Dwight Eisenhower

Starting with Harry Truman, we’ve come to the presidents who were alive in my lifetime. And yet, I don’t remember Harry Truman, who had been retired over 13 years by the time I was born. I do have very vague memories of Dwight Eisenhower, aka “Ike,” from when I was a very small child. Mostly, it came from archival footage shown during Nixon’s term.

Mind you, I’m too young to have gotten what all the fuss about Nixon was at the time. Looking back on him is going to make for an interesting blog post.

For Eisenhower, I read Michael Korda’s Ike: An American Hero. Korda, a British ex-pat living in New Jersey, actually met many of the players in the drama that was World War II’s European Theater. For an Englishman, Korda does show a certain contempt for a large number of British generals and admirals, most notably Bernard “Monty” Montgomery. Mind you, he is equally hard on Douglas MacArthur and, while admiring of him, George Patton. But Korda’s somewhat fawning biography demonstrates something I said early on about earlier presidents. Many of those who occupied the Oval Office had already peaked before reaching the White House. John Adams, James Madison, and James Monroe all were guaranteed prominent places in history before their terms in office, but were not spectacular presidents themselves. William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Ulysses Grant were revered generals whose political careers were lackluster at best, even after winning the highest office in the land. (Harrison, in fact, is most famous for dying in office, as Taylor did. However, Taylor is better known as a general in the Mexican War.) Calvin Coolidge accomplished more as governor of Massachusetts. Hoover was a brilliant engineer and humanitarian, but a lousy president. George H. W. Bush did more as a diplomat, spy master, and vice president before finishing up Ronald Reagan’s paperwork in the late 80′s and early 90′s.

Ike often gets lumped in with this group. There was an image of him in office, one that he did not exactly discourage, of being a caretaker president, that he spent most of his time playing golf and watching TV (the first president to do so regularly) with wife Mamie. But Ike, in spite of recurring heart trouble, was a shrewd president, quietly working behind the scenes to accomplish his agenda. What frequently emerges when one looks more closely at Ike is how prescient the man was. He knew Germany would be divided after World War II and that Stalin would be uncooperative. He also foresaw the need for NATO so that Europe would not be left again at the mercy of a hungry Napoleon, most likely from a vengeful Germany. He also bewildered some by not reacting to the hysteria of the 1950′s. He refused to engage Joseph McCarthy, seeing him as a drunk who would (and did) eventually self-destruct. (Rather spectacularly to the point where archive footage of him in Good Night and Good Luck was criticized for poor casting in the role of Senator McCarthy.) Ike also did not believe in the missile gap, knowing full well that the Soviets did not have nearly the missiles they claimed or even the missiles the United States had.

Ike was a moderate and a very calm man, though fits of temper on his part were legendary. It may surprise you to learn that the man who commanded the troops of three major powers in World War II and balanced the egos of Patton, Monty, and DeGaulle, came from a pacifist Mennonite background. Eisenhower grew up in Abilene, Kansas, a quiet Midwestern farm town. Although he was a career military officer, he actually has quite a bit in common with his more liberal predecessor, Harry Truman.  Both were from small Midwestern towns, had a solid work ethic, and were brilliant at their chosen fields: Eisenhower in the military and Truman in politics. So from 1945, with the death of the wealthy FDR, to 1961, when Joseph Kennedy’s son Jack assumed the presidency, America was governed by common men from the Middle America. They were not towering intellects (or egotists) like Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson. (In fact, both men had contempt for Wilson, but then so did a lot of people in charge of fighting World War II.) Both men despised playing games, though could when called upon. And Eisenhower, despite being a modest man skilled at negotiating with kings, dictators, presidents, and field marshals, was ambitious as hell.

What probably saved Ike from the arrogance that plagued colleagues like Patton and MacArthur was that Ike 1.) came from a poor background (Both MacArthur and Patton were wealthy), and he was an administrative officer through most of his career. But he was very forward thinking. After World War I, when traditional cavalry was still thought to be the norm for warfare (despite evidence to the contrary in France), Ike and Patton took a tank apart and reassembled it, developing theories on how to use them in combat. This sort of experimentation would win the war in Europe and even prompt Rommel to openly wish he was an Allied general. (“I could win this war in 14 days,” Rommel said after Normandy.)

Perhaps Ike’s greatest accomplishment is keeping the Cold War from becoming hot. He resisted calls to use atomic bombs against China and, years before Nixon finally did so, recommended normalizing relations with the People’s Republic of China. Today, China is seen as a wealthy, if ambitious, hub of capitalism, but in Ike’s day, the nominally communist nation counted Josef Stalin and Nikita Kruschev as its patrons. As Ike extricated America from the Korean War, he warned of getting involved in another Asian hot spot, Vietnam. The French were losing badly and making many of the mistakes that would send America home with its collective tail between its legs in 1975. Kennedy realized this, but died before he could reverse course. Johnson and Nixon plunged ahead with this misadventure.

It’s doubtful Eisenhower could get elected today. Witness the downfall of David Petraeus, a brilliant officer who could do well in either major party. Today, Ike’s relationship with Kay Summersby, his driver and secretary during his command of the Allied Forces, would be fodder for 24-hour news channels and wreck his career before he could even mop up in North Africa. Plus Ike’s personality was very low-key. He lost his temper privately, exerting considerable control in public situations where Monty and MacArthur would have ranted and where Patton did shoot his mouth off. The media doesn’t respect level-headed, thoughtful leaders, demanding larger-than-life personalities that they can build up and tear down quickly. There’s a reason Ike is identified with a simpler time.

 

Harry Truman

Of all the men who have been president, Harry Truman has to be the unlikeliest. Maybe Gerald Ford could give him a run for his money, but even into his vice presidency, no one could imagine this unassuming man from a small town in Missouri becoming the most powerful man in the world. No one was more surprised than Harry Truman himself.

Born near Independence, Missouri during the Chester Arthur administration, Truman came from a long line of Midwestern farmers. Until the 1920′s, he showed no interest in politics beyond what anyone in rural Grandview or small town Independence might have shown. He was a farmer. He struggled, occasionally doing well working for a bank and making a half-hearted attempt to become a lawyer, but Truman was essentially the common man. He did, however, have a deep sense of duty and a love of history. A farmer he might have been, but Harry Truman was also well-read for someone of his modest background.

His sense of duty led him to join the Army in 1918 when America entered World War I. It was while in Europe that he met future business partner Eddie Jacobson and Jim Pendergast, son of Kansas City machine boss Tom Pendergast. It was this and several other associations he made while in France that convinced him to run for office. His father had been road overseer for Jackson County, and Truman decided to follow in his footsteps. Surprisingly, Pendergast tapped him to run for County Judge (similar to a county commissioner in other states). In that role, Truman proved to be that most surprising asset to a party machine: The honest politician. Pendergast, a cement company owner, had to bid on Truman’s pet highway projects.

Truman proved a better politician than a businessman. He and Jacobson owned a haberdashery that succumbed to bad timing in the early 1920′s. Yet he proved very effective in working a political system he found corrupt. Under Truman’s leadership, Independence and Kansas City saw its roads expanded and paved, and two new courthouses built. But Truman could only serve two terms as presiding judge. Lamenting that his career was probably over, he found himself the surprise candidate for junior senator from Missouri.

In the Senate, though, Truman had to overcome a preconceived notion of him as the “Senator from Pendergast.” Truman was loyal to Pendergast, considering him a product of the party system no different than Roscoe Conkling of an earlier era, but he also had his scruples. He built relationships with Jack Garner, FDR’s original vice president, as well as Speaker Sam Rayburn and his own future VP, Alben Barkley.

In 1940, he gave the world a preview of how he would win election in his own right in 1948. Largely abandoned by his party, Truman called in all his chips to finance a shoe string campaign to win reelection to the senate. Up until election day, without support from his party or FDR, he won reelection to the Senate. And he was not quiet second time around. As America geared up for an inevitable war that even isolationists could not deny was coming, the Army and Navy found itself gouged and bleeding cash from every corner. The Truman Commission, a bipartisan committee formed to investigate wrong-doing by suppliers and contractors, trimmed billions in waste (though he was quietly told to ignore the mysterious “Manhattan Project”) and exposed several deficiencies in war production. As a result, American industry was better prepared to supply the military for the total war that began on December 7, 1941.

In 1944, the ailing Franklin Roosevelt opted to run for an unprecedented fourth term, mainly out of a sense of duty to the nation. However, Vice President Henry Wallace proved to be somewhat erratic for Democratic (not to mention Republican) tastes. The party told Roosevelt he would need a new running mate. Original VP Garner had left Washington in a huff after two terms with Roosevelt. Wallace was seen as borderline communist while southern candidates proved to be too racist for northern and western voters. Truman, a man not without prejudice but capable of setting them aside, was the compromise candidate. Ironically, Truman was actively campaigning for Democratic stalwart Jimmy Byrnes and did not want the job. Roosevelt shamed him into it. The ticket defeated the GOP’s unlikeable Thomas Dewey.

Yet Roosevelt was sicker than realized. Stalin had noted at Yalta that FDR could not survive more than six months in his current condition. Less than three months into his new term, the president died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Truman likened his sudden elevation to the White House as “the moon, the stars, and all the planets falling on me.” When he asked Eleanor Roosevelt if he could do anything for the newly widowed First Lady, she replied, “Is there anything we can do for you? Harry, you’re the one who’s in trouble now.”

The idea of this small-town politician ascending to the presidency scared a lot of people. How would he handle the end of World War II? Could he handle the massive egos of Churchill and Stalin? At Potsdam, he made friends quickly with Churchill, as well as his successor, Clement Atlee. He also sized up Stalin and found him the most amiable evil man he’d ever met. Despite early attempts to work with the Soviets, it became clear the bulk of the Cold War’s blame could be laid squarely at Stalin’s feet, a man more interested in expansion and domination than world peace.

Truman found himself at the center of a growing Cold War with the Soviets. And yet at home, he took advantage of America’s new prosperity to press from unemployment assistance, national healthcare, and student aid. As Roosevelt’s advisors resigned or retired, Truman began surrounding himself first with old Missouri hands, raising the specter of his machine past, then with those he had befriended during the war, including Omar Bradley, James Forrestal, George Marshall, and, later, Dean Acheson.

In 1948, though, his popularity had ebbed. Both parties wrote him off, despite the Democrats nominating him. Yet Dewey, running again for a second time, arrogantly assumed the election was a formality while Truman criss-crossed the country shaking hands and reminding people that he was one of them. As a result, Dewey lost the election in an upset the news media failed to see coming.

He spent most of his second term in Blair House, the residence across the street from the White House. The Executive Mansion suffered catastrophic structural failures, including the collapse of the floor in Margaret Truman’s bedroom. Truman had the White House gutted and renovated “to last a thousand years.” The foundation was shored up, something not possible when George Washington helped lay the cornerstone. The interior was faithfully replicated.

But it was Korea that dominated his second term. Initially, the public and Congress, already fearful of communists abroad and at home, supported Truman’s decision to call for United Nations action against the government of Kim il-Sung. Initially, the war was a disaster, not helped by General Douglas MacArthur’s chronic insubordination. Truman relieved him of command. Firing a hero in the minds of many, caused his approval ratings to plummet. It was not helped by the drunken rants dressed up as aggressive patriotism on the part of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Truman managed to bring the war nearly to a close (Eisenhower would finish the job.), but he and the Democratic Party were drained and finished by 1952. America was ready for a change, and Eisenhower provided Republicans with an alternative to the ravings of McCarthy and the isolationist retreat of Senator Robert Taft. Truman left Washington to become something most presidents can only dream of: A private citizen.

Many are divided on Truman. Some see him as an honest, decisive president who didn’t stand on the usual pretense of DC. Others see him as a hot head whose rash decisions led to Republican dominance in the 1950′s and deeper hostilities than might have been necessary with the Soviets. However, our three most recent presidents probably needed to take a page from his playbook. Bill Clinton did, to some extent, pressing his agenda in spite of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. George W. Bush seems to be the most Truman-like, though not nearly as successful. Barack Obama probably could stand to give his opponents a little more hell like Harry. But Clinton and Obama are Harvard grads, while Bush is a product of Yale. Two governors, one of them an oil man, with a Chicago lawyer precludes the common touch that, at best made Truman successful and at worst allowed him to function more effectively than other embattled presidents in recent times.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Consistently ranked in the top 3 presidents by historians (The other two are Lincoln and Washington), one would not have expected Franklin Roosevelt to become not only one of America’s most admired presidents but the only four-term president as well. The son of wealthy New York parents, prior to his term as assistant Secretary of the Navy, it seemed the only thing FDR had going for him was sharing a last name with cousin Theodore (of the so-called “Oyster Bay Roosevelts”). Outside of politics, he was dependent on his mother for income and something of an idle son of wealth typical of the Gilded Age.

Yet Roosevelt inherited a flare for adventure from his mother’s family, the Delanos, traveling extensively before and during his initial time in Washington. He also had the Roosevelt ambition. When tapped to run for State Assembly in Upstate New York, he hired a car to criss-cross his district and shake as many hands as possible. By 1910, despite arguments with New York City’s infamous Tammany Hall machine, FDR became a Democratic Party stalwart. So it came as no surprise when Woodrow Wilson tapped him in 1912 to be Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

While Wilson might have rubbed people the wrong way during his eight years as president, Roosevelt won admirers. Like cousin Theodore, he was a master politician, skilled at making deals and bringing opposing sides together. By 1919, rumors had relief czar Herbert Hoover running for the Democratic nomination with FDR as his running mate, a ticket Roosevelt openly hoped to see. When Hoover declared that he was a Republican and not ready for the White House, Democrats nonetheless paired Roosevelt off with Ohio Governor James Cox. The ticket lost to Warren Harding, and the Democrats spent the next dozen years or so in the political wilderness.

Roosevelt took a break from politics and went into law. He and Eleanor had to rethink their marriage after she caught him in an affair. He started a law firm while building a home for Eleanor on his Hyde Park estate. The two remained partners, and Eleanor’s public service career blossomed in the early 1920′s. However, in 1924, it all nearly came to an end. It is thought (and biographer Jean Edward Smith does not contradict this) that he contracted polio, from which he made a remarkable recovery despite permanent damage to his legs. However, modern experts suspect that Roosevelt contracted influenza which led to Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which also attacks the nervous system.

Roosevelt, being a Roosevelt, was not about to let his diminished capacity stop him. After months of therapy and exercise, he learned how to walk assisted or with a crutch and a cane. He was soon back to work at his law firm and taking the waters at Warm Springs, Georgia. It was in this small town, where he built a center for rehabilitating polio victims, that he came into contact with many rural southerners who would be hit hard by the Depression. FDR became Georgia’s adopted son.

In 1928, New York Governor Al Smith opted not to run again in order to take on Herbert Hoover in the 1928 election. FDR, having now proven himself both a loyal Democrat and physicially robust in spite of the damage to his legs, was anointed Smith’s successor. Roosevelt fairly walked into governor’s mansion in Albany, the second office he held in common with Theodore. (Like FDR, Roosevelt had served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy before becoming President.) As the economy tanked, he implemented many programs that would serve as models for the New Deal.

By 1932, it was clear Hoover was in over his head. Hoover had inherited a humming economy and planned his presidency around it. When the stock market crash of October, 1929 blind-sided him, Hoover floundered, stubbornly clinging to his belief that government intervention of any kind would make matters worse, even declaring on a couple of occasions that “the Depression is over.” FDR ran against several candidates, including Al Smith, for the nomination. He eliminated Texas’ Jack Garner by tapping him for the vice presidency. (Garner would famously say that the vice president’s role wasn’t worth “a bucket of warm piss.”) FDR, while certainly popular with voters, did not so much win the election as Hoover lost it by imploding.

Once in the White House, Roosevelt proceeded to take action. It is Roosevelt who gave us the “100 days” every new president is now expected to perform upon taking office. With a Democratic Congress in both houses, he was able to declare a banking holiday and force banks to prove solvency before they reopened, founded the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Securities and Exchange Commission, and several New Deal relief programs.

This is where we get most of our myths about FDR. Liberals claim that this was a permanent change in government while conservatives like to point out that the economy never came out of the Depression before World War II, that the New Deal failed. Both assertions are spectacularly wrong. Roosevelt never intended the New Deal to last forever, with the exception of Social Security, unemployment, the SEC, and the FDIC, all of which exist today (with Social Security’s problems a major component of our current debt issues). However, what conservatives fail to point out (or maybe do not realize) is that the New Deal did work while it was in place. In 1937, FDR decided it was time to shut down the more temporary parts of the New Deal, now that unemployment was falling and gross domestic product was on the rise. Unfortunately, this triggered the recession of 1937, which left the economy firing only only three cylinders for the next couple of years. Hamstringing his efforts to retrench and adapt was FDR’s bizarre scheme to pack the Supreme Court to protect remaining New Deal programs, followed by a failed purge of the Democratic Party. Roosevelt’s second term was as troubled as his first term was a success. It did not portend a third term.

However, things in Asia and Europe deteriorated. Isolationism dominated American public opinion in 1939 and 1940, but no one expected the US to remain completely neutral. Roosevelt began sending aid to Britain as the UK was America’s best defense against Hitler. FDR believed that peace with Japan could be brokered while the US waited for Germany to provoke them into the war, most likely through submarine warfare as with World War I.  He did not declare himself a candidate, but openly said he could be drafted. The Democrats did so, and it is actually with some relief that the Republicans nominated Wendell Wilkie to challenge him. The men did not initially like each other, Wilkie proved to be a quick study on the crisis brewing in Europe and Asia. Wilkie issued statements designed to ensure FDR was able to work with Churchill in combating German and Italian aggression. After FDR won, he sent Wilkie to Britain to coordinate with Churchill. Said Roosevelt, “You may have to sit in this office some day.” If FDR’s second term was about hubris, his third was about duty.

FDR and Churchill worked closely once America entered the war. And Roosevelt worked hard to develop a good relationship with Josef Stalin. While Stalin himself is considered one of history’s biggest villains, it is very telling that the Soviet leader told FDR that he thought Hitler was unstable.

With the war still raging, a fourth term was a forgone conclusion to everyone but the GOP’s self-important nominee, Thomas Dewey. Vice President Garner committed political suicide by opposing Roosevelt in 1940, and then Vice President Henry Wallace proved to be too erratic. Roosevelt found a compromise running mate in Missouri’s Harry Truman. That may have been his best decision. His third term had taken its toll on him. By 1944, Roosevelt was suffering from severe high blood pressure and congestive heart failure. After the Yalta Conference, where the Allies planned the postwar world, Stalin noted that FDR looked like he had less than six months to live. His words proved prophetic. A mere 82 days after his fourth inauguration, Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Harry Truman was summoned to the White House from a weekly poker game with House Speaker Sam Rayburn. Eleanor Roosevelt informed Truman that the president was dead. When Truman asked if there was anything he could do for the First Lady, she responded, “Is there anything we can do for you? Harry, you’re the one who’s in trouble now.”

There are many who have a somewhat revisionist view of Roosevelt, blaming him for the present economic crisis. However, those same people look to Ronald Reagan as a model of how to face such upheaval. What they fail to understand that, while Reagan had a different ideology from FDR, FDR was Reagan’s hero and role model. From FDR, Reagan learned that a president needs to have a plan and self-confidence, and he needs to unite a people even when they may be diametrically opposed to his or her policies. Without Roosevelt, no president since World War II would have been able to do his job.

Herbert Hoover

If you ever wanted proof that ideologues make horrible leaders, look no further than Herbert Hoover. Here is a man who came into the White House with the reputation and the qualifications to place himself among the greatest presidents of the twentieth century but managed to blow it. Some of Hoover’s poor reputation is not deserved. The Great Depression began seven months into his term. There were warning signs, but no one really saw them. It was a New Era, after all. However, Hoover was stubborn and self-deluded, denying federal aid when even the most conservative of business and political leaders fairly screamed for it.

Hoover is kind of like a libertarian version of Woodrow Wilson, the smartest guy in the room whose biggest fault is that he knows it. He had a pathological inability to see how anyone else could come up with a different conclusion than he did.

Which is too bad because Hoover was one of the most impressive men in the nation at the time. During World War I, he organized and ran the effort to feed Belgians, who were trapped between the Allies and Germany. So forceful was his leadership that German troops were under orders to allow Hoover to pass unmolested through their lines and back.

Under Warren Harding, and later, Calvin Coolidge, he became Commerce Secretary, often called the Wonder Boy as he took on tasks beyond the scope of his department. And therein lies the problem. Late in his second term, Coolidge would hear of something Hoover did and mutter “What has our Wonder Boy done now?”

Nonetheless, such was his reputation that Hoover was the only choice for the Republican nomination in 1928, which let him cruise into the presidency. As his term began, people predicted the 1930′s to be a period of unprecedented prosperity.

And then came Black Tuesday. Part of Hoover’s problem was that he would implement a policy and state “There. The depression is over.” Most of the time, he would be confronted with evidence that government intervention was called for and explain that it would hurt the people the idea was supposed to help. In 1932, with 25% unemployment and the stock market still in tatters, the people decided Hoover wasn’t the Great Engineer after all. Franklin Roosevelt defeated him in a landslide.

Calvin Coolidge

Ronald Reagan had two role models coming into the White House in 1981. The first was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who came to power during the Great Depression. The American economy in 1981, though nowhere nearly as precarious as it is today, was mired in one of the worst periods of stagnation since the Depression. Reagan saw Roosevelt’s willingness to up-end the status quo as the path to restoring the nation. But where FDR implemented the New Deal to keep America from deteriorating into a Third World country (a term that did not exist until the Cold War began), Reagan would need to reverse course for the crisis he faced. To do that, he would have to turn to his second role model, the quiet, dour Calvin Coolidge.

Coolidge, a former governor of Massachusetts, was a contender for the 1920 Republican nomination. Smart money said that Coolidge, who had made his reputation breaking the Boston Police Union in the 1919 strike, rivaled Theodore Roosevelt crony General Leonard Wood. Whoever won the nomination would likely beat the Democratic ticket (which turned out to be Ohio Governor James Cox and Navy Secretary Franklin Roosevelt). But in 1920, conventions were not the primary-driven pieces of stagecraft they are today. Incumbent presidents had to fight to keep their jobs. The anointed heir to the party throne might emerge from the convention as an also-ran. 1920 was no exception. Back-room deals and political bartering resulted the nomination of the handsome, affable Warren Harding, a man with Bill Clinton’s libido, but not his intelligence. To give weight to the ticket, the GOP tapped Coolidge as vice-president.

Harding, as discussed in this space recently, was in over his head. He famously predicted the job would kill him, and in 1923, it did. Coolidge, a classic New England Puritan, became president in a manner befitting a plain, simple-living man from Vermont. He was sworn in late at night by his father, a notary public, in a Vermont farmhouse with no power and no indoor plumbing. It was probably a good thing, too, as Harding had the most corrupt cabinet since Ulysses S. Grant half a century earlier.

Coolidge quickly crafted his image as “Silent Cal,” a man who said very little. Ironically, it was Coolidge who first used the new medium of radio to regularly address the nation, giving the president a direct line to the people. He also started the tradition of broadcasting the State of the Union address, an absolute novelty in 1923.

Coolidge inherited a postwar boom and crafted his policies to preserve it. Coolidge was a major proponent of the trickle down theory that Reagan favored. At the time he came to office, the highest income tax rate in America was 70%. He had it down to 50% by the time he left office in 1929. He also lifted many of the regulations that came out of the Progressive Era. Much of this sustained the prosperity of the 1920′s through the end of Coolidge’s term, but…

Many of those same moves lifted controls that might have prevented the Crash of 1929 or at least mitigated its effects. Whereas we had 70 years of both Keynesian and Milton Friedman economics to guide us in 2008, the consequences of Coolidge’s hands-off approach to the economy were hard to predict. It was a new world, one where the United States occupied a position now occupied by China in the world, a nation with a rapidly growing economy and poised to become the world’s commercial superpower. Most of the institutions we now take for granted, even after 2008, did not exist, or were so new that no one quite knew how to utilize them.

However, while Coolidge shares some of the blame for the Crash of 1929, what cost him some of the later respect of historians, even after a brief renaissance in his reputation in the 1980′s, is his passivity. Not only was Coolidge reserved, he was hardly decisive. Many of his policies came from letting cabinet members such as Harlan Stone, Herbert Hoover, or Andrew Mellon pick up the ball and run, simply giving their moves his stamp of approval. No one expected him to be as bold as Theodore Roosevelt or his cousin Franklin. Certainly, the nation no longer had the patience for the Sheldon Cooperesque Woodrow Wilson. But lesser lights such as Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and even the paranoid Richard Nixon possessed a requisite amount of gumption to make bold moves when called upon. Only Nixon could go to China, and only Coolidge could have given weight to unpopular banking regulations that might have kept the economy from overheating.

Coolidge was a good president for his time, but he could never be a great one. The job requires far more imagination than he had. But he was damn sight better than the empty suit he replaced, Warren Harding.

Warren G. Harding

In surveys of historians on the performance of presidents, Warren Harding universally ranks last among the twentieth century’s chief executives. Think about that for a second. He ranks lower than Herbert Hoover, who’s handling of the first four years of the Great Depression likely prolonged it to the point where 20% unemployment was considered a recovery. He ranks lower than Jimmy Carter, whose presidency was doomed by the fallout from Watergate, stagflation, and the Iran hostage crisis. He ranks lower even than Richard Nixon, whose paranoid antics wrecked trust in the government for the next three generations. Why?

Two reasons: He spent most of his time in office getting laid, and he had the single most corrupt cabinet in US history. His attorney general, Harry Daugherty, makes Alberto Gonzalez look like Perry Mason. The former never stopped JFK or Bill Clinton from accomplishing great things, but Harding spent an inordinate about of time boffing two or three mistresses (not to mention various one-night stands he was able to arrange). But then he could still be a hands-off president. It worked for Reagan. Oh, wait. Reagan didn’t spend the 1980′s using an intern’s firm little butt to polish the Oval Office desk. He was busy negotiating the end of the Cold War with Gorbachev.

No, Harding was really hands off, letting his Ohio Gang pretty much run the country. And the Ohio Gang was busy selling off pieces of the nation to the highest bidder and lining their pockets with the proceeds. In fact, Daugherty, Harding’s campaign manager, helped engineer the Ohio senator’s nomination by cutting deals with Senator Albert Fall, a former prospector and oil speculator, and Jake Hamon, another oil man who craved the position of Secretary of Interior. Harding got elected, but Hamon was killed by his mistress before Harding’s inauguration. So Harding tapped Fall instead. And Fall proceeded to illegally sell off three naval oil fields to three different oil companies, including Sinclair Oil. As the Democratic Party (and eventually Harding’s own Republican Party) began calling for heads to roll, Harding quipped that it wasn’t his enemies he worried about. His friends were going to ruin him. He also once said “This f***ing job’s going to kill me.”

It did. The resulting Teapot Dome scandal, named for the odd-shaped national monument in Wyoming that sat in the midst of a rich oil field, put Harding under such stress that it killed him.

Which, of course, was the worst thing that could happen to the Teapot Dome conspirators. Harding’s death elevated Calvin Coolidge to the White House. Harding was a glad-handing yes man, easily duped and swayed. Coolidge was the governor of Massachusetts who handled the Boston police strike of 1919. The first thing Coolidge did was distance himself from the Teapot Domers. He had a country to run, which apparently hadn’t been done since stroke-ravaged Woodrow Wilson left office in 1921.

So what was the result? Daugherty and Fall eventually went to jail. Oil man Harry Sinclair did six months for contempt of the Senate. One conspirator was likely murdered. And Coolidge put the Bureau of Investigation, which Daugherty used as his private security force, on a tighter leash. This eventually led to its reorganization 12 years later as J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Several other oil figures faced multiple indictments, and two even died in a bizarre murder-suicide when faced with prison time.

Was it worse than Watergate? Watergate permanently shattered the nation’s confidence in its government. It also showed a very capable president whose contempt for his own citizenry led to his own destruction. Harding was simply a dupe. That we did not have a Civil War pending on his watch is all that saves him from being worse the James Buchanan. In short, he was a likeable patsy.

Woodrow Wilson

I’ve always had mixed feelings about our 28th president. On the one hand, he was a leader in the progressive movement, modernized the banking industry, and pressed hard for peace in Europe after World War I. On the other hand, he segregated the federal government, failing to pick up where his three predecessors – McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft – left off in race relations. One could make the excuse that he was the child of the Confederacy and could be excused for the prejudices of his time. To that, I say it he was elected in 1912, a little late in the game to be hanging onto that character fault at his level of prestige.

That Wilson survived his first term at all is remarkable in and of itself. By the time he suffered the  catastrophic stroke that left wife Edith in virtual control of the nation in 1919, he had survived five strokes, four before being elected governor of New Jersey. His ability not only to function but to govern – first Princeton University, then New Jersey, and finally, the United States – is a testament to his resiliency.

It also explains his increasingly intractable personality. Starting with his days as president of Princeton University, Wilson became more and more resistant to opposition, developing an autocratic style. In many ways, Wilson compares to Nixon in his autocracy. However, when viewed objectively, Wilson is redeemed by his idealism. Whereas Nixon’s inferiority complex was visible for all to see, Wilson clearly had a vision for his college and for the nation. Certainly, he was neither lazy nor dishonest. Like his successor, Warren Harding, he literally worked himself to death. (Although Harding, a robust man, died suddenly. Wilson lingered for three years after leaving the White House.)

But many of Wilson’s problems mirror those of an earlier president, Thomas Jefferson. Like Jefferson, Wilson was a brilliant political theorist. Like Jefferson, he was an intellectual. Unlike Jefferson, he had no John Adams or Alexander Hamilton to serve as a foil to give him a sense of pragmatism.

Intellectualism has certainly not been a hindrance to the presidency. Jefferson, James Madison (a fellow Princeton alum), and Lincoln were all intellectuals. FDR, Kennedy, and Clinton were also intellectual presidents. However, all these men learned from experience and were able to adjust. Wilson…

Not so much. I think it’s safe to say that, out of the 43 men who have occupied the White House, Woodrow Wilson is the Sheldon Cooper of American presidents.

What’s Wrong With America: Campaign Ads

It’s that time again. That time when the guy who wants to run the country and the guy running the country accuse each other of the most egregious things: Like one guy’s a Mormon and the other guy’s black. Oh, wait. They save that for after the conventions.

But it’s not just the presidential campaigns. Every year, some of the states pick governors. Every two years, all of the House and one third of the Senate is up for grabs. There are primaries and general elections. Added to all this electoral goodness are municipal elections and various issues for school levies and casinos and what have you.

And in each and every case, there’s a campaign manager whose job is to lie, slander, and terrorize.

I’m of the firm belief that we should make room for immigrants by deporting these low-lifes. Unfortunately…

They’ve been with us since the dawn of the republic. And they’re an import from Europe. Go on. Ask any Brit who knows their history about “rotten boroughs.” It’s an early forerunner to the Chicago ballot system that polls the Chicagoland’s cemeteries.

Honestly, if you want an objective opinion of how Obama has done, or how Romney might perform, you’re going to have to do something the campaign managers don’t want you to do: Read the news.

I don’t mean those idiotic blogs that only massage your ideological leanings. Obama’s getting the worst of it, partly from pure racism (and don’t deny it. You know the cowards are out there.), but mainly because he’s the sitting president. Romney’s a newer flavor. It’ll be well into September when all the black helicopter chasing and frustrated Weatherman wannabe morons come up with rumors slightly more credible than Elvis sightings, UFO theories, and anything that comes out of a Kardashian’s mouth.

It frustrates me to no end to watch campaign ads that bear less resemblance to the person being slammed than they do to the work of James Callender. Who’s that?

This genius made a living telling the world that John Adams wanted to be the King of America, sell the US out to the British, and quite possibly eat your baby. James, however, ran afoul of the Alien & Sedition Acts. While unconstitutional and regretted by Adams, His Rotundity nevertheless decided that, before Congress corrected that mistake, to use them on Callender. When his patron, Thomas Jefferson, did not pardon him, Callender emerged from his prison sentence to spread rumors about the author of the Declaration of Independence. The story of Jefferson’s affair with Sally Hemings proved true – almost two hundred years later – the rest of Callender’s tripe bore about as much resemblance to reality as I do to Rita Hayworth.

Fast forward about 40 years, and we have the campaign staff of William Henry Harrison painting Martin Van Buren as a rich aristocrat while Harrison is a brawling frontier cabin dweller. Never mind that Van Buren clawed his way up from poverty while Harrison was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and lived on a sprawling Ohio River plantation.

The fact is every election cycle, we have to put up with this garbage. And they come in all stripes. You have the ones that skew statistics. You have the ones that manage to use footage of a candidate to misquote him. (Neat trick, but bullshit is bullshit.) Then there’s the series of commercials I refer to as “The Bitch.” You’ve heard her. The woman who comes on in a soft, but worried voice, who fears the end of civilization itself because this issue is done by people who only want to do you harm. I don’t fault the woman doing the ads. It’s a sweet gig if you can get it.

I fault the campaign managers. If I am said to be an unrepentant bigot toward any group, then I proudly call myself a campaign manager bigot. These are people who lie. They distort. And they destroy the democratic process. Worst of all, they use fear to get you to change your mind.

One such douchebag, Ken Blackwell’s manager for Ohio governor, suggested in one breath that maybe Ted Strickland is gay and in the next said his job was to win a campaign by any means necessary. Incidentally, Strickland won – by a landslide, and Blackwell’s party nominated current governor John Kasich, who generally does not sound like an idiot.

There are other stupid campaign tricks that bug the hell out of me. Not lowering taxes is a tax hike? (No, stupid! It’s not a tax hike. It’s not anything! I took math in high school.) The anti-casino ads talking about all the out-of-staters taking jobs and the economic drain casino towns. (The casino towns in Indiana found these hysterical as the only out-of-staters hired were from Ohio and Kentucky. You know. Locals. They also had a drop in crime and a rise in their economy. Don’t pitch statistics reality won’t backup.)

I’d like to say I have a solution, but I don’t. By November, gays, Muslims, corporate executives, and Christians will be pointed at as boogiemen that one guy or the other (or even both) is completely and totally behind. The only suggestion I have is to use campaign ads as your cue to hit the john, get a beer, or even change the channel.

July 20, 1969

My earliest clear memory is of Armstrong stepping off the ladder onto the lunar surface.

It’s time we go back.

William Howard Taft

How do you follow Theodore Roosevelt? The same could be asked of Roosevelt’s cousin, FDR, or Ronald Reagan. In the case of both Reagan and Roosevelt, you elect the man’s handpicked successor to finish up his paperwork. In the case of Reagan, that would be George H.W. Bush, who very much would have liked a second term. In the case of TR…

Let’s just say that Mrs. Taft wanted the White House more than Will Taft wanted it. But that’s what happens when you send a judge to do an executive’s job. Not that Taft wasn’t capable or willing. It just wasn’t his thing. When you get down to it, only James Buchanan wanted out of the White House more than Taft.

But I get ahead of myself. When I reached this president, a Cincinnati product like William Henry Harrison (a Virginia transplant), Ulysses Grant, or Benjamin Harrison, I decided to look more at the local angle than Taft in light of the two presidential giants who book end his term, Roosevelt and Wilson.

For that, I read Mark Painter’s short biography of Taft. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because I selected his wife’s biography of William Henry Harrison to look into that president’s life. Like Mrs. Painter’s book, the Taft bio was only a hundred pages long. Unlike Mrs. Painter, Judge Painter has a whole four-year term to work with.

And it’s appropriate Mark Painter is a judge, for that was what Taft was, first and foremost. Taft went to University of Cincinnati Law School and started as an assistant county prosecutor for Hamilton County. Eventually, he became a Superior Court judge, Solicitor General of the United States, and a federal appellate judge. If that was as far as he ever went, he would have been happy.

But Taft was also friends with Theodore Roosevelt. On Roosevelt’s recommendation, President McKinley appointed him governor of The Phillipines after the Spanish-American War. Good thing, too. Taft set about crafting a democratic government and modernizing the country, a sharp contrast from military governor Arthur MacArthur’s. (Yes, the father of Douglas MacArthur.) The general looked at The Phillipines like Indian land recently taken and treated the natives as such. Taft took to the job with gusto and declined a seat on the Supreme Court, his life’s goal, because he did not think The Phillipines could spare him.

As it was, Taft would be drawn further and further from the bench. He returned to the US to succeed Elihu Root as Secretary of War. Yet his tenure in Roosevelt’s cabinet was decidedly un-warlike. He stepped in as provisional governor of Cuba when civil war threatened to break out in the young republic, mediating between rebels and the original government. He supervised construction of the Panama Canal. He also spent a considerable amount of time huddling with Roosevelt on anti-trust and labor policy, as well as making diplomatic calls on Roosevelt’s behalf, typically the Secretary of State’s job. In his position, his skills as a mediator were invaluable.

In the White House, where he served as Roosevelt’s chosen successor (handily defeating perennial bridesmaid William Jennings Bryant in the general election), he was miserable. While Taft could resolve a dispute or run a project or set up a government and public services, he had no stomach for the rough-and-tumble politics required of the chief executive. When Roosevelt tried to retake the White House in 1912, it probably came as a relief when Wilson actually won.

What Taft wanted, and what he thought he’d never have after Wilson’s victory, was a seat on the Supreme Court. Yet in 1921, Warren Harding became president. A Republican like Taft, Harding chose the Cincinnati-born judge to fill a vacancy for chief justice. On the bench, he disagreed constantly with two of his associate justices in the opinions handed down. Ironically, they became his closest friends on the high court. It was here, however, that Taft was happiest. And here that his time in the cabinet and as governor of The Phillipines paid off. The federal courts were a mess in 1921. The Supreme Court had a huge backlog of cases. There were not enough federal courts to handle the lower cases, nor could the Supreme Court refuse to hear cases. On top of that, the court was housed in the Senate Building at the Capitol. Taft wanted to 1.) expand the lower courts, 2.) limit the Supreme Court’s case load to only important cases, and 3.) get this third branch of the US government its own building. By 1926, Taft’s efforts resulted in the largest overhaul of the federal judiciary since 1789, when Congress originally defined the courts and the Supreme Court’s role. Taft did not live to see the Supreme Court Building itself open, but he was present when the cornerstone was laid.

Like a lot of presidents, Taft’s biggest accomplishments preceded his time in the White House. Unlike any other president, he was actually more accomplished after he left office than he was before or during his tenure.