Clinton One Of Top Ten Presidents: Yeah, Right! by Tim Siggia

Clinton One Of Top Ten Presidents:

Yeah, Right!

By Tim Siggia

March 04, 2008

It's old news by now, but it still deserves commentary. A recently-released Harris poll listed those U. S. presidents whom respondents considered to be the top ten of all time. The list goes as follows:

1. Abraham Lincoln

2. Ronald Reagan

3. Franklin D. Roosevelt

4. John F. Kennedy

5. George Washington

6. Bill Clinton

7. Thomas Jefferson

8. Harry S Truman

9. Theodore Roosevelt

10. George W. Bush

Naturally, not all are going to be in agreement with the Harris findings. Many Americans, according to political persuasion, will quarrel about the rankings, saying, for instance, that George Washington, the Father of our Country, should take a back seat to no one, or that John F. Kennedy, a war hero and a civil rights pioneer, is not the equal of Teddy Roosevelt. All a matter of opinion in the end, I suppose. What most of us can agree upon, is that each one of these presidents had one or more laudable achievements to his credit that puts him above the rest. Well, almost all. There is one very glaring exception.

How did Bill Clinton manage to garner a Number Six listing on the Top Ten out of 43? In fact, how did he happen to make the list at all? What was his outstanding accomplishment? The first one that comes to mind is that he was the second president in history to be impeached by the House of Representatives. The first was Andrew Johnson. So why isn't Johnson's name up there? Surely as Number One in that category, he deserves a billing somewhere in the Top Five at least -- if, of course, that be the validating criterion. But perhaps it isn't. So another distinction Bill Clinton can rightfully claim is that of being the physically second largest president. Once again, however, we find Clinton occupying the Number Two Slot. Number One was the 300-plus-pound William Howard Taft. So where's his name among the Top Ten? Apparently it isn't about size, either.

Oh yes, I almost forgot: Bill Clinton gave us a great economy and a balanced budget for the first time in decades. He did. If you don't believe it, just ask him. Or ask James Carville, or Helen Thomas, or Terry McAuliffe, or any of the others who routinely parrot the Clinton-Is-The-Greatest mantra. Well, let's assume this for the moment to be true (which it isn't, of course, but stay with me for a moment). Didn't we also have a burgeoning economy under Calvin Coolidge? "Keep Cool With Coolidge" was the prevailing slogan then, with the prevailing wisdom of the time being that the depression that followed was all Herbert Hoover's fault. Why isn't the name of Calvin Coolidge at least at Number 7, or 5, or whatever? No, the placement of Bill Clinton at Number Six All-Time still seems to be shrouded in mystery. So let's examine how Bubba compares with his colleagues on the Harris Top Ten:

George W. Bush inherited an economy on the verge of recession and brought it back into line with tax cuts. He answered an unprovoked attack on American soil with a direct and decisive military response, and routed the Taliban in Afghanistan. After numerous bumbling attempts by the United Nations to deal with the arrogant Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Bush attacked Iraq, liberated that country's people, and Saddam Hussein was eventually found and brought to justice. Bill Clinton inherited an economy already bottomed out from a recent recession and on the upswing, rode the ensuing period of prosperity, and claimed credit for it, though he himself did nothing to bring it about. He started unprovoked military actions in Bosnia and Somalia, and essentially did nothing when attacks were made on the World Trade Center and the U.S.S. Cole. On at least two occasions he could have had Osama bin Laden handed over to him by the Sudanese government, and refused. Bin Laden would later be the lead perpetrator in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Theodore Roosevelt was known as the "Trust Buster" who broke up huge corporate conglomerates which essentially had held monopolies in various industrial and commercial fields. With the motto, "Speak softly and carry a big stick," he showed American military muscle as not only a force to be reckoned with if crossed, but also as an instrument of goodwill, sending the Great White Fleet around the world expressly for that purpose. Bill Clinton, who, in his own words, loathed the military, used the armed forces mainly as a platform for numerous pointless social engineering experiments, such as co-ed boot camps and the attempt to open the services to openly gay recruits. He also allowed military humiliations such as the one in Mogadishu to go unanswered.

Harry S Truman made the most momentous decision of the Twentieth Century: that to use the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the execution of which brought a quick end to World War Two, and, in retrospect, saved countless lives on both the American and Japanese sides by making a military invasion of Japan unnecessary. Bill Clinton ordered unprovoked air strikes against Iraq in an obvious effort to divert attention away from his own impeachment.

Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers of our country, was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and one of the primary framers of the Constitution. Bill Clinton was the author of two books about his favorite subject: himself.

George Washington, the Father of Our Country, was America's first president as well as America's first three-star general. It was he who set the prototype that others would follow, and stands today as the only president ever to be unanimously elected. Bill Clinton is the legitimate father of Chelsea Clinton, and of how many others he might be the illegitimate father is anybody's guess. He is also to date the only president in history to have questioned the meaning of the word, "is".

John F. Kennedy earned the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism during World War Two. As president he made one misstep in the ill-considered Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, but made up for it by standing up to Russian premier Nikita Khruschev with a naval blockade of Cuba when offensive missiles were discovered on that island in 1962. Khruschev backed down, and the missiles were removed. Bill Clinton refused to serve his country during the Vietnam War and used various ruses to evade military service. Then, as a Rhodes Scholar, he led demonstrations against his own country on foreign soil. As president, he allowed America to be humiliated by refusing to respond to terrorist attacks as previously noted.

Franklin D. Roosevelt brought America through the Great Depression and into World War Two, which effectively ended that depression. Throughout World War Two he proved himself an effective commander-in-chief, and was the only American president to serve three complete terms and be elected to a fourth, during which he died in office. Bill Clinton brought America through a period of prosperity that was based primarily on a dot-com boom he had nothing to do with, but for which he still claimed credit. He also claimed credit for a balanced budget that was essentially balanced for him by a Republican Congress. Clinton's own predictions of budget balance were contradictory, proving that he in fact had no idea of how to bring a budget balance about. He ended his second term with an economy headed toward recession.

Ronald Reagan ended the malaise and low morale of the Jimmy Carter presidency with a rebuilding of America's military and a restoration of military pride. He also ended the failed policy of detente with the Soviet Union, declaring that government an "Evil Empire." His domestic policies of tax cuts and reduced spending brought about a period of unprecedented prosperity. His communication skills enabled him to overcome the obstacles of a hostile press and a Democratic Congress, bringing his message directly to the people. It was because of his policies that the Soviet Union eventually collapsed after more than seventy years in power. Bill Clinton, after making vague campaign promises of a "middle class tax cut", once safely elected did just the opposite and imposed the largest tax increase in history. Allowing his wife to take charge of a program of socialized medicine the voters had never asked for, a program that was hatched in secrecy and would have bankrupted the economy if enacted, resulted in his party's being voted out of power in the Congress, and Republicans taking control of both the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years.

Abraham Lincoln began his presidency with a country on the verge of civil war, a war which became fact after his election. Lincoln used his presidency primarily to prosecute that war, which was won by the Union in 1865. It was largely through Lincoln's efforts that the country was eventually reunited, Lincoln answering those in his party who called for vengeance on the South with a program of reconciliation, "with malice toward none, with charity toward all." Lincoln died in 1865 by assassination. Bill Clinton's presidency divided the country as it had never been divided since the Vietnam War, and it remains so divided to this day.

By all comparisons, it seems that Bill Clinton comes up wanting for justification in his placement on the Harris Top Ten, with every one of his colleagues having bettered him overall regardless of standing. If one word can explain Clinton's presence on this list, that word would have to be "politics" -- the word behind every other claim to greatness for a president who was not only not great, but not even good, his frailties and shortcomings masked by the pure luck of coincidental circumstances. If Bill Clinton truly deserves to be on this list, then so do a number of similarly qualified luminaries from the Club of 43. Names like Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore and James Buchanan come to mind.