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ANDY ROONEY
Good President, Bad President Considering how much faith we have in the ability of our democratic system for choosing our leaders, it’s disappointing to look at how few great Presidents we’ve had over the years. We’ve had good ones, bad ones and mediocre ones but very few great ones. If pressed to answer a question about his own standing among the 42 men we’ve had for President, I don’t think George W. Bush would claim to be one of the great ones. I don’t know what he thinks of his performance. He seems satisfied with his work but he also appears modest enough to deny ranking at the top. (As Winston Churc-hill said of his rival Clement Attlee, “He is a modest man — with a great deal to be modest about.”) Power in the United States is, fortunately for all of us, not so much centralized in the Presidency that the oc-cupant of the Oval Office is solely responsible for the course the nation takes. The President, whoever he is, often diffuses his power by delegating a lot of it to others. President Bush has spread his power thinner than most by turning over so much of his authority to helpers like Vice President Cheney and unelected assistants like Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gon-zales and behind-the-scenes aides we didn’t elect and don’t even know, like Andrew Card and Karl Rove. It’s too bad President Bush is not great because we’re in need of greatness right now. We’re in competition with Japan, China and the Arab countries for leadership of the world. We’re still ahead but they’re catching us. Of course, we might be better off if they did, so that the whole weight of the world wouldn’t be on our shoulders. There has often been a shortage of greatness in the White House. To un-fairly pick a few examples off the bottom of my head, no one ever accused Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon or the first George Bush of greatness. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is probably the only President of the 20th Century that future historians will put in the same rank with George Wash-ington and Abraham Lincoln. John F. Kennedy might have been on his way to Mount Rushmore but he was assassinated. There are supporters who make a case for Lyndon Johnson, Truman and Ronald Reagan, but “great” is not the universal adjective used for any of them. Woodrow Wilson isn’t a hero in the history books, although he was the first President to recognize that the United States needed to be part of a world alliance. His League of Nations was a good idea that failed, so he doesn’t get any credit. Our best Presidents have found a way to overcome the most serious de-fect in our democracy — the seesaw balance of power in the relationship between Congress and the President that too often ends in inaction. Politi-cally knowledgeable Presidents like Lyndon Johnson knew how to play the House and Senate, but too often our Presidents have been stymied by the legislature. President Bush isn’t much in charge of either, even with his own Republican majority, and he has a way of alienating them. There have been times it wasn’t necessary for us to have a great Pre-sident. Dwight Eisenhower wasn’t great but he was popular. He was in office for eight years and people liked him. He was easy to take. We were cruising along, so Ike was just what we needed — a hand’s off President. He patted us on the head, told us every-thing would be all right and went out to play golf. Ronald Reagan polarized the nation. Half of us loved Reagan, half of us hated him. There were not a lot of people in the middle. It’s that way with President Bush, and it’s half his fault and half ours. It’s wrong that so many people enjoy not liking him and wrong that so many like him so much they refuse to admit his shortcomings.
We could use a great President to-day. George W. Bush’s most ardent supporters like him, they like his wife and they support him in general but they don’t claim he’s a great President. Too bad.
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