Currently viewing the tag: “Presidents”
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(Ilya Somin)
The Obama Administration’s decision not to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act has inspired a great deal of criticism from commentators who believe that it is an unwise or illegitimate extension of executive power. The critics include Richard Epstein, Curt Levey, and our own Orin Kerr, among others. John Yoo argues that this is a constitutionally permissible exercise of executive power, but an unwise one that contradicts the Democrats’ position on other executive power issues.
I’m not a fan of either the Obama Administration or some of the legal arguments they have made in support of the claim that DOMA is unconstitutional. But I do think that they made the right call here. If a President genuinely believes that a federal statute is unconstitutional he has a duty not to defend it.
I. The President’s Duty to Defend the Constitution Supersedes His Duty to Uphold Federal Statutes When the Two Conflict.
Let’s start with first principles. The president takes an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution. His duty to uphold the Constitution supersedes his obligation to enforce federal statutes when the two come into conflict. After all, federal statutes are only legitimate in so far as they are constitutional. One of the greatest threats to the Constitution is the enactment and enforcement of unconstitutional laws that exceed the powers of government.
Ever since George Washington, presidents have exercised their own judgment in assessing the constitutionality of federal laws, and have not simply deferred to the courts or to Congress. Each branch of government has an independent responsibility to assess the constitutionality of current and proposed laws. This is not incompatible with the duty of the president or Congress to obey judicial decisions that strike down a statute, since the Constitution gives the courts jurisdiction over all cases arising under it. But if the courts haven’t yet ruled on the issue, nothing prevents the president or Congress from making a considered independent judgment that the statute is nonetheless unconstitutional and acting accordingly.
Thus, if the president genuinely believes that DOMA or any other federal statute is unconstitutional, he has at least a prima facie duty not to defend it in court, and possibly a duty not to take actions to enforce it either, as part of his exercise of prosecutorial discretion (a traditional executive power). Obviously, the president can still choose to defer to Congress or the courts in ambiguous cases where he is not sure whether a statute is constitutional or not. It would have been perfectly legitimate for the Obama Administration to conclude that they are not sure whether DOMA is constitutional, and therefore will defer to the considered judgment of Congress until such time as the Supreme Court definitively decides the issue. But the President apparently has a considered view that the statute really is unconstitutional, and not merely uncertain in its status. If so, his duty to the Constitution requires him take the action that he did.
II. Practical Considerations.
Many of the critics of Obama’s decision cite the danger that allowing presidents to refuse to defend statutes they consider unconstitutional would allow them to negate any laws the administration happens to disagree with, simply by not arguing for them in court. This is a reasonable concern. But I think it is overblown.
The fact that the administration chooses not to defend a federal law doesn’t mean that it won’t have other able defenders. In practice, virtually any significant federal law is likely to be supported by states and/or private parties who have standing to intervene. For example, any of the 45 states that today forbid gay marriage would probably have standing to defend its constitutionality on the grounds that otherwise they might have to extend tax credits and other government benefits to resident couples who have entered into same-sex marriages in other states. If a future Republican administration chooses not to defend the constitutionality of the individual mandate, both state governments who support it and various private parties who benefit from it materially would have standing to intervene. For example, insurance companies support the mandate because it requires people to buy their products and that financial stake in the law is surely sufficient to give them standing.
Indeed, supporters of a challenged law should prefer that its defense be handled by a party that is genuinely committed to it, rather than a hostile Justice Department that is only litigating the case because they believe they can’t get out of it. Ed Whelan, a prominent critic of the Obama Administration’s handling of the DOMA litigation, claims that the “administration has been sabotaging DOMA litigation from the outset” by refusing to make the best possible arguments in the law’s defense. If so, wouldn’t DOMA supporters be better off if the statute’s defense were handled by parties who actually believe in their case and genuinely want to win it?
Past experience supports the conjecture that a president’s unwillingness to defend a federal statute doesn’t necessarily doom it to defeat. This is not the first time that a president refused to defend the constitutionality of a federal law or regulation. In 1989, as Jim Copland points out, the George H.W. Bush administration refused to defend the constitutionality of federal affirmative preferences in the Metro Broadcasting case. In the 1982 Bob Jones case, the Reagan administration refused to defend an IRS policy denying tax exemptions to a university that practiced racial segregation for religious reasons. Significantly, both policies were ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court, as other extremely able lawyers were found to defend them. For example, the Bob Jones case was won by prominent Washington, DC lawyer William Coleman.
In recent years, federal courts have gradually relaxed standing rules, making it easier for a variety of parties — especially state governments — to bring lawsuits or intervene in existing ones. Thus, it is highly unlikely that a president’s refusal to defend a statute in court will mean that it won’t find able defenders elsewhere. If there is still a problem, the proper solution is to further loosen restrictive standing requirements, which should be eliminated anyway for reasons I explained here.
UPDATE: I should add that it might also be legitimate for the president to adopt a general policy of deferring to congressional judgment on issues relating to the constitutionality of federal statutes, if he believes that Congress’ judgment on these matters is likely to be systematically superior to that of the executive branch. But I think any such presumption is at best dubious in an era when Congress generally enacts whatever statutes it wants with little or no serious consideration of constitutional constraints on its power.
UPDATE #2: I have changed around some of the wording in this post for the sake of clarity.
“It’s still the case that most Senators see a president when they look in the mirror,” writes Jon Bernstein, “and that continues to be an important ingredient that helps make the Senate what it is.”
You hear this all the time. But what’s the evidence that it’s true? Only one Senate Republican — John Thune — even explored running for president this cycle, and he decided against it. There were more in 2008, which was considered a banner year for senators with presidential ambitions, but “more” only meant five or six sitting senators who even considered entering the race. It didn’t mean 15 or 20.
So who are all these senators who are keeping their presidential ambitions so tightly controlled? I know Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell don’t see a president when they look in the mirror. I don’t think Chuck Grassley or Max Baucus consider themselves likely presidents, nor do Ron Wyden or Mike Enzi. Is Amy Klobuchar planning a run? Chuck Schumer? John Barraso? Jay Rockefeller?
As far as I can tell, most senators look in the mirror and see a future committee chairperson, not a future president. And that’s why most of them tend to keep their heads down and be team players rather than act out and grab the headlines for themselves. The idea that they all see themselves as a future president seems to me to be a cheap shot — a way of making fun of their egos and ambitions without actually doing the hard work of evaluating their job performance and seeing whether they really do seem to be out for themselves.
Schools and banks were closed, no mail was delivered but, aside from that, nobody seemed to notice Presidents Day.
In a Gallup poll, Ronald Reagan is named “greatest,” followed by Abraham Lincoln, Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt-and Barack Obama. (Name recognition seems to matter.)
For someone who has lived through 13 of 44 White House occupants, “greatest” is meaningless. The important question is how much difference did the men in the Oval Office make in the lives of Americans.
They used to inaugurate them on my birthday, March 4th, and FDR took office in 1933 when I turned nine. I was past 21 on April 12, 1945, sleeping in uniform on a German farmhouse floor when someone shook me awake to tell me the only President I had ever known was dead.
After the Great Depression and World War II, the tenure of future Presidents went by in a relative blur. Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs-twice-to end the war, making the U.S. the only nation ever to use that ultimate weapon.
In the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower prided himself on staying in the “middle of the road,” in retrospect an admirable undertaking, followed by Kennedy’s thousand days, in which he learned after a Bay of Pigs fiasco how to avoid blowing up the world in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Lyndon Johnson passed an historic Civil Rights law, started a War on Poverty but left office in despair after escalating a small Vietnam War to tragic proportions.
Then came Nixon…
MORE.
A pre-President’s Day Gallup poll ranks America’s Greatest Presidents as chosen by those polled:
This got me to thinking about how I would rate the top 10. I decided to focus solely on what they did as President. Hence, while I totally honor him for it, Washington’s service as commander-in-chief and in the Constitutional Convention don’t count. They make him a Great American, but they don’t affect his greatness as President. Accordingly, I start my list with Lincoln.
- Abraham Lincoln: Preserved the Union. Emancipation Proclamation. Set stage for reconciliation. Homestead Act. National Banking Act.
- George Washington: Defined so many of the President’s roles. Avoided foreign entanglements. Put down rebellion. Jay Treaty. Kept balance between Hamilton, Adams, and Jefferson, no small task. Bill of Rights on his watch.
- Thomas Jefferson: I’ve lost most of the hero worship I developed for Jefferson while attending his University and reading Dumas Malone’s magisterial biography (Jefferson the Virginian (Jefferson and His Time)
). His failures re slavery and his sympathy for the French revolutionaries appall. Conor Cruise O’Brien’s superb biography The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800
was a useful corrective. Still, he helped John Adams set the precedent for peaceful transition of power between Presidents of differing parties. Lewis & Clark. The Louisiana Purchase. Barbary pirates dealt with. Foundation of US Navy. Ended external slave trade on time. - Theodore Roosevelt: Possibly ranked too high. Must admit to admiring his out-sized personality. But I think he actually had a lot of very significant accomplishments: Panama Canal. Great White Fleet. US starts to become Great Power. Trust busting. Food and drug regulation. Conservation. National parks.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Pains me to rank him this highly. The bad: Created modern regulatory state. Court packing scheme. Keynesian economics. Allowed Japanese internment. Corporatism in the early New deal (esp. NIRA). But there is also so much good: Lend-lease kept UK in war. Managed coalition warfare among the Allies. Won the war. Set stage for post-war American dominance. Ended racial discrimination in federal government hiring and thus helped set the stage for successful civil rights movement.
- Ronald Reagan: My favorite President. Tax cuts and reform. Military buildup bankrupted Soviet Union. Won the Cold war. Arms reduction. Morning in America after Carter malaise. Would rank higher if he had actually done more to cut the size of government. Starving the beast didn’t work. Only gave lip service to pro-life movement. Put Swinging Sandy O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy on SCOTUS, thereby preventing emergence of a solid conservative majority.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower: Ended Korean War. Balanced budget 3 out of 8 years. Interstate highway system. Civil Rights Act of 1956.
- John Adams: At this point, you start getting into the territory where candidates have some serious warts. E.g., the Alien & Sedition Act. On the plus side, he managed the crisis with France despite a telling lack of support from either major party or his own cabinet. And he helped set the precedent for peaceful transition of power between Presidents of opposing parties.
- James Polk: Reduced tariffs. Managed the Fifty-four forty or fight crisis to a peaceful resolution. Won the Mexican war, annexing Nevada and California. Second only to Jefferson in the amount of territory he added to USA.
- Andrew Jackson: Speaking of warts, the Indian Removal Act remains a blot on the national escutcheon. On the plus side, there was the veto of the rechartering of the Bank of the United States. Squashed South Carolina’s secessionist tendencies for a couple of decades. Managed the Nullification crisis and the Texas revolution. Expanded the voting public.
Comparing my list to the Gallup poll, Clinton comes in way too high on the latter. I’d put him somewhere around 15 or so. If only he could have kept his pants zipped.
Kennedy is even more overrated. I get the mystique. All that Camelot crap. But his positive record’s pretty thin and there’s a ton of negatives.
It’s way too soon to draw conclusions about Obama, but my guess is that he’ll end up in the bottom third.
W should be somewhere in the bottom quintile. The war of choice in Iraq still seems like a mistake, all things considered. The failure to catch Osama. Massive deficits. Huge growth in entitlements. The corruption of the K Street Gang.
Jimmy Carter goes into the bottom quintile too. Gave away the Panama Canal. Pardoned the draft dodgers. Fumbled Iran. The hostages. The malaise speech. Stagflation. It was the worst presidency of my adult life.
Richard Nixon is a most interesting case. He was a liar and a cheat. Given half a chance, he might have become a usurper as well. His efforts to ape Disraeli’s progressive toryism mostly turned into left-liberal programmatic victories. Massive expansion of the regulatory state. Harry Blackmun was an awful SCOTUS choice. Wage and price controls flopped, as one would expect. Adopted Keynesian economic policies. Yet, he also did a lot of really good stuff, especially in foreign policy. Relations with China. Detente. SALT I and II. Saved Israel’s bacon in the 1973 war with Operation Nickel Grass. Got us out of Vietnam quagmire, albeit by throwing the South Vietnamese under the bus. Took us off the gold standard. Doesn’t get enough credit for efforts in areas of school desegregation and civil rights generally. William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell were great SCOTUS choices. How does one grade such a mixed bag?
What is really shocking abut the whole exercise is the number of nonentities, mediocrities, and flops who have made it to the Oval office. With the exception of Polk and Jackson, the Presidents who served between Monroe and Lincoln were almost all mediocrities, at best. The list between Lincoln and Teffy Roosevelt is equally uninspiring. In the modern era, you’ve got oddities like Carter, Gerald Ford, Bush 41 and 43, and Obama.
Surely we can do better.
A pre-President’s Day Gallup poll ranks America’s Greatest Presidents as chosen by those polled:
This got me to thinking about how I would rate the top 10. I decided to focus solely on what they did as President. Hence, while I totally honor him for it, Washington’s service as commander-in-chief and in the Constitutional Convention don’t count. They make him a Great American, but they don’t affect his greatness as President. Accordingly, I start my list with Lincoln.
- Abraham Lincoln: Preserved the Union. Emancipation Proclamation. Set stage for reconciliation. Homestead Act. National Banking Act.
- George Washington: Defined so many of the President’s roles. Avoided foreign entanglements. Put down rebellion. Jay Treaty. Kept balance between Hamilton, Adams, and Jefferson, no small task. Bill of Rights on his watch.
- Thomas Jefferson: I’ve lost most of the hero worship I developed for Jefferson while attending his University and reading Dumas Malone’s magisterial biography (Jefferson the Virginian (Jefferson and His Time)). His failures re slavery and his sympathy for the French revolutionaries appall. Conor Cruise O’Brien’s superb biography The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800 was a useful corrective. Still, he helped John Adams set the precedent for peaceful transition of power between Presidents of differing parties. Lewis & Clark. The Louisiana Purchase. Barbary pirates dealt with. Foundation of US Navy. Ended external slave trade on time.
- Theodore Roosevelt: Possibly ranked too high. Must admit to admiring his out-sized personality. But I think he actually had a lot of very significant accomplishments: Panama Canal. Great White Fleet. US starts to become Great Power. Trust busting. Food and drug regulation. Conservation. National parks.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Pains me to rank him this highly. The bad: Created modern regulatory state. Court packing scheme. Keynesian economics. Allowed Japanese internment. Corporatism in the early New deal (esp. NIRA). But there is also so much good: Lend-lease kept UK in war. Managed coalition warfare among the Allies. Won the war. Set stage for post-war American dominance. Ended racial discrimination in federal government hiring and thus helped set the stage for successful civil rights movement.
- Ronald Reagan: My favorite President. Tax cuts and reform. Military buildup bankrupted Soviet Union. Won the Cold war. Arms reduction. Morning in America after Carter malaise. Would rank higher if he had actually done more to cut the size of government. Starving the beast didn’t work. Only gave lip service to pro-life movement. Put Swinging Sandy O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy on SCOTUS, thereby preventing emergence of a solid conservative majority.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower: Ended Korean War. Balanced budget 3 out of 8 years. Interstate highway system. Civil Rights Act of 1956.
- John Adams: At this point, you start getting into the territory where candidates have some serious warts. E.g., the Alien & Sedition Act. On the plus side, he managed the crisis with France despite a telling lack of support from either major party or his own cabinet. And he helped set the precedent for peaceful transition of power between Presidents of opposing parties.
- James Polk: Reduced tariffs. Managed the Fifty-four forty or fight crisis to a peaceful resolution. Won the Mexican war, annexing Nevada and California. Second only to Jefferson in the amount of territory he added to USA.
- Andrew Jackson: Speaking of warts, the Indian Removal Act remains a blot on the national escutcheon. On the plus side, there was the veto of the rechartering of the Bank of the United States. Squashed South Carolina’s secessionist tendencies for a couple of decades. Managed the Nullification crisis and the Texas revolution. Expanded the voting public.
Comparing my list to the Gallup poll, Clinton comes in way too high on the latter. I’d put him somewhere around 15 or so. If only he could have kept his pants zipped.
Kennedy is even more overrated. I get the mystique. All that Camelot crap. But his positive record’s pretty thin and there’s a ton of negatives.
It’s way too soon to draw conclusions about Obama, but my guess is that he’ll end up in the bottom third.
W should be somewhere in the bottom quintile. The war of choice in Iraq still seems like a mistake, all things considered. The failure to catch Osama. Massive deficits. Huge growth in entitlements. The corruption of the K Street Gang.
Jimmy Carter goes into the bottom quintile too. Gave away the Panama Canal. Pardoned the draft dodgers. Fumbled Iran. The hostages. The malaise speech. Stagflation. It was the worst presidency of my adult life.
Richard Nixon is a most interesting case. He was a liar and a cheat. Given half a chance, he might have become a usurper as well. His efforts to ape Disraeli’s progressive toryism mostly turned into left-liberal programmatic victories. Massive expansion of the regulatory state. Harry Blackmun was an awful SCOTUS choice. Wage and price controls flopped, as one would expect. Adopted Keynesian economic policies. Yet, he also did a lot of really good stuff, especially in foreign policy. Relations with China. Detente. SALT I and II. Saved Israel’s bacon in the 1973 war with Operation Nickel Grass. Got us out of Vietnam quagmire, albeit by throwing the South Vietnamese under the bus. Took us off the gold standard. Doesn’t get enough credit for efforts in areas of school desegregation and civil rights generally. William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell were great SCOTUS choices. How does one grade such a mixed bag?
What is really shocking abut the whole exercise is the number of nonentities, mediocrities, and flops who have made it to the Oval office. With the exception of Polk and Jackson, the Presidents who served between Monroe and Lincoln were almost all mediocrities, at best. The list between Lincoln and Teffy Roosevelt is equally uninspiring. In the modern era, you’ve got oddities like Carter, Gerald Ford, Bush 41 and 43, and Obama.
Surely we can do better.
Washington (CNN) – No doubt, members of Congress are especially happy on this Presidents Day, as they sleep off the political hangover from last week’s relentless, lengthy and refreshingly specific budget debate in the House. But many American brains may still be hurting. This week, American Sauce boils down the dueling budget debates (House Republicans vs. President Obama) in clear terms.
And, more true to the holiday, we present profiles of three of the least-known, but more interesting, U.S. presidents.
After many nominations and much discussion on Twitter, the final three are: 1. Chester Arthur 2. James Polk and 3. Grover Cleveland. We explain why they stand out in the podcast, with help from the students of Two Rivers Charter School in Washington DC.
Listen to the podcast here.
Or keep reading.
BUDGET BASICS
HOUSE REPUBLICANS 2011 PROPOSAL
-Summary: House Republicans passed a spending bill early Saturday morning to cut some $ 61 billion in spending for the rest of the current year. That would cut this year’s deficit about 4 percent. (See math below.)
-Spending cuts proposed: Approx. $ 61 billion over current spending levels.
-Effect on Agencies: Ranges, from 0 percent to 22 percent cuts in general.
-When?: Cuts would happen this year, immediately upon enactment.
-When cuts would end: Sept. 30, 2011.
-So, total length of cuts: seven months or less.
-Effect on the deficit: It would cut the deficit this year by about 4%.
-The math on that: The Congressional Budget Office last estimated the deficit for 2011 would be $ 1.48 Trillion. The Office of Management and Budget has since estimated that it will be $ 1.645 Trillion. $ 61 Billion is about 4 percent of either figure (4.1 percent of CBO, 3.8 percent of OMB).
-Does this address entitlements?: No. This is a short-term spending measure only.
-Read original bill, H.R. 1: here.
-Length: 359 pages
-Read the list of amendments which passed: http://bit.ly/e4w6Am”>here. (This is the official GOP release, scroll down for list of amendments)
-Vote: The bill passed 235-189.
-Party Switchers: Three Republicans voted ‘no’. Those were: Rep. John Campbell, California, Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona and Rep. Walter Jones, North Carolina. No Democrat voted ‘aye’.
-Look at the vote yourself here.
-So what now?: The current spending bill expires Friday, March 4th. But President Obama and Senate Democrats have repeatedly said they oppose any spending cuts this fiscal year, and therefore oppose the Republican spending plan. Thus, either the House or Senate must compromise – on a short-term extension of current funding or a bill with some cuts – or we will have a government shutdown. Hence all the big voice, dramatic “GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN!” talk out of Washington over the weekend. For the moment, most Capitol Hill reporters I know are betting, strongly, on a short-term extension this go around. Thought the threat of a shutdown could remain for much of the year.
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S 2012 BUDGET
-Summary: President Obama unveiled his proposed budget for next year, fiscal 2012, and his vision for the government’s checkbook over the next decade. This plan would reduce the deficit $ 1.1 Trillion over ten years, by cutting spending and raising some taxes. It would cut down, but would not entirely erase, the deficit.
-Spending cuts proposed: $ 33 Billion in 2012. Approx. $ 730 billion over ten years.
-Increased taxes proposed: Approx. $ 360 billion over ten years.
-When?: The presidents’ spending cuts would begin in October. Tax increases go into effect at various times. (They are targeted at various industries and Americans making over $ 250,000 a year.) The income tax increase for wealthy Americans would begin in 2013.
-Effect on the deficit: The president’s budget would cut deficits by $ 1.1 Trillion over ten years.
-What’s that mean?: The president’s plan would bring the budget into what’s called “primary balance”. That means U.S. revenues would cover all spending except for payments on the national debt. (Which are hefty.) Thus, this proposal gets closer to plugging the leaks in the federal budget, but ultimately does not close the gap entirely. The U.S. would still run a deficit and add to the national debt, but at a smaller rate than under current policy.
-Does this address entitlements?: Not significantly. The president has said that must be dealt with in a back-and-forth with Republicans.
-Read the president’s budget proposal: click here for the White House link, or click here and scroll down for the government printing office version.
-Length: 2500+ pages with all documents, including the appendix.
-So what now: At the moment, the White House and Congress are focused on this year’s government spending bill which expires on March 4. The next move in the fight over next year’s budget will come from House Republicans, who have said they will present their long-term budget proposal in coming weeks. The debate over 2012 spending could go well into the fall.
Follow on Twitter: @LisaDCNN.
You can also listen to American Sauce on iTunes or subscribe to the podcast via RSS.
The American Independent News Network and the Michigan Messenger are taking the day off to celebrate Presidents Day. Originally a celebration of George Washington’s birthday on Feb. 22, it is now viewed as a celebration of his and Lincoln’s birthday, which was Feb. 12. Happy Birthday, gentlemen.
Happy Presidents Day! If you’re a Republican, the good news is, nearly one in five Americans think Ronald Reagan was our greatest president. The bad news: George W. Bush is still scraping the bottom of the barrel. If you’re a Democrat: FDR, Bill Clinton, JFK and Barack Obama are good news for you (sorry, Jimmy […]
The Reid Report
Washington (CNN) – A potential GOP presidential contender is spending Presidents Day in the state that traditionally kicks off the race for the White House.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is in Iowa Monday, meeting with state Republican party officials and with some state lawmakers. Barbour, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 1990’s and chairman of the Republican Governors Association last cycle, is seriously considering a bid for his party’s presidential nomination.
Barbour’s scheduled to return to Iowa on March 15, when he headlines a GOP dinner in Scott County. The Mississippi governor says he’ll decide about whether he’ll run for the White House after his state’s legislature adjourns in April.
Iowa’s caucuses traditionally lead off the presidential primary and caucus calendar.
-Follow Paul Steinhauser on Twitter: @psteinhausercnn
Bruce Bartlett provides the Cliffs Notes.
Because Jon Bernstein is recycling his President’s Day post, I will recycle the graph from mine from 2009. See the post for links to the data.
It’s worth keeping in mind the essential flaws in this kind of ranking process. Individual presidents face very different challenges — many of which are outside of their control. Some of these challenges are very difficult, and others are less so. In essence, we ask some presidents to play the Los Angeles Lakers, and we ask others to play a junior varsity high school team. Or the challenges could be different in kind: some presidents play the Lakers, and some try to climb Everest. But yet, at the end, we feel that presidential “greatness” can be measured accurately despite these challenges.
The more general problem here is that the experiences of presidents are not really comparable. This problem of non-comparability (or “non-equivalence”) is well-known in the social sciences. Zach Elkins and I discuss it in this paper (pdf), which is titled “The Vodka Is Potent But the Meat is Rotten.” (If only the paper were as interesting as the title!) Malcolm Gladwell discussed it, although without using the term “non-comparability” in this recent New Yorker article.
The point is not that all presidents are identical. The point is that ranking their “greatness” conflates their skill with the circumstances they faced.
Today is not just a day for bargain-shopping at the local big box. Let’s remember the legacy of our outstanding leaders on Presidents’ Day, including George Washington, the Father of Our Nation. Pictured is a statue of that man, which I photographed earlier this month at the District of Columbia’s Washington Circle in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood.
Happy Presidents’ Day!
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history Americana George Washington Washington DC america usa
… and put the money they suck out of the system into teaching and scholarships.
Adjuncts of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but the idea that you’re different from the classified workers! Except they probably have a better deal!
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