Ford's Assessment of Fellow Presidents

[Mimpy]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/12/ford.pres...s.ap/index.html

Highlights:

• Ford: Carter, a fine person but a poor president

• Ford: Reagan, a bad manager and the least well-informed on running gov't

• Ford: Truman, Nixon were good on foreign policy

• Ford: Eisenhower best president of his lifetime

Don't know too much about these presidencies to comment myself, but I liked what he said about the American people at the end. Thoughts?

Edited January 13, 2007 by Mimpy

[The Wrath]

I disagree with all 4 of those assessments. Carter is not a fine person, I thought Reagan did a great job managing (and shrinking) the government, Nixon's foreign policy was a disaster, and I don't see how Eisenhower can be considered the greatest president of the 20th century. Surely Reagan deserves that honor.

[LaszloWalrus]

My vote for greatest president goes to Coolidge.

[The Wrath]

Not saying you're wrong, but why? I don't know anything about him.

[KendallJ]

Harding and Coolidge put the roar in "The Roaring Twenties".

The revenue acts of '21 (Harding) and '24 (Coolidge) slashed the top marginal tax rates from 75% to 25%.

Salsman cited his favorable view of Coolidge's domestic policies in his article on the Cause fo the Great Depression.

[LaszloWalrus]

Coolidge had no religious angle (to my knowledge at least), liberalized economic policy, and generally kept the government out of running people's lives.

[DarkWaters]

Although the Reagan administration issued a lot of tax cuts, their policies led to massive government expansion and dramatic increases in the National Debt. This is from Wikipedia:

"In order to cover Reagan' federal budget deficits, the United States borrowed heavily both domestically and abroad, and by the end of Reagan's second term the national debt held by the public rose from 26 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 1980 to 41 percent in 1989, the highest level since 1963. By 1988, the debt totaled $2.6 trillion."

I think Ronald Reagan was the first Republican to issue generous tax cuts while simultaneously undergoing sharp increases in government spending on such a large scale. To Reagan's defense, he at least claimed to want to disassemble LBJ's Great Society in his memoirs.

In terms of laissez-faire economics, Calvin Coolidge was a much better President. "The business of the American people is business." sums up his administration's philosophy fairly well.

[DarkWaters]

Coolidge had no religious angle (to my knowledge at least)

I started reading Robert Sobel's biography of Calvin Coolidge.

I noticed this alarming excerpt in the following speech that Calvin Coolidge delivered as Vice President:

We do not need more material development, we need more spiritual development. We do not need more intellectual power, we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen. It is on the side of life that it is desirable to put the emphasis at the present time. If that side is strengthened, the other side will take care of itself. It is that side which is the foundation of all else. If the foundation be firm, the superstructure will stand. The success or failure of liberal education, the justification of its protection and encouragement by the government, and of its support by society, will be measured by its ability to minister to this great cause, to perform the necessary services, to make the required redeeming sacrifices.

The speech was entitled "The Things That Are Unseen." It was delivered at Wheaton College in 1923.

So far, these comments do not seem to reflect the defining characteristics of his life and Presidency, but I am only done with a fourth of the book.