The Donelson Files

Ranking Presidents will be determined by what history show about their accomplishments. And historians make mistakes. Dwight Eisenhower was ranked a mediocre President when his administration was over but years later, we view Eisenhower in a different light as he presided over peace and prosperity throughout the 1950’s. He was that bridge between the end of the Korean war and the 1960’s and a new generation of leaders. Bill Clinton was another President similar to Eisenhower in that he presided over peace after the cold war end and prosperity result of the technology explosion. He was the last true moderate Democrat and served as a bridge from the Reagan years to the new century.

Reagan was considered the affable dunce by historians in 1989 after his Presidency ended but you have to view him as one of the greatest President in the 20th century as he ended the cold war in victory and his economic policies lead to a quarter century of economic growth that spread world wide.

Woodrow Wilson was considered by many historians as a great if not very good President due to his progressive views. We know now he was the most racist President over the past century, his record on civil liberties was horrendous and he blew the peace after World War I when he refuse to work with Republicans on the League of Nations and nor did he see their concerns. The irony is that he spent the last two years of his administration incapacitated by stroke and he was not even in charge of his administration. He presided over a pandemic worse than the present pandemic and the economy slipped in to a recession that some economists classify as a depression. (Harding economic policies actually led to a recovery and the depression of the 1920’s didn’t happen.)

Presidents that historians underrated include Warren Harding whose presidency was considered a failed President but his policies led to a decade of recovery and he oversaw the Naval treaty of 1922 which restricted battle ships development. Harding also was a voice for Black’s civil rights in contrast to his predecessor who was outright racist.

William McKinley oversaw an era of prosperity and America became a world power after the Spanish-American War but his successor would be one credited with much of his accomplishment, Theodore Roosevelt. His achievements overlooked, McKinley may be consider a nearly great President and Harding a better President than many historians view him.

While it is easy to view as Lincoln and Washington as our two greatest Presidents, there are others who should not be forgotten. James Polk was a one term President but under him, the United States expanded to California and he solved a major treaty with Great Britain over the borders of Canada and the United States in the West plus he won a war with Mexico that led to the final expansion on the continental United States.

Coolidge was another underrated President but his accomplishment disappear with his successor handling of the economy as Hoover’s policies led to the Great Depression.

FDR is considered a great President and maybe one of the top two of the 20th century, my own view his policies delayed recovery from the Great Depression but he also defeated fascism in World War II. He set in policies that changed and transform America.

Some of the worst include Buchanan, Fillmore and Pierce, the three Presidents who presided America right before the Civil War and I gave my view of Wilson. Hoover was a good man who was one of the most intelligent man to hold the office but he found himself in a economic morose that he managed poorly and you may put him as one of the worse of 20th century and Jimmy Carter was a mediocre President but you could still rate him higher than Obama or Hoover. (You can argue that Reagan economic policies rescue Carter and engineered a recovery and we were spared the result of a second Carter term that may have proven more problematic.)

Historians as a group tend to be liberal and often rate liberal Presidents higher than conservative which is why Harding is rated low. My own top ten today would be Washington number one and Lincoln number two with others including Reagan, FDR, McKinley, Harry Truman, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and James Monroe. I haven’t put these eights in order and certainly in a few years, I may rethink this list.

Others who should be given more credit include Harding, Coolidge, Grover Cleveland, and Eisenhower. There are those whose own record are incomplete or still being reviewed even after many years. Kennedy had very few accomplishments but he set in place policies that Johnson followed up on including tax plans and civil rights. The question is would JFK followed a similar policy toward the Vietnam war and would he done his own war on poverty similar to LBJ or a more modest version? And would he been as aggressive on civil rights as LBJ was? A more modest war on poverty and following through on the civil rights may have cemented his place in history as a more modest war on poverty may have been more successful with less damaging to those it was suppose to help. His tax plan led to a decade of recovery.

There are those whose record was incomplete including William Henry Harrison and James Garfield who died early in their administration before they had a chance to accomplish anything. (Harrison lasted only a month and Garfield was murdered seven months into his Presidency.)

Chester Arthur passed civil service reform, totally unexpected based on his past political history and Grant was a determine fighter for blacks in reconstruction era plus he defeated the original KKK during his administration. Neither men are highly rated as Presidents but maybe they should be. As for Andrew Johnson, he didn’t deserve to be impeached but he was also very poor President who fail to follow up on the Lincoln legacy.

Your thoughts?

On Presidents day, I made the following observations: I rated Trump and Obama in the second half of my ranking of Presidents and added Trump has to be rated ahead of Obama. The trick is to understand that often Presidents rankings changes with age and even then Historians get it wrong.

In the case of Trump, he had several accomplishments including the Abraham accord bringing Arabs and Israel together, his tax plans helped majority of Americans move up the economic ladder compared to Obama and certainly he was better on civil liberties than Obama.

Obama administration record on civil liberty was atrocious including IRS going after conservative groups, senators and staffers spied upon by CIA, and beginning of the Russian collusion hoax, in which a Presidential campaign was spied upon. His foreign policies was a disaster beginning with Iranian deal and the continuing rise of China under his watch. His economic record was okay and it is here that he could at least be competitive with Trump. There was a recovery from a major recession but it was the slowest recovery from a recession over the past three quarter of century but overall, his last years in GDP growth was similar to Trump first three years. The difference is that Trump saw more economic growth among those at the bottom.

While Trump will be remembered by historians for his response to the Corona virus and there is much to criticize, there was major accomplishments including the development of vaccines in record time. The first major obstacles in Trump response is that many of his scientific advisors beginning Dr. Anthony Fauci were mistaken in both their view of virus and their solutions like the lockdown proved to be a disaster. While historians may not agree, the data says otherwise. (2017 Covers.pdf (amermaj.org) is one of many studies that show the disaster of the mistake.)

The economic recovery from the pandemic started almost immediately as unemployment dropped in May and was cut by more than half by the time Biden became President. The recovery would have been even better if Democratic governors had lifted their economic restrictions. This along with Trump own personality undermined his accomplishment while Obama success getting re-elected and media love for him overestimate his incompetence.

For Trump, a complete failure of the Biden’s administration and Republican winning in 2024 may show his presidency in a better life and Biden’s failure will merely reflect further of Obama’s own failed Presidency.

First observation of the day, Kudlow discussed Janet Yellen global tax proposal, “Finally, there is what the Journal calls Janet Yellen’s “Global Tax Surrender.” This is not only about giving away our tax sovereignty. It’s also about jacking up our taxes on top of what Uncle Joe already wants to do, and it’s not only about a new global minimum tax…It may also be about a new windfall profits tax. That’s according to Dan Clifton of Strategas Research. As the G-7 finance ministers merrily build a new high-tax highway, rest assured that Communist China will not be part of the higher taxes. Why? One reason is they’re too smart…As for us, in some sense Ms. Yellen seems to be trying to make up for lost competitiveness that she will incur from raising the corporate tax to 28% and putting a 21% minimum tax on United States profits overseas. She’s succeeding in getting the other big countries to raise their taxes, too, though at the end, we may be taken to the cleaners because foreigners won’t do what we want them to do.” This is part of the big reset of “Capitalism.” It will prove to a failure as we exporting our bad economic policy worldwide.

Second observation of the day when John Phelan noted that one thing that could help minority businesses is to protect those businesses with good policing. He observed how many of those who rioted in Minneapolis and destroyed many black businesses were white and he mocked, “They did in the name of social justice and against racism” as they destroyed many black businesses.

Larry Kudlow makes a interesting point that the V shape recovery, uneven as it is, continues as unemployment dropped to 5.8. As I mention before, our employment should be lower, between 4 to 4.8 percent and this higher unemployment is due to many states slow in reducing or lifting their economic restrictions.

If Biden did nothing and no additional stimulus passed, we would be pushing even faster economic growth. Kudlow has made the point that this recession was the reaction to a natural disaster nationwide, the pandemic. The economy was in good shape in February 2020 and the economic restrictions enacted along with the lockdown stopped economic growth abruptly. Unemployment was 14.4 percent but many states opened up and the unemployment dropped to 6.7 by the end of year and the last six months saw the annualized rate of nearly 19%.

It could have been been even higher if other states followed through with opening their economy and if many states chose to open their economy. Blue states were out performed by states with Republican governors and their policies slowed the recovery.

Kudlow warns, “If Uncle Joe’s policies — I’m calling them his plan for a Green Workers’ Paradise — get through, then the outlook is going to turn poor: stagnation, growth recession with big inflation. If his pre-Soviet, Bulgarian approach is enacted into law, we will devalue the dollar and choke off the supply-side of the economy.”

On the Donelson Files, Center for American experiment economist John Phelan feared that Demand side of Biden policy could choke off the recovery and we can see 10 percent inflation by year end. Phelan joined follow researcher Martha Njolomole and Jim Echols discuss the economic development and how to move forward. Among the agreements was that we need less regulations in urban center and remove obstacles for lower income workers to make a living or start new businesses, reducing taxes and restraining spending. Echols noted that there are educational programs being developed in the Kansas City area to educate minorities about capitalism and all three noted how much of the media were not well informed on economy as recent new stories showed.

Kudlow is an optimist since he believes that much of Biden agenda moving forward will not be passed as he stated, “Wait a second, though — are those policies going to get through? That’s what Gerry Baker and Kim Strassel are asking, and a couple of weeks ago, when the Senate parliamentarian allowed only one 51-vote reconciliation package, I myself started getting interested in the possibility that these far-left policies just might not make it across the finish line and that the forces of growth and good and prosperity would eventually prevail.,,The congressional Republican Party is completely united against the high-tax Green Workers Paradise.”

From Federalist, “Biden’s proposal seeks over $200 million in funding “to help end this high rate of maternal mortality and race-based disparities in outcomes among birthing people.” So yes we live in stupid times. Birthing people are called women.