The other best presidents

Today, Presidents’ Day, is when the media surveys the American Political Science Association and announces who scholars rank as the best president. It’s the political equivalent of a Hall of Fame ballot, but has fewer surprises, especially at the top end.

The three best president are almost always the same. Washington, who held together a nation operating under a rickety set of principles that could have become the Articles of Confederation Part Deux. Lincoln, who saved a nation from itself. FDR, who brought the American political system into the modern era. Barring a zombie apocalypse, will stay that way for some decades.

That’s in part because it’s such a broad question. When asking about the best, we gravitate towards the ones who presided over great times. It’s like how the NFL MVP almost always goes to the QB. When you have the ball on every play, it’s easy to be seen as the best. But American presidents existed in other times than crises, so thinking about the best presidents in more specific criteria can help throw light onto underrecognized members of the civic pantheon.

Best president if he had never been president — Herbert Hoover

One of the greatest Americans of all time suffered the misfortune of attaining the presidency. Herbert Hoover was an orphan who graduated from the first class at Stanford, then wrote the book on mining. Literally. He wrote a wide-selling textbook on mining and translated a 16th century mining textbook into English from Latin. He oversaw food relief programs during World War I, crossing battle zones to convince the German military to allow food deliveries to Belgian civilians. After the war he did the same for Russia. And when senators questioned whether he should be sending food to people who might be communists, he replied, “Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!” The man was Jed Bartlett incarnate, the highest political compliment possible.

Then, of course, came the Great Depression. Hoover’s reluctance to run deficits and the Smoot-Hawley tariff showed macroeconomic ineptitude and his name is now synonymous with poverty and incompetence. If he had never been president, or had run in 1920, he would have been remembered as a cross between Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Shepherd.

Best president if he had remained president — (tie) Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy

Lincoln, if he had remained president, might have avoided the Andrew Johnson-led charge into Southern revanchism and Jim Crow and been even greater than he was. Kennedy could have avoided the Vietnam War.

It’s difficult to judge which of these was a bigger loss, because it’s difficult to know whether either would have been successful. Lincoln was up against the entire white population in the South, who never stopped fighting the social change wrought by the Civil War. Kennedy had to confront the logic of containment and a military staff that pushed for war even during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It can be argued that the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans for a hundred years is a bigger tragedy than the 58,000 dead of the Vietnam War (though that’s a depressing argument to have). But Kennedy had the kind of clout on foreign policy that Lincoln didn’t in southern politics. Lincoln’s potential was a bigger target, but a lower probability, so this is a tie.

James Garfield, who might have cleaned up some of the excesses of the Gilded Age if he had been in office more than 7 months, gets an honourable mention.

Best president if he had been a little better — Woodrow Wilson

To me, Wilson is a mix of Chuck and Firefly. NBC’s show about a nerd who becomes a spy was so close to being great. It had action, comedy, will-they-won’t-they, secret identities, season-long mysteries, Yvonne Strahovski. But it never went to that next level that wins awards and seeps into the public consciousness. And Fox’s show about a sci-fi Western, which did enter the public awareness and could have been great, was cancelled in 2003 for low ratings. But its ratings were almost four times as high as Breaking Bad’s first season in 2008. If Firefly had been made just a few years later, in a changed TV ecosystem, it might still be on the air.

Wilson could have been one of the best but for two flaws. Himself and his times.

He created the Federal Reserve and levied the first federal income tax. He navigated the difficult position of a major power during a world war. He won the war and made the United States a central player in peace negotiations, and conducted foreign policy with rhetoric that provides one of the major lodestones for international relations today.

But he couldn’t get the Senate to approve his policies, in no small part because he was inflexible and overconfident. The United States never entered the League of Nations, crippling the body that would deal with Hitler and Mussolini. When the Treaty of Versailles bound Germany to hyperinflation and economic disarray, there was no institutional structure created by Wilson to deal with the situation and his overreach in the direction of idealistic principles triggered a backlash towards isolationism that almost allowed Hitler to conquer Europe.

Wilson was a lesser version of FDR and his own self-image, but was very close to greatness.

And a round-up of some other important categories

Best president if you’re a corrupt cabinet member — Warren G. Harding

Best president if you’re a pulmonary historian — William Henry Harrison

Best president to go camping with — Teddy Roosevelt

Best president to complain about camping with Teddy Roosevelt with — William Howard Taft

Best president in a movie with Eric from Boy Meets World — this guy