The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game | 
 enlarge | Author: Alvin S. Felzenberg
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 17117
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 480
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.5
ISBN: 0465002919
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.099
EAN: 9780465002917
Publication Date: June 9, 2008
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Product Description
It’s a perennial pastime to rate U.S. presidents on an all-time ranking: Certain presidents were “Great,” others were “Near-Great,” and so on down to “Failures” and “Unmitigated Disasters.” (OK, we made that last category up.) But as Alvin Felzenberg points out, there are many flaws with these rating systems. Despite reams of new historical information, the rankings never seem to change very much. They all favor a certain kind of president-those who tended to increase executive power. That aside, the idea of rating presidential performance on a simple linear scale is absurd. The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn’t) breaks presidential performance into easily understandable categories-character, vision, competence, foreign policy, economic policy, human rights, and legacy-and assesses, for each category, the best and worst. The result is a surprisingly fresh look at how the various presidents stack up against each other, with some of the “greats” coming off far worse than their supposedly mediocre colleagues.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 New Analysis Yields Brilliant Insight May 30, 2008
Wise Economist (Falls Church, Virginia, USA)
41 out of 47 found this review helpful
Dr. Felzenberg creates a new and useful methodology for rating U.S. Presidents. Instead of one single grade as in previous surveys, he rates presidents on six criteria. The first three are internal characteristics that each president carries into the Oval Office: character, competence, and vision. The second three reflect presidential accomplishments: economics, protection of liberty and human rights, and defense and international affairs.
Felzenberg uses his methodology masterfully to provide his readers with concise, intriguing, and often amusing portraits of all Presidents (except William H. Harrison, James A. Garfield, and George W. Bush). Felzenberg weaves recent economic and historical research into his vignettes to provide readers with new and sometimes surprising insights into many Presidents.
For example, Felzenberg demonstrates that Ulysses S. Grant deserves a far higher rating, especially for his protection of the rights of the freedmen, than most historians have granted him. At the same time, Felzenberg convincingly proves that although Andrew Jackson was an extremely competent in achieving his policy objectives, his economic policies and his disregard for human rights were very damaging to the United States.
Felzenberg brilliantly peers into the complex personalities of Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Nixon, and Reagan. Unlike many other historians, Felzenberg's analyses of the economic policies and results of the Presidents are well grounded in sound economic reasoning and indisputable facts.
This is a hard book to put down. Every reader will learn a great deal about the men who have served in the White House. Some readers may disagree with some of Felzenberg's grades for certain Presidents in one of the six criteria or another. However, all of Felzenberg's judgments are objective and based on thorough research. In summary, this thought-provoking book is a must buy and read.
To be read as an appetizer. June 24, 2008
M. Dillon (Oak Hill, VA)
22 out of 24 found this review helpful
Comparing presidents from over two centuries may seem to require a ton of homework at best, if it's not an impossible task altogether. But this book succeeds because:
1) The US Constitution hasn't changed much, nor the American's desire for liberty and the pursuit of happiness;
2) Felzenberg has done his homework, is insightful and is a master of concision;
3) As primary reasons for success/failure of aspects of a presidency become apparent, the book's conclusion provides a natural, clear and coherent how-to-look-for-a-good-president guide. And heaven knows, all this matters.
Like all the best history, this excellent book leaves me wanting to read more.
Fresh, unconvential take on presidential ratings August 19, 2008
A. Klein (New York)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Reviews criticizing this book for its supposed conservative bias are off target. (For example, Lyndon Johnson, generally a conservative bete-noire, comes in for great praise for his role in civil rights.) Anyone who's read the book will know that its most original contribution is assigning credit and blame, where appropriate, to lesser-known presidents whose actions had an important impact on economic history, civil rights, etc. For example, the discussions of the civil rights accomplishments of oft-neglected presidents like Grant and Coolidge, or of the various failings of an oft-praised president like Madison, add much new to our generally facile understanding of these presidents.
Of course, many readers may disagree with the author's characterizations of Reagan, which are probably the most controversial element of the book, but the sections on Reagan are neither hagiography nor polemic; they present facts in a measured fashion, and readers are free to interpret them differently than the author does. That does not detract from the overall value of this excellent and thorougly-researched book for readers of all political stripes.
Finally, readers interested in US economic history will find this book a fascinating review of economic policy, especially the monetary system, from the early republic through the modern era of the Federal Reserve system.
This book is highly recommended for readers of all political backgrounds. Though they may disagree with a few of the conclusions, the author's scholarship is undeniable, and Democratic-leaning readers interested in civil rights will find the book's discussion of those issues especially interesting.
Proudly conservative take on ratings game August 11, 2008
Robert Fliss (Cape Coral, Fla.)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I noticed that most of the negative reviews of this book seem to come from liberals. Well you have a right to your opinion -- and by God! I have a right to mine.
The presidential ratings game the Schlesingers started is so slanted toward the left as to be virtually worthless. It seems that the surest way of getting a high rating is to participate in yet another expansion of federal power.
After all, historians are biased in favor of presidents who did something they can write about. Advocates of federal restraint, like Cleveland and Coolidge, make dull copy.
Let's face it -- the presidential ratings game is just that. It's less factual than the sportswriters' votes for the college football championship.
Felzenberg introduces a measure of discipline by breaking the ratings into six classifications, weighted equally for the overall score.
Liberals should be able to take comfort from the high rankings awarded to Truman and FDR, the latter despite a fairly tough critique of the New Deal. The author is, if anything, even more tough on Hoover, noting that many policies we associate with the New Deal started with the Republicans.
The difference here is that at least some in the GOP, as embodied by Ronaldus Magnus, learned that the best thing the government can do in an economic downturn is let the market work itself out. The Democrats, on the other hand, evidently learned nothing, and still view the New Deal as a public policy triumph, when in fact it prolonged the Great Depression.
The only other long depression in American history followed Andrew Jackson's demolition of the national bank. Is there a pattern here?
As an unapologetic conservative, I'm a little disappointed that my all-time favorite Democrat, Grover Cleveland, didn't score higher.
Actually, Felzenberg is fairly open to big-government policies, as witnessed by his ranking of Theodore Roosevelt third behind Lincoln and Washington. I don't believe that anyone had coined the phrase "big government conservative" during TR's lifetime, but it fits like a glove.
Much as I admire TR for his undoubted patriotism and colorful personality, the really outstanding president of that era was the martyred William McKinley, who inherited the mantle of limited government from Grover Cleveland.
Of course, it's all a game, and this book was written to provoke debates. Felzenberg does a vastly better job defending his ratings than any other historian I've read who attempted the same task.
I don't have to agree -- just indulge me by arguing from facts and logic instead of slogans and fear, which is all the left has been offering for decades.
I'm recommending this book to all my conservative friends. In fact, on the phone the other day, my friend and I were wracking our brains for the absolute worst president in American history.
We both blurted out simulataneously: "Woodrow Wilson!"
Actually Felzenberg gives the booby prize to James Buchanan for having allowed the War Between the States to happen.
The way I figure it, Buchanan was a weakling, but slavery was such a poisonous issue that something had to break.
Wilson -- the beau ideal of the sanctimonious Puritan reformer -- dragged the nation into a European war we had no business in. After victory in 1918, Wilson ensured we would lose the peace by insisting on the breakup of the Hapsburg Empire. Supposedly, this was to be done along ethnic lines, but the reality is that the Hapsburg successor states were nearly as polyglot as the "ramshackle empire" itself. The resulting power vacuum left Central Europe and the Balkans ripe for devastation by fascism, Nazism, and communism.
Good going, Mr. President!
A Fun and Very Informative Book August 18, 2008
Okie Expat (Philadelphia, PA USA)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Admittedly biased by a personal friendship with the author, I still found this book to be not only Dr. Felzenberg's best work to date, but for a political historian, refreshingly balanced, insightful, and a easy to read.
This is book is ideal for the political junkie and amateur history who tires easily with heavy tomes more focused on often insignificant historical facts instead of interpretation and analysis. While I'm sure I do not agree with all of Dr. Felzenberg's rating (I thought he was a little harsh on Richard Nixon, and was too kind to Mr. Manifest Destiny, James K. Polk, the only President who really lied to start a war), he has successfully established a new benchmark for rating Presidents as objectively as humanly possible.
His greatest service, however, may be exposing the heavy biases of respected historians such as Dr. Arthur Slezinger, who clearly rated President by how they matched up against his liberal idealogy of bigger and more intrusive government. No liberal, Dr. Felzenberg nonetheless made an obvious attempt at fairness and balance in his ratings. I suspect such biased readers and historians will chafe at his high rating of Ronald Reagan and others, but I defy them to find flaws in his presentation.
I strongly recommend this book to: political junkies; anyone who is interested in the history of the Presidency; and high school and college teachers looking to orient their pupils on the presidency. I especially recommend it to journalists, who by and large are ignorant of history and can't handle book above an 8th grade level (much less digest it). It was a terrific and fascinating read.
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