Challenge: Make a Mundane President a Good American President

I am speaking of academic historians - Arthur Schlesinger Jr for one of the better known examples - in the two or three generations immediately following his presidency. I quite agree that views about him today are more mixed.


To some extent I can understand the fad for TR. He was a colourful and vibrant personality with whom it is easy to fall in love, and in my youth I felt that way myself. Forty years on, though, I must confess to not really seeing what is gained by bringing him back. On domestic reforms he is unlikely to have achieved any more than the first term Wilson did - probably less if he pulled in an obstructionist Republican Congress on his coattails - and he is even less likely than Wilson to have avoided entry into WW1, the only thing which could give the Progressive Era even án outside chance of lasting longer.

Eh, although you do find some on the liberal side who like Wilson (his first term saw the cumulation of the Progressive movement), I don't think his star is that bright. His racism, his entry into World War I, his botching the peace treaties are all black marks against him.
It could well be a generational thing, mind you.
 
Eh, although you do find some on the liberal side who like Wilson (his first term saw the cumulation of the Progressive movement), I don't think his star is that bright. His racism, his entry into World War I, his botching the peace treaties are all black marks against him.
It could well be a generational thing, mind you.


I think it probably is. I get the strong impression that Wilson's stock has fallen quite a bit in the last decade or two - perhaps paralleled by a decline in the big government liberalism esposed by most of his admirers. It may be more than a coincidence that this decline has been accompanied by a reappraisal of Harding, who has long suffered in comparison to his sainted predecessor.

I have no real quarrel with eliphas8 as far as disliking Wilson is concerned. I too find plenty to dislike. I merely dissent from the assumption that TR would be a major improvement. He might have done a bit better on the racism front, but so might many others. Basically, If entry into WW1 is considered unavoidable, I would go for Charles Evans Hughes as the most likely to resist the attacks on civil liberties. If it can still be averted, the best hope is probably Champ Clark or even (with a bit of swallowing) William Jennings Bryan. La Follette might be even better but I can't think of a plausible way to get him in.
 
About Coolidge: His problem is, he's a mundane president even if the Conservatives love him, because he didn't do anything. That was essentially his Presidency; to make the President as much of a non-entity as possible. Because Coolidge was a mundane, boring man. He was Adlai from Futurama.

That's the thing: the Coolidge love is largely based on a philosophical belief about the proper role of political leaders, that under most circumstances, high Presidential activity levels are a vice, not a virtue. Coolidge actually did accomplish a fair amount, but he's remembered for being staid, quiet, even-tempered, and modest, and thus attracts a fair amount of admiration for his attitude among those who prefer that style of political leadership.

I'll confess to being a bit of a Coolidge fan myself, and I've heard a fair amount of admiration for both Coolidge and Harding from among my fellow small-l libertarians and similarly from many fiscal conservatives.

The case for Harding is that he rolled back a lot of Wilson's bad (from a conservative or libertarian perspective) policies, especially in terms of cutting both taxes and spending. His admirers credit his administration's policies with quickly ending the depression of 1920 and setting the stage for the sustained economic boom of 1921-1929, and note that his policies (despite massive tax cuts) reversed the deficit he'd inherited from Wilson and (over the course of the subsequent Coolidge administration) paid off over a third of the national debt.

The case for Coolidge over Harding (in addition to the stylistic admiration of his "Silent Cal" image) is that Coolidge shares most of the credit for the accomplishments attributed to Harding by Harding's admirers, but without much of Harding's baggage. Harding's memory is marred by a major corruption scandal where Harding's Secretary of the Interior was caught taking bribes. Harding's role in this Teapot Dome scandal is somewhat overstated in the prevailing historical view, I think, in part because the scandal broke shortly after Harding's death (making him a convenient person for other people tarred by association with the offenders to shift blame to), but he does deserve a certain measure of blame. While Harding wasn't personally implicated, Harding was in charge and was ultimately responsible for policing his cabinet, which he didn't (Harding appears to have been completely oblivious, and the scandal was broken by a Senate investigation), and Harding also gets a measure of blame for being the one who appointed the corrupt Secretary Fell in the first place, in addition to the blame for failing to supervise him properly.

Coolidge continued the policies that Harding's admirers credit him for (especially tax reform: the top income tax rate was 73% when Harding took office, 50% when Harding died and Coolidge became President, and 25% when Coolidge left office), and most of the positive effects credited to Harding's economic policies (the 20s boom and the paying down of the national debt from $26 billion to $16 billion) took place mainly under Coolidge. But Coolidge's hands were completely clean of Teapot Dome, so an admirer of the joint Harding/Coolidge economic policies can safely admire Coolidge for continuing and extending them without accepting the taint of Harding's association with Teapot Dome.

There's all sorts of theories about blame for the Great Depression, but it's worth noting that several of the major theories place at least some blame on both Harding and Coolidge:

  • Milton Friedman's "Great Contraction" theory holds that the Great Depression would have been a relatively minor recession but for active mismanagement by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, which made the wave of bank failures and personal and business bankruptcies far worse than it should have been, by refusing to carry out the Fed's statutory duty to bail out illiquid-but-solvent banks (i.e. those which have sufficient assets to pay their bills, but due to a bank run or other difficulty need a short-term bridge loan to avoid bankruptcy), and by making monetary and bank-regulation changes that pulled a huge amount of money out of circulation (causing a deflationary death spiral, as the reduction in the money supply cut prices and wages and left lots of people, banks, and businesses unable to pay their debts and other contractual obligations). Under this theory, two of the major villains were Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon (appointed by Harding and retained by Coolidge and Hoover, and the primary architect of the Harding/Coolidge fiscal policies) and Fed Chairman Roy Young (appointed by Coolidge).
  • The Austrian School theory is that the 1921-1929 boom was largely illusionary prosperity due to a speculative bubble fuelled by loose monetary policy under the Harding and Coolidge administrations, and the stock market crash and waves of bank failures that triggered the Great Depression were an inevitable "hangover" from those policies as the bubble burst and everyone had to unwind the consequences of nearly a decade of bad investment decisions made under the false assumption that the asset bubble was a genuine boom.
  • Nobody really thinks much of Hoover's role in the Depression. Nearly all economists think Hoover's tariff policy made things much worse, and there's likewise broad-based disdain for Hoover's support for wage and price fixing. Austrian-schoolers, Friedmanites, and Supply-Siders all agree that Hoover's decision to reverse the Harding/Coolidge tax cuts (raising the income tax back from 24% back up to the 70+% range) made things worse, and even many Keynesians support this view as well (raising taxes in a recession is generally considered contraindicated by Keynesians). Keynesians also fault Hoover for failing to do enough on the spending side to relieve the Depression (he did more than he's generally credited for, but significantly less than FDR did later, and most Keynsian observers feel even FDR did too little in terms of spending-based fiscal stimulus until WW2 broke out). Hoover's taint spreads to Harding and Coolidge by association, as Harding appointed Hoover as Secretary of Commerce, and Coolidge kept Hoover on in that role, and it was from his stature that role that Hoover was able to secure nomination and election in 1928.
 
I think it probably is. I get the strong impression that Wilson's stock has fallen quite a bit in the last decade or two - perhaps paralleled by a decline in the big government liberalism esposed by most of his admirers. It may be more than a coincidence that this decline has been accompanied by a reappraisal of Harding, who has long suffered in comparison to his sainted predecessor.

I have no real quarrel with eliphas8 as far as disliking Wilson is concerned. I too find plenty to dislike. I merely dissent from the assumption that TR would be a major improvement. He might have done a bit better on the racism front, but so might many others. Basically, If entry into WW1 is considered unavoidable, I would go for Charles Evans Hughes as the most likely to resist the attacks on civil liberties. If it can still be averted, the best hope is probably Champ Clark or even (with a bit of swallowing) William Jennings Bryan. La Follette might be even better but I can't think of a plausible way to get him in.

In order to get La Follette in, you'd have to find someway to mend the TR/La Follette rivalry which, although not impossible, is very difficult. Those two suffered from a solid dose of testosterone poisoning in relation to one another and found it difficult to cooperate even when it was in both of their best political interests. A La Follette administration in 12 or 16 would have kept the US out of the war, I have no doubts (although I've always said I could have seen RML getting involved in Mexico)
 
LBJ

IIRC, JFK ordered to begin the withdrawal of military advisors from Vietnam the day before he was assassinated. The day after LBJ was sworn in, he reversed the order, and then ordered the number of advisors doubled.

Vietnam.

Get out after the 1964 Election, and LBJ is at least thought of as a Good President.

But then that's like saying that if Nixon had only had an honest Cabinet and West Wing...:rolleyes:
 
LBJ

IIRC, JFK ordered to begin the withdrawal of military advisors from Vietnam the day before he was assassinated. The day after LBJ was sworn in, he reversed the order, and then ordered the number of advisors doubled.

Vietnam.

Get out after the 1964 Election, and LBJ is at least thought of as a Good President.

But then that's like saying that if Nixon had only had an honest Cabinet and West Wing...:rolleyes:

Well yes on Vietnam (which will start an argument because how could we possibly avoid a war in a small nation no one knew the name of which many were warning us to not Americanize, and which the President was fully committed to not making an American war), but LBJ is already considered good. Vietnam may have tarnished his legacy, and made him a pariah in the years shortly after his presidency, but his legacy overall is extraordinary
 
There's plenty of Presidents who are remembered fondly or for doing a lot. But, there are also many who are not memorable. For every Lincoln, TR, FDR, and Reagan, there's a James Buchanan, Millard Fillmore, Benjamin Harrison, and Calvin Coolidge.

The challenge is to take one of the mundane American Presidents, and make them a good to great American president. Or at least make them someone who is really remembered for something.

Honestly, I don't think Reagan deserves to be up there with all three of the others you mentioned.
 
Woodrow Wilson is always an interesting topic for discussion since he attracts a strange, passionate hatred from some, almost entirely on the Internet (well, and Glenn Beck, but, uh...). I remember there was a thread here that posited that Wilson was the worst President of the twentieth century or something ridiculous like that.

Wilson is still regarded very highly by (most!) historians. That's not to say that he didn't have some awful qualities - his aforementioned racism being the most obvious - but it's funny to see Wilson being reviled when Warren Harding, who's near-unanimously considered the worst President in the history of the nation, and Calvin Coolidge, who really wasn't much better, being reappraised as conservative icons.

Beware that this is not the case on AH.com. The liberals of this site love Theodore Roosevelt and generally despise Wilson.
Yeah, liberals on the internet have different views to the liberal intelligentsia in the real world. The most obvious I've noticed is those who defend Richard Nixon as the "last liberal President", which is just...
 
Woodrow Wilson is always an interesting topic for discussion since he attracts a strange, passionate hatred from some, almost entirely on the Internet (well, and Glenn Beck, but, uh...). I remember there was a thread here that posited that Wilson was the worst President of the twentieth century or something ridiculous like that.


I wouldn't say there's anything strange about the hatred. His second term, in particular, was a horror from a civil liberties pov. I agree it's not self-evident that another POTUS would have done much better, but he seems to have gone along willingly enough.

As to "worst President", I don't think that's a useful term. There are just too any claimants. I recall my old headmaster, after reading some end of term results, commenting that there had been "stiff competition for bottom place".



Wilson is still regarded very highly by (most!) historians. That's not to say that he didn't have some awful qualities - his aforementioned racism being the most obvious - but it's funny to see Wilson being reviled when Warren Harding, who's near-unanimously considered the worst President in the history of the nation, and Calvin Coolidge, who really wasn't much better, being reappraised as conservative icons.

I wasn't aware of anyone making Harding into an icon, though I've occasionally had that impression in regard to Coolidge. My impression is that he's just getting a fairer deal these days. He wasn't a great man, but he made up for that by putting some pretty capable ones - Hughes, Hoover, etc - into his cabinet. In freeing Debs and others, he healed some wounds and generally showed himself a better man than the vindictive Wilson. There was some corruption, but no more than is usual in the aftermath of a major war. Such periods are nearly always a bit seamy. Like I say, Imho he was just unlucky to come directly after a POTUS who certainly was an icon to most of those writing the history books.
 
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Hoover was a good man at the wrong time. If he had been president when the Second World War broke out, he would have had the intelligence and energy to have been a great wartime leader.

I rather like Zachary Taylor, the only president in the pre-Civil War period who showed any backbone when dealing with the slavery hardliners. Had he lived to serve two terms, at worst he would have left the north in a better shape to fight the war than OTL. It's also possible that the war would have come earlier, which would, I think, have been to the north's advantage.

Two complete guesses: William Henry Harrison, if he had lived, would have been in sympathy with the aims of the Congressional wing of his own party (which Tyler basically wasn't) and would have presided accordingly. Not sure how that would pan out. Also not sure how Hayes would have acted towards the former confederacy if he had won the election decisively.
 
Everytime I read about Franklin Pierce, I feel a lot of pity for him. He was a young general, carrying hope, who was broken by the death of his son shortly before his inauguration. I wonder what he could have done in such a troubled era.
 
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