Rating the presidents: being a great president requires the right opportunities, the right choices, and the right historian.

Being a great President requiresthe right opportunities, the right choices, and the right historian.

Mr. McDougall, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World since 1776, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986.

No sooner had Bill Clinton won re-election than he reportedly began to fret about his "place in history," thereby inspiring a Doonesbury series in which a clutch of historians is invited to the White House for an Arkansas sales pitch. Lyndon Johnson was more methodical. While doing research at the LBJ Library (itself a monument to ego of pharaonic proportions), I discovered that Johnson had commanded all federal agencies to compile voluminous accounts of the great deeds done during his tenure, the better to elevate his standing in history. That was enough to suggest to me that perhaps the best first cut to make is between those of our Presidents who cared about their place in history and those who did not.

Retrospective rating of American Presidents is wonderful sport for historians, if only because reputations are the only things over which we exercise power. So it was that when the Intercollegiate Studies Institute asked me to serve on a panel ranking the Presidents I promptly said yes. I have always envied the baseball writers who get to vote each year on which players deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, and then write columns explaining their ballots. How much more fun to pass judgment on all 41 Chief Executives in American history! The Institute's purpose was undoubtedly to obtain results at variance with Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s periodic polls, which invariably lionize such Presidents as FDR, Truman, and Kennedy, and discount the achievements of such Presidents as Eisenhower and Reagan. But being a gentleman as well as a scholar I endeavored to muzzle my own politics and rank the Presidents by objective standards. First, was the President a political success insofar as most Americans at the time applauded his performance? Second, did the President address the pressing issues and challenges faced by the nation in his day and win approval for his solutions? And third, did those solutions, in retrospect, promote the security, prosperity, and liberty of the American people? The last, of course, is a matter of interpretation, but the first two criteria tend to balance any bias introduced in the third.

The principle behind these criteria is historicity. Our schools and media ought to encourage students and citizens not to judge historical actors (e.g., the slave-owning Jefferson) according to present-day ideology, conventional wisdom, or cant; to do so is ahistorical, unfair, and arrogant. They ought instead to help people imagine the times, places, and circumstances in which historical figures found themselves, and so identify the constraints upon them and the limited choices they faced before rendering a verdict on their leadership. What cannot be properly discounted, however, is the "normalcy" factor: Clinton's nemesis. The President who had the misfortune to govern in times of repose had no chance to prove his mettle. Perhaps he could have been great -- we may even suspect that he would have been great -- but we can hardly credit him for surmounting crises that never occurred (unless we have reason to think that he prevented a crisis). Thus, while everyday people pray, "Put me not to the test" -- a truer rendering of "Lead me not into temptation" -- the President obsessed with his "place in history" whispers, "Bring on the dragons that I might slay them."

Now, at the risk of raising the dead and the hackles of readers, here is one historian's ballot:

George Washington -- Great. Truly the "indispensable man" and "modern Cincinnatus," he defined the office of the Presidency in terms of its limits as well as its powers, and is more responsible than anyone else for translating the theoretical wisdom embodied in the Constitution into pragmatic, enduring reality. His Farewell Address is still the greatest state paper in American history.

John Adams -- Below Average. As a patriot, diplomat, and political philosopher he deserves his place among the greatest of the Founding Fathers. As a one-term President following Washington, however, he pales. His quasi-war with France and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were his most famous -- and dubious -- accomplishments.

Thomas Jefferson -- Great. A radical ideologue with too loose a tongue in the 1790s, he performed as President with statesmanlike skill and bipartisanship, and kept his eyes fixed on national, not factional, interests. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase was a coup, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition a triumph of vision. He practiced libertarianism at home and "no entangling alliances" abroad, and placed his stamp on the emerging Democratic Party.

James Madison -- Failure. He and Hamilton were the brightest stars in a galaxy of brilliant political philosophers. But compared to Jefferson he appeared weak and indecisive. He almost ruined New England with his anodyne Non-Intercourse Act (economic sanctions against the European belligerents in the Napoleonic wars), was duped by Napoleon into resuming trade with the French Empire, and bungled into the silly War of 1812.

James Monroe -- Near Great. Granted, he was a passive "consensus" leader who ran unopposed (Era of Good Feeling) and presided over a quiet octennium; and the Panic of 1819 marred his record. But he had an exceptional Cabinet and the good sense to defer to it (a quality underappreciated by historians who admire "strong" Presidents). The Missouri Compromise of 1819 kept the nation together for a generation, and the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 was second only to Washington's Farewell as a blueprint for wise foreign policy.

John Quincy Adams -- Below Average. The greatest Secretary of State in American history, he was a bust as President all the way from his selection by a fractured House of Representatives after he lost the popular vote to his landslide defeat in 1828 at the hands of Andy Jackson. He accomplished little and left office embittered.

Andrew Jackson -- Near Great. A freebooting soldier contemptuous of authority who flooded Washington with hicks from the sticks (a practice emulated by more recent Southern Presidents), he nonetheless proved to be a charismatic defender of Jeffersonian principles. He founded the modern national party system, abolished the U.S. Bank, stared down the South Carolinian hotheads in the Nullification Crisis, bit the bullet on Indian Removal (which he truly believed was the lesser of evils) in 1830, and paid off the national debt.

Martin Van Buren -- Below Average. A party hack who had helped to build Jackson's national party, he was a one-term flop whose only legacy was the slang term "O.K."

William Henry Harrison -- Failure. "Harrison came in upon a hurricane," wrote John Quincy Adams in 1841; "God grant he may not go out upon a wreck." He did: Tippecanoe died after a month in office.

John Tyler -- Failure. The first "accidental President," he moved into the White House after Harrison's death and was promptly stymied by congressional gridlock (not that he would have done much anyway). He stood up for Hawaiian independence when it was threatened by Britain and as a lame duck rammed through the annexation of Texas by a joint resolution in 1845. But the latter was an inflammatory act of dubious constitutionality, and sowed the seeds of war with Mexico.

James K. Polk -- Near Great. He was the greatest conqueror in U.S. history save Washington himself, and assertions to the effect that he was a creature of slaveholders or of Manifest Destiny zealots are canards. The Manifest Destinarians were either airy pacifists in the mode of John O'Sullivan (the New York editor, born on a British battleship in the 1812 war, who coined the term "Manifest Destiny," but even so no relation to NR's editor), or "5440' or Fight" zealots hot to seize all Oregon from the British, or ideological crusaders eager to annex "All Mexico" and export the fruits of Anglo/Protestant civilization. Polk spurned all three schools, and made peace (with Britain, in 1844) and war (with Mexico, in 1846) for limited ends with realistic means. He also kept his promise to step down after one term.

Zachary Taylor -- Failure. A military hero, he came to office with no agenda. His one stance -- opposition to the Compromise of 1850 lest it permit the westward spread of slavery -- was a loser, and he died after 18 months in office.

Millard Fillmore -- Below Average. Not the complete cipher many think, he executed the Compromise of 1850, dispatched Commodore Perry to Japan, and lived as a bachelor without scandal. But he was another accidental President, whom his party never even considered nominating in 1852.

Franklin Pierce -- Below Average. He cannot be called a failure, because he did not try to do anything. The economy boomed in the 1850s, but that was due in large part to the influx of gold from California.

James Buchanan -- Failure. The only Pennsylvania President, he did try to do something -- preserve the Union -- and totally flopped. He presided over the crackup of the national Democratic Party, then spent his lame-duck period of 1860 - 61 fiddling while Rome burned.

Abraham Lincoln -- Great. Leaving aside his war leadership (which was brilliant in terms of morale, though marred by numerous false starts and errors) and generous plan for Reconstruction, he pushed through the Transcontinental Railway, Homestead Act, and Land Grant College system, thus laying the geographical and institutional foundations for a continental superstate. But he was able to do so much in domestic policy because the Southern contingent had walked out of the Capitol; hence there is probably no point in wondering what sort of peacetime President he would have made. In foreign policy, he and his canny Secretary of State William H. Seward kept the Europeans out of the American conflict and expanded U.S. trade with Asia. No other President had to overcome such extreme peril, and it is hard to imagine how he could have done so without those arrogations of power to the Federal Government for which some conservatives now fault him.

Andrew Johnson -- Failure. He was almost impeached and convicted, but through little fault of his own. Thanks to Seward, he acquired Alaska in 1867.

Ulysses S. Grant -- Failure. He was duly honored before entering the White House and revered by Americans (e.g., Mark Twain) and foreigners after he left it. However, his Administration itself was marked by few positives, and the negatives (scandals, depression after 1873, and disastrous Indian wars) were legion. Like all ex-generals except Washington and Eisenhower, he was miscast as President.

Rutherford B. Hayes -- Below Average. A product of smoke-filled rooms following the crooked, dead-heat election of 1876, he had virtually no mandate to do anything and not much evident desire to try.

James A. Garfield -- Failure. A decent man, but he was murdered within months.

Chester A. Arthur -- Below Average. He signed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and civil-service "reform" -- both of which seemed to be good ideas at the time. Politicians of 1997, take note: the only things worse than unchecked immigration and venal bureaucrats are the attempts made to get rid of them.

Grover Cleveland -- Near Great. Perhaps the best candidate for greatness who never got the chance to prove it, he was the only President save FDR to win the popular vote in three successive elections (only to lose the Electoral College in his second race, in 1888). His record is sullied by the Panic of 1893, but he championed free trade, broke the Pullman strike to keep the U.S. mail moving, and quashed a sordid bid to annex Hawaii in 1893 even as he hung tough against European imperialists in Venezuela. A man of true principle.

Benjamin Harrison -- Below Average. A worthy Hoosier, he nonetheless won the White House as a legacy and minority vote-getter. He pushed tariffs unreasonably high, and his tight-money policies provoked the Populist revolt. He did, however, support overdue expansion and modernization of the Navy.

William McKinley -- Below Average. A very tough call, since he was an honorable man whose term came to be identified with the Spanish -American War and acquisition of colonies in 1898, neither of which he especially wanted. Most damning is his decision to annex the Philippines, which landed the Army in a bloody colonial war and launched the United States on its twentieth-century career as a self-righteous crusader. Suffice it to say that Woodrow Wilson approved of all that he did and could not wait to get his hands on the enhanced powers of the Presidency.

Theodore Roosevelt -- Great. The only accidental President to achieve even Above Average, much less Great, status, he was a leader in every sense and in every arena. His formula of big government to stand as umpire between big business and big labor may be deemed wrongheaded, but his policies of peace through strength (the "big stick") abroad and trust-busting and conservation at home, not to mention the Panama Canal and the mediation of the Russo - Japanese War in 1905, more than justify his place on Mt. Rushmore.

William Howard Taft -- Below Average. A fine Chief Justice of the United States, he was almost a failure as President in large part because "TAFT" did not stand for "Take Advice From Theodore." He reversed many of Roosevelt's foreign and domestic policies and paid for it with a humiliating third-place finish in 1912.

Woodrow Wilson -- Failure (by his own admission). The most controversial call of all, since many would rate him as Great. He achieved a full domestic agenda, including the income tax, the Federal Reserve, the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Federal Trade Commission, and the virtual nationalization of industry during the war, all of which greatly expanded federal power. Abroad, he failed to "teach the Mexicans to elect good men" despite two invasions, failed to create a Pan-American league, failed to defend the United States' rights at sea as a neutral during the Great War, failed to "keep us out of war," failed to win a peace based on his Fourteen Points, then failed to win ratification of his Versailles Treaty and League of Nations -- all thanks to his priggish, stubborn thirst for power.

Warren G. Harding -- Below Average. A humble man without ambition, he should be remembered less for the scandals during his Administration (which were minor by today's standards) than for his exceptional Cabinet featuring Charles Evans Hughes, Herbert Hoover, Andrew Mellon, and James Davis. Had he not died in 1923, he might have been re-elected and gone down in history as a twentieth-century equivalent of James Monroe.

Calvin Coolidge -- Average. In this one case let us employ the rank of Average and so let Silent Cal serve as the benchmark for the others. He presided over the 1920s' peace and prosperity as a shining example of the fact that when things are going well the wise leader says little and does less.

Herbert Hoover -- Failure. The Republican equivalent of Wilson, he was a man of soaring high-mindedness and energy who achieved many lesser goals only to fail grandly in the one he cared about most: in his case, the engineering of prosperity for most people and opportunity for all. A great humanitarian, he saw his Presidency shipwrecked by the Crash of 1929 at home and collapse of the postwar orders in Europe and Asia.

Franklin D. Roosevelt -- Great. Whatever one thinks of the man's character, policies, or legacy, how can he not be termed Great? He served four terms spanning crises more acute than any others in U.S. history excepting the Civil War, and left a more indelible mark than any other President in this century. To be sure, his New Deal was slapdash, mostly ineffectual, and at times unconstitutional, and his frivolous foreign policy lurched from deep isolationism in the mid 1930s to disingenuous interventionism from 1937 to 1941, to harebrained Wilsonianism and appeasement of Stalin during World War II. But to borrow Tip O'Neill's line about Reagan, "Da people loved him," and he led them through the most trying of times. FDR, scoundrel and titan: the Pisastratus of American politics.

Harry S. Truman -- Below Average. Second only to McKinley as a tough one to rate, he gave us much to admire -- hence his resilient reputation. But the fact remains that under his care the United States knew neither peace nor prosperity, and the American people rejected him utterly in the end. As for the heroics attending the birth of Containment, credit the President for his grit, but honor Acheson, Marshall, Kennan, Nitze, Dulles, Vandenberg, and the rest for providing the initiative, brains, and bipartisan support.

Dwight D. Eisenhower -- Great. Peace and prosperity for eight years, dangerous Cold War crises averted or managed, a federal budget cut and balanced, the military downsized without risking national security, and not least the Interstate Highway System: more than enough for greatness. He made mistakes (Suez, Earl Warren, the U-2 fiasco), but admitted them as such and took responsibility. He had a temper, but he was shrewd and governed without scandal. Colin Powell's greatest asset is that people hope he's another Ike.

John F. Kennedy -- Below Average. He was mostly show, not substance, and what substance there was either failed (civil-rights bill) or did harm ("Pay any price, bear any burden . . ."). His tax cut worked, but his foreign policy was awful from the Bay of Pigs and Vienna summit of 1961 to the Cuban Missile Crisis (viz. his pledge never to try to oust Castro), "neutralization" of Laos, overthrow of the Diem regime in Saigon, and escalation in Vietnam.

Lyndon B. Johnson -- Failure. Even worse than JFK, he did more damage to the American Republic than any other President of his era, perhaps any era. The Great Society was wasteful and counterproductive; his conduct of the Vietnam War amounted, in Paul Johnson's phrase, to a veritable "suicide attempt"; and his guns-and-butter approach on the home front was gutless. Hubris is too gentle a word to apply to a man who nearly tore the country apart.

Richard M. Nixon -- Near Great/Failure. So schizoid a record that only a split ranking will do. He was the mirror image of Wilson in that he succeeded grandly in most foreign-policy ventures (detente, opening to China, the Yom Kippur War) but failed at home and, like Wilson, destroyed himself in the end. A big environmentalist who founded the Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (for which some liberals now credit him), he also vastly expanded Johnson's entitlement programs, abolished the draft, gave 18-year-olds the vote, and presided over Roe v. Wade. He showed the Republican Party the future with his Southern strategy, but also crippled it for a decade with his domestic liberalism, failure to campaign for local Republicans, and Watergate. His greatest virtue, perhaps, was his eagerness to run for President at all in the horrible year of 1968 and assume a thankless and dangerous task.

Gerald R. Ford -- Below Average. He resembles Harding in that the nation yearned for a bland, mediocre leader to restore it to normalcy. And, like Harding, he had a magnificent Cabinet, including Henry Kissinger, James Schlesinger, and Edward Levy. But he was stymied in foreign and economic policy alike by the post-Vietnam hangover in Congress.

Jimmy Carter -- Failure. He brokered the Camp David Accord (for which American taxpayers still ante up), but otherwise his Administration is rightly associated with the loss of Iran, the hostage crisis and the "Desert One" debacle, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, not to mention recession, inflation, "malaise" (his own word), disco, rampant promiscuity on Main Street, and drugs in his own teetotaling White House. He should have been a preacher.

Ronald Reagan -- Great. He made some mistakes (Iran - Contra and the deregulation of Savings & Loans without repeal of federal deposit insurance), ran up big deficits, and had the good fortune to follow five consecutive botched Administrations. But he gave America eight years of peace and prosperity, restored the nation's optimism with a skill at least equal to FDR's, honored wholesome values to a degree unknown since Ike, broke up OPEC and thus broke the back of inflation, and, together with Thatcher, Walesa, John Paul II, Solzhenitsyn, and Gorbachev, tossed the Soviet empire on the ash heap of history. The leadership void he left behind is eloquent testimony to his stature. Put Ron on the Rock!

George Bush -- Below Average. A bureaucrat/party man/ company man, he would have made an ideal politician . . . in Japan. He showed true finesse in stitching together the Gulf War coalition, but strategically (vis-a-vis defeated Iraq, the collapsing USSR, the "New World Order") and domestically ("Read My Lips," the 1992 campaign), he was genuinely vision-impaired.

Bill Clinton -- Below Average (pending). It is too soon to tell, of course: he may be impeached or rise to some crisis. But as of now it is hard to name anything of his own that he has achieved (NAFTA was Bush's initiative). He made a hash of policy toward Asia and Europe, and learned all the wrong lessons of Vietnam with regard to the Third World. He even retreated from his entire original domestic agenda and seems determined to destroy the morale and preparedness of the U.S. armed forces. Still, he may match Reagan's record of unbroken peace and prosperity, and will thus look good to posterity by comparison to George Bush and Al Gore.

Speaking of Gore, one pattern that clearly emerges from this exercise is that Presidents who follow a successful two-termer of the same political party invariably flop. John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Van Buren, Andrew Johnson, Taft, Hoover, and Bush were all one-term flops, and Madison and Truman, although they won second terms, were less than distinguished. Would Nixon have done a one-term fadeout had he succeeded Ike after 1960? Will Gore do likewise if elected in 2000? History says yes, and one wonders why. Is this due to some cyclical swing in the mood of the electorate, or is it that popular Presidents are just hard acts to follow? Or do successful Presidents tend to mortgage the future to obtain short-term results (and win re-election), obliging their successors to inherit the wind? If so, then will Gore be stuck with the task of realizing the balanced budget by 2002 and facing the foreign crises that are bound to erupt with a hollowed-out, feminized military? He may well step into Bill Clinton's shoes only to wish soon enough that he hadn't. All the more reason for American voters to choose the Republican -- any Republican -- next time around. At least he (or she) will have a chance to be Great.