Idle hands, devil's workshop. . . The other day I rummaged through the encyclopedia and made a list of all the candidates nominated by major parties for the presidency, noting what political office they held at the time of nomination, or what had been their most recent office, or, in the case of presidents themselves, what was the "highest" office they had held before their terms in office.
The results are pretty interesting. Americans don't usually nominate men who have never held elective office, unless the men are or have been generals in the army. When such candidates are nominated, only the generals stand a decent chance of winning. All the others lose (Pinckney, Greeley, Hughes, Willkie). The generals themselves, as presidents, range from excellent to poor: Washington, Eisenhower, Grant, Taylor, W. H. Harrison.
So we vote for politicians and generals, but we don't vote for congressmen and senators. That's really quite remarkable -- it's something the European parliamentary politicians would find hard to understand. Since the days of Washington we have nominated 21 sitting senators to run for president -- again, I'm talking about major parties or significant third parties only (that is, a third party strong enough to gain electoral votes or a million popular votes). Of those 21, only two have won. The record is 2-19. The odds that you flip a coin 21 times and come up with at most 2 heads? It's 232/2,097,152, or roughly 1 in 9,000. The only senators to win? Harding and Kennedy. Not a great record, there.
Why don't we vote for senators? (We hardly ever even nominate a congressman.) Most commentators say that Americans distrust the "insiders" in Washington, and that seems right to me. We're patriotic, sure, but we also consider our own government, at least in part, as a kind of invading power to be overthrown once in a while, and modestly resisted at all times. So we nominate a lot of governors, in a usually vain attempt by more local and humanly comprehensible governments to rein back the central monster. (Governors and ex-governors, by the way, have a very fine record in these elections, winning over 70% of the time, by my count.) What will happen this year, I don't have any clear idea. The Democrats seem set to nominate one senator or another (and, if my hunch plays out, it will be the gentleman from the great Home of Lincoln), while the Republicans have sent into the arena an old senator, a mayor (no mayor has ever won), a couple of governors, and a couple of very smart and bold congressmen who have no chance of victory. Part of the problem for a senator is an easily assailable list of votes, an easily assailable list of absences, and the air of pompous detachment from the little people.
Another thing I noticed, musing over the pictures of past presidents. They're not great lookers. Some of them were dashing enough: Jefferson, Monroe, Kennedy. Probably the handsomest was Franklin Pierce. But they're rare. The Adamses were downright homely; Cleveland and Taft were obese; McKinley, one of the gentlest of men, stared down from beetle brows as if he wanted to land an ax at the base of your skull; Eisenhower didn't relish war as Patton did, but he looked as if he might, and never more than when he smiled; Nixon looked the part of a crook, as did Lyndon Johnson; Andrew Johnson looked like a butcher invited to the wrong party; and Lincoln may have been the ugliest man in the history of our politics. I guess that gives Mr. Giuliani an advantage. . .
I'm not sure, either, that television will change matters here. The choices seem to tap into what is still a deep well of mainly healthy skepticism toward government, and mainly healthy skepticism of the ever-smiling, pretty-faced "helpers" who want to lighten your life by lightening your wallet. But those wells may be drying up, as people increasingly turn to government as a surrogate for the church, to provide "salvation" and "security," in exchange for the surrender of one's will. With this difference, of course: when I surrender my will to God, I am set free.
So, statistically speaking, we are looking for an ugly governor?
Posted by: Bobby Winters | December 08, 2007 at 12:37 PM
Our distaste for legislators in the Presidency is especially curious given that our President serves not only as head of state but also as head of government. Or maybe that's not so curious after all.
Posted by: DGP | December 08, 2007 at 12:53 PM
Maybe we prefer governors and generals to senators because we prefer someone with who has had the reponsibility of running something to someone who bloviates a lot and votes on legislation once in a while.
Posted by: Judy Warner | December 08, 2007 at 02:26 PM
"Part of the problem for a senator is . . . the air of pompous detachment from the little people."
So true, Dr. Esolen, so true.
But senators also appear to be detached from themselves. Just turn to c-span to watch them at work. They give speeches to a nearly empty chamber, in a language so distant from ordinary discourse as to sound almost foreign. The worst of it is that they don't seem to think for themselves. Often, most read ploddingly, without any preparation, from statements written by their staff. That has led some into the absurdities of never-never land. Remember how Joe Biden gave a speech written for him that revealed he was the son of a British miner? And how Hillary Clinton, in the ad hoc free-for-all of a television debate, contradicted her position on illegal immigrant drivers' licenses a mere minute after she proclaimed it?
Perhaps if they had to take part in something like the parliamentary question periods of Great Britain and Canada, where elected officials have think on their feet, senators would seem more presidential to voters.
Posted by: maria horvath | December 08, 2007 at 03:05 PM
Exactly, or in other words, a governor is an executive, as are most if not all generals. It is the executive branch, after all, were electing someone to. A senator, on the other, is what you said.
Posted by: Jim Kushiner | December 08, 2007 at 03:08 PM
>>>Maybe we prefer governors and generals to senators because we prefer someone with who has had the reponsibility of running something to someone who bloviates a lot and votes on legislation once in a while.<<<
He is, after all, the "Chief EXECUTIVE". Senators and Congressman don't execute much of anything, not even their staffs. Since BS is a legislator's stock in trade, perhaps people look towards candidates who have, at least for a while, actually been responsible for something.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 08, 2007 at 06:19 PM
I saw a remarkable claim made on C-SPAN the other day - whether true or not I don't know, but the deliverer seemed authoritative - that no Mayor of New York City has held subsquent political office in over a century, although several (notably would-be President John Lindsay and would-be Governor Ed Koch) have tried. That's an interesting sign of the distrust with which people view New York City, since in theory running a city that large would (and most likely does) require skills as great as running a state.
Posted by: James Kabala | December 08, 2007 at 07:34 PM
One characteristic of the early presidents, outside of Washington, is that they all had extensive diplomatic experience, and 4 of them served as Secretary of State.
John Adams--ambassador
Thomas Jefferson--Secretary of State under Washington
James Madison--Secretary of State under Jefferson
James Monroe--Minister to France, Minister to Court of St. James, Secretary of State
John Quincy Adams--Minister to the Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, chief negotiator of the U.S. commission for the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, and minister to the Court of St. James (Great Britain) from 1815 until 1817, Secretary of State under Monroe
Posted by: Thomas Hart | December 08, 2007 at 08:14 PM
>>>John Adams--ambassador<<<
Neither a very good nor a very successful one--could not hide his disdain for decadent and immoral Europeans who we just happened to need as allies. Also did not get on well with fellow commissioner Benjamin Franklin, whom he considered a dirty old man.
>>>Thomas Jefferson--Secretary of State under Washington<<<
Also Ambassador to France, and far too much enamored of his host country. Turned out not to be very good at foreign affairs as President, being responsible for the Embargo Acts which single-handedly ruined American commerce--not that Jefferson, the agrarian republican, cared much for grubby commerce (which is why he died bankrupt).
>>>James Madison--Secretary of State under Jefferson<<<
Implemented Jefferson's bankrupt foreign policy, turned out to be a perambulating disaster as President, had to flee Washington one step ahead of the British army.
>>>James Monroe--Minister to France, Minister to Court of St. James, Secretary of State<<<
The one foreign policy success so far. Benefited from the stability that ensued after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the command of the seas by the Royal Navy.
>>>John Quincy Adams--Minister to the Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, chief negotiator of the U.S. commission for the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, and minister to the Court of St. James (Great Britain) from 1815 until 1817, Secretary of State under Monroe<<<
By far the most intelligent President, a polymath and polyglot, and a very accomplished diplomat--but not very successful as President. Did not face many foreign policy challenges in any case.
Of the five Presidents listed, Adams carried the prestige of being part of the Committee on the War in the Continental Congress, as well as a drafter of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was governor of Virginia (not particularly successful) as well as principal author of the Declaration. Madison was instrumental in devising the Constitution, and was a legislative technician par excellence Monroe got in mainly because he was Madison's protege and because the Federalists were already collapsing. J.Q got in mainly because he was John Adams' son..
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 08, 2007 at 08:44 PM
Bobby,
Yes, an ugly governor, exactly!
I did make a blunder in the post: we did elect one man who had never been elected to public office, but who had held positions of high executive responsibility (Hoover).
I agree entirely with Stuart's assessment of the unconscionably underrated John Quincy Adams. Garfield, though wishy-washy, was pretty intelligent -- I've read that he could write in both Latin and Greek -- at the same time, with a pen in each hand. Nice parlor trick.
Posted by: Tony Esolen | December 08, 2007 at 09:32 PM
Garfield also wrote an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Clearly he must have been a very bright man, but he was pretty mediocre as a statesman and probably would have been mediocre as a President even if he had lived.
The Adamses are probably my favorite Presidents; it's too bad that they were Unitarians (as was another President of whom I'm fairly fond, William Howard Taft; his admirable son Robert was Episcopalian, however). John Quincy seems to be coming back into historical favor. Daniel Walker Howe's new 1815-1848 volume in the Oxford History of the United States is dedicated to his memory.
Posted by: James Kabala | December 09, 2007 at 12:55 PM
As far as bright legislators, I've become a latent fan of Duncan Hunter. His grasp of issues is flat out amazing. I also think he's preformed the best in the debates. Unfortunately he doesn't have the star power of Thompson (my current favorite) or Guilliani and lacks the religious appeal of Huckabee (who is a European Christian Democratic style party leader in the making and a keen example of how the Religious Right would shatter sans a pro-death democratic party). Of course I've been impressed with the whole group of them except for Mr. Guilliani and Romney who both seem far too slick for their own good. I even like Ron Paul in his own very-not-a-president-but-would-be-nice-at-dinner sort of way.
Posted by: Nick | December 09, 2007 at 01:26 PM
I would welcome anyone defending Jefferson's status as one of the near great presidents. He certainly was a great man and had many great accomplishments, but I can think of little he did while President to justify his high ranking. The two accomplishments which are most often brought out, the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis & Clark Expedition, hardly seem worthy of the opinion of his being a near great President. The former literally fell into his lap because Napoleon needed the money and the latter made a lot of sense in light of that purchase, though the West would almost certainly have been explored in short order without it given the prospects of private interests making money. Against these "accomplishments," we have the embargo ("O Grab Me" as it was known, and for good reason), which was a disaster.
Posted by: GL | December 09, 2007 at 01:36 PM
If Ron Paul's mouth and brain were in the body of a Christian Mitt Romney, I think we would have a winner.
As for the American people, I think we are pretty fickle. We like that personality come election time (can you give any other reason besides personality why Paul would not make an excellent president?) but when it's attempting to pull the wool over our eyes on some matter or another, we are shocked and appalled.
Personally, I say 86 the hang-up on personality and elect a straight-talking, no-nonsense man who is not interested in rhetoric. (Like Ron Paul.)
Posted by: Irene | December 09, 2007 at 01:52 PM
>>>As far as bright legislators, I've become a latent fan of Duncan Hunter. <<<
In my dealings with Hunter, mainly on defense matters, I have found him to be one of the best informed, most engaged and most perceptive legislators I have met. But then, his son is on his fourth or fifth deployment to Iraq, so he has a dog in the fight.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 09, 2007 at 02:51 PM
>>>Personally, I say 86 the hang-up on personality and elect a straight-talking, no-nonsense man who is not interested in rhetoric. (Like Ron Paul.)<<<
Except that Paul, like his Ronulan fans, is essentially just deranged.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 09, 2007 at 02:54 PM
>>>Except that Paul, like his Ronulan fans, is essentially just deranged.<<<
The only sane man in the asylum will often appear out of touch.
Posted by: Kirk | December 09, 2007 at 08:03 PM
Yes Stuart, all those irritating checks and balances do seem to keep us from running an efficient government. Why not have done with the lot? Putin really has something special going on over there, if only we could get with the program and jettison Ted Kennedy!
I mean, who care about process when you can get RESULTS instead?
The reason that senators have a harder time getting elected may have nothing to do with experience. Senators have an easily pinpointed voting record of yeas or nays that opponents can point to and attack the senator on. Almost every bill that passes through Congress is a product of compromise. So it isn't hard to find something to skewer a senator on somewhere in the record. Even if the bill the senator voted for was a bill to provide health care for poor infants and provide Christmas care packages to GIs in Afghanistan, if there was a tax increase tucked away somewhere in there, that senator is now going to get roasted by the opposition as being in favor of tax hikes.
Can't win as a Senator really...
Governors, by contrast get to propose initiatives drafted in language they picked out themselves. And if the legislation didn't pass, it's the legislature's fault!
Running as a governor means never having to say your sorry, or that you even care. It's the crap that runs downhill. It's really not about management experience.
Posted by: Seth R. | December 09, 2007 at 09:03 PM
Except, Seth, that most of our most influential Presidents since Lincoln had been governors (sometimes quite effective governors), and it shows: Cleveland, McKinley, both Roosevelts, Wilson, Coolidge, Reagan, Bush. Then there were governors who were busts as Presidents -- I mean in terms of influence; I don't like FDR or Wilson all that much, but you can't deny their effectiveness: Hayes, Taft, Carter, Clinton. I'll take a governor over a senator any day, if only to put someone there who DOESN'T owe the current pack of hoodlums a darned thing.
Posted by: Tony Esolen | December 09, 2007 at 11:32 PM
Except that Paul, like his Ronulan fans, is essentially just deranged.
Care to demonstrate your assertion?
Posted by: Irene | December 10, 2007 at 01:04 AM
>>>Care to demonstrate your assertion?<<<
We can start with his isolationist foreign policy, if you want. Libertarianism tout court is just as much a delusion as any other "-ism".
>>>Yes Stuart, all those irritating checks and balances do seem to keep us from running an efficient government. <<<
You misread me entirely. I endorse fully the separation of powers and like very much the idea that our government was organized in such a way that nothing gets done. My own personal program for returning to more limited government has two points:
1. Remove the air conditioning from every government office building in Washington. This will ensure that Congress and the civil service cease to operate between May and October.
2. Pay every Congressman one million dollars and every Senator two million dollars per year, then deduct $100 thousand every time they sponsor or co-sponsor a bill.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 10, 2007 at 04:50 AM
Hah!
Posted by: Seth R. | December 10, 2007 at 06:48 AM
(no mayor has ever won)
FYI, Grover Cleveland and Calvin Coolidge were mayors -- Cleveland of Buffalo, Coolidge of Northampton, MA. Whatever their place in history (Cleveland doubtless deserves wider recognition), each was a man of strong character and clear principles.
Posted by: John Koontz | December 10, 2007 at 08:10 AM
(no mayor has ever won)
FYI, Grover Cleveland and Calvin Coolidge were mayors -- Cleveland of Buffalo, Coolidge of Northampton, MA. Whatever their place in history (Cleveland doubtless deserves wider recognition), each was a man of strong character and clear principles.
Posted by: John Koontz | December 10, 2007 at 08:10 AM
I thought it was interesting that, until the last century, British diplomats in Washington got a hardship bonus for "tropical service".
Posted by: W.E.D. Godbold | December 10, 2007 at 08:24 AM
John,
I think Tony was talking about sitting mayors. There were *former* senators who later became presidents (e.g., in the 20th century there was Truman, LBJ (who had been majority leader), Nixon). Truman was, in my estimation, a near great president. LBJ and RN were, of course, busts. I may be forgetting someone. The other Presidents who served some time in the Senate were Monroe, John Q. Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, W.H and Benjamin Harrison, Tyler, Pierce, Buchanan and Andrew Johnson). So, of the 15 Presidents who have spent some time in the Senate, only three, Adams, Jackson and Truman, were successful as Presidents to any significant degree. None of the greatest Presidents served anytime in the Senate and of those three I just mentioned, each had significant relevant experience outside the Senate. Jackson and Truman had executive experience, Jackson as a general and Truman as a county judge in Jackson County, Missouri. (A county judge was an administrative post in Missouri -- I believe the office is now called county commissioner. One of my great-grandfathers was a county judge in Missouri. In Jackson County, Missouri when Truman served, it would have been akin to having mayoral duties, though it was shared among three officeholders.) Adams, probably the least effective of the three, had considerable foreign policy experience, as noted by others above.
Posted by: GL | December 10, 2007 at 08:37 AM
Thanks, GL, I did mean "sitting mayor". As you've noted, plenty of ex-senators have been elected President, along with plenty of ex-governors, ex-congressmen, vice presidents, and so forth. Nixon was an ex-congressman when he ran in 1960, but in the public's mind he was primarily a vice-president. Eight years later, nobody was thinking too hard about his time in Congress, sixteen years before.
What's really striking is to note the last office held by the Presidents since Cleveland in 1892 (including the second-last, for Cleveland himself, a special case, and for those who rose to the presidency by the death of a president):
Cleveland (President/Governor)
McKinley (Governor)
Teddy (Vice President/Governor)
Taft (territorial governor)
Wilson (Governor)
Harding (Senator)
Coolidge (Vice President/Governor)
Hoover (Commerce secretary)
FDR (Governor)
Truman (Vice President/Senator)
Eisenhower (General)
Kennedy (Senator)
LBJ (Vice President/Senator)
Nixon (Vice President)
Ford (Vice President/Congressman)
Carter (Governor)
Reagan (Governor)
Bush Sr. (Vice President)
Clinton (Governor)
Bush Jr. (Governor)
The only people on that list without executive experience are Harding and Kennedy. Both good looking, both womanizers; but that's coincidental. Probably.
Posted by: Tony Esolen | December 10, 2007 at 09:21 AM
>>>Nixon was an ex-congressman when he ran in 1960, but in the public's mind he was primarily a vice-president. Eight years later, nobody was thinking too hard about his time in Congress, sixteen years before.<<<
Nixon's stature was elevated by the fact that Eisenhower had suffered a debilitating heart attack during his second term, so that for several years Nixon took a far more prominent role that most previous vice presidents. FDR, for instance, kept Harry Truman completely out of the loop, so that he had to be briefed on the Manhattan Project upon taking office. This, in spite of the fact that FDR had been in failing health at east since the second half of 1943.
On Hoover, his management of relief programs in Europe after World War I elevated him to public prominence and demonstrated his abilities as a manager/executive.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 10, 2007 at 09:49 AM
>>>Hah!<<<
My other modest proposal would be repeal of the 19th amendment. John Lott has recently published a detailed study of the correlation between female suffrage and the increase in the size of government. He found that within 30 years of women getting the right to vote, the size of government begins to increase geometrically. This is true not only of the Federal Government, but of the various state governments that accorded women the right to vote in the 19th century.
Lott attributes this to different attitudes on the part of women, which tend to differ based upon the marital and family status of women. Single women are half again more likely to favor expansive government social programs as men. But when women marry, that gap closes significantly, and if these women have children, their attitude towards government social programs is almost indistinguishable from that of men. But divorced women revert to the attitudes of single women, and single mothers are even more likely than other single women to favor government entitlements. Thus, a woman's political positions are directly related to her marital status and likelihood of divorce--simply as a matter of self-interest. The collapse of the family in the 1970s has therefore tended to make women as a voting bloc much more liberal than men, and the need of politicians to pander to the women's vote invariably drives the expansion of entitlements.
The conclusion is inescapable: if we rescind the 19th Amendment, the expansion of government will halt and eventually reverse itself. I've shown this to my wife and several other women, all of whom agree that losing the right to vote is a small price to pay for putting a stake through the heart of liberalism.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 10, 2007 at 09:59 AM
>>>The only people on that list without executive experience are Harding and Kennedy. Both good looking, both womanizers; but that's coincidental. Probably.<<<
Is it? Need I point out that Harding was the first president elected AFTER the ratification of the 19th Amendment?
As for Kennedy, is it coincidence that he was elected in the first widely televised campaign? OK, so Papa Joe had to buy Illinois, but still, without the women's vote, where would Kennedy have been?
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 10, 2007 at 10:01 AM
So why didn't Harold Stassen ever win?
Kamilla
Posted by: Kamilla | December 10, 2007 at 10:25 AM
Actual, Eisenhower had a job between retiring as general and becoming President which should have disqualified him from any high office: he was a college president (Columbia). ;-)
Posted by: GL | December 10, 2007 at 10:48 AM
Stuart,
If there is a serious study on this is it published? Book form? Who do I order it from? I'd be interested to see if it draws a connection between government as a substitute husband and single women. Also, you may force me to switch from Thompson to Hunter with a comment like that. I really like Thompson's' written work but he's so far done poorly on TV of all the weird things.
Irene,
Ron Paul seems to be genuinely committed to his cause and is by all accounts a nice man. He comes off very grandfatherly to me and I'd probably happily have him over to discuss politics. However, as per Stuart, I think his positions are dangerously isolationist. His flirtation with the gold standard is also...well...odd. He also doesn't know the constitution half as well as he claims to. In particular he should pay careful attention to what navies were historically used for prior to the signing of the constitution and why that would affect the presidents war powers.
Posted by: Nick | December 10, 2007 at 01:07 PM
I would be skeptical of Lott's claim for the following reason: The states that granted women the vote in the nineteenth century or early twentieth century were generally frontier states. If the size of government in Wyoming Territory (state from 1890 onward) expanded dramatically between 1869 and 1899, a likely reason is that there barely was such a place as Wyoming Teritory in 1869, and the next thirty years must have seen the construction of a great deal of post offices, courthouses, town halls, roads, jails, public schools, etc., and a greater need for officers to run all these places. An ardent libertarian, of course, would say that many of these places should not be government-funded, but they were sort of things that even government in the nineteenth century did fund. Frontier Wyoming had no Social Security or Aid for Families with Dependent Children.
To make the study complete it would be necessary to compare Wyoming with a neighboring area that granted women's suffrage at a later date (like Nevada or Colorado) and see if the rate of growth in Wyoming was really greater in Wyoming than in the others.
Also, I believe that contrary to received opinion, Nixon actually carried a majority of the women's vote in 1960.
Posted by: James Kabala | December 10, 2007 at 02:30 PM
One final nitpick on the original post: Charles Evans Hughes had been Governor of New York before he was a Supreme Court Justice or a presidential candidate.
Posted by: James Kabala | December 10, 2007 at 02:34 PM
It's also worth noting that recent years have seen a number of candidates who attempted to defy history and ran for their party's nomination without having held elective office. Three who did relatively well were Jesse Jackson, Pat Buchanan, and Steve Forbes, but none could break the curse. (Alan Keyes was another such candidate who did quite poorly.)
Posted by: James Kabala | December 10, 2007 at 02:37 PM
I'd be happy to cede the point of isolationism if someone would be willing to DEMONSTRATE such a claim, not merely bandy it about like George Bush and "defeatist." It takes a careful, thoughtful person to read what he has written, watch videos of his speeches (before and during this election season), and engage with his foreign policy rather than dismiss it as isolationist simply because he doesn't agree with undeclared, illegal wars the end of which is spreading our way of life, not some vague ideal of "freedom," which we don't even enjoy.
Stuart, last time I checked, Paul is running as a Republican, not a Libertarian.
Posted by: Irene | December 10, 2007 at 03:17 PM
A thought experiment:
How would it be if we voted instead by households, thus:
1. Single people, unless they are widows or widowers, are not households, though they may be considered as dependents in households.
2. Households receiving direct assistance from the government do not qualify.
3. Each household designates one person as its official voter. The designation will remain unchangeable as long as the household is intact.
4. The votes of each household will be weighted according to the number of people in it. So: the vote of Mr. Jones, married with nine children, will count for 11.
5. The party found at fault in a divorce loses the franchise.
6. Single widows and widowers retain the franchise, if they are living alone.
I think political discussions would change overnight ...
Posted by: Tony Esolen | December 10, 2007 at 03:28 PM
Since Giuliani is also not a sitting mayor, it seems that the actual criteria Tony used here is highest office held prior to becoming presdient.
In terms of non-elective office, Americans have also avoided the judiciary for presidential candidates. While one president and one also-ran made their way to the Supreme Court (Taft and Hughes), the only judge ever to run for president was Parker in 1904.
If one is willing to overlook its highly left-wing slant, Irving F. Stone’s “They Also Ran” is an entertaining read for unsuccessful presidential candidates up through 1944.
As for Ron Paul, I’ll refer folks again to the link I posted on the “Rudy and the Evangelicals” thread:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/the_ron_paul_campaign_and_its.html
Posted by: James A. Altena | December 10, 2007 at 03:50 PM
We'll we'll start with undeclared illegal wars. Congress granted permission for Iraq therefore it is all very legal. Quibbling over what they called that permission is exactly that, quibbling. Congress also granted additional kinds of permission under the War Powers Act. You can argue that such an act is bad law, but it is within congress' constitutional powers to grant permission. I'd love a citing proving otherwise (not to mention you completely blew by the historical use of the navy).
Mr. Paul has argued that he is not isolationist, instead he is only opposed to interference. This is of course hogwash. The minute you trade you've interfered. The minute you've pursued open markets you are supposing a policy that does not exist in most of the world and has to be defended (if not forced), as the British did, with a navy to back up the foreign policy. Paul cites Jefferson and then conveniently forgets the The First Barbary War.
Posted by: Nick | December 10, 2007 at 03:50 PM
James,
I don't know if that article addresses the problem correctly. Paul, as a libertarian, believes that anybody is free to say anything they want at any time no matter how crazy. He may be opposed to neo-Nazi's, but he'd sure defend their right to speech and free association with his campaign. I don't think he is ideologically capable of returning the money. The article seems to imply he's Nazi friendly instead. His ideological blindness, of course, is exactly why he shouldn't be president.
Posted by: Nick | December 10, 2007 at 04:00 PM
James,
C.E. Hughes was a Supreme Court Justice before he ran from President. He was appointed by Taft as an Associate Justice and resigned his seat to run against Wilson. He was appointed by Hoover as Chief Justice, succeeding Taft.
You are, of course, correct in your clarification on Tony's intent, as Rudy is no longer mayor. The point, I would take it, is that no one has gone from being a mayor to being President without having achieved a higher office than mayor before ascending to the Presidency. Mayor of N.Y. is the highest office Rudy has ever held. Despite the fact that I don't care for the man at all, I would have to admit that being mayor of N.Y. is probably, at least in many ways, better preparation for being President than being governor of a state, especially a small one such as Arkansas.
All,
I can't help but note that no one has ever challenged my assertion here or on previous discussions on this site that Jefferson is overrated *as a President*. (Again, I don't dispute he was a great man for his accomplishments outside the White House, just that his performance in the White House is overrated.) I certainly believe he was better than average as a President, but not one of the top half-dozen, at which level he is almost always ranked. Is there anyone here who disagrees with that assessment? I thought there would be a Jefferson defender out there, but maybe you all agree that he is overrated. Just curious.
Posted by: GL | December 10, 2007 at 04:24 PM
Nick,
I don't deny Ron Paul's right to his own beliefs and free speech. And I don't think the article implies he's "Nazi friendly." What it does is to point out that:
a) his views attract extremists such as neo-Nazis, which neither the views of mainstream Republicans or Democrats do; and
b) that the Ron Paul campaign not only makes no serious effort to disavow such extremist support, but attacks those such as Michael Medved who call attention to such support. (Michael Medved -- "discredited"? Apparently Ron Paul supporters don't just stop with advocating decriminalization of drugs....)
I think those two factors are quite sufficient reason to call Ron Paul into question. He may not be Nazi-friendly, but I don't cotton to someone who turns a blind eye to it in order to keep money either.
And I quite agree with the other points made in your most recent post.
Posted by: James A. Altena | December 10, 2007 at 04:26 PM
>>>If there is a serious study on this is it published? Book form? Who do I order it from? <<<
Go here for the original article:
http://johnrlott.tripod.com/op-eds/WashTimesWomensSuff112707.html
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 10, 2007 at 04:33 PM
>>>I can't help but note that no one has ever challenged my assertion here or on previous discussions on this site that Jefferson is overrated *as a President*.<<<
I would put the period after "overrated". But then, as compared to Washington, everyone is overrated.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 10, 2007 at 04:40 PM
I believe Ronald Reagan once asserted his right to keep a donation from the John Birch Society (or maybe it was even a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan) with the statement, "If they give me money, then they're buying into my ideas, not the other way around."
Posted by: James Kabala | December 10, 2007 at 04:40 PM
as compared to Washington, everyone is overrated.
I pretty much agree, though I think Lincoln is just about as great as a President as Washington. (I await Joe Long's rebuttal. ;-)) Lincoln's accomplishments before becoming President, however, pale in comparison to Washington's. No one in American history, and few in world history, compare to Washington.
Posted by: GL | December 10, 2007 at 04:47 PM
I admit to not being a huge fan of American History (even though I studied it at the AP level all the way back in HS) until later in life. Now, looking back, I repeat everyday that we were so unbelievably lucky to have had Washington. Comparing him to anyone else, even Lincoln, is so unfair. A weaker man would have crushed the spirit of revolution that the original post refers to.
Posted by: Nick | December 10, 2007 at 05:11 PM
>>>I pretty much agree, though I think Lincoln is just about as great as a President as Washington. (I await Joe Long's rebuttal. ;-)) <<<
Lincoln's only a genius if you think the Civil War was inevitable in 1861. Probably because of his inexperience, Lincoln was noticeably ham-fisted in his handling of the secession crisis, in the process making war inevitable, and thereby setting the stage for his own brilliant career. Dying before reconstruction was also a good career move--it created all sorts of "what if?" fantasies that enhanced the Lincoln legend in contrast to Johnson's ineptitude.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 10, 2007 at 05:56 PM
we were so unbelievably lucky to have had Washington.
I assume you mean "blessed," not "lucky." With that, I would agree.
Posted by: GL | December 10, 2007 at 06:36 PM
Stuart,
I don't believe Lincoln's ineptitude caused the war. His lack of experience may have prolonged it and enlarged its scope -- though he cannot be faulted for being left with a bunch of duds for generals, the best ones being Southerners and with the nation not ready for the brutality unleashed by Grant and Sherman to end it and with neither of them ready to assume command at the outset. Lincoln's tenacity, however, won the war. A lesser man would have buckled and compromised away the Union. Admittedly, his assassination undoubted made his place in history, both by making him a martyr and by saving him from having to make the thankless decisions needed to reconstruct the nation.
Posted by: GL | December 10, 2007 at 06:46 PM
I'd put Sam Houston right up there with Washington, but I'll admit I'm biased.
Posted by: Peter Gardner | December 10, 2007 at 07:02 PM
GL,
Thanks for correcting my foggy memory of Hughes' career.
As the chronology of events shows, it was the mere fact of Lincoln's election that made secession inevitable, not anything that Lincoln did. South Carolina's legislature called for a secession convention on November 10, 1860, only four days after the presidental election, and ratified secession on Dec. 20th. The several other states that followed suit ratified the Confederate Constitution on March 11th, 1861, one week after Lincoln's inauguration. And, contrary to Stuart's "ham-fisted" characterization, Lincoln acted with as much caution and reticence as was possible in his position to maintain the position of the Union while not needlessly provoking the Confederacy into war -- e.g. informing the Confederate government in advance of the replenishing of strictly non-military supplies at Ft. Sumter and Ft. Pickens, rather than moving unilaterally. "Ham-fisted" far better describes the Confederate decision to attack Ft Sumter. As Robert Toombs reportedly told Jefferson Davis in the Confederate cabinet debates that led to the decision to make the attack, the move "will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest. . . .Legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary. It puts us in the wrong. It is fatal."
Posted by: James A. Altena | December 10, 2007 at 08:14 PM
>>>I don't believe Lincoln's ineptitude caused the war.<<<
There's a recent book out on the subject, I forget the title, but I will look it up. In any case, consider that secession occurred in two waves, and that the first involved only the "deep" South. The rest of the southern states-most notably Virginia--did not leave until AFTER Lincoln called for the raising of an army to invade the secessionist states. Without those second wave states, the Confederacy would not have been politically, economically or militarily viable, and the rebellion would have collapsed in short order.
Once war became a reality, Lincoln really should have listened to Winfield Scott. It really was the Anaconda that beat the South--most of the killing that went on in the interim was essentially wasted motion.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 10, 2007 at 08:41 PM
>>>I'd put Sam Houston right up there with Washington, but I'll admit I'm biased.<<<
Washington could hold his rum a lot better than Sam Houston. And Houston was awfully lucky to be fighting Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, the Napoleon of the West.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 10, 2007 at 08:43 PM
But what other American politician besides Houston could get away with being a polygamist, and still being elected president twice? That, and they named my hometown after him, so that's a big point in his favor!
I do, however, in my current sleep-deprived finals state, object to his spoiling of many people's naps. I sure wouldn't want him to interrupt me when I am sleeping.
Posted by: Peter Gardner | December 10, 2007 at 09:18 PM
"In any case, consider that secession occurred in two waves, and that the first involved only the "deep" South. The rest of the southern states -- most notably Virginia -- did not leave until AFTER Lincoln called for the raising of an army to invade the secessionist states."
My previous reply did consider that, Stuart. It's quite clear that they would have seceded after Ft. Sumter anyway; the mobilization was just an excuse, and the majority of the Confederate cabinet explicitly banked on the expectation in approving firing upon Ft. Sumter. And mobilization is a separate issue from Scott's "Anaconda strategy," which concerns what to do with a mobilization. You can't have the latter without the former.
Posted by: James A. Altena | December 11, 2007 at 04:34 AM
>>>It's quite clear that they would have seceded after Ft. Sumter anyway; the mobilization was just an excuse, and the majority of the Confederate cabinet explicitly banked on the expectation in approving firing upon Ft. Sumter. <<<
Perhaps. I'm not so sure. Virginia, for one, was definitely divided on secession, even after Ft. Sumter. The fact is, large portions of the Piedmont and Appalachian regions were staunchly pro-union (so much so that the northwest corner of the state broke off to become West Virginia) and the legislature was very much on the fence until Lincoln's mobilization. The fact that any army intent on invading the south would have to march through Virginia played an important part in the final decision to leave. Without Virginia, its large free white population, and its industrial capacity (the Tredegar Iron Works produced more than half of the South's iron for railroads, ordnance and machinery), the South would not have had the capacity to wage an extended war against the United States.
On the Anaconda, I was guilty of a non sequitur. My point was, having gotten the Civil War going, Lincoln compounded his original error by waging it in a very ineffectual manner that ensured its escalation into the closest thing to a "total war" that the U.S. has ever seen. Scott (a Whig but no abolitionist) correctly saw that the South's unbalanced economy was utterly vulnerable to blockade and interdiction. His plan for controlling the coasts and inland waterways, and waiting for the South to collapse in fact mirrored what actually happened--minus most of the carnage.
Yes, the Anaconda would have required mobilization, but most of that mobilization would have been naval, and the army would not have been committed to an invasion of the South so much as the selective seizure of key ports and the opening of the Mississippi River. This would have avoided direct confrontations with most of the Confederacy's armies, thus depriving the Confederacy of the opportunity for military victories that sustained their morale for three and a half years. Instead, the effect would have been an increasingly onerous poverty and hunger on the home front and the slow logistic strangulation of the Southren armies.
The Confederate government, prodded by popular demand, would probably have sued for some reconciliation along the lines of status quo ante and full immunity for Confederate leaders. Yes, slavery would have remained intact for the time being (Lincoln's shift of war aims in 1862 was a direct result of the failures of his military strategy and the need to forestall Confederate appeals for European aid--and also a monumental calculated risk, since it was by no means clear that the North would fight for Negro emancipation), but eventually it would have fallen, without the lasting legacy of racial hatred that resulted both from the war and from Reconstruction.
This of course, is all counter-factual, and so generally meaningless speculation. It does, however, show that Lincoln had a range of alternatives from which to choose in 1861, and that his choice might not have been the best one.
That said, Lincoln did not spring forth fully grown as a war leader, but grew into the role through a painful process of trial and error. His genius lay in his determination, ruthlessness, ability to inspire public support, and brilliance as a political wheeler-dealer that allowed him to hold the North together long enough for the inexorable mathematics of attrition to do its deadly work. In that regard, comparisons between Lincoln the war leader, and George W. Bush the war leader, are not inapposite.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 11, 2007 at 05:55 AM
I read an article not too long ago, I don't remember where, that made the point that most, if not all, of the presidents that are usually considered "great" are ones that expanded the power of the executive and/or the federal government in one way or another. This is especially true, I believe, of the Three Great Centralizers -- Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR. Conservatives are generally quick to jump on Wilson and FDR for these tendencies, but usually give Lincoln a pass. The latter, however, pushed for a greater centralization of government, including massive federal funding of internal improvements (ostensibly because of wartime need; but he was a Whig, remember, and would have done so anyways), and was quite dictatorial in his handling of opposition to the war.
If conservatives are to be consistent, they should have just as many questions about Lincoln's policies as they do about Wilson's and Roosevelt's.
Posted by: Rob G | December 11, 2007 at 06:44 AM
Ronald Reagan is on the way to being considered great. He did not reduce the power and reach of government as he is said to have done by the left, starving babies and creating armies of homeless, but he did not expand it by much. He did not expand the power of the executive; in fact, even while he was in office we began hearing of the "imperial Congress." If he had had a Republican Congress he almost surely would have reduced the power of the federal government considerably.
Posted by: Judy Warner | December 11, 2007 at 07:29 AM
Reagan may prove to be an exception, but time will tell. It's hard to say if the Left will ever consider him great, so what we may end up with is a sort of FDR in reverse.
Posted by: Rob G | December 11, 2007 at 07:51 AM
>>>Ronald Reagan is on the way to being considered great. He did not reduce the power and reach of government as he is said to have done by the left, starving babies and creating armies of homeless, but he did not expand it by much. <<<
I notice that on the network news, at least, the homeless were legion during the Reagan and Bush 41 years. The day Bill Clinton took office, they miraculously disappeared, only to pop out of the woodwork the moment Bush 43 took his hand off that Bible. The very notion of a Republican president makes people homeless.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 11, 2007 at 07:52 AM
"The very notion of a Republican president makes people homeless."
Indeed, it changes the very nature of mathematics. Under a Democratic president 5.6% unemployment is "low," while when a Republican is in the White House, 4.8% is "high."
Posted by: Rob G | December 11, 2007 at 08:23 AM
Rob,
Since he left office, Reagan has been growing in stature even among the left. Maybe it was Gorbachev's calling him great a few years ago that did it.
Here's an article that discusses the question of Reagan's greatness. It quotes grumpo-conservative Joe Sobran in support of your thesis:
Posted by: Judy Warner | December 11, 2007 at 09:09 AM
>>>Since he left office, Reagan has been growing in stature even among the left. Maybe it was Gorbachev's calling him great a few years ago that did it.<<<
A statesman is a Republican who is dead.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 11, 2007 at 09:33 AM
Rob G.,
Lincoln acted during a national emergency -- THE national emergency -- . The notion that he should have acted to keep government small and decentralized is absurd. He would have been acting as Jeff Davis and the others who formed the Confederacy acted, placing high ideals over immediate practical needs, and thus lost the war. Saving the Union was paramount and called for actions which could not be justified in ordinary times. Knowing what was necessary and doing it despite the whithering criticism is what made Lincoln great.
As for his push for nationally funded internal improvements (mostly infrastructure), I agree that he most certainly favored that, as did the Whig party. He was no more in favor of centralized government, however, than Washington or Hamilton. Again, there is a confusion of conservatism and libertarianism or conservatism and state's rights. Lincoln did believe in the principle of subsidiarity, which is clear if one reads his writings. He, however, like many before him, believed that there were internal matters which were best handled at the federal level. The federal government was funding internal improvements long before Lincoln came to power. There is a profound difference in what he favored and what Wilson and FDR favored.
As to Wilson, WWI did not justify much of his efforts at centralization and was no where near the level of emergency which the Civil War or the Great Depression and WWII were. He was a progressive and favored a far greater role for government in regulating the economy. His actions in this area long predated our involvement in WWI. Likewise with FDR, though again, some of his actions were necessitated by the national emergencies of the Great Depression and, to be fair, the science of economics was not nearly as advanced as it is today. Hoover's approach, which many conservatives today would applaud, might well have worked in time, but fathers desperate to feed their starving families didn't have the luxury of time and resoundingly defeated Hoover (though both my grandfather's voted for him), expecting him to do something. Admittedly, what he did was not merely to address the emergency, but to put in place a vast array of social and economic engineering programs, many of which plague us to this day. He also put in place a lot of war time programs, such as rationing, which were dropped after the war, though he significantly increased the military bureaucracy as well. Again, however, that was necessary to win the war.
Thus, I would say Lincoln was in the mode of Washington and Hamilton, as opposed to Jefferson, on the role of the central government. Wilson and FDR are the culprits in the expansion. Wilson had not excuse. FDR did, but he didn't have to put in place the permanent programs which he did. Even those, however, would not have been so bad (except of Social Security), had LBJ not come along and expanded them all.
Posted by: GL | December 11, 2007 at 09:56 AM
I agree that Reagan is one of the great Presidents and will likely be generally seen as such (even among liberals) by the time most of those who were adults during his life time are dead. Once the partisan disputes are history to those then living, his record can be judge dispassionately and his record is remarkable.
Posted by: GL | December 11, 2007 at 10:00 AM
GL -- my point was not that Lincoln "should have acted to keep government small and decentralized" during the war, but that being a Whig, he was in favor of a more powerful federal government, the war notwithstanding. In effect, the war simply enabled him to consolidate federal power in a quicker and more thorough manner than would have been possible in peacetime. Because of the war and its aftermath, and Reconstruction, a more centralized understanding of the Federal government became entrenched, and the increases in central power, bureaucracy, etc., were never reduced to anywhere near pre-war years.
"The federal government was funding internal improvements long before Lincoln came to power."
True enough. But did it not increase in a major way, never again to subside, beginning with his presidency?
Posted by: Rob G | December 11, 2007 at 11:42 AM
Rob,
I don't deny that Lincoln was in favor of a strong central government. I just deny that he should be classed with the likes of Wilson and FDR. I am contending that his federalism (absent his emergency war measures) is in line with Washington's and Hamilton's vision and, thus, consistent with a legitimate interpretation of the Constitution as understood by at least some of the nation's architects, and I believe Washington and Hamilton would have recognized the need for emergency measures in light of the Civil War. (There was, after all, no uniform agreement among the Founders as to the exact scope of the new national government which they were constructing and, like all good politicians (which our Founders were), they left some of these issues open to later interpretation. Washington's cabinet was divided between those who favored a strong central government -- the Hamiltonian faction -- and a weak federal government -- the Jeffersonian faction.)
Wilson's and FDR's policies, as opposed to Lincoln's, were a violation of the vision of the Constitution held by any of the Founders. LBJ's vision was a rape of that document.
Posted by: GL | December 11, 2007 at 01:27 PM
"I don't deny that Lincoln was in favor of a strong central government. I just deny that he should be classed with the likes of Wilson and FDR."
Perhaps not in terms of scope, but I do believe he effectively got the ball rolling in Wilson's and FDRs direction and gave it a push.
Posted by: Rob G | December 11, 2007 at 01:35 PM
Rob,
We will just have to agree to disagree. I would point out that there was nearly a fifty year gap between Lincoln's death and Wilson's inauguration. Of course, TR (also now a darling of conservatives) was not exactly a small government advocate either, but even his term began more than 35 years after Lincoln's death. If Lincoln got the ball rolling in the direction promoted by Wilson and FDR, it certainly took a long time for it to gain any speed.
You may note that I am a Hamiltonian in my understanding of the Constitution and the proper role of the federal government, not a Jeffersonian. Today, the intellectual heirs of those two men are part of the fraying Republican coalition and one of the growing fissures in that coalition is between the heirs of those two men. Neither man would, I believe, be comfortable with the Democratic party. So, if one wants to use a broad definition of conservative, both traditions would fall within such a broad definition and Lincoln would fit nicely in the Hamiltonian stream.
Posted by: GL | December 11, 2007 at 02:02 PM
As I tend to the Jeffersonian side of things, I believe that the GOP, being basically Whiggus Redivivus, has been mostly hostile to Jeffersonian ideals since its inception. It is, and always has been, the party of Big Business, alllied with government. Hamilton may have lost the duel, but due to Lincoln, et al., his policies won in the long run.
Posted by: Rob G | December 11, 2007 at 02:26 PM
Of course, as President, Jefferson at times showed his own Hamiltonian streak. With all due respect, Jefferson's ideals are wonderful in theory. In practice, even he found them difficult to govern by.
Posted by: GL | December 11, 2007 at 02:38 PM
[I composed this reply this morning at work and e-mailed it home to post this evening -- I can't post directly from work. In the meantime GL has quite ably stolen some of my thunder, but it's easier for me to post this than to rewrie it, so forgive any needless repetition of certain points already made.]
Dear Rob,
Your position is a mixture of truth and over-simplification that leads to a certain degree of distortion. True, in evaluating presidential “greatness” there is a bias toward “centralizers.” But such an evaluation is inherently bound up with exercises in presidential activity and initiative (one does not award “greatness” to do-nothings), and virtually any executive activity, any assertion of executive authority, will have a centripetal effect in causing more power to gravitate in that direction. So the bias toward centralization is virtually inherent in any evaluation of "greatness."
And if one is going to going to make villains of presidents who promoted centralization of power, then George Washington (with his decisive tilts towards Hamilton’s positions on assertion of federal and executive power, his supression of the Whiskey rebellion, etc.) had better be put at the head of the list.
Thus, one has to distinguish centralization per se from its purposes and consequences. And when that is done, Lincoln differs greatly from Wilson and FDR.
First, Lincoln had a war on American soil, not overseas.
Second, it was a civil war, not a foreign war. {GL has already covered this point and its ramifications quite well.]
Third, the Civil War began six weeks after Lincoln assumed office, whereas WWI began over four years after Wilson assumed office and WW II eight years after FDR assumed office, so that the latter two presidents had extensive tracks records of peacetime expansion of federal government power apart from war efforts, whereas such expansion as occurred under Lincoln were entirely in conjunction with the war effort.
Fourth and last (and related to the first three points), despite the interesting thesis of an effective “second founding” of America as a result of the Civil War currently being promoted by Mark Noll and other historians, the fact remains that the expansion of government under Lincoln was in the main temporary and largely receded after the war was done, whereas the expansion of government under Wilson and FDR did not recede but remained permanent. [The only significant long-term expansion of any part of government after Lincoln I can call to mind was the military, and that owed much to the final phase of the "Indian Wars."] This clearly indicates that Lincoln’s actions were not seen as establishing a permanent precedent or institutions, but rather as one-time emergency measures. If one wishes to seek a villain of federal government expansion, one should look to Theodore Roosevelt as the initial main culprit. (Many of Wilson’s policies differed little from those pioneered by Teddy.)
All this of course does not address the underlying crucial questions on which this depends – given the expansion of the United States from a set of sparsely populated Atlantic seaboard colonies to a continental nation many times larger, whether some greater degree of centralization was inevitable, or at least necessary, if the USA was to become and remain a real nation rather than something akin to the EEC; and if necessary to being such a nation, should that price have been paid (and if so to what degree), or should the USA have devolved into several smaller nations instead?
I don’t know that there is any regular participant on this site who doesn’t think that the federal government has now over-reached its proper bounds and needs to be curtailed, and significantly rather than incidentally. But I think that only someone with a starry-eyed romantic view of history, or an ideologue of e.g. the Ron Paul stripe, imagines that somehow the USA in the 21st century can be run on strictly 18th c. means. (I am not implying you to be either of these.)
In short, I think the sweeping denunciations of the greater centralization of government power to the federal level favored by many conservatives are as overly simplistic as the notion dear to so many liberals that every problem needs a centralized government solution. We need solutions that are at once both grounded in sound principles of the proper functions and limitations of government, and concrete and practical (rather merely abstract and ideological) realizations of the same. And over that, even among friends, there will be disagreement over particulars.
Posted by: James A. Altena | December 11, 2007 at 04:31 PM
Perhaps we should vote, not merely for officeholders, but for offices--that is, every federal department "sunsets" after, say, eight years, unless "re-elected." Pretty soon we might even get the government we really want.
Posted by: Bill R | December 11, 2007 at 04:43 PM
Dear Stuart,
We are closer together than when we started. Your "perhaps" is not absolute as your initial position. Your facts are on target, and I think your speculations are not without some merit.
As the military historian you are my superior in much of the subject matter here. But (to pose queries to you) I confess to being sceptical that a Union "Anaconda" strategy "would have avoided direct confrontations with most of the Confederacy's armies" because I think the Confederacy would have taken the military initiative before allowing matters to degenerate to a state of "an increasingly onerous poverty and hunger on the home front and the slow logistic strangulation of the Southern armies." [The peculiar Southern sense of honor, as well as military considerations, would have been a major factor here as well.]
I also question how effective a Union blockade actually could have been, given the technology of the time; blockades, like embargoes, generally have a poor record of success.
Finally, for a number of reasons (including once again the unique Southern sense of honor), I very much doubt that the leaders of the Confederacy would have sought reconciliation on even the lenient terms you suggest. I think that they would far rather have preferred to persist with what would have become a glorified banana republic (substitute cotton for banana). As for "popular demand" for such a move, I suspect that had the Confederate leaders made such an attempt, their fate would have been akin to that which greeted the Byzantine delegates returning from Florence in 1439.
Finally, I also agree that Lincoln did not spring forth as a war leader like Minerva from the head of Zeus. But I reject any characterization of him as "ruthless," which fits neither his public or private conduct or utterances. Determined, and willing to make the hardest decisions at terrible cost? Absolutely. But ruthlessness entails not just that, but a callous disregard for or even pleasure in the needless sacrifice of innocents for some self-serving end. Napoleon, Hiter, and Stalin were ruthless; Lincoln was not.
PS: A quick biliographic scouring turned up the following books as relevant here (no, I haven't read any of them myself). If one of them the one you previously had in mind? (And your comments on the ones you have read would be welcome.)
Maury Klein, "Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War" (1997)
Eugene M. Wait, "Opening of the Civil War" (1999)
William W. Freehling, "The Road to Disunion" (2 vols., 1990-2007)
James L. Abrahamson, "The Men of Secession and the Civil War" (2000)
David M. Potter [surely an old classic!}, "Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis" (1942)
Jon L. Wakelyn, ed., "Southern Pamphlets on Secession, November 1860 - April 1861" (1996)
Donald E. Reynolds, "Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis" (2006)
Posted by: James A. Altena | December 11, 2007 at 05:01 PM
Dear Bill,
While your idea is interesting, the problem is that abolishing existing offices and/or creating new ones would require continuing massive re-writes of huge swatches of existing laws, if for no other reason than to re-delegate authority to enforce laws. Do you really want to give Congress and the state legislatures that much to do? Don't they already get into enough mischief? :-)
Posted by: James A. Altena | December 11, 2007 at 05:05 PM
James, I should have included a smiley face. I think visions of sugar plums were dancing in my head!
Posted by: Bill R | December 11, 2007 at 05:08 PM
"the Civil War began six weeks after Lincoln assumed office" and "such expansion as occurred under Lincoln were entirely in conjunction with the war effort."
While this may be true, and one may certainly argue 'what ifs,' it seems to me that Lincoln, committed Whig that he was, would have favored such expansion anyways.
'The only significant long-term expansion of any part of government after Lincoln I can call to mind was the military, and that owed much to the final phase of the "Indian Wars."'
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't government support/subsidization of the railroads and of other industries continue unabated after the war?
"I think the sweeping denunciations of the greater centralization of government power to the federal level favored by many conservatives are as overly simplistic as the notion dear to so many liberals that every problem needs a centralized government solution."
Being a firm believer in the principle of subsidiarity, I'd strongly disagree. Seems to me that wisdom would prompt us to say "If a thing CAN be done locally, it SHOULD be done locally." Otherwise we risk too great a concentration of power too far from home. Anti-centralist conservatives have been saying this for decades, but they have largely been ignored. And just as predicted by most of them, we now have a gigantic over-reaching Leviathan of a central government.
Posted by: Rob G | December 11, 2007 at 05:35 PM
"...ruthlessness entails not just that, but a callous disregard for or even pleasure in the needless sacrifice of innocents for some self-serving end."
How about making war against civilians in order to keep (at bullet point) a portion of the country in a voluntary union which it no longer wanted to be a part of, so that his portion of the country could benefit financially at their expense? When you add to this the suspension of habeas corpus, the shutting down of opposition newspapers, the persecution of political rivals...
Maybe not ruthless, but unscrupulous, perhaps?
Posted by: Rob G | December 11, 2007 at 05:46 PM
Rob,
The whole situation that produced the Civil War was and is much more complex than your incredibly tendentious and simplistic statement here makes it out to be.
Suffice it to say that a slave-holding society and its apologists are the last ones to be in any position to lecture anyone else about being unscrupulous. The slaves did not exactly have a choice about being "in a voluntary union" with a society they "no longer wanted to be a part of," did they?
And your "so that his portion of the country could benefit financially at their expense" is as big a crock as the current leftist accusation that GWB made war on Iraq on behalf of the oil companies. Again, the South didn't exactly cavil at extracting every drop of financial benefit it could gain at the expense of the blood and sweat of its slaves, did it?
And as for "When you add to this the suspension of habeas corpus, the shutting down of opposition newspapers, the persecution of political rivals..." -- there were plenty of counterparts to that in the South as well, including ones that pre-dated the formation of the Confederacy. E.g., why don't you mention that in the 1860 election, in direct violation of the law, many Southern counties either refused to allow the Republican Party to appear on the ballot, or else confiscated and destroyed all Republican ballots and news sheets -- with the US Post Office even being pressed into service to this end?
In short, I tired long ago of the sheer humbuggery of Confederate apologists posturing as defenders of liberty and limited government.
Obviously, we're not going to agree on this subject, to put it mildly. But it is quite noticeable that it is almost always the Southern apologists who drag this topic into MC with gratuitous attacks at Lincoln on threads devoted to completely different topics. If it is introduced, I will withstand it, and in the strongest terms. So how about if both sides simply leave Lincoln and Civil War polemics out of MC?
Re: your previous post:
a) Stuart may recall better than I, but subsidies to railroads were relatively short-lived (I believe the scandals involving James G. Blaine brought them down), and in any case that is a completely different phenomenon than the expansion of government power itself. The railroads did not through receiving such largesse thereby become departments of the government, or even more heavily regulated by it. You're comparing apples and oranges here.
b) As for subsidiarty, I already addressed that in my last post on the "Rudy and the Evangelicals" thread. Suffice it to say that my comment with which you take issue does not in any way contradict that principle. That is precisely why I wrote (emphasis now added -- words between the asterisks)
"We need solutions that are at once both grounded in *sound principles of the proper functions and **limitations** of government,* and concrete and practical (rather merely abstract and ideological) realizations of the same."
Posted by: James A. Altena | December 11, 2007 at 06:31 PM
First, as Rob is a Jeffersonian, I perfectly well understand his discontent with Lincoln. But he should confuse Jeffersonianism with conservatism. Jefferson was anything but a conservative.
Second, the federal government did subsidize the railroads and that is perfectly compatible with Hamiltonianism.
Third, you should read what Lincoln wrote about the principle of subsidiarity. He fully supported it. The issue between his views and yours is whether private interests, local governments or state governments could do as effectively those things which he supported the federal government doing. Had he believed that was the case, he would almost certainly have supported those things being done at a lower level. His writings make that clear. He didn't think such was the case and so he supported federal subsidies or outright funding.
Posted by: GL | December 11, 2007 at 06:58 PM
While I disagree with Rob and agree with you I'd point to Stuart deftly switching the topic on Lincoln and not Rob. Conversations tend to wander given enough time.
Posted by: Nick | December 11, 2007 at 07:27 PM
In a thread which was discussing "great" presidents, I don't see why Lincoln is off-limits, either for praise or for criticism. Why this 'noli me tangere' for Abe? Imply that I'm a neo-Confederate all you want, but I will not offer a pinch of incense at any Lincoln Memorial, either real or imagined. No president deserves a pass, especially one whose presidency raises so many questions.
"Suffice it to say that a slave-holding society and its apologists are the last ones to be in any position to lecture anyone else about being unscrupulous."
The South's errors do not excuse the North's.
"In short, I tired long ago of the sheer humbuggery of Confederate apologists posturing as defenders of liberty and limited government."
And I'm tired of the North's claims to virtue, when there is nothing praiseworthy in defending an economic power grab by painting it as some great moral crusade. (This is not, of course, to imply that the South was faultless or that Southern slavery was not a great moral evil.)
"...he should not confuse Jeffersonianism with conservatism. Jefferson was anything but a conservative."
I would not confuse Jeffersonian with conservatism. Rather, I'd say that certain elements of Jeffersonianism (localism, anti-centralization, agrarianism, etc.) comport well with conservatism, and that it is these elements which survived longer in the South than in the North. The fact that the South chose to defend a moral evil on these bases is unfortunate, but that fact does not negate the good of those things in themselves. To me, this seems to be the error that many critics of the South make, equating the means of defense with what was being defended.
Posted by: Rob G | December 12, 2007 at 07:56 AM
Understand Rob, I do believe you are correct to say that one who is Jeffersonian should have problems with Lincoln. And, of course, I am no big fan of Jefferson and have said so. You and I, I believe, recognize that the two men's political philosophies are not reconcilable. But I think we can also agree that neither man's philosophy is compatible with what we now think of as liberalism nor would either support the nanny state, introduced broadly by FDR and brought to full flower by LBJ's Great Society (and, I would add, inflated by "conservative" -- that's a laugh -- George W. Bush).
Posted by: GL | December 12, 2007 at 08:19 AM
Rob,
By the way, I have no problem with your criticizing Lincoln (though I disagree with you), just in your blaming him in any way for the New Deal and the Great Society.
Posted by: GL | December 12, 2007 at 08:20 AM
"I think we can also agree that neither man's philosophy is compatible with what we now think of as liberalism nor would either support the nanny state..."
A hearty Amen to that!
Posted by: Rob G | December 12, 2007 at 08:31 AM
Something I don't think anyone has mentioned so far (and I didn't think of myself until about ten minutes ago): Jefferson Davis was a sitting Senator when elected. Maybe that's the real reason the Confederacy lost.
Posted by: James Kabala | December 12, 2007 at 11:46 AM
Touché Mr. Kabala! Obviously the South was doomed from the start.
Posted by: Nick | December 12, 2007 at 12:06 PM
Good point, James. Now if Lincoln had won his senate race against Douglas in 1858, perhaps ole Jeff Davis could have liberated the Confederacy by a filibuster.
Posted by: GL | December 12, 2007 at 01:28 PM
Rob:
“Imply that I'm a neo-Confederate all you want….”
I don’t need to – you provide the explicit testimony yourself. "If it walks like a duck," etc. If you assume neo-Confederate positions and use neo-Confederate rhetoric (and your accusations can be found in any number of web sites and publications devoted to the same), don't complain if anyone considers you to be a neo-Confederate.
“I will not offer a pinch of incense at any Lincoln Memorial, either real or imagined.”
No-one asked you to, and no-one here has done so.
“In a thread which was discussing 'great' presidents, I don't see why Lincoln is off-limits, either for praise or for criticism.”
No-one said or implied that he was. But you present no evidence whatsoever for calling him unscrupulous -- which means the charge is nothing but slander.
“The South's errors do not excuse the North's.”
“And I'm tired of the North's claims to virtue, when there is nothing praiseworthy in defending an economic power grab by painting it as some great moral crusade.”
And you will search MC in vain for an advancement of either claim by me -- or by anyone else on MC, for that matter, I suspect. Not that you ever voluntarily bring up the South's faults in launching your repeated gratuitous tirades against the North, of course.
So here are three totally unsubstantiated accusations you make agasint your opponents -- as unsubstantiated as the ones you maeke against Lincoln and teh North. Interesting how you repeatedly need to try to justify yourself and your positions by making false accusations against others, imputing to them beliefs and actions they do not hold, have not performed, and for which you have no evidence.
Your black/white fallacy here is identical to that of the folks who cancelled their Touchstone subscriptions over “The Godless Party” issue a couple of years back. The fact that the editors (rightly) termed the Democrats such did not imply that the Republicans are “The Party of God” or constitute any endorsement of them. Similarly, the fact that the Confederacy was founded for the purpose of perpetuating slavery (as its vice president and author of its constitution, Alexander H. Stephens, stated in a major speech a month before the outbreak of the Civil war), rather than preserving states' rights per se, does not mean giving a free pass to the North.
As a trained historian I view the entire matter of secession and the Civil War as something far more complex than either a simplistic division between good and evil, or the tendentious canards you offer (which simply demonstrate an inability to engage in a substantive and serious discussion on the topics).
And regarding the latter, you just repeat your barnyard fertilzier about “an economic power grab.” How about solid proof of that instead of just reiterating question-begging, circular reasoning empty assertions? Let's see some verifiable citations from Lincoln's speeches and private papers, Northern federal cabinet meeting minutes, etc., showing that the Northern war aim was specifically to stage "an economic power grab" instead of to preserve the Union.
You are the one who first chose, here and elsewhere, to throw rhetorical Molotov cocktails on this subject. So don't splutter with wounded indignation when they are deposited back in your own yard and you are identified as being a verbal bomb thrower. Matt. 7:1-5 and Rom. 2 applies here as always.
Suppose instead you had written the following:
"While slavery was an evil and unjustifiable institution, I firmly believe that the South had a constitutional right peacefully to secede from the Union. And however strongly the North believed otherwise, it committed an even greater wrong in resorting to military force to abrogate it -- even if that purpose had been to end slavery rather than merely to preserve the Union by force. Likewise, I do not doubt the depth or sincerity of the convictions of Lincoln or other Northerners who believed it to be their duty to preserve the Union by such means. But they were wrong to do so, and their actions needlessly unleashed the horrific carnage of the Civil War, and they therefore bear the primary moral responsibility for that bloodshed."
Now, while I might (and would) disagree with this, *that* would be a reasonable and defensible position, one that could be argued on the basis of actual historical evidence. It certainly would not be a neo-Confederate position. More importantly, it does not resort to impugning needlessly the integrity of the other side. Someone can objectively be morally wrong without being personally hypocritical, unscrupulous, or corrupt. (E.g., I can firmly believe that a practicing homosexual is in grievous sin without having to assert that he act out of a selfish desire to exploit others for physical pleasure, as opposed to a tragically and neurotically misdirected need for genuine same-sex affectional bonds.)
But you chose no such reasonable course. It is not the position you have argued at all. Instead, you resort to completely unsupportable, inflammatory, and slanderous accusations that Lincoln was an "unscrupulous" man who led the North to engage in "an economic power grab" . . . "so that his portion of the country could benefit financially at their expense." In short, like so many conservatives today, you act like a modern liberal -- engaging in cheap psychologizing, with imputations of unprovable malign motives in order to try to discredit your opponents personally where you lack hard evidence.
Note that neither I, nor anyone else on MC that I can find, has ever made comparable imputations against Confederate leaders. I have said that their cause was objectively immoral, and I stand by that. I have never said or implied that they did not firmly and sincerely believe their convictions to be right, and acted upon those consistently as best they could. In short, unlike you I distinguish between the sin and the sinner. And when I taught U.S. history to college freshmen, I was careful not to inject any personal or ideological slant, but rather did my best to give my students as objective an understanding as possible why the two sides could come to such passionately opposed extremes that the result was the most terrible conflict in our nation's history. Can't you make an effort to do the same?
So, when you're ready to have a reasonable discussion of the Civil War, that can be done (though MC should not be the venue for that). But don't expect to be taken as either serious or reasonable when you resort to sweeping accusations and indefensible hyperbole.
Posted by: James A. Altena | December 14, 2007 at 03:15 AM
"“Imply that I'm a neo-Confederate all you want….”
'I don’t need to – you provide the explicit testimony yourself'
I see. So anyone who doesn't buy completely into the North's take on things is a Neo-Confederate? Then you may want to consult Richard Weaver, Walter Williams, Thomas DiLorenzo, Robert Penn Warren, M.E. Bradford, Marion Montgomery, and many others, none of whom, as far as I know, is/was a "Neo-Confederate." Professor Williams, especially, would get a good chuckle from hearing that!
"Not that you ever voluntarily bring up the South's faults in launching your repeated gratuitous tirades against the North, of course."
There is no need to do so. Have we not all heard about the South's faults during the entire course of our public education, almost from infancy, through elementary and high school and well into college? Why repeat the obvious?
In no way do I "splutter with wounded indignation." I merely object to being reckoned a Neo-Confederate for simply having the unmitigated gall to question Lincoln's motives. I guess I'm a racist for questioning affirmative action too, huh?
Frankly, though, I have neither the time nor the inclination to discuss this issue in depth, as I doubt it would bear any fruit. There are plenty of books out there that question both the Lincoln myth and the North's perception of itself as a "treasury of virtue." Some of them are even written by (gasp!) African Americans. I humbly suggest you peruse a few of them.
And yes, I will avoid bringing this subject up again. Apparently it's one of those which tends to generate more heat than light, at least for some folks.
Last word's yours.
Posted by: Rob G | December 14, 2007 at 07:35 AM
James A.,
You hit the nail on the head on your critique of neo-Confederates. To paraphrase Grant, the Confederates fought valiantly for their cause, but few have died for a worse cause than the one for which they fought. (I would add that I have five direct ancestors who fought in the war, three for the Union and two for the Confederacy.)
Posted by: GL | December 14, 2007 at 03:02 PM
GL and James, I love you guys but you're wrong - and so was Grant. Confederate soldiers fought for a cause largely identical to that of Washington and Jefferson - and while it is possible, with some digging, to find Union soldiers who signed up with the abolition of slavery as their main objective or at least didn't object to it (even claimed it afterwards, like Grant, who owned slaves himself well into the war!), it is not at all easy to find a Johnny Reb (from General Lee to private soldier) who believed that his cause was slavery. Indeed their claim was to be the authentic inheritors of the tradition of the American Revolution - as Wade Hampton would assert after the war, "George Washington was a 'rebel', but Robert E. Lee never was".
The great tragedy of the War was that there was a good deal of right on each side...noble men from Robert E. Lee to Robert Gould Shaw, from Oliver Howard to Stonewall Jackson, and innumerable unknowns who followed them behaving precisely as honor and morality dictated that they must behave - and thus constrained to kill one another. I am neither a Davis nor a Lincoln fan - Davis, brilliant and arrogant; Lincoln, shrewd and tragic - both of them opportunists. I look for the figures to admire, among the men in the arena - the real fighters who also became the real reconcilers.
For the record, personally I don't care to be "Neo-" anything...
Posted by: Joe Long | December 14, 2007 at 03:25 PM
>>>(I would add that I have five direct ancestors who fought in the war, three for the Union and two for the Confederacy.)<<<
Got that beat. My wife has one who fought for both.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 14, 2007 at 03:29 PM
Joe,
I appreciate your position and count you as a friend, but on this we must disagree.
I am convinced that most of the soldiers in the North fought to preserve the Union (not to free the slaves) and most from the South fought to destroy the Union (having been wrongly convinced that Lincoln would destroy their way of life, though most of the men who fought for the Confederacy would have been better off to see the plantation economy of the old South destroyed and replaced by an economy that more closely mirrored the more populace and growing North). I believe the Union was (and is) indissoluble as a matter of law (though I'll admit that this was an open question on which reasonable men differed in 1861). However, the Southern, Andrew Jackson, so thought when South Carolina threatened to secede and one of the great orations in American history, Daniel Webster's "Liberty and Union" speech, was delivered in response to threats of secession from his home region, New England, and in defense of an indissoluble Union. The secession threats addressed by Jackson and Webster preceded the Civil War by decades. This was not a new issue in 1861. I am also convinced that the cause of preserving the Union was a noble one and the cause of destroying it, no matter how well intentioned, was not. And so, I agree with Grant.
Posted by: GL | December 14, 2007 at 03:47 PM
GL - a reasonable position, yes (the preservation of the Union) - I personally agree with Calhoun's toast: "The Union - next to our liberty, most dear." Whether they were right or wrong about which policies would eventually be economically best for them, Southrons fought for self-determination; your arguments could easily be those advanced by Great Britain against the American Revolution. And the Tory arguments, too, had weight. (Plus the Brits had more enlightened racial policies than we colonials, in general.) Lousy slaveowning secessionist rebels; didn't they understand the great privilege of being part of the enlightend British empire?
But in any case, proper Southron loyalties today are to the Constitution and the Union which is based upon it; the ambiguities of state-first loyalties, proper to the men raised under them, are gone now. "Forget your animosities and make your sons Americans", said Lee, and our grand-daddies did.
Posted by: Joe Long | December 14, 2007 at 04:01 PM
GL, of course I'm going to disagree with you here on almost all points. But one sentence strikes me: "most of the men who fought for the Confederacy would have been better off to see the plantation economy of the old South destroyed and replaced by an economy that more closely mirrored the more populace and growing North."
This seems to me to be exactly what many in the South DID NOT want, from those before the war who protested against the commercialism of the North, through the War itself and Reconstruction, right up through the Southern Agrarians in the 1920s and 30s. From thence comes the argument that one reason the main North needed to preserve the union was so that its business and industrial interests could be continued and expanded. I've read many books on both the War itself and the lead-up to it, and have yet to be shown that this argument is wrong.
Posted by: Rob Grano | December 14, 2007 at 04:02 PM
By the way, Rob, you condemn Lincoln as a Whig, as if that were a bad thing. I think being a Whig was a good thing.
Posted by: GL | December 14, 2007 at 04:15 PM
Just for the record, Lincoln ran for President as a Republican. It's common knowledge, but commonly overlooked by people seeking to identify Lincoln with some of the flawed stances of the Whigs. It was the election of Lincoln as a candidate of the new, anti-slavery Republican party that triggered the secessions, due to protection of slavery.
Rob, all your economic arguments can be easily reduced to this simple point on the side of the South: their economy was dependent on slavery, so they wanted to protect slavery. On the North I'll grant some slightly more arguable questions with regards to motive, but even granted that there's nothing good about painting an economic power grab as a moral crusade, you haven't established an economic power grab - and neither have any of the authors you've cited. (I know... I've read almost all of them. Although, if memory serves, most of them were literature professors, not historians or economists.) Historians have sufficiently established that Lincoln was voted into office the second time as one who would preserve the Union, not as one who would ensure a good economy. The people clearly believed that they were involved in a moral crusade, not an economic power grab - as evidenced not only by their votes, but by their blood. And a brief look at the secession convention notes for almost every state that seceded adequately establishes that the secessionists weren't worried about economics, except in relation to slavery. Read the Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia secession convention notes for further detail.
Posted by: NJI | December 14, 2007 at 05:25 PM