Posted on 03/04/2011 11:42:19 AM PST by americanophile
Change isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. That’s what most of us have come to realize in recent years, whether the change proposed came from Pres. Barack Obama or the Tea Party movement. Still, most haven’t quite reached the point where we oppose change and fight for stability.
Maybe we ought to: Maybe sometimes it is the time for no change. That, at least, was the position of Warren Harding. Warren who? On the presidential roster, Harding is POTUS 43. No, that doesn’t mean he’s replaced George W. Bush: Harding’s “43” is his aggregate rank among presidents. Since there’s a tie somewhere in there, this means Harding is the worst-ranked president in the history of our land.
Still, the most despised chief exec had something to say about the issue that’s preoccupying the country. Nowhere did Harding put the case against change, and the case for realism, better than in his inaugural address, delivered 90 years ago today.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
No wonder I don’t know about him. The commies have expunged him from the record.
Thanks for the education! He’s a very strong, and successful supply sider. If only Hoover had taken his advice.
Thanks justiceseeker93.
Harding & Grant do really get a raw deal from historians who rank them dead last. Harding wasn't THAT bad, but given that he died before he could accomplish anything, and foolishly appointed a bunch of crooks to his cabinet, I can't rank him very high, regardless of whether had the right positions on the issues (and even if he did, I disagree with his pardon of that lunatic Eugene Debs). And Grant can be summarized simply: Brilliant general, lousy President. The funny thing is they had a DU thread a couple years back, where the DUmmies were ranking the "best" of the Gilded Age presidents (1866-1900), where basically every President from that era was center-right and there were no "progressives" to pick from. They went with Grant as their fav.
I have to disagree with Fieldmarshaldj, I DO think Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan deserve to near the bottom. Pierce was obviously not in the right mental state to be President after his only child was crushed to death in front of him, and sent most of his administration drinking himself to death. Buchanan was a worthless coward who watched the country fall apart, sat on his hands, and left to Lincoln to death with. His position that he had "no authority" to interfer with secession might have had more credibility if he hadn't used the U.S. military to stop Utah from seceding during the Mormon war three years earlier.
One thing we do have to remember is how much politics has changed in a century. Sadly, I think the political spectrum of this country is much more left-wing than it was a century ago. For example, Ike was the last president to really get control of our borders and enforce immigration laws with Mexico. At the time it wasn't controversial at all, but today he'd be labeled a right-wing minuteman reactionary and be subjected to a firestorm of attacks for being insensitive to "poor migrants". Teddy Roosevelt was "progressive" in his day, but today liberals wouldn't like his passion support for hunting or his staunch opposition to multiculturalism and belief that everyone should learn English or leave. And even the liberal icon FDR wouldn't have ever dreamed of promoting "civil unions", let alone gay marriage, which would have certainly resulted in impeachment and talks that the President had lost his mind. I think Calvin Coolidge's son, John Coolidge, once remarked in the 70s that "my father couldn't get elected today" and said that Silent Cal would be rolling in his grave if he saw how liberal America had become. And that's 30 years ago!
In any case, I'll just rank the 20th century presidents from best to worse. Note this is for overall effectiveness and accomplishments -- I'm not rating them by how much they agreed with me or how conservative they were.
Ping me if you want any details on my choices. Too much to explain here, I'd have to discuss them individually.
Ronald Reagan
Calvin Coolidge (most underrated President of all time)
Theodore Roosevelt
William Howard Taft
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Richard Nixon
Harry S. Truman
George H.W. Bush
Gerald Ford
Herbert Hoover
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Warren G Harding
Bill Clinton
John F Kennedy (most OVERRATED President of all time!)
Woodrow Wilson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Jimmy Carter
Just a quick comment. I wasn’t saying Pierce or Buchanan deserved to be ranked as “good”, only that both were in a terrific bind given the political realities of the time, and almost anyone serving during that period would’ve similarly found themselves in a no-win situation. That has to be taken into account when assessing either of them.
As an aside, I was looking up something on Lincoln’s 1st VP, Hannibal Hamlin. Hamlin had been an abolitionist during his prior years in Congress and unlike a decent chunk of the new Republicans, hadn’t previously been a Whig but a Democrat, and he was a stalwart Pierce backer in 1852. It is astonishing to consider the diametrically opposed factions within both the Democrats and Whigs up to that point that had to keep their members “happy.” It would be the equivalent today of keeping San Francisco Anti-War Moonbats and Wisconsin Union Thugs in the same party with Jesse Helms and Sarah Palin Conservatives. The Whigs collapsed by 1855 because they couldn’t hold the Cottons and Conscience types together, and for that matter, the Democrats themselves collapsed as well in 1860 trying to hold together two similar factions. Not even Lincoln’s rival Stephen Douglas was considered acceptable to the Southerners.
Heh. Yeah, I ranked Kennedy pretty far down the list, though Woody Wilson, LBJ, and Jimmy Carter managed to rank lower simply because they were able to do more damage. Had Kennedy stayed a full 8 years, he might have been worse than LBJ. The fact Kennedy was a scumbag in private while portraying himself as an all-american boy scout and family man in public life certainly lowers my opinion of him. Had to rank him below the RAT machine liberal (but decent family man in private life) Harry Truman for that reason.
It's amusing when conservatives fall over themselves to heap praise on JFK and slobber all over his "legacy". When you expose the truth about what slime he was, they whine about how we shouldn't say those things cuz we need to convince Democrats about how "today's Democrats" have "left them" and blah blah blah. Can't think of a single RAT who said "geez whiz, I WAS gonna vote for Obama, but now that Republicans praised my icon JFK, I feel so grateful that I'm gonna pull the level for McCain!"
Someone mentioned RATs do the same think with Eisenhower, and post all over the Internet about how he was sooooo much better than today's Republicans and what a wonderful leader and role model he was, frequently quoting Ike's "millitary-industrial complex" line as some brilliant piece of wisdom forewarning about the evil "neo-cons". Funny, since they despised Ike at the time he was President and said he was completely clueless about politics. They probably have as much success converting conservatives into the Dem camp with the "industrial-complex" quotes as our side does with the freepers worshiping JFK for cutting taxes and stealing Harding's speech with the "ask not what your country can do for you" lines.
No he wasn’t. Across the street is a cemetary.
No he wasn’t. Across the street is a cemetary.
When I first visited the grave, my reaction was “when I die, bury me like they did Warren G. Harding.” Since there is nothing to scale the memorial against, pictures don’t do it justice.
I don’t see ‘W’ in your list. Also, I would have placed Gerald Ford much higher - certainly above Nixon and H.W. Bush.
Liberals have vilified him for years while deifying FDR and woodrow wilson..
Liberals have vilified him for years while deifying FDR and woodrow wilson..
Harding also released a number of nonviolent protesters who had been locked up by Wilson, and dismantled many of Wilson’s the wartime economic controls.
He ought to be considered a hero for rolling back - if only temporarily - the expansion of the Progressive state.
I ranked only 20th century Presidents, Teddy Roosevelt to Clinton. "W" took office in 2001. IMO, it's too early to judge the 21st century presidents.
>> Also, I would have placed Gerald Ford much higher - certainly above Nixon and H.W. Bush. <<
Ford was a seat-warmer for 2 years and I can't think of anything positive he accomplished. I think he took some positions as House Minority Leader, but compared to today's GOP platform, he leaned on the RINO side as President. His appointments were particularly bad -- appointed one of the worst liberals to SCOTUS (John Paul Stevens), and unlike Ike and G.H.W.B., he never regretted it! And he made the uber-RINO Nelson Rockefeller his veep, placing him a heartbeat away from the Presidency. That would be like McCain appointing Arlen Specter as veep. < p>
Thanks for the ping!
Not only that. The company was Occidental Petroleum owned by Armand Hammer, agent of Soviet influence, who use to brag that he "owned" Al Gore's father.
Thanks, js93!
But of course. My bad.
I think Coolidge gets far worse press than Harding. See tom Silver’s book, “Coolidge and the Historians.”
You know what, you’re right. He did do enough to get on the list.
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