The historian Doris Kearns Goodwin recently wondered aloud whether the president of the United States — not just this president, but any president — still has a “bully pulpit.”
That term comes from Teddy Roosevelt. The bully pulpit is what he called the presidency. TR probably pushed the nation beyond where it really wanted to go with reform legislation. He also used his executive powers more than any president before him had. He dominated the national conversation.
Goodwin wonders if this isn’t much harder to do these days. We live in a fog of distraction. We are an impatient and preoccupied society and everything everyone says goes though a vast media filter that is mostly noise. Hence, no more Lincolns or Roosevelts; only Fords, Carters, and Bushes. No big presidencies; only diminished ones.
Consider the presidents since FDR.
Truman is now remembered as great or near great, but he was very unpopular when he left the presidency in 1952.
Eisenhower never lost personal popularity like Truman and might have won a third term in 1960 had he been eligible. But maybe not. He lost Congress in 1958 and a wave of Democratic progressives came to power. That wave helped carry young John Kennedy to office — an antidote to a sick and aging Ike. The nation was ready for a change.
We look back on Kennedy through the prisms of martyrdom and remembered grace, but he was not doing well as president when he died. He was having trouble with Congress and he was sinking in the polls. He had disastrously invaded Cuba and brought the nation to the brink of nuclear war. He committed us to Vietnam.
LBJ? The master legislator passed all the landmark civil rights legislation JFK could not pass. But Vietnam killed his administration and he was driven from office.
Richard Nixon? A very able man. He was nearly impeached and also driven from office.
Jerry Ford? A good, maybe even a great man. Two years and out.
Jimmy Carter? Another fine man. The greatest ex-prez in our history, it is said. One term in office and gone.
Ronald Reagan was beloved, but also utterly befuddled in a failed second term. And though he is still regarded with fondness by many, he is the author of many of our current economic problems.
George Bush the elder? He actually won a war and then had the prudence not to start a wider war. The country threw him out like an old bowl of kibble.
Bill Clinton was also nearly impeached, and, in the eyes of many, he disgraced his office. His second term, like Reagan’s, was an almost total wash.
George Bush the younger? Perhaps the most despised president since Hoover and the least respected since Harding.
What all this suggests is that, first, we are hard on presidents in this nation. We always have been.
Second, in the light of history we seldom see these men as we saw them in office.
Even Lincoln wasn’t Lincoln. He didn’t look so great to many of his contemporaries. He was called inept, indecisive, and inarticulate.
Both Roosevelts were hated, in their day, by roughly half the country.
Time changes the picture.
Jimmy Carter we now see as a statesman, not an incompetent.
When Ford died in 2006, many wondered: Why did we reject this man? He was sound, decent, moderate, and sane.
Ford might have been a superb president in his own term. Carter might have been good in his second term.
And Bill Clinton is no longer seen as an embarrassment or a rogue, but The Prince — savvy and wise.
Back to Lincoln: Actually, there was a huge amount of noise surrounding Lincoln’s presidency. He was much opposed, often at every turn, often by persons who were supposed to be his allies and friends.
But he became the mythic Lincoln. How? He did compromise, and he was pragmatic, but his politics was rooted in permanent things — a concrete sense of the common good, the Union and continuity of the Republic, his own duty.
FDR built the New Deal. Truman rebuilt Europe. Ike built the interstate highway system. Kennedy launched NASA and the Peace Corps. There wasn’t much support in Congress, or in the public, for any of these things at the time.
And Lincoln’s conduct of the civil war? Forget it. Precious few people, at that moment, thought he was doing the right thing and doing it well.
That may be the bottom line.
Presidents must do their duty as they see it, and let history sort it out. George W. Bush was right about that.
Let Obama be Obama. Future historians will review him very differently than Fox News does today. So will his fellow citizens.
Keith C. Burris is editorial page editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.
