HARSH PRESIDENTIAL JUDGMENT OF PRESIDENTS -- Almost an American Institution

BY EDWIN COONEY
Written Friday, May 25th, 2007

As I’ve stated on numerous occasions—privately as well as in my columns—I’m a Jimmy Carter Democrat and have remained so, through thick and thin, since 1976.

Last weekend, my political hero startled some pretty impressionable people by asserting that the Bush administration was the worst in history in-so-far as our effect on the world was concerned.

The former president’s assertions in the Democratic Gazette of Little Rock, Arkansas as well as over the BBC were considered by many to have been exceedingly harsh and even unprecedented. Douglas Brinkley, one of Mr. Carter’s biographers, called his remarks “fighting words,” suggesting that Jimmy Carter’s words were unusually abusive to President George W. Bush.

It’s hard to understand how Mr. Brinkley could reach that conclusion had he bothered to do just a little research. Former presidents have often been every bit as harsh on their successors.

One of the richest sources for what former presidents have said about each other is William A. DeGregorio’s Complete Book of U.S. Presidents. The following presidential observations are from the fourth edition of Mr. DeGregorio’s work.

President Washington had no predecessor to criticize him. However, criticism by Thomas Paine -- whom many consider to be the Father of the American Revolution through publication of his famous pamphlet “Common Sense”, which swore enmity to all tyrannies -- was pretty powerful stuff by the end of President Washington’s second term of office. Paine, who gained the admiration and friendship of George Washington during and after the American Revolution, felt abandoned by Washington when Paine became a prisoner during the French revolution. In an angry open letter to President Washington from France in 1796, Thomas Paine excoriated George Washington thusly:

“AND AS TO YOU, SIR, TREACHEROUS TO PRIVATE FRIENDSHIP (FOR SO YOU HAVE BEEN TO ME, AND THAT IN THE DAY OF DANGER) AND A HYPOCRITE IN PUBLIC LIFE, THE WORLD WILL BE PUZZLED TO DECIDE, WHETHER YOU ARE AN APOSTATE OR IMPOSTER, WHETHER YOU ABANDONED GOOD PRINCIPLES OR WHETHER YOU EVER HAD ANY.”

President Washington more than survived Thomas Paine’s attack, but many, especially Jeffersonian Republicans, deeply believed that Washington’s tendency to lean toward Britain was elitist and potentially damaging to Thomas Paine’s perpetual goal—freedom.

Thomas Jefferson didn’t live to see Andrew Jackson become President, but he witnessed Jackson’s frequent rages on the floor of the United States Senate. Jackson was a young Senator from Tennessee and Jefferson, Vice President under John Adams, was Senate President when he asserted that Jackson was “…A DANGEROUS MAN.”

John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State under James Monroe had supported Andrew Jackson when Secretary of War John C. Calhoun wanted Jackson arrested following his 1820 invasion of Spanish Florida. He was defeated for re-election as President by Old Hickory in 1828. Of Jackson John Quincy Adams later wrote:

“A BARBARIAN WHO COULD NOT WRITE A SENTENCE OF GRAMMAR AND WHO COULD HARDLY SPELL HIS OWN NAME.”

Whether it was pure anger over his defeat by Jackson or jealousy of Jackson’s popularity that led John Quincy Adams to attack Jackson isn’t clear. What is clear however is that Adams saw Andrew Jackson, with all of his popularity, to be an inferior individual and leader.

President James Knox Polk was conducting a war with Mexico in 1848 which many -- including Illinois Representative Abraham Lincoln -- considered to be an immoral war despite America’s triumph. Said Lincoln of President Polk:

“I MORE THAN SUSPECT THAT HE IS DEEPLY CONSCIOUS OF BEING IN THE WRONG—THAT HE FEELS THE BLOOD OF THIS WAR, LIKE THE BLOOD OF ABEL, CRYING IN HEAVEN AGAINST HIM…HE IS A DEEPLY BEWILDERED, CONFOUNDED, AND A MISERABLY PERPLEXED MAN.”

Whatever President Polk might or might not have felt about his presidency in general or the war in particular, his weakened physique enabled him to live only three months and eleven days after his term. He died on June 15th, 1849.

Former president Franklin Pierce, whose own personal tragedies and failings led up to the Civil War, said of President Lincoln:

“LINCOLN IS, FOR ALL HIS LIMITED ABILITY AND NARROW INTELLIGENCE, THE ABOLITIONISTS’ WILLING INSTURMENT FOR ALL THE WOE WHICH, THUS FAR, HAS BEEN BROUGHT UPON THE COUNTRY FOR ALL THE DEGRADATION, ALL THE ATROCITY, AND ALL THE DESOLATION AND RUIN.”

Like President Washington, Abraham Lincoln easily survived the attacks on him made by “handsome Frank” Pierce, primarily because Pierce by the mid 1860s was seen even by his New Hampshire neighbors as having been a political and personal failure due to personal tragedy and perhaps even heavy drinking.

Then, of course, there was Teddy Roosevelt’s assessment of Woodrow Wilson. TR was never happy; it seems, with any president who served after he did:

“FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, NEVER ALLUDE TO WILSON AS AN IDEALIST, MILITAIRE, OR AN ALTRUIST. HE IS A DOCTRINAIRE WHEN HE CAN BE SO WITH SAFETY TO HIS PERSONAL AMBITION….HE HASN’T A TOUCH OF IDEALISM IN HIM. HIS ADVOCACY OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS NO MORE REPRESENTS IDEALISM ON HIS PART THAN DID HIS ADVOCACY OF PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY….HE IS A SILLY DOCTRINAIRE AT TIMES, AND A COLD-BLOODED POLITICIAN ALWAYS.”

TR’s criticism of Wilson came in 1919 just days before his January 6th death while President Wilson traveled triumphantly through Europe following the November 11th, 1918 armistice that ended “The Great War” and “saved the world for democracy,”--a sentiment expressed by Wilson and millions of others.

Former President Truman’s assessments of Republicans were seldom if ever gentle. In the volume the late Stephen Ambrose wrote about Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency, he quoted Truman as saying of Ike:

“HE DOESN’T KNOW ANY MORE ABOUT BEING PRESIDENT THAN A PIG KNOWS ABOUT SUNDAY.”

Truman’s assessment of General Eisenhower in Mr. DeGregorio’s book doesn’t represent an improvement of President Truman’s evaluation of President Eisenhower in Professor Ambrose’s book:

“IKE DIDN’T KNOW ANYTHING AND ALL THE TIME HE WAS IN OFFICE, HE DIDN’T LEARN A THING. IN 1959, WHEN CASTRO CAME TO POWER DOWN IN CUBA, IKE JUST SAT ON HIS ASS AND ACTED AS IF HE DIDN’T NOTICE WHAT WAS GOING ON DOWN THERE. WHY, MAYBE CASTRO WOULD JUST GO AWAY OR SOMETHING.”

One of Mr. Truman’s least favorite politicians in any party was future President Richard M. Nixon. What President Truman said about Richard Nixon may have been said long before RMN was elected. It goes as follows:

“RICHARD NIXON IS A NO-GOOD LYING BASTARD. HE CAN LIE OUT OF BOTH SIDES OF HIS MOUTH AT THE SAME TIME AND IF HE EVER CAUGHT HIMSELF TELLING THE TRUTH, HE’D LIE, JUST TO KEEP HIS HAND IN.”

As harsh as it sounded last weekend, by comparison with the above, Jimmy Carter’s assessment of George W. Bush as “AS THE WORST PRESIDENT IN OUR HISTORY IN-SO-FAR AS OUR PLACE IN THE WORLD IS CONCERNED,” is reasonably mild. However, it brought down on Mr. Carter the force of all of the Conservative dogma attacks which those of us sympathetic to Jimmy Carter have heard since he was President. Accordingly, President Carter is far more affective when he addresses himself to issues than he is when he addresses himself to personalities or persons.

Every former president has an official right that President Carter knows about and actually spoke of some years ago in an interview. That right is to address the United States Senate at any time.

Suppose President Carter, feeling as he did about President Bush’s pending invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, had availed himself of this prerogative and had appeared before the U.S. Senate to say something like this:

“I STAND BEFORE YOU TODAY, NOT IN OPPOSITION TO OUR PRESIDENT, FOR I KNOW WHAT IT IS TO SERVE AS PRESIDENT AND THUS TO SUFFER ALL OF THE FRUSTRATIONS WHICH THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THAT OFFICE OFTEN BRING TO ITS OCCUPANT. NOR, DO I COME AS AN OPPONENT OF ALL WAR BECAUSE, TERRIBLE AS IT IS, WAR CAN BE ESSENTIAL TO HUMAN FREEDOM AND INDIVIDUAL SECURITY.

“I STAND BEFORE YOU TODAY RATHER IN SAD OPPOSITION TO PRESIDENT BUSH’S PROPOSED INVASION OF IRAQ BECAUSE I SEE WITHIN THE VERY CIRCUMSTANCE OF THAT INVASION THE GATEWAY, NOT TO VICTORY OVER TERRORISM, BUT RATHER TO AN UNINTENDED INVITATION TO THE INCREASE OF DEADLIER AND MORE WIDESPREAD TERRORISM…”

I think it might have been a hell of a speech and might well have increased Jimmy Carter’s status as a statesman even if it had brought him temporary criticism.

I’d have been delighted to help him write the speech. Late as it is—I just did.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY