Posted on 02/18/2009 2:28:58 PM PST by Syncro
WHY WE DON'T CELEBRATE 'HISTORIANS DAY'
February 18, 2009
Being gracious winners, this week, liberals howled with delight at George Bush for coming in seventh-to-last in a historians' ranking of the presidents from best to worst.
This was pretty shocking. Most liberals can't even name seven U.S. presidents.
Being ranked one of the worst presidents by "historians" is like being called "anti-American" by the Nation magazine. And by "historian," I mean a former member of the Weather Underground, who is subsidized by the taxpayer to engage in left-wing political activism in a cushy university job.
So congratulations, George Bush! Whenever history professors rank you as one of the "worst" presidents, it's a good bet you were one of America's greatest.
Six months after America's all-time greatest president left office in 1989, historians ranked him as only a middling president. (I would rank George Washington as America's greatest president, but he only had to defeat what was then the world's greatest military power with a ragtag group of irregulars and some squirrel guns, whereas Ronald Reagan had to defeat liberals.)
At the time, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. dismissed Reagan as "a nice, old uncle, who comes in and all the kids are glad to see him. He sits around telling stories, and they're all fond of him, but they don't take him too seriously" -- and then Schlesinger fell asleep in his soup.
Even liberal historian Richard Reeves blanched at Reagan's low ranking in 1989, saying, "I was no fan of Reagan, but I think I know a leader when I see one."
Reagan changed the country, Reeves said, and some would say "he changed the world, making communism irrelevant and the globe safe for the new imperialism of free-market capitalism." In Reeves' most inspiring line, he says Reagan "was a man of conservative principle and he damned near destroyed American liberalism."
By 1996 things hadn't gotten much better for Reagan in the historians' view. A poll of historians placed Reagan 26th of 42 presidents -- below George H.W. Bush, his boob of a vice president who raised taxes and ended Republican hegemony under Reagan. Four of the 32 historians called Reagan a "failure."
I guess it depends on your definition of "failure." To me a failure is someone who aspired to be a legitimate scholar but ends up as an obscure lecturer at Colorado College.
Speaking of which, Colorado College political scientist Thomas Cronin explained Reagan's low ranking, saying Reagan "was insensitive to women's rights, civil rights, oblivious to what was going on in his own Administration -- the procurement scandal, HUD, Iran-Contra."
Soon after he took office, President Reagan famously hung a portrait of President Calvin Coolidge in the Cabinet Room -- another (Republican) president considered a failure by historians.
Coolidge cut taxes, didn't get the country in any wars, cut the national debt almost in half, and presided over a calm, scandal-free administration, a period of peace, 17.5 percent growth in the gross national product, low inflation (.4 percent) and low unemployment (3.6 percent).
Read more at AnnCoulter.Com
Unlike some recent presidents with Islamic middle names, he didn't run around comparing himself to Lincoln constantly.
Read the rest at AnnCoulter.Com
Ann Will be here tonite:
QUOTATIONS FROM CHAIRMAN ANN February 18, 2009, 3:18 PM TONIGHT! ANN COULTER SPEECH AT THE COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY - Date: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 Time: 7:00pm Place: Kendall Hall 110, 2000 Pennington Road, Ewing, NJ
Click here for map and directions.
Coulter one the President ‘dazed’ historians.
I’m guessing that the “historians” placed Obama at #1 citing “amazing greatness and blackness”. Just a guess.
Humphhh!!! These so-called “historians” are not fit to tie Ronald Reagan’s shoes. Go get em,Ann!!!
Pow!
And into the center-field bleachers.
Some day GW Bush will be recognized as one of America’s greatest presidents. I agree with Ann that Reagan is our greatest president. I think eventually GW Bush will be recognized as our second greatest.
Lincoln is overrated. In my opinion, he was one of America’s worst presidents. He split the nation and destroyed the half of America that didn’t want to go along with his radical plans. Lincoln was not a Real Republican.
Just take that list and turn it upside down.. then you will have something more accurate.
His name will be forever above the list as The Greatest President Ever Possible and The King and Emperor of The World, the Great Shame of America.
That's Present B. Hussein Obama, King Saul's (Alinsky) protege.
Bravo Ann!
bttt
This is good. Thanks for posting. The rankings do give JFK way to high a position and GOP Presidents always get the shaft.
There’s a difference between a historian, a popularizer of history, and a historical commentator for popular culture. Any supposedly serious historian who pronounces on events that are still ongoing is a fraud.
I don’t know if anybody was ‘howling.’
The one ranking that amazed me was US Grant moving up in the list. His administration was rife with corruption and graft.
"Being gracious winners, this week, liberals howled with delight at George Bush for coming in seventh-to-last in a historians' ranking of the presidents from best to worst."
They have been doing a lot of that recently.
Must be something in the water or food.
His portrait and that statement will be on an ornate hand-crafted gold emblem hovering ten feet above the list.
This is so true. I love Ann. Her sarcasm rivals mine own.
I especially love that alleged historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin. Here’s an admitted plagarizer who consistantly is on Meet the Depressed and is especially beloved by Chris Matthews of tingling leg fame.
And how about that Brinkly guy? Has he ever been right about anything.
George Dubya Bush had his faults but already he looks like a genius next to this Dingbat we now have running things. Bush had way too much class and concern for image than to hop aboard AF1 for a skip to a restaurant on Valentine’s Day with equally classy Laura Bush. All but for the beloved photo op.
The generally accepted wisdom is that Bush will be vindicated by history. With Obama he gets his due a bit sooner it would seem.
As great as Reagan was, I wouldn’t say that he is our greatest president. IMO, that honor would have to be shared by Washington and Jefferson.
A generation or two ago, Andrew Johnson was regarded as a kind of martyr for having been impeached and Grant as one of the worst presidents.
But now they've changed places. Johnson was strongly against civil rights measures and Grant was for them -- probably not by today's standards, but by those of his day. At least, he didn't wimp out or sell out like Hayes and later presidents did, so his stock has risen.
I don't know where I'd rate Grant, but it's certainly true that mid-20th century historians played up the corruption of Grant's and Harding's administration because they were Republicans. Democrats like Truman got a pass on administrative scandals.
I bet most are liberals.
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