THE BAD ONES

By Edwin Cooney

Of course we don’t purposely do it, but from time to time we really do choose bad presidents. Most Americans rate presidents largely on two considerations: “Did I like or agree with him?” or “Did he keep or break his word?”

Recently, for an internet presentation, I researched in some depth the five men who held the presidency between 1845 and 1860. With the exception of James Knox Polk (whom some scholars actually rate as a “near great president” since he accomplished in one term all of his campaign promises), the others (Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan) were exceedingly ineffectual. The question inevitably is: How could that be? Were they less educated or less capable than previous chief executives? The answer is that although Taylor and Fillmore (the 1848 Whig national ticket) were comparatively undereducated, the rest were on an educational par with earlier presidents.

What then makes a president great? What makes a president “bad”? As I’ve learned over the years, “great presidents” such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, have two things in common. The first is that they established institutions and traditions which favorably affected the structure of government or society for generations to come. The second thing is that they were willing to take major political risks to bring such changes about.

Some examples of these are George Washington’s personal construction of the Executive Branch of our government, Mr. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the subsequent passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution which ended slavery as the military went about the business of quashing the South’s rebellion, and FDR’s utilization of government as a legitimate tool for affecting the lives of the average citizen with the passage of Social Security, farming and banking legislation just to name a few items.
FDR also conducted us through a major world war which would enhance anyone’s reputation. Thus, great presidents have done things that construct or reconstruct thereby strengthening our nation in the process.

So, you ask, what makes a “bad president? Glancing at the names at the bottom of most presidential rankings, one inevitably sees such names as John Quincy Adams and Millard Fillmore. Adams, although experienced and highly principled, failed in office because he was seen by many as having made a “corrupt bargain” with House Speaker Henry Clay to be elected by the House of Representatives in February 1825 after the popular Andrew Jackson was not able to acquire enough electoral votes to win the presidency.
Millard Fillmore, whom John Quincy Adams befriended when they both served in the House of Representatives ten years or so after Adams’ presidency, failed because his enforcement of the fugitive slave law exacerbated rather than cooled the flames between the North and the South in the 1850s. Ulysses S. Grant, who was generally considered a great man and president during his lifetime, is regarded now as having failed as president for allowing himself to be used by corrupt men in politics and finance even as he remained pure in his personal and official conduct. Then there’s Herbert Clark Hoover—an excellent administrator and conscientious public servant who fed much of the world during World War I. He failed as president because he was unwilling to make essential economic and politically principled changes to meet the genuine economic distress which was visited on millions of Americans by the “Great Depression.”

Bad presidents are inevitably unpopular, and, not surprisingly, are seldom reelected -- President Grant being the exception. What bad presidents or presidencies have in common is that they are overwhelmed by the political and economic situations and circumstances they were elected to control. The immediate pre-Civil War presidencies failed because those presidents couldn’t see beyond the writ of the law. If slavery was lawful, men such as Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan said, then the law must be upheld. The principle that we are a government of laws and not of men sounded fine in the wake of Watergate, but as I see it, this very observation is what brought on the worst political and societal train wreck in our history.

No single principle or rule can be followed by someone who wishes to be President of the United States to insure presidential success or prevent a “bad presidency.” Presidents are rated by the people they serve. Presidents such as Truman and Eisenhower have risen since they left the White House and, as observed earlier, Ulysses S. Grant has declined in public and scholarly esteem over the years.

Ah! but therein lies one of the inevitable factors in any president’s fate. Presidents, good and bad, don’t do what they do in a vacuum. In each case, their reputation is sanctified by you and by me.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY