Corporate leaders in the United States often draw leadership
lessons — good and bad — from the examples set by American presidents.
But in looking to the White House, it’s important to recognize that
history’s take on presidential performance is subject to change,
according to presidential historian Richard Norton Smith, who spoke at a
recent Wharton Leadership Conference. He offered 10 rules for
presidential evaluations that stand the test of time.
For example, he said, Dwight D. Eisenhower was considered something
of a do-nothing president, ranking below Chester A. Arthur, during the
dynamic Camelot era of John F. Kennedy. In contrast to the PR-driven
Kennedy, Eisenhower used to say, “The job of the president is to
persuade, not to publicize.” Indeed, the Supreme Commander of the
Normandy invasion was so subtle and self-effacing as president that
historians judged him mediocre.
Nearly 50 years after Eisenhower left office, however, scholars are
revising their opinions. His presidential papers revealed a skilled
political operator who worked quietly behind the scenes, but was driven
by policy, organization and intellectual rigor. Despite pressure to
rescue the French, he kept the U.S. out of Vietnam in 1954, reasoning
with prescience that the cost of war in Southeast Asia would far
outweigh any strategic benefits.
“There is no single rule for assessing presidential performance” said Smith, who addressed the recent
13th Annual Wharton Leadership Conference, co-sponsored by the Center for Human Resources and the Center for Leadership & Change Management.
“Eisenhower illustrates better than anyone the need for each generation
to revisit its assumptions” in light of new evidence, the performance
of succeeding presidents and the perspective that comes with time.
“Americans have been revising their estimates of presidents for as
long as we have had presidents,” said Smith, who has published
biographies of Thomas E. Dewey, Herbert Hoover and George Washington,
and is the presidential scholar in residence at George Mason University
in Fairfax, Va. People forget that the revered Washington “was in fact
an enormously controversial president” who was burned in effigy and
denounced as a “betrayer of the Revolution” while he was in office.
Bouts of historical revisionism and counter-revisionism explain why
assessments of the nation’s leaders “bounce around like corn in a
popper,” Smith said. For example, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the
Kennedy and Nixon historian, favored “transformative” presidencies with
charismatic leaders promoting a more powerful federal government,
exemplified by Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt. A more nuanced approach,
evaluating leaders in the context of their time rather than in
hindsight, has kindled reappraisals of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and
even Calvin Coolidge — all of whom tended to be underrated because they
were modest advocates for a more limited role for government.
“The presidents who promise freedom
from government” — Thomas
Jefferson, Coolidge and Reagan — “are as legitimate in their own time
and place as the presidents who, in effect, promise freedom through government”
— the Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson, Smith said. “You
can take a Coolidge seriously now, something you couldn’t do before
Ronald Reagan.”
10 Rules to Judge a President
Smith offered his personal list of “10 rules to judge a president” as
a more objective approach avoiding the distorting effects of changing
societal values, such as the pro-government activism of the New Deal and
the 1960s:
1) History rewards the risk-takers. The list of
presidents and the bold initiatives that pushed them up in the rankings
are obvious, including Thomas Jefferson (the Louisiana Purchase), Harry
Truman (stopping Communist aggression in Korea), Lyndon Johnson (Civil
Rights Act of 1964), and Richard Nixon (dialogue with Red China).
But risk taking does not always conform to our notion of a
“swashbuckling, agenda-setting executive” that began with Teddy
Roosevelt 100 years ago. “Sometimes, doing nothing is the most difficult
form of leadership of all,” Smith said. He cited George H.W. Bush’s
diplomatic refusal, despite strong pressure, to attend “the photo opp of
the century,” the destruction of the Berlin Wall that symbolized Soviet
domination of Eastern Europe.
“By not rubbing Mikhail Gorbachev’s nose in the humiliation of the
demise of the Soviet empire, he made it possible for Gorbachev to go
along with a peaceful integration of Germany and for the Soviet Union to
support Bush’s coalition in the First Gulf War,” Smith said, noting
that few would have predicted Soviet acquiescence to these American
initiatives.
2) A president who actively campaigns for his historical place is engaged in a self-defeating exercise. Warren
G. Harding hoped to be “the best loved” president and came to office in
a landslide victory after promising a “Return to Normalcy” following
World War I. In the end, Harding couldn’t extricate his administration
from the Teapot Dome bribery scandal and quickly fell into obscurity,
widely ranked among the worst presidents.
Smith said he found it “profoundly disturbing” that Bill Clinton
pondered his legacy aloud with former advisor Dick Morris, who later
wrote a memoir that included critical observations of the former
president. According to Morris’s book, Clinton wondered if the fact that
he had not led the nation during a time of war would diminish his
ranking among the presidents. Surprisingly, “Clinton’s reputation and
the significance of his presidency have risen significantly,” Smith
said. “Clinton’s presidency is being weighed, as each president is
ultimately, against his successors” — in this case, against George W.
Bush’s record of war, deficit and economic crisis.
Clinton’s most important legacy may be his success in “moving the
Democratic Party to the middle of the road to a point where it had
fiscal credibility and a muscular foreign policy, without surrendering
its fundamental social justice principles,” Smith said.
3) There is no single theory of presidential success. Proponents
of the “strong presidency” as a prerequisite for greatness often cite
Teddy Roosevelt’s concept of stewardship: “The president was free to do
anything he wanted that was not expressly forbidden by the
Constitution,” Smith said. He offered an alternative theory valuing
presidents who viewed stewardship as protecting taxpayers and who did
not seek power by expanding government — a theory underlying
reappraisals of Coolidge, Truman and Ford.
Derided as “silent Cal” (Dorothy Parker, when informed of his death
in 1933, famously asked: “How could they tell?”), Coolidge deserves
reappraisal “for his authenticity as much for his ideology,” Smith said.
An introvert who battled with “paralyzing shyness,” Coolidge’s
“reticence was matched by his canniness…. He created a public persona
that held the world at bay while allowing him to indulge in a humor as
sharp as Vermont cheddar.” Coolidge’s honesty and lack of an
overpowering ego should be all the more valued in an age “when so much
of our public life is riddled by fakery, when candidates without ideas
hire consultants without scruples,” Smith said. “For lack of a better
word, I would say that Coolidge was grounded,” exhibiting a strength of
character that he said Truman, Ford and Reagan also possessed.
4) Presidents can only be understood within the context, conventions and limitations of their time. Invariably
ranked among the greatest presidents, the populist Andrew Jackson fell
from grace during the time period when historians realized that millions
of Americans — women, blacks and Native Americans — had been
politically or economically marginalized. Social activism led to a
revisionist view that “changed the lens through which we viewed
Jacksonian America.” Smith argues for a more objective approach in
dealing with the past, “to understand someone in the context of their
own time and not make the mistake of applying our conventions to an
earlier time.” Those who judge presidents do not have license to simply
dismiss earlier generations; instead, “the obligation is ours to try to
understand them.”
5) If presidents are governed by any law beyond the Constitution, it is the law of unintended consequences. Although
Woodrow Wilson wanted to be the father of the “new freedom,” his
idealistic vision was overtaken by the massive increase in government
regulation and spending required by World War I. “In his second term,
events beyond his control overwhelmed him. Foreign war, domestic
upheaval, shameful outbreaks of racial and ethnic intolerance mocked his
idealism and reordered his priorities,” Smith said.
6) Presidential power, although awesome on paper, is based largely on moral authority. Franklin
Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan understood how to use moral authority to
achieve their objectives, although their goals were diametrically
opposed. Broadcasting fireside chats to generate hope through the New
Deal, Roosevelt banked “emotional credit and credibility” that he used
throughout his presidency to win support for creating the modern social
welfare state. Similarly, Reagan gained enormous influence through his
response to the assassination attempt in 1981. “His legend began when
millions saw a side of Reagan they never knew existed — the jokes that
he cracked [and] the grace that he displayed,” Smith said.
7) The president requires a talent for making useful enemies.
History’s most admired presidencies were often locked in struggles with
adversaries who gave them power. “Roosevelt and Reagan had a genius for
exploiting their opponents, whether European dictators in the 1930s or
the Evil Empire that haunted [Reagan],” Smith said.
8) Every great president marches to the beat of his own drummer. Reagan
personified the principle that great leaders “are essentially
mysterious figures,” with capabilities not fully understood. Reagan’s
national security adviser, Robert McFarlane, remarked: “He knows so
little and accomplishes so much.”
9) The challenge posed by any crisis is equaled by the
opportunity for leaders to forge an emotional bond with the people they
lead to gain moral authority and expanded powers. Franklin
Roosevelt, having rescued democratic capitalism, “was all but immune
from” right-wing attacks accusing him of Stalinesque power abuses.
Lincoln was called an “incipient dictator” for suspending
habeas corpus
barring unlawful detention, but Americans never doubted his belief that
he had to suspend one clause in order to save the rest of the
Constitution.
10) Greatness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Social
and economic conservatism had their heyday under Reagan, demonstrated
when Clinton declared the era of big government was over and produced
balanced budgets. But the Reagan consensus that “markets were sacred”
and “Wall Street invariably knew better than government regulators” has
been repudiated, “at least provisionally,” by the financial crisis that
led to Democratic sweeps of Congress and the presidency. “All of that is
up for grabs,” Smith said, although it’s too soon to predict what will
replace “the age of Reagan.”
How will historians rank George W. Bush? Much will depend on what
happens in the Middle East, where two unresolved wars continue to weigh
on his legacy. “If 30 years from now there is some semblance of
stability and democracy, then deservedly or not,” historians may take a
very different view of the Bush presidency, Smith noted. Still, he
doubted that Bush’s reputation would undergo the dramatic reappraisal
that has benefited Eisenhower. “I don’t know whether, when we look at
the Bush papers, we’ll discover the same surprising wisdom,
sophistication and concealed gifts that we now associate with
Eisenhower.”
“党管网络”
习近平“集六大最高权力于一身”
企圖控制市場往往會招致市場的報復。
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