Reticence on Policy and the Ranking of America's Greatest Presidents.
I'm kind of fond of these Presidential Ranking polls of historians, being, as I am, a guy overly fond of numbers. Here's a recent one, including a former President, the 45th, trying to resume his disastrous reign and now ranked 46th our of 46:
Presidential Greatness Project.
(Joe Biden is ranked currently 14th in this survey; expect him to rise in accordance with his patriotic move to step aside facing even the remote possibility of the worst President ever resuming his disastrous tenure.)
These surveys are summaries of opinions, of course, but they are fun and often educational - when you get into the weeds, which I sometimes do. They are also subject to the times at which the survey is made. The much deserved elevation, up 9 positions (in this survey) of President US Grant - who I personally regard as the second most essential President of the 19th century - is a function of most Americans, other than cultists worshipping a racist who they confuse with either Jesus or God, coming to terms with America's long and extensive racist past, including the "lost cause" interpretation of the War for Slavery that took place between 1861 and 1865.
The first, second, and third positions in these surveys often involve slight shifts among the relative positions of the top three, Lincoln, FDR, and Washington, all three of whom were essential to the continued existence of the country; a hard, and probably unfruitful choice.
I'd like to pull out a feature of two of these top three, FDR and Lincoln: Reticence, the property of keeping their cards close to their chests. FDR's critics often referred to him as a liar - which sometimes he was, if you look - a case can be made that he lied in 1940 in his third campaign for the office, when he claimed his goal was to keep the US out of the war in Europe. After the election he declared and executed his policy of becoming the "arsenal of democracy." It is this, and not neutrality, that caused Germany to declare war on the United States shortly after Pearl Harbor. (He had no case for a war on Germany immediately after Pearl Harbor; he needed the Germans to act before he could declare war on them.) Still the point was that he did not announce the policy, other than to assert his values, the importance of Democratic ideas to the world
Similarly, Lincoln refused to state, after being elected but before being inaugurated, to reveal his policy on the secession of the slave states, in particular with the reinforcement of Fort Sumter. He needed the Confederates to act, and they did. He wrote his famous letter to Horace Greeley claiming that he would do what was necessary to save the Union whether or not it freed no slaves, some slaves or all the slaves at the same time he was composing the Emancipation Proclamation and discussing it with his cabinet.
I believe their greatness is very much tied to their policy flexibility, to having values, but not having self imposed rigid constraints.
I make this point with respect to fracking, which I oppose. I very much liked Kamala Harris's point - of which I am aware although I did not watch the baiting exercise in the CNN interview - that her values did not change although her particular positions did, might, and may yet again. The exergies of the moment, in Great Presidencies, decided the policy, and not preordained commitments to policy themselves.
I expect great things from a President Harris, but the fewer "read my lips" statements she makes, the better. Only a fool shows the cards one holds.
I hate fossil fuels and believe they should be banned forthwith, but irrespective of what VP Harris does or does not say about them to, for instance, carry Pennsylvania, matters not a wit to me. What matters is the values, and the ability to not confine oneself to promises that are, or should be, empty.
Just a point I'd like I'd like to make. I think a good or great President should at times, be liars when called upon to do so, if the purpose of a lie is to fulfill values.
As for #1, to return to rankings, here's Ron Chernow and General David Petraeus offering their opinion, as a side bar in a discussion of Grant, that George Washington should be number 1:
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