Presidential Rankings - The Great Ones

I have long disagreed with the regular presidential rankings that are published every few years.  Invariably, the most recent Republicans are at the very bottom and the most recent Democrats rank very highly.  No bias there.  A couple of weeks ago, I came across one by Robert Graboyes that did not follow the usual rankings.  The presidents are separated into quintiles: highly positive, somewhat positive, neutral, somewhat negative, and highly negative.  There is a 6th category for those who died so early in office that they don't merit ranking.  Let's start with the greats (i.e., highly positive):

Graboyes defines highly positive as leaving "at least one blockbuster accomplishment that swamps any negatives."

George Washington:  He was the first president and established what the office would be.  Everything he did became a precedent, including his resignation after 2 terms.  He defined the presidency.

Thomas Jefferson: The third president bought Louisianna from Napoleon, dramatically expanding the United States.  Where most nations were paying protection to the Tripolitan pirates, Jefferson sent the Marines.

James Monroe: Other than Washington, Monroe is the only president to run unopposed for re-election.  His time in office was known as the Era of Good Feelings.  He announced the Monroe Doctrine, which declared the Western Hemisphere as off-limits to European powers.

James Knox Polk: Nearly doubled the size of the United States and established treasury autonomy.  As a longtime Polk fan, it pleases me greatly that he was placed in the highly positive group.  This surely impacts my view of his overall picks.

Abraham Lincoln:  He saved the Union.  Enough said.

Theodore Roosevelt: He strengthened the presidency and established America as a superpower.  Indeed, he is the first US president to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: He led the allies to victory.

Harry Truman: He began the containment of Communism.

Ronald Reagan: He turned the economy around from the Ford/Carter mess, starting a 25-year economic boom.  More importantly, his strategy ended the Soviets without a war.

Generally, this is a good list.  I will quibble about FDR, whose actions regarding the Great Depression and threats of packing the Supreme Court should cost him a great spot.  However, FDR has been listed as one of the three greats - with Washington and Lincoln - in almost every list.  If Mount Rushmore had been carved in the 50s or later rather than the 20s and 30s, FDR would be on it.

Vice Presidential Success Rate

When the vice president becomes president, by whatever means, how does that tend to work?  Let's take a look.

First, let's consider those elected to the presidency on their merits:

1. John Adams served as the first vice president.  When George Washington declined to run for a 3rd term, Adams was elected.  His was a tumultuous presidency and not popular.  He served only one term.

2. Thomas Jefferson served as the second vice president.  Though Adams and Jefferson were on opposite sides of the political aisle of the day, the way the system worked gave the presidency to the man who received the most electoral votes and the vice presidency to the man who received the 2nd most electoral votes.  This was changed for the 1800 election so that Jefferson and Burr ran as the Democratic-Republicans against Adams & Pinkney for the Federalists.  Jefferson proved to be far more popular and successful than the president for whom he was VP.  He served for two terms and is considered one of the great presidents.

3. Martin Van Buren was Andrew Jackson's second VP.  He was elected in 1836 and was then beset by a financial panic the following year.  He only served one term.

4. Richard Nixon served as Eisenhower's VP and ran for the presidency in 1960.  He lost.  However, he ran again in 1968 and won.  Though he was reelected, his second term proved to be a national disaster thanks to Watergate.

5. George Bush was Ronald Reagan's VP for two terms.  In 1988, he ran as the 3rd Reagan term and won in a landslide.  In the wake of the Gulf War, he was so popular that most of the 'formidable' Democrats declined to run.  However, an economic downturn led him to have only the one term.

6. Joseph Biden was Barack Obama's VP for 2 terms.  Unlike most vice presidents, he did not seek election immediately after his stint as VP.  He was elected in 2020 and it is yet to be determined if he will complete a second term like Jefferson or be relegated to one-term status like most of the rest.

Next, there are those who took over in the wake of the president's death through illness.

1. John Tyler spent only a month as the VP before William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia.  Most of the papers referred to Tyler as Acting-President.  This was the first time the VP assumed the office of president and the exact workings were not settled.  Tyler established the ascension of the VP to President, not Acting-President.  He was not a popular president and did not win nomination for re-election.

2. Millard Filmore became president when Taylor died of cholera in 1850.  Having no mandate other than filling out Taylor's term, Filmore was bypassed in favor of Winfield Scott for the Whig Party.  In 1856, he ran as the Know Nothing nominee; he won 8 electoral votes.

3. Calvin Coolidge stepped in when Warren Harding died.  It was the Roaring Twenties and the country was humming.  Coolidge benefitted from the prosperity.  He was elected to a term of his own, serving from 1925 to 1929.  Coolidge declined to run for another term, thinking it would be too much for a man to serve 10 years as president.

4. Harry Truman had only been VP for a few months when FDR died.  He took the helm in the waning days of World War II and dropped the bomb.  He was nominated to continue as president in 1948 and - despite headlines to the contrary - defeated Dewey.  He had a successful presidency and is viewed quite favorably by historians.

Finally, there are the VPs who took office in the wake of a presidential assassination.

1. Andrew Johnson was Abraham Lincoln's second VP and had only served a month when Lincoln was assassinated.  He had a contentious relationship with the Radical Republicans and eventually found himself being impeached, something not to be repeated until Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.  Unsurprisingly, he did not have a term of his own.

2. Chester Arthur took office when James Garfield died.  He had lingered for a couple of months after his shooting.  Arthur was a machine politician who benefitted from the Spoils System and yet became the champion for reform when he was in office.  Though he might have secured a term of his own, Arthur was in poor health and didn't have strong support from the party.  He left office in 1885 and died the following year.

3. Theodore Roosevelt was McKinley's second VP, the first having died in office.  Like Garfield, McKinley lingered and even appeared to be recovering from the assassin's bullet.  Roosevelt took office and proved to be an active executive.  He easily secured a term of his own and even had enough popularity at the end of that term to select his successor.

4. Lyndon Baines Johnson became president when JFK was assassinated in Dallas.  In one of the most lopsided elections, he trounced Barry Goldwater in 1964 and won a term of his own.  However, the Vietnam War crushed his popularity.  He declined to run for a second term and his party lost the 1968 election.

Of the VPs elected on their merits, only Thomas Jefferson can be called a success.  President Biden will have to wait until next year to see if he joins Jefferson.  Of those to take over after a death, both Coolidge and Truman made the office their own and won re-election for themselves.  Of those who took over after an assassination, only Theodore Roosevelt fully succeeded.  LBJ was burdened with an unpopular war and a tumultuous era.

Generally, VPs do not provide strong presidential material.  Of course, that is true of most presidents as well.

Rewriting History

I just read this article where the writer proposes that bombing Nagasaki was a war crime.  As we get further from World War II, this revision of history is going to take hold, particularly among the historically illiterate.  Sadly, that cohort is growing by leaps and bounds.

 

When I was in college, I took a semester of Chinese History.  When we reached World War II, the professor expressed his disapproval of the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Though he clearly didn't agree, he allowed that one could argue for the dropping of the first bomb.  However, the second was unseemly.  Really, Truman only gave them three days before dropping another bomb.  What was not discussed was the other possibility: amphibious landing like in Normandy followed by a steady advance through Japan.  How many thousands of US soldiers would have died in that effort?  How many Japanese would have died resisting it?  As it happens, we had a good idea.

 

Iwo Jima is a volcanic island about 8 square miles in size.  It took a little over a month for the US Marines to secure the island in February and March of 1945.  The Japanese had 21,000 troops on the island.  Against this, the US threw 500 ships and over 100,000 Marines and sailors.  In the fierce fighting, nearly 7,000 Americans were killed, more than 19,000 were wounded.  The Japanese forces had 18,000 dead and only 216 taken prisoner.  Japanese forces suffered 85% killed and only 1% captured.  Wow, those are some dedicated troops.

 

The United States had made plans to invade Japan.  It was Operation Downfall.  The expectation was that the invasion would begin in November 1945 and the war would conclude by 1947.  Japan has an area of 145,935 square miles, equivalent to 18,241 Iwo Jimas.  The estimated military of Japan was 4,335,500 men in arms and 31 million conscripted civilians.  Let's just ignore the civilians for the sake of this example.  That means that Japan had 206 times as many troops as had been on Iwo Jima.  Let us suppose that Japanese soldiers on Japan were only half as determined as those on the outlying island of Iwo Jima, willing to suffer only 40% dead before surrendering.  How many Japanese soldiers will die in that scenario?  1.7 million.  For every 2.6 Japanese soldier killed on Iwo Jima, an American was killed.  Let's do the math: 1.7 million Japanese soldier killed during Operation Downfall divided by 2.6 equals 654,000 Americans killed.  Seeing as the Russians were going to invade from the north, the US could expect to take only half of those casualties.  Of course, if they proved as determined as those on Iwo Jima, double everything.

 

Clearly, the projections are horrendous and the death toll is astronomical.  With this in mind, how does 130,000 to 246,000 killed in atomic bombs sound?  Not so bad.  Actually, a really good trade-off.  In fact, one could say that Operation Downfall would have been the war crime.  It is easy to say what was done was wrong or immoral when the alternative is not mentioned.

 

What of the idea that Truman should have paused the bombing.  What part of unconditional surrender did the Japanese not understand.  Here is a thumbnail sketch of the last days of the Pacific War:

 

USA: Surrender Unconditionally

Japan: No

Hiroshima: BOOM!

USA: Surrender Unconditionally

Japan: Your weapon is impressive but you cannot have very many of them.  We will endure

Nagasaki: BOOM!

USA: Surrender Unconditionally

Japan: We have several conditions

Emperor Hirohito: ARE YOU MAD?  WE MUST SURRENDER!

Japan: We will surrender with 1 condition

USA: Sigh.  What is your condition?

 

The condition was that Emperor Hirohito would remain the sovereign ruler of Japan.  This allowed the Japanese Monarchy to escape the war crimes trials that followed and remain intact to this very day.  Of course, the Japanese Imperial House is very similar to the British Monarchy, almost exclusively ceremonial.

 

Nagasaki tipped Hirohito.  Without Nagasaki, the Japanese would have continued to fight and thousands of American Marines, sailors, and soldiers would have died.  Yes, many of the military commanders opposed the bomb.  Recall that the US staged daylight bombing runs of Germany to increase bomb accuracy to reduce civilian German casualties at the cost of American airmen.  There is no precision bombing with an atom bomb.  Truman was right and untold thousands of Americans and Japanese survived the war thanks to his decision.