America's worst historians

R. Emmett Tyrrell:

There are certain questions frequently asked of eminent minds in public that must be avoided lest that eminence reveal himself to be a moron or at least moronic in certain areas of intellectual endeavor. Recently the Washington Post addressed one of these questions to Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia University. Naif that he is, Foner exuberantly rushed forward to prove my point. The question asked was one variation or another of "rank the present president of the United States on the historians' scale of 'great' to 'failure.'" Foner, though the author of distinguished historical studies of 19th century America, bemanured his scholarly credentials by ranking George W. Bush as "the worst president in U.S. history." Now I like a good joke, but nowhere in his tortured exposition was there a hint of humor.

Obviously in the area of contemporary history the professor is a moron. We may even extend his moronism to include the ranking of presidents throughout American history. He claims that Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan "occupy the bottom rung," because they "were simply not up to the job" of facing a "national crisis." Well, I can agree to that. Then he throws in Calvin Coolidge and Warren G. Harding, because of "the corruption of their years in office," though Coolidge's administration was not particularly known for corruption. If Foner is still placing the blame for the Depression on Coolidge he might devote some time to reading economics, particularly Milton Friedman's explication of the Depression, which makes clear that it was a monetary crisis made so by the Fed's tight money.

Finally, he places Richard Nixon at "the bottom rung" for his "disdain for the Constitution and abuse of presidential power." Nixon's opening to China and navigation of the tricky waters of the Cold War apparently amount to nullities in Foner's analysis, as does Nixon's fairly successful management of a government that is gigantic in comparison to those of the earlier failed presidents.

Onto this junk heap of inferior presidents he now heaves George W. Bush. Note, nowhere at "the bottom rung" does he place Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton. Carter blundered both in foreign policy and in economic policy, leaving office with interest rates at 21.5 percent, inflation at 13.6 percent and unemployment at 7.1 percent. Americans abroad were embarrassed to show their passports, and at least 52 were being held hostage in our Tehran embassy. Clinton got himself impeached by practicing the same abuse of power and ithyphallic compulsiveness that some of us reported he had practiced as a mediocre governor of Arkansas. Clinton's economy was healthy (save for its bubble), but that was mainly because he followed Republican economic policies. His plan to "grow the economy" via the reduced interest rates that he promised from a balanced budget (balanced mostly through military cuts) failed. Interest rates went up.

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Tyrrell devastates Foner's "case" with facts. How Carter could be left off the list of worst President's is inexplicable. In both economic and foreign policy he had many more disasters than successes. Bush by contrast, has had a strong economic record and in foreign policy has waged an aggressive war against enemies who want to destroy us. The real problem is that liberals did not want to liberate Iraq and want the US to lose in Iraq and they are angry that Bush want adopt their bad advice in Iraq. They will never admit they were wrong about Iraq and they keep trying to construct a case for the opposite.