My apologies to Presidents Coolidge and Hoover

Recently during a conversation with a man probably 15-20 years my junior, that gentleman commented, "George Bush is the worst president in my lifetime," whereupon I responded, "The same for me." But then I remembered that, during the first two years of my life, Calvin Cooolidge was president and, over the next four years, it was Herbert Hoover; history has generally characterized those two men as less than great presidents. So, I added, "But maybe Bush is not as bad as those two."

Somewhat later, I checked Presidential Leadership*, a book which contains a review of each of the 42 presidents who preceded George Bush by one of a selected university professor in the fields of political science, history, and law; in addition to these reviews, 78 individuals in those fields rated each president, from best to worst. (George Bush was reviewed based on his accomplishments during the first three years of his presidency, shortly after which time the book was published, but was not rated because of the lack of his full tenure at that time. Likewise, two of the presidents who died shortly after taking office were not rated: William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia on April 4, 1841, exactly one month after taking office, and James Abram Garfield was assassinated on September 19, 1881, after just six months in office. Thus, 39 of the presidents were rated.)

* published by Dow Jones & Co., New York 2004, edited by James Taranto, of The Wall Street Journal, and and Leonard Leo, of The Federalist Society, 291 pages.

In reading the review of Coolidge by John O. McGinnis, a professor of law at Northwestern University, I found the the following comments:

Historical evaluations of presidents consistently underrate Calvin Coolidge...The reason for such slights is wholly ideological: Coolidge provided (at least until Ronald Reagan) the most effective presidential defense of limited government in the twentieth century.

The harsh ideological judgment of Coolidge has also relied on a false stereotype of his political views and ignored his many virtues that transcend partisan politics.

Coolidge provides a model for the kind of leader needed in a republic: honest, modest, and shrewd.

Coolidge was ranked 25th from the top of the 39 who were rated.

Likewise, Hoover was also spoken of kindly by Robert H. Ferrell, history professor at Indiana University. Some of that reviewer's comments are:

We should expect Herbert Hoover to get a heavy amount of criticism. After all, the Great Depression started on his watch...President Hoover deserves better. Consider his philosophy of government, which is largely accepted today...Alas, most scholars of the presidency have chosen to remember the gibes about Hoover, who was in fact a great public servant whose service spanned five decades. He deserves better from history.

Hoover was ranked 29th of the 39.

I have a faint recollection of "Hoover carts." That name was applied to automobiles which had been converted into mule-drawn vehicles by their owners who were supposedly so destitute during the Great Depression of the 1930s that they were unable to buy gasoline for them or to maintain them. I don't recall exactly how the conversion took place--did the owners just hook up a mule to the front bumper, or was some kind of surgery done to the hood? I don't remember, but I do remember a "Hoover cart" parade passing my house in the small North Carolina town where I grew up. That event was probably during the 1932 presidential campaign and was likely the effort of Democratic strategists in support of Franklin Roosevelt. I imagine the "Hoover cart" term itself was dreamed up by those political operatives.

So, after reading the reviews of Presidents Coolidge and Hoover--even though realizing that each represented the opinion of just one individual reviewer--I feel that I do owe an apology to the memory of those two men in thinking that they might have been worse than George Bush.

The three highest-rated presidents were George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt, in that order. The three lowest were Franklin Pierce and Warren Harding, tied for 37-38, and James Buchanan, the worst at 39th.

If the book Presidential Leadership is updated some time after January 20, 2009, it will be interesting to see whether James Buchanan or George W. Bush gets the 40th spot.

However, a higher power will eventually have to rank Bush. I quote from my blog posting "The Worst President in History?" of 5/20/06, in which I wrote about a magazine article with that title, written by a Princeton professor. I added the following comment in that posting.

Since he professes to be a faithful believer in the Divinity, when he passes on to meet his Maker, Bush had better be prepared to explain away his personal responsibility for the tens of thousands of American military personnel and Iraqi civilians killed and gravely wounded, as well as the thousands more of ordinary Iraqis whose lives have been made miserable during the war and its aftermath.