There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind who the worst president in U.S. history is. I don't care what they've got on Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Warren Harding or either of the Andrews - Jackson (who may not have been a terrible president, but was certainly a shit) or Johnson. No president in the past, and, with luck, no president in the future, will ever be as evil, sordid and incompetent as Donald J. Trump. (When it comes to Trump, I just can't summon up my inner Abe Lincoln. I have to do a bit of wordsmithing. With respect to presidents, I'm strictly with malice towards one, with charity towards most.)
Deciding on the best is a bit more difficult. For one thing, I greatly admire FDR. But my pick - Abraham Lincoln - definitely lands me in uncontested territory. After all, most historians go with Abraham Lincoln as their Number One or Number 2, neck and neck with George Washington.
But Abraham Lincoln is not only the greatest president, he's right up there among the ones I've liked the best as a human being.
What's not to like? There's the humble, up from nothing backstory. His empathy. His courage. His brilliance. His brilliant writing. His humor. The sorrows he endured - the loss of two of his sons; the difficult wife. His decency, integrity, honesty. His capacity for leadership, his ability to bring in and listen to the "best and the brightest." (Pretty much the antithesis of You. Know. Who.)
Hardly original on my part, of course.
I'm sure there aren't a lot of folks out there - unless they're related - who talk about how much they liked and admired Zachary Taylor. Or John Tyler. (Or is it Zachary Tyler and John Taylor?) Who include Franklin Pierce and Rutherford B. Hayes in their pantheon of heroes. Who thrill to the personal qualities of James Garfield or Chester A. Arthur.
Certain choices are easy to make.
But Lincoln really does stand head and shoulders above most of the rest, and not just because he was so tall. (6'4", even without the stovepipe hat.)
So, on Abraham Lincoln's birthday, I doff my virtual stovepipe hat to him.
And with Presidents Day just around the weekend corner, I'll give a nod to the other presidents I've liked and admired.
I wish Thomas Jefferson weren't encumbered with so much scurrilous racist stuff. I admired his writing, his inventive mind - the dumbwaiter, a swivel chair, a cypher machine, pedometer improvements - his fine eye (Monticello), and the fact that he popularized both macaroni and ice cream in the US. I liked Jefferson well enough to have purchased the six-volume Dumas Malone biography, which I did back in the 1970's. But not well enough to have plowed through it in its entirety.
I am very fond of Franklin Roosevelt. His vision and ability to communicate helped pull us out of the Depression, and pull us into a war that we needed to get pulled into. And help win it. If ever there were the right man for the time. (Other than Lincoln, that is. And maybe even, in his decidedly non-great way, Joe Biden. Remains to be seen, but I'm hopeful.) I've read plenty about FDR and about Eleanor (a woman I greatly admire), and I don't hold the philandering against him. But I do hold the reluctance to admit Jews fleeing Nazism against him, and the camps for Japanese-Americans (that they've never been fully compensated for). Still, wouldn't I have loved to pay a visit to Campobello and/or Hyde Park when FDR was there. It's pretty wonderful going now - I've fortunately been to both places - but how great would it have been to hang around having a martini with FDR, even if he did smoke.
As a young Catholic girl - bonus points for being an Irish-Catholic from Massachusetts - I, of course, adored JFK. And his flair, wit, and intelligence still hold up. He done good with the Cuban Missile Crisis; not so good with Bay of Pigs. Did he do enough for Civil Rights? Yes/no/maybe? Would he have kept us out of going waist deep into the Big Muddy of the Vietnam War? Probably not with Bob McNamara sitting at the "best and brightest" table. But who knows? Unlike many other presidents, JFK certainly knew and appreciated the costs of war. Anyway, in terms of presidents I like, John Fitzgerald Kennedy is not likely to ever drop from the top five. Just because.
Jimmy Carter, I suspect, is someone I'd find pretty boring in person. But I liked him as president for his honesty - there was a malaise; we should have turned our thermostats down - and I've really liked him as an ex-President. Well into his 90's, he's still swinging a hammer to help build affordable housing through Habitat for Humanity.
I cried the night Barack Obama, and I cried the day he left office. Of the presidents in my lifetime, he's the one I would most like to have met. Not the greatest president ever, but, all things considered (c.f., the crap he inherited; Mitch McConnell), he done good. Brains, cool, wit, empathy. A wonderful writer, a brilliant orator. He's the man!
And I think I'm going to like Joe Biden just fine. After all, he seems like a guy I could have gone to grammar school with. He uses the word 'malarkey.' He's kind, smart enough, and has tremendous EQ. Plus a great wife. And dogs.
Anyway, today being Lincoln's birthday, Presidents Day being upon us, and the impeachment trial of the Worst President Ever playing out, I thought I'd do a little thinking about the men who've held the office.
As with all things, you have to take the good with the bad. We don't need all of our presidents to be of the greatness and stature of Abraham Lincoln. But let's hope we never have another president who's as stunningly all bad at DJT.
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