I agree mostly with you. However… FDR, I believe will lower in estimation as economists are really only now in earnest dredging up just how damaging he was to our economy. Once the so-called “Greatest Generation” dies off — FDR will plummet like a rock. Ditto JFK when the Boomers die off. He had lots of pretty words, but history shows he was a bad to incompetent President who nearly got us all killed. It’s one thing to buck people up — which you will get you contemporary adulation — it’s quite another to do the right thing — which generally gets you hated now — respected later. Lincoln was despised in his time — squeaky-voiced, gaunt… he was the original McChimpy Bushhitler. Then he was shot. That is the shortcut to fame and widespread respect unfortunately. He deserves it — the respect not the shooting.
Wilson — dropping in estimation too — especially as his idealism becomes more and more embarrassing and his racism and elitism more and more apparent. Lots of words though and we have him to blame for laying the foundations of modern bureaucracy. TR is also known more for deeds and pithy statements than great oration. Another Presidential star that will rise is James Polk… not much respected in the 19th c. because Republicans controlled and didn’t like him and being from the South in the 19th c. is a death knell to ones reputation.
Should Bush have communicated better? To be liked now — the answer is a huge “Yes.” To be respected down the road? Not so much. Even the Lilliputians can tie Gulliver down with enough rope. Did he give them some rope? Yes. Mountains of unfair and incompetent media — there’s doing and then overdoing your job — coupled with a virulently hateful Left and fair weather Right…. Cry him a river I guess, but I don’t think Reagan could’ve overcome that. I think Bush basically resolved to do what he thought was right — spent 5 years pissing into the wind with the media and then just said “screw it” I’m doing the surge. I agree it’s his job to talk to us. It’s more his job to do the right thing. THAT is how history will judge him I believe.
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Yes, how “history will judge.” But am I not history; history to my family, my descendants.
Just like some Boomers you talk to, Jack Kennedy was God on earth, best president we ever had. They can’t really say why, but they just know it.
Same way some people know Bush was horrible — can’t really pin anything down, but they just know it.
These people are also history.
When I encounter people lamenting a perceived incorrect historical view of a person or event I regale them with this chestnut, “History is written by the winners.”
Yeah Kath, but perception is not always reality (in fact it rarely is the whole truth). There is a truth that is not always visible. There’s visible leadership and then there’s being lead either well or down the primrose path that folks don’t know until they look back and see where they’ve been. The Bush haters are history too you are correct — but they lack perspective. I lack perspective, but I’ve enough history to know I lack perspective and trust that down the road we’ll know the truth. The secular left have little faith in anything unseen — to their — and our — detriment.
For example — it looked like FDR was leading us through the Great Depression. Looking back — he didn’t know what the hell he was doing and actually prolonged the Depression by 4 or 5 years. A very capricious fellow. Who cares if he makes you feel better when it’s his policies that are keeping you hungry and afraid?
Don’t get me wrong — miscommunication is Bush’s greatest failing followed by misguided loyalties in idiots like Brown, Tenet, et al. BUT — he has been a great leader and history will bear that out. And it’s important — even if we don’t realize it now — there are things we can’t or won’t know for decades down the road.
And I don’t think badly of Bush at all, and again, I don’t know all the ins and outs of every “political” turn.
I do know how I, personally, felt and reacted and lived with him as my President. And I am sad to see him go.
Floyd,
I absolutely agree with your final paragraph.
A comment on FDR. You are likely right, and maybe he did implement some poor policies but I get a little upset with Conservative scholars like Jonah Goldberg who sit writing on a laptop in an air-conditioned office in 2008 chastising FDR for mis-steps in 1938. When you’re President of the United States and 1/3 of the nation is unemployed and U.S. citizens are literally starving to death, hundreds are literally encamped on the White House lawn… You’re going to do something, anything to try to help. Was some of it wrong. Yes. Did most of his policies lead to problems when they were not undone when prosperity returned? Yes. But let’s not take his actions out of context. People were literally starving. Every day. By the hundreds. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
The men and women who lived in the U.S. in the 30′s and 40′s loved the man. Would have gone to hell and back for him. We have to give their firsthand accounts of the circumstances some credence. They were living through the times and most thought he managed the situation brilliantly. Surely the vast majority of Americans weren’t so stupid that they could not see through the lunatic policies of a charlatan. Maybe FDR was a great President…
FDR will probably be remembered as a great president for a long time because of that. History is just giving it a little balance now instead of his god-like persona. Hey, my grandparents loved the man. Spoke unendingly about how grateful they were. FDR’s biggest failing is not making sure these programs would get revoked. In all honesty, he would not have likely done anyway. This is all coming back around in the form of Obama.
Conservatives have a right to be mad at him for it, even in their air-conditioned offices, because of the scars left because of it. In my opinion, bringing up these points is something we need to do if only just to say, “Hey, FDR might have gotten us out of it but ultimately his policies were wrong-headed, let us learn from our mistakes. So yeah, let’s do what FDR did right and leave the rest behind.” Without these kinds of reminders (which make some people very upset) we are doomed to repeat those mistakes.
At the most, FDR will move a peg or maybe two downward, but appreciation of the practical, immediate effects of his policies will keep him regarded as one of the greater Presidents.
I love the stories my grandmother tells me about FDR, most of which involve her relating the grumblings of my staunchly Republican/conservative great-grandfather, who because of his skills as an engineer was employed by many of the New Deal projects (TVA, construction of dams, etc.). “Thay socialist SOB, but it’s a job!”
Read Amity Schlaes book. FDR’s persecution of Andrew Mellon was criminal — as well as the Schechter brothers from Brooklyn. His waking up every day and pricing gold at whatever the hell he felt like. FDR invented identity politics in the 1936 election and he was definitely not a believer in the Constitution. His New Deal was basically an attempted re-founding. Ditto WW2. If he’d not gone to Yalta we might never have had a Cold War to that extent. Stalin played him like a marionette. Much like Kruschev did JFK twenty years later.
I think FDR will probably always be in the top 10 Presidents unless we have a fundamental philosophical shift back to our founding principles in which case he will probably fall farther down the list.