Presidential Reputations

Historians have been undeservedly hard on some of our presidents. All of them have been intelligent men and most of them have at least meant well, however their efforts turned out or were perceived. Some presidents have been reviled as ineffective and some as corrupt. What must be remembered, and is often forgotten by professional historians, is that until relatively recently, newspapers were not required to publish the truth (and even now the truth is often derailed before an item is published). The term “yellow journalism” applies to the tarnish on some presidents’ reputations. At a time when any calumny could be published with impunity, newspapers were often owned by political rivals who pulled out all the stops in trying to influence the public.

Ulysses S. Grant was vilified by the Democratic papers and the scandals of his administration were greatly exaggerated in an effort to send a Democratic candidate to the White House. Chester A. Arthur is widely perceived to have been corrupt, yet as president he led the effort to pass legislation to control the spoils system of government. Franklin Pierce’s reputation of being a weak president is apparently based on his failure to prevent the Civil War, which could not have been prevented by any president. Most of the presidents who are considered weak and/or ineffective were actually extremely effective, they simply did not catch the journalists’ imaginations or they did not lead the country into war. We remember best our wartime presidents. War is exciting and memorable. Peacetime presidents such as Tyler, Fillmore, Hayes, Arthur, Cleveland, McKinley, Harding, and Hoover are perceived as boring and ineffective. Yet they dealt with the problems of their times and kept the country on a more or less even keel. That’s what they were supposed to do.

For instance, Hoover’s reputation suffered greatly at the hands of the Democrats in consequence of the Great Depression that began during his term of office. Franklin Roosevelt pursued many of the same policies Hoover used in an effort to heal the economy but very cleverly used the media to discredit Hoover and garner credit to himself as a humanitarian. In his first presidential campaign, FDR denounced Hoover’s use of federal relief programs as tending to weaken the body politic by encouraging people to rely on government charity. Once in office, he quickly expanded the federal relief efforts and took Hoover to task as being a tool of big business who cared nothing for the sufferings of “the little man.” At the beginning of World War I Hoover had embarked on a lengthy period of altruism that saved millions of people from starvation during and after the war. But he did it quietly, without calling attention to himself in the press, and without asking for honors or rewards.

Saving millions of people from starvation is not fun to read about so Hoover is pushed into the ranks of presidents labeled ineffective while the public and press avidly pursue every detail of Bill Clinton’s sexual peccadilloes. This says more about the press and the American people than about our presidents. Someone has said that people get the government they deserve. It is evidently true.