OPEN UNIVERSITY DECEMBER 4, 2006
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by David A. Bell
As a historian, I read the discussion in The Washington Post about George Bush's place in the history books with great interest, especially the excellent contribution by OU's David Greenberg. But the argument about our "best" and "worst" presidents also got me thinking about the distinctly limited usefulness of these sorts of exercises, which, at their worst can quickly degenerate into games of trivial pursuit. One reason is that, for the general public and historians alike, "greatness" correlates so closely with success, which means that in practice, one of the most important requirements is simply good luck. The novelist Harry Turtledove once illustrated this point in a very astute "alternate history" called
How Few Remain, which was premised on the idea that a stroke of pure luck allowed the Confederacy to win the battle of Antietam, and with it, the Civil War. Set in 1881, in an America still divided between North and South, the novel included as one of its characters none other than Abraham Lincoln--still alive, but largely reviled in the North as a failure and a crank; the man who lost the war. In truth, evaluations of presidents as "great" or "terrible" are similar to evaluations of them as managers of the modern economy: In both cases we give them far more credit for influencing events than they deserve, infusing them with our hopes and our anger, and making them the symbolic focus of our desires to imagine the world as a more controllable place than it really is. I don't mean to say that individuals don't matter in history (Hitler? Churchill?). But let's remember the extent to which a person's historical reputations reflects not only his own qualities and actions, but what has been projected onto him, as a result of factors beyond his control. In the case of George Bush, if Iraq proves to be less of a disaster than is now feared--perhaps, ironically, because Bush is succeeded by someone more competent--he may yet escape the "worst" category that so many of us feel he deserves.
4 comments
"...we give them far more credit for influencing events than they deserve." If Bush does not deserve the "credit" for influencing the events in Iraq, then who (pray tell) does? True, Bush is not wholesale to blame for the fiasco that exists on the ground there, but the deluded ignorance that preceded the invasion and the serial mismanagement that proceeded thereafter rest snugly upon his shoulders.
- drdannyu
December 4, 2006 at 4:33pm
Turtledove's many sequels to How Few Remain tease out the implications of Lincoln's failure and disgrace further -- he eventually becomes a leading figure in a powerful Socialist political party in the now divided USA!
- austinexpat
December 4, 2006 at 6:41pm
...with how president's are eventually judged. But, I think it was Lincoln himself who preferred lucky generals over merely competent ones.
- ChanRobt
December 5, 2006 at 9:04am
to borrow an aphorism. I'm struck that Prof. Bell illustrates his thesis with a fictionalized counter-factual and a hypothetical post-Bush reversal of fortunes in Iraq that, again hypothetically, could rehabilitate President Bush's reputation. In real life, of course, Antietam turned out much as might have been predicted from the contest between a superior general with a smaller force and an inferior general with a larger force: an effective draw. And, also in real life, it's hard to think of an example in which a successful successor saved a failed predecessor's historical bacon or vice versa: in which a failed successor ruined his predecessor's good reputation. Cf Washington-Adams, Buchanan-Lincoln, Lincoln-Johnson, Kennedy-Johnson. "[L]et's remember," Prof. Bell writes, "the extent to which a person's historical reputation reflects not only his own qualities and actions, but what has been projected onto him, as a result of factors beyond his control." All presidents-all people-are confronted with events that are beyond their control. But rather than a president's wise choices being negated by happenstance, isn't it more often the case that presidents are judged by how they play the hands they are dealt? It was bad luck for both Hoover and FDR to be confronted by a depression; we judge one to have dealt with the Depression badly, the other well. It was bad luck for both Andrew Johnson and Harry Truman to have been thrust, unprepared, into the presidency. But we remember one as a failure and the other as a success because of how they responded to their bad beginnings.
- JoeyBarbash
December 7, 2006 at 5:58pm