The first and largest shock from my first graduate course was to “learn” that Richard Hofstadter was an unbiased historian. The old boy had a keen view of history, but he saw it through the present tense as much as anyone. So kudos to Kuklick for reminding us that historians write to mirrors. Still, his model, to measure presidential value solely by contemporaneous sources, is troublesome.
As much as I distrust Hoftstadter’s reactionary “Paranoid Style of Politics,” he’s correct that hysteria and fear are some of the primary currencies of the American present tense. If so, there must be something beneficial in it, as we’ve been damned successful despite our paranoias (my inclination here is to emphasize that word, “despite”). A friend put it to me the other day: “Why is it that Americans are always about to be taken over by someone else?”
If it is fair to say that Americans don’t always choose well in their votes, then how can Kuklick find in their opinions more accurate wisdom of presidential performance? What if we built into the model of “presidential greatness” the extent to which the presidents rely upon paranoia. Would this be any less problematic than the judgments already employed? It would also provide a basis for judgment absent electoral results. Going this way would require of Kuklick’s model recognition of conservative voices during a president’s term (those resisting paranoia), and it would require the usual historical view of larger outcomes to evaluate where our presidents have strayed too far in reaction to and in creation of hysteria.
The worst presidencies, or the worst presidential moments, sieze paranoia for self-aggrandizement. Sometimes it’s necessary and good to act upon a national impulse; other times it’s just hysterical, otherwise known as demogogy. Were we to add that one to the “greatness” scales, more than a few presidencies on the list would tilt far lower.
Looking at another period, he might be forced to conclude that the people got it terribly wrong. The theory-breakers would be a president who was loved when he was in office who turned out to be horribly wrong or inadequate, and one who was hated in his day who turned out to be a real prophet. People loved Harding during much of his Presidency, but public opinion turned on him after he died and the scandals came out. So which is the true verdict?
Historians can't help building their theories based on what comes later. A Great Depression, a Pearl Harbor, a 9/11 forces them to rethink their theories. Some of them really relish being "proven right" by events, and Kuklick may be reacting against that. The Depression was the major historical event for a whole generation of historians and their opinions of politicians was based on whether they were Roosevelts or Hoovers, and you can see the delight some of them had in hoping that Eisenhower or Reagan would turn out to be the Hoovers of their day.
Kuklick's a philosophy professor, and curiously, a major scholar in the history of American philosophy. But you can see the problem. His history is a nuts and bolts version of who said what when. If Kuklick writes "If William James had said this rather than that" or "If John Dewey hadn't come to that conclusion" he's already doing something like philosophy.
If an historian of science questions Einstein's conclusions he's pretty close to doing science, rather than history. But if a historian writes "If Franklin Roosevelt had done this rather than that," he's not "doing" politics. He's still in the realm of history (more or less). There isn't a separate discipline to deal with critical or hypothetical questions.
I guess Kuklick's theory works better as a corrective for other perspectives than as the final answer. You do have to take into account just what people at the time thought of a president. You can't dismiss it, but it doesn't have to be the final word. Most people who vote in such polls or discuss them are probably choosing on the basis of ideology, and Kuklick's view, as flawed as it may be, isn't a great danger today.