Article by Alex Martin. Edited by Liam Geoghegan. Additional Research by Robyn Hall.

From Chief Magistrate to Commander in Chief: An increase in Executive Power.

Before I venture into to Tom Hercock’s territory of American History I offer the humblest apologies and after reading his articles in the first two editions of new histories I offer the strongest encouragement that you read his stuff concerning the American past. However when I discovered that the theme of this issue of New Histories was to be “leaders” it seemed necessary to me to write about American Presidents and more specifically what historians think about American presidents. The job of President of the United States of America began its tumultuous and exciting history in a deliberately understated fashion. Washington referred to the position as ‘chief magistrate,’ the title was deliberately without the pomp and pageantry that is associated with Dukes, Marquises and Monarchs. You can be president of a cricket club without conceit, but if you are King of anything (ring, hill, France) modesty is all but impossible. Nowadays, however, the position of the chief magistrate has been elevated to ‘the leader of the free world’ or the vulgar extrapolation from the constitution: ‘commander and chief’. And historians collaborate in this increase of executive power.

League Tables

In 2009 C-SPAN (Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network,) commissioned and released a poll ranking all 43 American presidents that had completed their term in office (hence there was no Barrack Obama and Grover Cleveland was counted as the 22nd and 24th President as he served two non-contiguous terms.) The indices that used to construct this league table “Public Persuasion”, “Moral Authority”, “Relations with Congress”, “Performance Within Context of Times”, “Crisis Leadership”, “International Relations”, “Vision/Setting An Agenda”, “Economic management”, “Administrative Skills”, and “Pursued Equal Justice For All,” are at best contestable. “Moral Authority”, is most likely a quality disliked by ‘the left’ whereas ‘the right’ would have an aversion towards “Economic management.” Full list here http://www.c-span.org/PresidentialSurvey/Overall-Ranking.aspx but the best bits, the top 5 are 1st Abraham Lincoln 2nd George Washington 3rd Franklin Delano Roosevelt 4th Theodore Roosevelt 5th Harry Truman, and the Bottom 5 are 42nd James Buchanan 41st Andrew Johnson 40th Franklin Pierce 39th William Henry Harrison 38th Warren G Harding. In my opinion this table is next to useless, this indices are peculiar, the victors predictable and the historical inquiry shallow. However as a piece of primary evidence it demonstrates what historians like in their presidents. They prefer the leaders of the free world to the magistrates.

“Good Presidents” and when I ponder that historians are just, I a weep for my subject

On the face of it, the top presidents seem fair enough; Lincoln freed the slaves, Washington founded the nation, FDR helped win World War Two, Theodore Roosevelt aimed for ‘Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens,’ and Harry Truman defended South Korea from the Despot Kim Il-Sung. However all these presidents (with the exception of Washington) engaged in the increase in the power of the executive at the expense of the judiciary and legislature. Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt suspended Habeas Corpus; a person’s right to have a judge determine the legality of his imprisonment. Lincoln authorised the military to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone suspected of aiding the rebels, whereas FDR did so to kidnap. 120,000 men, women and children of Japanese ancestry, 74,400 (62%) of whom were American citizens, and taken to what FDR described as concentration camps. An act motivated by ‘race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership’. Harry Truman went to war without consulting congress and Theodore Roosevelt, apart from being an egomaniac who compared the stakes of his third-party run for the White House to the rapture and second coming of advocated the war-inducing Monroe doctrine. Others in the top quartile such as Woodrow Wilson (9th) got elected by running on a platform of peace, then entered World War 1. The liar also imprisoned pacifists that peacefully protested against his hypocritical actions. These tyrant-mimicking despots should be ingrained in our historical consciousness as never again moments but are instead given medals.

“Bad Presidents” and a fruit fly presidency

If the top presidents seem like a bizarre choice then I’m certain the bottom set will baffle you. There are some presidents in the list where the epithet “evil-scumbag-who-no-one-not-even-his-own-mother-liked” would be too generous. For example, James Buchanan, who supported the rights of slave holders, was investigated by the Covode committee, which could have impeached his administration, and Franklin Pierce who signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, an incompetent attempt to appease slave holders and abolitionists which simply expanded slavery throughout the U.S.A. However, some choices are frankly bewildering, whilst there are contestable presidents such as Andrew Johnson, who received the presidency after Lincoln’s assassination, and received a country that had been ravaged by a brutal war (with more causalities than World War One), and undergone unprecedented, massive social and cultural upheaval, receives no credit, not even leniency for “Performance Within Context of Times”. People such as Calvin Coolidge (26th), Warren Harding (42nd), Rutherford B. Hayes (33rd), Grover Cleveland (21st) and Benjamin Harris (30th) suffer the ignobility of low positions or the insult of mid table positions for what seems to be presiding over competent yet boring presidencies, they may not have the excitement of say incarcerating people based on their race, or the glamour of engaging in unconstitutional wars, but they did preside over periods of relative peace and prosperity. But the optimal moment of collected and aggregated stupidity from these historians questioned is quite clearly the placement of William Henry Harrison in 39th out of 43. He was the shortest serving American President of all time, he served 32 days then died from pneumonia. Please note that 32 days is shorter than the average life expectancy of a male fruit fly, historians have then somehow managed to construe an unexpected and premature death with incompetency.

Leaders of the free world

Calvin Coolidge wrote in his autobiography that it was ‘a major source of safety to the country (U.S.A)’ for the president ‘to know that he is not a great man.’ But what does he know he was only 26th. I would like to think that the penchant for power grabbing war hungry aspirant semi-despots is simply a proclivity for evidence, presidents who make laws start wars and kidnap make more noise and leave behind more evidence (the idiom that it is wrong to use evidence like a drunk uses a lamppost; for support rather than for illumination springs to mind). But I don’t think it is, at least not totally. I think there’s an open political element Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Wilson, Truman etc, where certainly not on the same political page (in some cases not even the same book) but they all have one thing in common, they used the executive office to shape the world in their image. Whether this is a form of leader worship or merely an indication of the dangerous politics we like today it’s not a good thing.