Eisenhower and the troops as they approached Berlin have an impact on the situation in Europe after the war? These are all questions that can be debated. Would Wilentz then place FDR in the middle of presidents because the country was not necessarily more secure in terms of international relations than when he entered office? I somehow doubt that. And, of course, we could debate all day long if FDR's actions ameliorated the country's economic situation or exacerbated the problmes of the Depression. Historians have a more complex view of FDR today than they would have had in 1945 when FDR died. Wilentz's exercise in judging Bush's presidency is silly and not a serious task for a respected historian.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:41 AM 0 comments

Comments:

You might have heard that Sean Wilentz has come out with a story in Rolling Stone arguing that George W. Bush may be the worst president ever. Jay Cost explains why Wilentz's method of arguing is specious and weak. Wilentz sets up three criteria for judging presidents.

This is why I was so aggrieved to read Wilentz's piece. He is a great historian who should know better than to devolve into the idle speculations of the history buff - but that is exactly what he does.

This becomes evident with a careful reading of his eighth paragraph. Wilentz gives three criteria for differentiating the good president from the bad. These are: (1) did they divide or unite the nation? (2) did they govern erratically or "brilliantly"? (3) did they leave the nation more or less secure? I shall take these as they are given - but I will say that I have serious objections to all three (particularly the second, which seems to present a false dichotomy and, with "brilliant," uses a word so hackneyed that it is almost bereft of meaning).

I'd just like to focus on the first question for a minute. The presidencies have left the country quite divided. We became bitterly divided during Washington's presidency, though he did his best to resist the emerging partisanship. Andrew Jackson was bitterly divisive and seemed to relish his fights with the newly-created Whig Party, a party that united groups who hated Jackson. Weak antebellum presidents sought to paper over the deep divisions that separated the country over the expansion of slavery into new territories. Both Pierce and Buchanan tried to appease Southerners on the slavery issue. Would that make the rate higher on trying to unite the country than Abraham Lincoln who would "accept war rather than let it perish?" Gee, what could be more divisive than that. Sure, he tried to bring the country together with a relatively soft Reconstruction plan and pleas to "bind up the nation's wounds," but let's not forget the anger with which the South had received Lincoln's offer of a lenient Reconstruction plan to welcome them back into the Union. They would find out how much worse Reconstruction could be under Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans, but at the time, during his presidency, I don't think you can describe the country as united. Even in the North, the Union was deeply divided between Republicans and Democrats. Would Wilentz dock Lincoln on that criteria? Or what about Harry Truman campaigning on the "do nothing Congress" and demagoguing the GOP? Was he uniting the country? Truman instituted loyalty checks in the federal government? Was that uniting us? Where does Wilentz put Truman on that criteria?

You know, it takes two to tango. The country can't be united if one group bitterly resists any attempt to bring the country together. That should not be the criteria on which to judge presidential greatness. Sure, we can come together in a crisis such as Pearl Harbor, but in the daily swing of things, we're a country that is divided ideologically because people believe different things. People have different views on the best way to attack the nation's problems. That is why they belong to different parties. Do we want a president who ignores these differences and just tries to pretend that everyone agrees on the best way to fight terrorism or strengthen the economy? Jay Cost is exactly right about what a silly exercise this was for Sean Wilentz, not to even get into judging a presidency while it is going on. Think of how our assessments of the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan have changed in the last 20 years. We can wait a bit for time to tell us if the war in Iraq was a terrible misadventure that deepened the problems in the Middle East and heightened the threats from terrorism or whether it was the turning point that changed the situation that we were facing regarding terrorism and these rogue nations. Serious historians should recognize the need for that time to pass.

UPDATE: I didn't have time before to address Wilentz's second and third criteria, but Jay Cost has some thoughts on the silliness of evaulating a president's governance as erratic or brilliant. I have a few minutes to offer some more thoughts. Of course, these terms represent value judgments and, if one despises George W. Bush, chances are you are not going to be able to be able to even conceive of the idea of his being brilliant. Is that necessarily the term you think of for those presidents usually regarded as great? Did George Washington govern brilliantly? It's not the adverb I would have chosen although I have usually put him in second place when I have been asked to evaluate presidents.

And trying to evaluate if the president left the country more or less secure while he is still in office is fatuous. Just think of what we've learned about Clinton's presidency in terms of leaving the country less secure since he left office. Think of what we learned after Reagan's presidency afterwards when we could evaluate it in terms of knowing that the Cold War would end a year after he left office. Think of what historians might have thought of Truman and leaving the country more or less secure if they'd tried to evaluate his presidency in 1950 in the beginning of the Korean War? And did FDR leave the country more or less secure? Sometimes, it doesn't depend on what the president does but what others do. Pearl Harbor happened on his watch. I don't argue that he knew about it ahead of time, but was he taking a needlessly aggressive stance towards Japan when he placed an embargo on certain goods? Or was he guilty of not making it clear how the United States would respond if attacked? He died after Yalta - did that agreement do anything to exacerbate the Cold War? Did the decision to rein in Eisenhower and the troops as they approached Berlin have an impact on the situation in Europe after the war? These are all questions that can be debated. Would Wilentz then place FDR in the middle of presidents because the country was not necessarily more secure in terms of international relations than when he entered office? I somehow doubt that. And, of course, we could debate all day long if FDR's actions ameliorated the country's economic situation or exacerbated the problmes of the Depression. Historians have a more complex view of FDR today than they would have had in 1945 when FDR died. Wilentz's exercise in judging Bush's presidency is silly and not a serious task for a respected historian.

posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:41 AM 0 comments

Comments: Post a Comment

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Friday, April 28, 2006

The Problem with Lists of the Worst Presidents

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HOME Betsy neither necessarily uses, nor endorses, the products advertised on this site. The truth about Avesil Cheap Hosting Atlanta Bankruptcy Attorney Dallas Bankruptcy Attorney Wikio Get exclusive travel deals and book discount cheap flights Online Bachelors Degree Comments from an AP history and government teacher in Raleigh, NC. e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com Commissions earned from selling items through Amazon will go towards buying materials for my classes. Thank you. Site Feed		Friday, April 28, 2006 The Problem with Lists of the Worst Presidents You might have heard that Sean Wilentz has come out with a story in Rolling Stone arguing that George W. Bush may be the worst president ever. Jay Cost explains why Wilentz's method of arguing is specious and weak. Wilentz sets up three criteria for judging presidents. This is why I was so aggrieved to read Wilentz's piece. He is a great historian who should know better than to devolve into the idle speculations of the history buff - but that is exactly what he does. This becomes evident with a careful reading of his eighth paragraph. Wilentz gives three criteria for differentiating the good president from the bad. These are: (1) did they divide or unite the nation? (2) did they govern erratically or "brilliantly"? (3) did they leave the nation more or less secure? I shall take these as they are given - but I will say that I have serious objections to all three (particularly the second, which seems to present a false dichotomy and, with "brilliant," uses a word so hackneyed that it is almost bereft of meaning). I'd just like to focus on the first question for a minute. The presidencies have left the country quite divided. We became bitterly divided during Washington's presidency, though he did his best to resist the emerging partisanship. Andrew Jackson was bitterly divisive and seemed to relish his fights with the newly-created Whig Party, a party that united groups who hated Jackson. Weak antebellum presidents sought to paper over the deep divisions that separated the country over the expansion of slavery into new territories. Both Pierce and Buchanan tried to appease Southerners on the slavery issue. Would that make the rate higher on trying to unite the country than Abraham Lincoln who would "accept war rather than let it perish?" Gee, what could be more divisive than that. Sure, he tried to bring the country together with a relatively soft Reconstruction plan and pleas to "bind up the nation's wounds," but let's not forget the anger with which the South had received Lincoln's offer of a lenient Reconstruction plan to welcome them back into the Union. They would find out how much worse Reconstruction could be under Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans, but at the time, during his presidency, I don't think you can describe the country as united. Even in the North, the Union was deeply divided between Republicans and Democrats. Would Wilentz dock Lincoln on that criteria? Or what about Harry Truman campaigning on the "do nothing Congress" and demagoguing the GOP? Was he uniting the country? Truman instituted loyalty checks in the federal government? Was that uniting us? Where does Wilentz put Truman on that criteria? You know, it takes two to tango. The country can't be united if one group bitterly resists any attempt to bring the country together. That should not be the criteria on which to judge presidential greatness. Sure, we can come together in a crisis such as Pearl Harbor, but in the daily swing of things, we're a country that is divided ideologically because people believe different things. People have different views on the best way to attack the nation's problems. That is why they belong to different parties. Do we want a president who ignores these differences and just tries to pretend that everyone agrees on the best way to fight terrorism or strengthen the economy? Jay Cost is exactly right about what a silly exercise this was for Sean Wilentz, not to even get into judging a presidency while it is going on. Think of how our assessments of the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan have changed in the last 20 years. We can wait a bit for time to tell us if the war in Iraq was a terrible misadventure that deepened the problems in the Middle East and heightened the threats from terrorism or whether it was the turning point that changed the situation that we were facing regarding terrorism and these rogue nations. Serious historians should recognize the need for that time to pass. UPDATE: I didn't have time before to address Wilentz's second and third criteria, but Jay Cost has some thoughts on the silliness of evaulating a president's governance as erratic or brilliant. I have a few minutes to offer some more thoughts. Of course, these terms represent value judgments and, if one despises George W. Bush, chances are you are not going to be able to be able to even conceive of the idea of his being brilliant. Is that necessarily the term you think of for those presidents usually regarded as great? Did George Washington govern brilliantly? It's not the adverb I would have chosen although I have usually put him in second place when I have been asked to evaluate presidents. And trying to evaluate if the president left the country more or less secure while he is still in office is fatuous. Just think of what we've learned about Clinton's presidency in terms of leaving the country less secure since he left office. Think of what we learned after Reagan's presidency afterwards when we could evaluate it in terms of knowing that the Cold War would end a year after he left office. Think of what historians might have thought of Truman and leaving the country more or less secure if they'd tried to evaluate his presidency in 1950 in the beginning of the Korean War? And did FDR leave the country more or less secure? Sometimes, it doesn't depend on what the president does but what others do. Pearl Harbor happened on his watch. I don't argue that he knew about it ahead of time, but was he taking a needlessly aggressive stance towards Japan when he placed an embargo on certain goods? Or was he guilty of not making it clear how the United States would respond if attacked? He died after Yalta - did that agreement do anything to exacerbate the Cold War? Did the decision to rein in Eisenhower and the troops as they approached Berlin have an impact on the situation in Europe after the war? These are all questions that can be debated. Would Wilentz then place FDR in the middle of presidents because the country was not necessarily more secure in terms of international relations than when he entered office? I somehow doubt that. And, of course, we could debate all day long if FDR's actions ameliorated the country's economic situation or exacerbated the problmes of the Depression. Historians have a more complex view of FDR today than they would have had in 1945 when FDR died. Wilentz's exercise in judging Bush's presidency is silly and not a serious task for a respected historian. posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:41 AM 0 comments Comments: You might have heard that Sean Wilentz has come out with a story in Rolling Stone arguing that George W. Bush may be the worst president ever. Jay Cost explains why Wilentz's method of arguing is specious and weak. Wilentz sets up three criteria for judging presidents. This is why I was so aggrieved to read Wilentz's piece. He is a great historian who should know better than to devolve into the idle speculations of the history buff - but that is exactly what he does. This becomes evident with a careful reading of his eighth paragraph. Wilentz gives three criteria for differentiating the good president from the bad. These are: (1) did they divide or unite the nation? (2) did they govern erratically or "brilliantly"? (3) did they leave the nation more or less secure? I shall take these as they are given - but I will say that I have serious objections to all three (particularly the second, which seems to present a false dichotomy and, with "brilliant," uses a word so hackneyed that it is almost bereft of meaning). I'd just like to focus on the first question for a minute. The presidencies have left the country quite divided. We became bitterly divided during Washington's presidency, though he did his best to resist the emerging partisanship. Andrew Jackson was bitterly divisive and seemed to relish his fights with the newly-created Whig Party, a party that united groups who hated Jackson. Weak antebellum presidents sought to paper over the deep divisions that separated the country over the expansion of slavery into new territories. Both Pierce and Buchanan tried to appease Southerners on the slavery issue. Would that make the rate higher on trying to unite the country than Abraham Lincoln who would "accept war rather than let it perish?" Gee, what could be more divisive than that. Sure, he tried to bring the country together with a relatively soft Reconstruction plan and pleas to "bind up the nation's wounds," but let's not forget the anger with which the South had received Lincoln's offer of a lenient Reconstruction plan to welcome them back into the Union. They would find out how much worse Reconstruction could be under Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans, but at the time, during his presidency, I don't think you can describe the country as united. Even in the North, the Union was deeply divided between Republicans and Democrats. Would Wilentz dock Lincoln on that criteria? Or what about Harry Truman campaigning on the "do nothing Congress" and demagoguing the GOP? Was he uniting the country? Truman instituted loyalty checks in the federal government? Was that uniting us? Where does Wilentz put Truman on that criteria? You know, it takes two to tango. The country can't be united if one group bitterly resists any attempt to bring the country together. That should not be the criteria on which to judge presidential greatness. Sure, we can come together in a crisis such as Pearl Harbor, but in the daily swing of things, we're a country that is divided ideologically because people believe different things. People have different views on the best way to attack the nation's problems. That is why they belong to different parties. Do we want a president who ignores these differences and just tries to pretend that everyone agrees on the best way to fight terrorism or strengthen the economy? Jay Cost is exactly right about what a silly exercise this was for Sean Wilentz, not to even get into judging a presidency while it is going on. Think of how our assessments of the presidencies of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan have changed in the last 20 years. We can wait a bit for time to tell us if the war in Iraq was a terrible misadventure that deepened the problems in the Middle East and heightened the threats from terrorism or whether it was the turning point that changed the situation that we were facing regarding terrorism and these rogue nations. Serious historians should recognize the need for that time to pass. UPDATE: I didn't have time before to address Wilentz's second and third criteria, but Jay Cost has some thoughts on the silliness of evaulating a president's governance as erratic or brilliant. I have a few minutes to offer some more thoughts. Of course, these terms represent value judgments and, if one despises George W. Bush, chances are you are not going to be able to be able to even conceive of the idea of his being brilliant. Is that necessarily the term you think of for those presidents usually regarded as great? Did George Washington govern brilliantly? It's not the adverb I would have chosen although I have usually put him in second place when I have been asked to evaluate presidents. And trying to evaluate if the president left the country more or less secure while he is still in office is fatuous. Just think of what we've learned about Clinton's presidency in terms of leaving the country less secure since he left office. Think of what we learned after Reagan's presidency afterwards when we could evaluate it in terms of knowing that the Cold War would end a year after he left office. Think of what historians might have thought of Truman and leaving the country more or less secure if they'd tried to evaluate his presidency in 1950 in the beginning of the Korean War? And did FDR leave the country more or less secure? Sometimes, it doesn't depend on what the president does but what others do. Pearl Harbor happened on his watch. I don't argue that he knew about it ahead of time, but was he taking a needlessly aggressive stance towards Japan when he placed an embargo on certain goods? Or was he guilty of not making it clear how the United States would respond if attacked? He died after Yalta - did that agreement do anything to exacerbate the Cold War? Did the decision to rein in Eisenhower and the troops as they approached Berlin have an impact on the situation in Europe after the war? These are all questions that can be debated. Would Wilentz then place FDR in the middle of presidents because the country was not necessarily more secure in terms of international relations than when he entered office? I somehow doubt that. And, of course, we could debate all day long if FDR's actions ameliorated the country's economic situation or exacerbated the problmes of the Depression. Historians have a more complex view of FDR today than they would have had in 1945 when FDR died. Wilentz's exercise in judging Bush's presidency is silly and not a serious task for a respected historian. posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:41 AM 0 comments Comments: Post a Comment