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Feb. 28, 2023 - Lionel Nation
15:28
The Greatest/Worst President in America History
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One of the most fun questions I ask, I love to ask people this, who your favorite question, or who your favorite president was?
And the internet is replete with more than one historian and academicians and academics and presidential scholars opining and weighing in as to who their president is, best and worst.
And when you ask civilians, they normally will give you the usual answers.
You know, FDR, Blinken, whatever.
It might be more contemporary JFK or Obama or Reagan or whatever.
And you can tell immediately, you can tell immediately whether somebody knows what they're talking about.
Whether they really understand the essence of this.
Whether they understand the gravamen, the actual trick to this question.
Because the first question you should be asking, of course, is what do you mean best?
What do you mean worst?
Worst how?
What are the criteria for what is and is not a good or a bad president?
You mean the most famous?
You mean the one who gets the most airtime?
The one who is referenced in media more?
Somebody who's famous?
Somebody who's loved?
Somebody who's part of the social scrum?
See, that's where it gets interesting.
Let me explain to you what that means, why that's critical, and give you a couple of hints as to what you should be looking at before you answer the question.
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Okay, best president, worst president.
What do you mean?
My criteria for best is, did you not do anything wrong?
Did you keep us out of war?
Did you maintain the economy?
Did you not exhibit or participate in anything that is considered egregious?
Did you do anything along those lines?
And that's critical.
That's critical.
That's the first issue.
Did you not do anything that was catastrophic?
Did you just leave well enough alone?
Did you just not break anything?
You know, at first, don't kill the patient.
Do no harm.
Okay.
We can get into then, did you do scandals?
Were you involved in scandals?
Did you do scandals?
Were they of your choosing?
Are you an accidental president?
How about some great accidental presidents?
Harry Truman?
Teddy Roosevelt?
John Tyler?
You know, John Tyler was terrific.
McKinley?
Garfield was great.
Grover Cleveland had his moment.
Yeah!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John Quincy Adams loved him.
The worst?
What do you mean the worst?
The worst?
Franklin Pierce, a drunk.
Buchanan, Andrew Johnson.
Oh my God.
I mean, it just depends.
And then you get into this notion of, well, what about Lincoln?
Was Lincoln that great?
Well, Steven Spielberg loved him.
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus.
Lincoln is not what people think in terms, historically, of what he was as to slavery and the like.
His goal was the notion of maintaining the union.
Now, there's another group of people who have suggested, why is it anybody's fault to maintain the union?
It is within the rules to secede, right or wrong or what have you.
Nobody ever speaks about it from that point of view.
Well, isn't secession bad?
Not everybody thought so.
I must admit, I think a contiguous, intact country is a lot better.
But understand, again, the reference.
Who were these people?
What was the, and I'm going to say it, what was the zeitgeist?
Who were these people?
And forget personalities.
People always love to go into, well, who was weird?
Who was weird?
Did you know that Grover Cleveland on the weekends was like the only person in the White House?
It was reported that if you were one of the few people who had a phone, and the joke goes, if you call the White House, and whoever answered, if you said, President Cleveland, please, you would most probably hear, speaking!
It was a different world then.
It was this...
James Garfield didn't want to be nominated.
He said, no, no, no.
Harding?
Was Harding poisoned?
I mean, all these great stories.
Warren Gamaliel Harding?
Teapot Dome?
The greatest writer?
Who was the greatest writer?
Believe it or not, U.S. Grant.
Many, many people believe he was.
Washington?
Very odd.
Didn't know how to...
Mule deal with people.
He had things to put his hand on, and he didn't really...
I think I told you this.
Jefferson never made a speech.
Adams was a far different type, far saltier.
I mean, before you get into the personality types of these folks, then you get into Miller Fillmore and Rutherford B. Hayes, and then you get into...
And I mentioned Cleveland.
What was great about Cleveland was the only...
The only two-term, the only two-term, non-consecutive two-termers ever.
And a real stand-up guy, a real stand-up guy who lost, I think his re-election, his first re-election, I think it was an electoral vote.
He says, well, those are the rules.
That's the way it goes.
We knew what we were getting into.
A far different cry.
And then there are people that, and this is what I want you to listen to.
Because you can hear me ramble about these little moments of, you know, historical, you know, that's cute.
It's fascinating stuff.
It is truly fascinating.
But the one thing I want you to understand, no matter what you think about any president, you've got to wait.
Remember, history would be a wonderful thing if only it were true.
When it comes to presidents, you have to wait a significant period of time before anybody really, really recognizes, really settles down into who they were and are.
That's the most important.
We don't know.
Truman left with one of the worst, one of the worst ratings maybe ever in how he's loved.
History is a very weird thing.
It's a strange, it's...
And you know, say what you want about Ken Burns, God bless him for at least making it seem remotely interesting, but there is no truth to this.
Do you think Kennedy, a thousand days, do you think Kennedy was as great as he was, or is the tragedy of his death this young, handsome couple that Camelot in the 60s and every, I mean, that day killed everybody.
It was the harbinger of the 60s and Vietnam and the terrible five-year period from 63 to 68 with JFK, RFK, MLK, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X. It just went on.
It was awful.
That day.
I was five years old.
I remember my mother was crying.
I didn't understand.
I said, what's going on here?
And there's a tendency to be, to wax hagiographic, to romanticize about people, to not necessarily be as critical.
But wait till you see what history does regarding Trump and Clinton and Obama and Biden.
You have to wait because we're too close.
The notion of history presupposes a significant lapse of time before there's any kind of reflection.
You have to have that.
Without that, it's not history.
It was the other day.
There has to be this notion of comparison.
And who gets to write it?
Is ChatGPT going to write history?
Who is going to write history?
What will be the prevailing thought?
Regarding the personalities and the efficacy and the lunacy of this.
I mean, let me just warn you.
Whatever you think is going to be the case in the future, do not necessarily believe so.
Because, again, history has to be read in terms of the context.
But if I have to pick the worst, Franklin Pierce.
Franklin Pierce, hands down.
But my favorite, The favorite president, the person who really was the guy who did the right thing, who actually, you know, despite, and the worst is what FDR did.
Oh my God!
I can go through.
From the St. Louis to basically wanting to pack the cord and he was In many respects, despised by people.
But to go through a depression and World War II, and while being physically, I don't know if I admire him or the fact that he didn't just quit.
So he is there.
Lincoln for the pros, but U.S. Grant, his writing is even better.
His writing is even better.
And Washington is heraldic.
It's almost like you can't speak of him normally.
So, I haven't been very good as far as who my favorite was.
Because, like I told you, I like Grover Cleaver.
I despised Wilson.
Wilson was awful.
Read what Wilson writes.
Dear God.
Oh, my God.
Income tax and post-League of Nations.
Oh, my God.
Plus, he had a stroke.
His wife, Edith, ran the show.
Favorite is tough.
Favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite is tough.
Because there's favorite because of what they did, and then there's kind of the personal thing.
I'm kind of, believe it or not, I'm kind of like a Cleveland fan.
Plus, he was born in In Bloomfield, and excuse me, Caldwell, New Jersey, and his home is right there on Bloomfield Avenue.
We drive by it all the time.
I haven't been much help regarding that, but Franklin Pierce, not good.
All right, my friends, have a great and a glorious day.
Thank you so much for watching.
Please put your thoughts and comments down.
Who were your favorites?
Who were your, whom did you despise or loathe or detest?
And please like the video, subscribe to the channel.
And make sure you hit that little bell so you're notified of new videos and the like.
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