One Utah

Come one, come all pundits on this blog, to a penetrating quantitative analysis of Presidential greatness versus experience at–

http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/Maps/Mar10.html

(scroll down to “Is an Experienced President a Good President?”)

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Conclusion: no correlation whatsoever!

My meditation:

According to this data, LBJ, with 27 years in the Congress, is the number two most experienced president and for my money, he was an exceptionally poor one. He was effective in the Senate but not in the White House. His presidency was proof positive AGAINST the argument that effective legislators make effective executives. Dramatic evidence that the executive and legislative arenas require two radically different skill sets.

Reagan on the other hand came from the executive branch, with eight painfully long years as governor and a whole lifetime on the campaign trail, but nonetheless for my money was one of drop-dead dumbest, silliest, clumsiest, least effective presidents in American history, running neck and neck with Bill Clinton in every department except intelligence–a most valid comparison oft-noted by presidential historians.

Reagan authorized arms for hostages, birthday cakes to the Ayatolla, a totally rogue-nation CIA that pandered to Iraq and armed Iran, coddling Saddam Hussein and other megalomaniacal tyrants all over the globe. Even while preaching the gospel of fiscal conservatism the Gipper ran up the greatest federal debt in the history of the world and then, for his last act, casually blew off the opportunity for total superpower nuclear disarmament offered to him on a silver platter by a genuflecting Gorbachev at Reykjavik–far and away the single greatest presidential blunder in all of American history–by many orders of magnitude more colossally stupid than anything Dubbya has ever done. In so many, many ways–fiscal, economic, domestic, foreign, environmental–Reagan set the stage for the eventual disintegration of America as a world power. What Dubbya has completed, Reagan began.

So I would be contrarian as to what constitutes, “effective” let alone, “great.” The dead-wrong-as-usual conventional wisdom is that Reagan was effective because he won two elections by large margins, reversing the polarity of the Congress, just as Clinton did 1992. This was the so-called Reagan “revolution.”

But I don’t buy that “effective” means “effective at winning elections” or “effective at political survival purely for its own sake”.

To me, “effective” means succeeding at some clearly defined political policy objective AND ALSO dealing adroitly with unforeseen contingencies–per Abraham Lincoln during the civil warm, or FDR during the Depression. “Effective” would in its penultimate expression mean being quite willing to LOSE an election in order to do the right thing for the country. It means having both vision AND stamina AND imagination AND integrity AND grace under pressure, all working together seamlessly.

Bill Clinton had no defined political policy objectives whatsoever, beyond longevity for himself in elected office. He was an airhead. He did exactly whatever pollster Dick Morris told him to do just about as mechanically as Dubbya did whatever Karl Rove told him to do, or Ronald Reagan did whatever his advisors thought General Electric and Bechtel–which supplied virtually his entire top management team–might wish him to do. Clinton’s single great domestic triumph is said to have been skillful “triangulation” of the Gingrich congress–e.g., promoting NAFTA on behalf of the military-industrial complex, and officiating over “the end of welfare as we know it.” Selling the poor mostly black folk down the river in order to fill up the campaign warchests and win elections.

But I don’t see much logic in crediting Clinton for balancing the budget or stimulating the economy. The ephermeral uplift of the 1990’s was very simply the ground swell of business cycle itself combined with a “perfect storm” of circumstance and convergent technology which temporarily spiked productivity even as energy prices and therefore inflation were at a cyclical low. Clinton was no more responsible for the behavior of the energy price/inflation cycle or the business cycle than Jimmy Carter was responsible for the behavior of OPEC.

Bill Clinton was “adroit” in handling unforeseen crises only inasmuch as he was shrewd enough to back down on whatever he had recently set out to do (gays in the military, national health care) or sufficiently timid enough to procrastinate on indefinitely (genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda)–either pulling back or flat giving up whenever a challenge proved difficult or dangerous. His greatest asset was his spectacular survival instinct whenever it was necessary to extricate himself–again and again; and again and again and again and again–from entirely self-engendered personal career crises, such as draft dodging, then Whitewater, then Geniffergate and Travelgate and Monicagate–et al. Wall to wall Bimbogate across two decades in elected office: the hidden “agenda” of the Clinton administration that presidential historians have long since conveniently forgotten….

We could very defensibly argue that the best president may well be the one who is so timid, so cautious, so utterly devoid of imagination, ideas, hutzpah or vision, so perfectly incapable of taking ANY initiative that he basically withdraws into a tortoise shell of inertia for his entire term. We want not the person “First in His Class”, but rather the phlegmatic student who SLEPT through class. We should aspire not to youthful idealism, but to advanced old age bordering on senility. Eisenhower would be the penultimate example. (”Is he ALIVE?”) The best offense is a strategy of uncompromising, isolationist, tortoise-like defense.

Are not the best presidents, like the best doctors, those wise and shrewd and zen enough to do nothing at all–to let time and the immune system do their work with minimal interference– as opposed to those who, like JFK declaring what would become the Cold War with his adolescent grandstanding and saber-rattling (”Let’s invade Cuba–that’ll show em!”), LBJ/Nixon in Vietnam, Truman in Korea, bush I and Bush II in Iraq, all making it their foremost priority to drive the nation straight into war at any cost whatsoever to the country and the people?

[Editors note: is this actually a back-door argument FOR the value of "experience"?  That depends upon what we mean by "experience"....]

What conventionally “great” Presidents do is make war, not policy or legislation. Nothing like a national security crisis to bring one’s personal approval ratings out of the toilet.

As Edward Abbey put it we have had “Roosevelt’s war”, then “Truman’s war”, then what might be called either “Kennedy’s War”, or “Johnson’s War,” or “Nixon’s War”, then “Bush War I” and “Bush War II”.

Our ambitious young men can think of nothing so glamorous as leading the nation into war.

But I would suggest that the conventional definition of “effectiveness” and “greatness” be reversed.

Instead of the hutzpah to rush into war, let’s acknowledge that true greatness is having the wisdom–and courage–to skillfully avoid it.

–JMNASHOFWIMOMNBW

This entry was posted Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 8:30 am and is filed under 2008 Election, American History, Conservative Sell-Outs, Conservatives, Corruption, Democracy, Democrats, Federal Budget, George W. Bush, Iran, Iraq, Mental Illness, Military Industrial Complex, National Politics, Nuclear Weapons, Party Politics, Peace, Political Corruption, Reagan, Republicans, Richard Nixon, The Constitution, This Blog, Zeitgeist. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.