Presidents

Recently asked to rank Barrack Obama as President, here is my current assessment. He is bad, very bad. He might well rank as a failure, but that remains to be seen. The characteristics he displays are not good ones: dishonesty, arrogance/elitism, lack of courage, lack of vision, hypocrisy. Other characteristics he doesn't display are essential for good Presidents: leadership, ability to choose quality subordinates, empathy. Of course, history might well rank him differently, for several reasons. One, historians later assessing the Obama Presidency will come across primary material/sources that wrongly fawn over Obama. Two, historians have, traditionally, been politically on the side of those like Obama. Three, perspective is necessary. Remember the contemporary views of Lincoln unti late in the Civil War. But, I can't see any reasonable (I guess that's the key word) historian ever ranking him as a good President--he clearly is not. That said, I also think very little of George W. Bush. In many ways I think he was insecure, afraid of being called names, of what posterity might say of him, etc. He strayed from principles he said he had, caving in instead of standing firm in "the good fight." I would rank him as a poor President, too. Now, this might not at all be fair because my standard for excellence in a President is A. Lincoln. I am currently reading yet another book about Abe and he, despite what I know of him, despite having read about three dozen books about him, continues to awe me. No, No, I don't think he's "St. Abraham," but, I laugh, I almost do. I think our last good Presidents were Truman and Eisenhower, for different reasons and in different ways. I'm not a big Kennedy fan, although my views of him have improved in recent years, due, largely, to my convictions that words/motivation can lead Americans to good things. I don't care at all for Johnson. He, of course, was responsible for the debacle called Vietnam and the deleterious effects of the Great Society, which, I think, has seriously damaged the fabric of American society. He was also a despicable person, from his treatment of individuals to how he used some events (such as the Detroit race riots) as weapons against opponents (George Romney). (How many more dead, how much more damage came due to LBJ's dallying--playing politics--in bringing in federal troops?) Nixon was a brilliant man, esp in foreign policy. But his personality faults led him to failure as a President (in many ways exactly the mirror image of JFK's positives). Ford was handed a losing hand. He was a good man put in an untenable position. He was courageous enough to do the right thing (pardon Nixon) in the face of almost universal opposition. He was right, but it cost him the '76 election. Carter was out of his league. He was just plain lousy. What made him even worse than that he was clueless, was that he was an arrogant elitist (which he remains). I'm not a big Reagan fan, although I loved his message. What he stated as his principles didn't always translate into commensurate actions. He wasn't bad, though, but not a good President. Bush Daddy was OK, not great (although his resume would have indicated he should have been). But, I think Reagan said it best, Bush "doesn't seem to stand for anything." No doubt history will be kinder on Clinton than I am. I think character counts and the messages that he sent about rotten personal conduct has resounded since. When we needed someone to lead a life of good moral example, he did the opposite--and he continues to give us the symbolic smirk about that. (I turn to history and the first Roman Emperor, Augustus, who recognized that Rome needed a kick in its immoral past and did so, establishing a moral society that held firm for a couple of centuries, despite Caligula and Nero.)