The Perversity of Legacy

by Will Wilkinson on January 19, 2009

Gene Healy, author of the fantastic Cult of the Presidency, notes that historians who rank presidents (and what’s the point of ranking presidents anyway?) love warmongering activist presidents. Gene couldn’t be more right that…

something’s gone wrong when a president’s worth is measured not by how much harm he avoided, but by how skillfully he capitalized on crises in order to spur revolutionary change. If presidents are too quick to embrace war, if they find themselves drawn toward sweeping theories of executive power and an exalted, quasi-religious view of their station, perhaps that’s because the people who fill out their report cards reward such behavior.

That’s something to consider as Barack Obama takes office amid an atmosphere of crisis at home and abroad. If history teaches us anything, it’s that the Audacity of Hope can all too often lead to the Arrogance of Power.

I wish Barack Obama the best: historical mediocrity.

Michael

Nice points, Huadpe, but I think they address the converse of the actual claim made in Healy's piece and apparently seconded by Will: the claim is not that all warmongers are well remembered presidents, but that all well-remembered presidents are war-mongers (or activists, revolutionaries...). This should be taken as a general rather than a universal claim, and it is probably generally true. I just don't see why anyone should be surprised by this. It's something like being surprised that people like tasty and unexpected foods over plain but nutritious foods, or that everyone like pretty Angelina while ignoring regular plain Jane, etc., etc..

huadpe

I agree that land wars are odious, but the notion of allowing ones nation to be ripped asunder for the sole purpose of sectioning off a half as an openly oppressive state is I believe just cause for war. The seceding states wanted to destroy liberty, and if a government has the duty to protect its citizens from the use of force, then in this case, the federal government was morally obligated to prevent half the country from becoming an oppressive state whose primary raison d'etre was the enslavement of a large part of its people.

libfree

Such an impossible standard, I wish I knew the catastrophe's our former Presidents averted.

Huadpe

I dispute your original posit (via Healy) that the highest ranking presidents are warmongering, or at least that if they are, they fought wars which were necessary and just. In particular, two of the most highly rated presidents are Washington and Lincoln. Washington did indeed start a war, of independence, whose product was the first free nation to have a place on this Earth in almost two thousand years. Lincoln fought a war (begun before he took office) to preserve that nation and liberate its most persecuted group from the shackles of slavery.

The only warmonger who generally makes the list would be LBJ, with Vietnam. The other four big warmonger presidents McKinley (Spanish-American war), Polk (Mexican-American war), Nixon (Vietnam continued) and Bush II (Iraq), generally are rated poorly.

Activists on the domestic front tend to fare better, but still exceptions exist, and make the correlation weak. Jefferson was not a big government man, for example.

Huadpe

I dispute your original posit (via Healy) that the highest ranking presidents are warmongering, or at least that if they are, they fought wars which were necessary and just. In particular, two of the most highly rated presidents are Washington and Lincoln. Washington did indeed start a war, of independence, whose product was the first free nation to have a place on this Earth in almost two thousand years. Lincoln fought a war (begun before he took office) to preserve that nation and liberate its most persecuted group from the shackles of slavery.

The only warmonger who generally makes the list would be LBJ, with Vietnam. The other four big warmonger presidents McKinley (Spanish-American war), Polk (Mexican-American war), Nixon (Vietnam continued) and Bush II (Iraq), generally are rated poorly.

Activists on the domestic front tend to fare better, but still exceptions exist, and make the correlation weak. Jefferson was not a big government man, for example.

Matthew Tievsky

Secession pre-dated Lincoln's inauguration, but the war did not begin until afterwardn (at Ft. Sumter) . Whatever the merits of the Civil War--and they are substantial (for freeing the slaves, not for preserving the unity of the state--wars for land are odious things)--it was largely a war of Lincoln's choosing, and it's that war that made him "great."

Michael

"something’s gone wrong" implies that there's a norm according to which things "go right." This is demanding too much, too soon, of a still relatively immature polity. If Americans are naive by this standard, then they are hardly a prey to some irrational exuberance, save that that irrational exuberance is genetically embedded. I was just trying to think of an example of a historical figure--in world history--who is NOT known for 'captializing on crises in order to spur revolutionary change,' or who is lionized by his or her descendants for actually standing athwart history and yelling, "Whoa, Now!?"....So, Gene could be more right: she could be accurate.