July 31, 2007
Another Great Rightist VIII Posted by Alexander Burns at 01:55 PM EST I’ve spent a few days now—or, at least, parts of them—organizing some further thoughts on the subject of Presidential greatness. John Steele Gordon concluded last week’s exchange on this subject with some perceptive observations. Though I disagree with his statement that Churchill, de Gaulle, and Reagan were not really men of the right, he does an excellent job of sketching out some of the character traits that helped these men secure the lasting good will of their countrymen. Optimism, eloquence, nationalism, and emotional openness are certainly qualities that characterize the most popular political leaders. One of Mr. Gordon’s points nagged at me all weekend, though, and that’s his prediction that the public will never absorb the information that undermines depictions of Reagan as the winner of the Cold War. It would be unsettling to think that the American people are incapable of a clear-eyed assessment of their Presidents. This may be the case, but I’ve been looking over some data on the Americans’ recollections of their Presidents, and I’m not so confident that Reagan’s aura of greatness will last. There are a couple predictable patterns that affect public perception of former Presidents, and right now I think they’re skewing the feedback on Ronald Reagan. First, Presidents almost invariably gain standing with the public after leaving office. I chalk this up to a combination of nostalgia—that is, bad memories fading and good ones sticking around—and Americans’ habitual attitude of skepticism toward whoever occupies the Oval Office at any given moment. George H. W. Bush received a smaller percentage of the vote in 1992 than any incumbent President since Taft. Five months into his Presidency, only 27 percent of Americans said his performance was “excellent or above average.” In a 2002 Gallup poll, however, a whopping 69 percent said they approved of his performance in retrospect. That’s a pretty impressive improvement for someone who didn’t do anything all that extraordinary in the decade immediately following his Presidency. Or maybe it’s not impressive at all; that’s just the bump that ex-Presidents get. This is especially helpful to articulate and personable leaders, who are better at manufacturing good memories. Second, it seems crude to say this, but ex-Presidents always get more popular when they die. In a January 2006 Zogby poll, 17 percent of Americans said Gerald Ford was a “great or near great” President. Exactly a year later, that number had almost doubled to 31 percent. No new facts about the Ford administration had emerged, but Ford had passed away on the day after Christmas in 2006. If Malvolio was correct in Twelfth Night, and some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have it thrust upon them, then recently deceased Presidents tend to fall into the last of those three groups. Reagan certainly benefits from these two phenomena. His reputation has also been enhanced by one of the factors that enlarged John Kennedy’s: His political party regards him as its last truly successful President. Just three of the Presidents since 1932 consistently break 50 percent in general survey assessments of Presidential greatness—Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Reagan. Roosevelt is usually at the top of these polls, with Kennedy topping him occasionally and Reagan trailing a little behind. It’s no accident that the thirty-fifth and fortieth Presidents keep taking the silver and bronze medals. Major Democrats, and some Republicans as well, invoke the memory of John Kennedy constantly. Just last week, the Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorensen wrote an article for The New Republic asking, “Is Obama the Next JFK?” Across the aisle, Reagan is the ex-presidential model of choice. As Carl Cannon recently observed, President Bush is so unpopular that “the GOP characters seeking to replace him in 2009 are coping with the current political environment by closing their eyes and pretending they are succeeding Ronald Reagan.” With a parade of candidates and pundits perpetually touting their achievements, it’s no wonder that the public rates Kennedy and Reagan so highly. None of these grade-inflating phenomena will last. As the people who actually experienced the Reagan Presidency constitute a smaller and smaller proportion of the overall American populace, feelings of nostalgia and posthumous sympathy will fade. And if one makes the possibly risky assumption that at some point or another there will be another competent Republican President, Reagan’s stock with the public will fall further. I don’t know where he’ll end up in 50 years, but if I had to speculate I’d probably venture a guess that he’ll be ranked alongside George H. W. Bush, his “kinder and gentler” successor. I expect Kennedy’s catastrophic death will preserve his reputation a little longer, but I’d guess that he’ll end up placing closer to Truman than to Roosevelt. In Mr. Gordon’s post last Friday, he wrote, “Nuance is for historians, not the people.” Maybe so, maybe not. But in the long run, “the people” don’t diverge so much from historians in their rankings of the Presidents. Once the noise of state funerals fades and the pining of wistful op-ed columnists subsides, that’s when Americans really figure out who their great Presidents are.
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