One Presidents’ Day tradition is the publication of surveys of various scholars and historians asking them to rank the presidents. Those polls tend to not be very illuminating; all they do is reflect the ideologies of the scholars—progressives favor progressive presidents, conservatives and libertarians favor presidents who pursued conservative or libertarian policies, and so forth.
Today, when knowledge of our country’s history seems to have faded away and a majority of Americans know very little about the 45 men who have been President of the United States, let’s look at some vignettes about some of those men. Maybe that will spark some curiosity and prompt a few readers to learn more about these men and their times.
Let’s start with George Washington. Several years ago, I asked one of my college classes, “What famous American’s birthday is today?” It was Feb. 22. Not a single one of that bright, attentive, class recognized the date as Washington’s birthday. It made me wonder: Do today’s youth ever hear the phrase “the father of our country”? Do they have any inkling of how deeply the other Founding Fathers respected and even revered Washington for his virtue, honor, and wisdom? Even Britain’s King George III—Washington’s putative enemy during the Revolutionary War—praised Washington as the greatest man in the world. Why do you think that is?
Did you know that the fifth president, James Monroe, was a war hero? As an 18-year-old, Monroe used his skill as a sharpshooter to help the colonists repel the Brits at Harlem Heights, New York—the first victory for the American side in the Revolutionary War. Also, Monroe and a cousin of Washington seized control of the two deadly cannons in the camp of the Hessian forces in the battle of Trenton on Dec. 26, 1776. Despite having been shot, Monroe was able to keep the Hessians from retaking the cannon, thereby preventing many American casualties and enabling the American side to prevail.
Decades later, during the War of 1812, while serving as President James Madison’s secretary of state and acting secretary of war, Monroe—then in his 50s—organized and directed the American resistance day after day on horseback. Without his leadership, the capital might well have fallen to the Brits and the young American Republic been extinguished. One other Monroe vignette: He ran unopposed for the presidency in 1820—the only man other than Washington to have done so. Amazing!
The seventh president, Andrew Jackson, should be remembered as the only president who managed to reduce the federal debt to zero. He also successfully blocked the rechartering of a national bank. From 1836—the end date of the Second Bank of the United States—until 1913, when Congress created the Federal Reserve System, the United States prospered (particularly after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery). Another point worth noting: The dollar’s purchasing power was roughly the same at the end of those 77 years as at the beginning. By contrast, in the 110 years of the Federal Reserve, the dollar has lost 98 percent of its purchasing power. Maybe Old Hickory understood economic matters better than today’s sophisticated economists.
The 11th president, James K. Polk, was the first to promise to not run for a second term when campaigning for the presidency. He was elected, achieved his few goals (lower tariffs and establishing the United States as a continental power stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific), and then kept his promise, stepping aside after one term.
Our 20th president, James A. Garfield, might have been one of our greatest, had he not been assassinated just months into his presidency. His life story is inspiring. He worked his way through his first year of college by washing dishes and performing other menial tasks. By his second year, he was earning his keep by teaching classes at the college. By his mid-20s, he was the president of the college. Having witnessed the use of unconstitutional paper money to help finance the Civil War, Garfield understood that paper money should be redeemable on demand by the holder for redemption in coin (gold or silver coin, as specified in the constitution) and that paper “notes are not money, but promises to pay money.” Garfield was a wise, brilliant, and honorable man.
Incidentally, it’s worth mentioning in passing that had Garfield been shot in 1981 instead of 1881, he wouldn’t have died (nor would President William McKinley have died if he had been shot in 1981 instead of 1901), whereas President Ronald Reagan would’ve died within hours had he been shot when Garfield or McKinley were shot. The degree of development of medical care has greatly impacted the history of the presidency.
Worth mentioning briefly is Garfield’s mostly forgotten successor, Chester A. Arthur. Arthur had been insinuated into the vice presidency by the machinations of the New York state political machine in the hope that he would steer patronage and federal spending to New York interests. However, when he unexpectedly found himself as president, Arthur rose to the occasion. He conducted himself like a statesman rather than a partisan hack and then didn’t run for reelection, feeling unworthy of the job. Arthur receives far less respect than he deserves.
Grover Cleveland, known as the 22nd and the 24th president, since his two terms in office were nonconsecutive, was one of the last true constitutionalists to hold the office. As progressive ideology was spreading through the American body politic, Cleveland resisted popular democratic pressures for expansions of government spending. He frequently vetoed such legislation on the grounds that there was no authority for such spending in the Constitution. Cleveland was a man of principle, integrity, and courage.
A little-remembered president—sandwiched between the colorful and hyperactive Teddy Roosevelt and the super-activist Woodrow Wilson (the only president to hold a doctoral degree and arguably our worst chief executive)—was the 27th president, William Howard Taft. “Big Bill” (all 300 pounds of him) later became Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. No other president before or since has sat on the high court.
The most infamously and unfairly disrespected occupant of the White House was our 29th president, Warren G. Harding. Progressive historians rank him as the worst 20th-century president—astounding given that Harding oversaw the century’s most stunningly rapid and successful economic turnaround. Harding led the country out of the depression that he inherited when he took office in 1921 in mere months. He turned a 20 percent plunge in economic production in 1921 into a boom in 1922 that saw production increase by a whopping 60 percent in the Roaring 20s. He accomplished this impressive feat by adopting policies that are anathema to progressives: He cut federal spending by more than 40 percent and let free markets make the necessary economic adjustments.
Compare that to progressive darling Franklin D. Roosevelt, who dramatically increased federal spending and involvement in the economy in the 1930s and managed to prolong the depression that started in 1930 for more than a full decade. The explanation for FDR’s popularity and Harding’s unpopularity with intellectuals is that intellectuals favor government control over free markets—a rather perverse preference given that the American people benefited far more from Harding’s small-government approach than from FDR’s Big Government policies.
In terms of positive achievements that benefited our country, only Ronald Reagan accomplished more than Harding, although Reagan was president for eight years while Harding died only three years into his presidency. Reagan, too, adopted policies that paved the way for prodigious economic growth. He also scored a great victory in foreign affairs, achieving a world-changing triumph in the Cold War, defeating the USSR without the bloodshed of military conflict.
That’s enough about presidents for now. There’s no need to stir up acrimony by talking about the more recent presidents. All of them have been polarizing figures in our ideologically divided republic, and many Americans are still feeling raw about them.
For those of you out there—especially young, curious thinkers—I would urge you to read biographies of some of our presidents. You can learn a lot of interesting things, both about the men who have held that office and about the history of our country. Then you can form your own opinions about who our greatest presidents have been.
