Nick Kristof Misfires (a Little) on Presidential Experience

One of the few things that would depress me more than Bill Kristol getting a regular column in the New York Times would be Nicholas Kristof or Paul Krugman giving up theirs. Luckily, I don't think that will happen.

That's a friendly preamble to a point I want to pick with Kristof about an otherwise good column today, "Hillary, Barack, Experience." He writes:

Alternatively, look at the five presidents since 1900 with perhaps the most political experience when taking office: William McKinley, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. They had great technical skills -- but not one was among our very greatest presidents.

Assessing the greatest and worst presidents is a process fraught with problems and subjective bias, but still. . .I'm not sure that some on this list aren't some of America's greatest presidents considering the challenges of their times.

Since 1900, FDR gets the most applause for stewarding the nation -- and frankly, much of the world -- through an extraordinary period of crisis. But he was monarchial in Bush/Cheney ways as well -- and it was because of FDR that national security leaders like James Forrestal and others worked to craft and pass the National Security Act of 1947 -- in order to prevent the total usurpation of power by other presidents who may not be as generally benign or as intelligent as FDR was. FDR accumulated so much power that some of America's post-WWII national security "founders" worried about what would happen if a powerful but dumb president came into office. Their nightmare may finally have been realized in the presidency of George W. Bush.

But was FDR among the greatest presidents? Probably -- but there were problems. Truman oversaw a dramatic era of global institution building and laid the contours of containment policy -- and for that he was great. But he also dropped the atomic bomb -- which both blurs and secures his legacy. Eisenhower knocked back the crazies in his own party who wanted to engage in a set of nuclear conflicts and embraced containment of Soviet ambitions over war. I think Eisenhower deserves more credit for his leadership and steady hand than he is often given credit for.

But to Kristof's list, I won't debate McKinley as I'm not a studied authority on his presidency. But I think Nixon must rank among one of the greatest foreign policy leaders in American history, his presidency blurred of course and denigrated by Watergate and his ethical darkness in American politics. But on one level, Nixon's experience was extraordinarily important in the judgment calls he made on China and the Soviet Union. I think we need someone like Nixon (in the foreign policy sense) back in the White House today.

Likewise, while Gerald Ford was not a sizzler -- his contacts with Congress, his understanding of the office of the president, and his humble approach to the job were exactly what was needed in the post-Watergate crisis of the nation in which Nixon's missteps (and crimes) had harmed the presidency.

And frankly, I think that George H.W. Bush's good sense managing the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, overseeing German reunification, and applying a limited deployment of power in the Middle East against Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait without a full invasion of that country get him positive points. His son, our current President, fails on nearly ever score of comparison with the administration of the elder Bush. For more on why George H.W. Bush ranks so highly on national security decision-making when compared to both Bush 43 and to Bill Clinton, read Zbigniew Brzezinski's excellent Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower.

I won't get into the LBJ debate deeply here as there has been enough out in public recently about LBJ and Martin Luther King after the spat between Obama and Hillary Clinton camps on who did more to usher in civil rights legislation. But clearly LBJ's dramatic political personality and experience helped usher in substantial Great Society legislation and programs -- including landmark civil rights legislation in collaboration with the organic and compelling surge orchestrated by Martin Luther King. LBJ moved the nation and I can't believe that his experience was a non-issue.

In any case, George W. Bush does rank in my view as one of the worst presidents not only of the century -- but in American history -- but I wouldn't make the same case that the presidents highlighted by Nick Kristoff didn't achieve some impressive results in their time -- that would have been less imaginable without the relationships and experience that they had previously amassed.

Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

Comments

[Doofus]

Kristof clarifies... http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/the-top-ten-presidents/

'A number of readers chided me for my implicit rankings in Sunday"s column of which presidents were the greatest. Some argued that I shouldn"t have included Woodrow Wilson as a great, while Steve Clemons at The Washington Note believes that I overrate FDR and don"t adequately appreciate Nixon or the first President Bush.'...

[midtown]

If Hillary gets the nod, I want a Democratic-controlled Congress, a Democratic-controlled Senate, and a lame-duck Republican President. Wont matter who it is. Daffy Duck for all I care.

[lovethesinner]

If I lived with my dad for 35 years would I have gained the experience needed to become a doctor? How has Hillary's time in the White House provided her with the experience needed to become president?

Nickolas Kristof is right: there is no valid claim to experience that Hillary can claim. At least, not openly.

The Clintons have done a subtle sell job that her candidacy is a "two for one" by sending Bill out to clean up the yard, and bully reporters. The problem is, there's actually a law against a president runnning for a third term, and even if she could run to him for advice, the republicans would run her out of office before the end of her first term.

To quote Bill, "this whole experience thing is a joke. It's a fairy tale."

[rblackbird]

Obama supporters ask yourselves this question: do you believe that many state senators aspire to become United States Senators?

Then, ask yourselves the following question: do you believe that many United States Senators aspire to become state senators?

Now, who has had the more extensive and valuable experience?

[Idytme]

Many times the people who point out that Clinton didn't have a lot of experience as a point that one does not need it, then turn around and point out how much he screwed up in office the first two years.
And people love to point to Cheney as a reason why experience doesn't mean good judgement, but they forget that it is the most experienced person who is actually running the government.
People voted for a man who they thought was against nation building but the person running the government was all for it.
Experience does matter and I would think people would want to vote for the person in charge and not get the defacto second in commands of Presidents who don't know how to run things.

[Doofus]

Kristoff:'Teddy Roosevelt had been a governor for two years and vice president for six months; Woodrow Wilson, a governor for just two years; and Franklin Roosevelt, a governor for four years. None ever served in Congress.'

So, Governors make 'great' Presidents. Senators
don't, arguably. Wilson was way too much the idealist: not great. HST, JFK, LBJ, RMN - each a Senator,
each with flaws, even tragic flaws, but
'near great' anyway. (Did Kristof forget Governor Ron Reagan?)

Anyway, one suspects that Governors tend to have more relevant experience to serve as Presidents than Senators do, not without exception.

[deminmo]

George H.W. Bush also had the Iran/Contra
scandal, and now his son seems to be out to
make a worlds record for questionable actions.
What we need is a President that can avoid the
power trip of the office, look at diplomacy
as a tool instead of saying it shows cowardace,
and be a statesman. You can find some of this
in a lot of former Presidents, we just can't
seem to get one with the whole package.

[oldpotsmuggler]

Sometimes our Presidents have needed to respond to events occuring in the world, and sometimes they have caused things to happen for the sole reason of wanting to have an excuse to respond. One way to evaluate the standing of ex-Presidents is to look at things that went on during their term because a close inspection will sometimes turn up their fingerprints in unexpected places.

Daddy Bush, in his earlier incarnations, was both a major player in the oil industry, and the Director of the CIA. There was the report, and I've not seen anything which dispels the suspicion, that Daddy suckered Saddam Hussein into attacking Kuwait by sending assurances through diplomatic channels that that would not be a step that the U.S. would need to respond to. Talk about knowing your adversary.

To me the reason for this was clear. A graph of world market price of oil over time shows that oil prices spiked as the result of the first Gulf War, and didn't reach those levels again until his son created the second Gulf War. Reagan obliged the oil industry by running a Carrier Task Firce into the Gulf every time that oil prices slipped during his two terms, but it takes true Texas oil men to really screw the country and the world like this.

Do I agree that Daddy was such a wonderful President in some respect? Not so much, unless your name was Exxon or Halliburton.

[DoninJoisey]

Experience counts for nothing if you don't learn from it. McCain cites his military experience, yet has stated we could have won in Vietnam only we gave up too soon, and that we are winning in Iraq!
Sad.

Intelligence and morals count more than experience in my opinion. The current Bush has none of the above.
Obama and Hillary are about equal in real experience (I don't count her 35 years) but I give the edge to Obama's personal experience and background.