Fred's Book Club: Hail to the Chief?

Welcome to another edition of our seeming endless book feature, the Humpback Writers. It's named for Hump Day since it runs on Wednesday, and we have yet to determine if any of the writers have actual humps. Today's book has a number of writers, but as far as I know they are all Hump-Free. And that's a sort of presidential joke (based on Hubert Humphrey -- I'm sure it was a killer in 1968), because this is a presidential book. 

James Taranto, whose "Best of the Web" feature on the Wall Street Journal's site was a daily must-read for years, and Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, edited the book Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House. They gathered essays on each man by prominent writers, and worked out what order they ought to be ranked. The book came out in 2005, so it only goes up to George W. Bush, although he's reviewed in there as well. 

Contributors include Glenn Harlan "Instapundit" Reynolds, the late Robert Bork, Edwin Meese, Paul Johnson, Ken Starr, and others. Because of the political bent of the contributors, ranging from centrist to right wing, they tend to consider factors like Constitutional appropriateness and national defense more heavily in judgment of our presidents than might Leftist historians. All of them are fair, I think, and all of them know how to write well. And most readers will learn things they didn't teach in school.

Here's Richard Brookhiser on George Washington:

When Hamilton's economic program, which included an excise tax on distilled spirits, provoked the Whiskey Rebellion on the Appalachian frontier in 1794, Washington had to rely on his own talents. The Whiskey Rebels thought they were justly defying an oppressive tax. But Washington saw their defiance of a legitimately passed law as a violation of republican government. "[If] a minority ... is to dictate to the majority," he wrote, then "all laws are prostrate, and everyone will carve for himself." Washington sent troops to the scene, five times as numerous as the army he had led across the Delaware in 1776; the show of force prevented further bloodshed. Good government and sound finances were saved. When Hamilton stepped down in 1795, American public securities were trading at 110 percent of face value.

Michael Barone on Ulysses Grant: 

Grant also believed that Indians could and should be treated the same as other Americans. He deplored the fighting between settlers and Indians on the frontier and put most of the blame on settlers. He wanted to protect Indians on reservations, provide promised funds, educate them, and provide individuals with title to land, so that they could blend into American society. He enlisted Quakers and churchmen to replace corrupt public officials. For a time violence lessened. 

John J. DiIulio Jr. on Chester Arthur:

Chester A. Arthur is one of our most underrated presidents. As every schoolchild once knew, Arthur is the rotund, whiskered man who became America's twenty-first president in 1881 when President Garfield, after barely four months in office, was assassinated.... Arthur was the ideal chief executive for an age when the presidency was still regarded primarily as an administrative branch. In addition to the Pendleton Act [reforming civil service], he fought many highly consequential legislative battles and put several previously neglected issues on the national political agenda. 

Not all of the pieces are winners. Lynne Cheney writes well on James Madison, but focuses more on the giant of his intellect in forming American ideals and the Constitution, and barely on his poor run in the White House. His presidency is summed largely in one paragraph:

Madison was not a forceful president. His way of making decisions was to examine every fact from every side, and he was not entirely happy with acting until everything pointed in one direction. The War Hawks in Congress, led by Henry Clay, ran roughshod over him and propelled the country into the War of 1812, a conflict that resulted in the burning of both the Capitol and the White House and ended in a peace treaty that left the situation after the war unchanged from what it had been before. 

One of my favorites in the book is Christopher Buckley on James Buchanan, often said to be our lousiest chief executive:

"At least he meant well" isn't quite up there with, say, Edwin Stanton's pronouncement at the deathbed of Lincoln: "Now he belongs to the ages."

Yet let's cut the poor guy some posthumous slack and grant him the benefit of the doubt that he did, at least, mean well. Perhaps historians, the next time they convene to decide who was the absolute worst president ever, will also factor in his good intentions and move him up two notches so that his ghost can experience the giddy feeling of looking down -- if only temporarily -- on Warren Harding and Franklin Pierce.

Also in the book are essays on the presidency in wartime, with the judiciary and the economy, and so on. 

This is an immensely readable book, enjoyable for students and fans of American history and casual readers who would just like to find a good book on the presidency and why it's become such a big fat hairy deal in our nation and the world. 

P.S.: All of this was written on Tuesday, before any election results came in. I may not have wanted to look at anything having to do with politics if things went sideways for my preferred candidates. But, at least books like this remind us that we have survived some pretty poor officials in all three branches of government, and if you're upset by today's non-resolution and the intimation that great chicanery is taking place, remember that we still have much for which to be grateful, much for which we have to fight.