The Dangerous Allure of Presidential Greatness

By Jerry Hendrix

Saturday, November 12, 2022

 

On March 2, 2021, just over a month after he had assumed office, Joe Biden gathered a distinguished panel of presidential historians for a private meeting in the East Room of the White House. Organized by Jon Meacham, the gathering was attended by other influential historians: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Beschloss, Michael Dyson, Joanne Freeman, Annette Gordon-Reed, and Walter Isaacson, the crème de la crème of the American Historical Association. Truly, it was a distinguished panel whose members are known for their understanding of the office of the president, its role, and its limitations. During the session, Biden and the historians explored his desire to have a transformative presidency. The meeting lasted for two hours.

 

It’s clear from the results of the past two years that first, the allure of presidential greatness is very powerful, and second, the presidential historians present failed in their professional responsibility to caution Biden on the very real historical limits to his agenda.

 

Every president wants to have a “great” presidency, to be listed among the relatively few great (Lincoln, Washington, FDR) or even the “near great” (Jefferson, Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Eisenhower). It’s clear that Biden (and most academic historians) admires Franklin Roosevelt above all others, and his incoming legislative goals — the initial $1.9 trillion Covid-relief plan, the $3 trillion infrastructure and Green New Deal plan, as well as the $400 billion college-debt relief and big movements in voting, immigration, and inequality — signaled that he wanted to pursue an FDR-like big-government, liberal agenda. According to reports in the press following the event, Biden sought nothing less than “the biggest change in governance in our lifetimes.” The historians spoke to the president about how much bigger and faster he could go. Such was the enthusiasm that was carried out of the meeting that Biden was reported to have told an aide, “I could have gone another two hours,” which stands out with a president who has spent more time away from the White House than any of his immediate predecessors.

 

I’m more of a military historian and strategist, but I have read plenty of presidential biographies and studies of the office of the president. Additionally, I am a strong believer in the practice of leveraging historical case studies to inform current policy decisions. As such, the March 2021 meeting between Biden and the historians emerges as a clear example of professional malpractice.

 

Between them, Goodwin, Meacham, and the increasingly radicalized Beschloss represent three of the most commercially and professionally acclaimed presidential historians of the modern era, historians who built their reputations on penetrating studies of presidents such as FDR, Jackson, Truman, Kennedy, and Bush the Elder while selling millions of books in the process. Their understanding of the office of the presidency as well as the domestic political environments that surrounded the subjects of their studies should have alerted them to the contextual differences between the presidents they studied and Joe Biden. The past presidents who had large majorities governed largely, and successfully. Presidents with narrow majorities, or who had to deal with their opposition in the majority in one or both houses of Congress, governed narrowly and worked to gain or expand their majorities over time. There are no examples of great presidents who, constrained by a narrow majority in the House and a 50/50 Senate, chose to go both large and fast with their agendas. It hasn’t happened before, and it’s doubtful it ever will.

 

The historians present in the East Room in March 2021 knew this, especially Meacham, who wrote the definitive biography of George H. W. Bush, thought by many to have had the very best one-term presidency by governing moderately, and yet Meacham apparently didn’t step in to advise Biden toward a narrower, more centric path that could have resulted in a modicum of success. Biden had, after all, run as a centrist who promised to bring together the two sides of the political debate, both of which are presently dominated by strong personalities at their wings. He even spoke about it in his inaugural address. Had the historians in the East Room urged him to take the centrist path suggested by both history and the current domestic political environment, he could have crafted a series of legislative victories on the economy, infrastructure, immigration, and national defense by bringing moderates to the table while eschewing the wings of both parties, and in doing so, he could have emerged as a productive, above-average president. Instead, the historians encouraged him, counter to the conditions on the ground, to seek “greatness” by pursuing a New Deal–like agenda that ensured that no member of the opposition could support him. This in turn resulted in the requirement that the new president, with the narrowest of majorities, secure the support of his entire party, leaving him bound to the most radical of the progressive wing of his party.

 

The poor performance of the Biden administration thus far was not apparent in this week’s election results. Had the projected “red wave” occurred, perhaps Biden and the leaders of the Democratic Party could have taken a step back from their agenda and tacked to a more moderate, centrist course to work with strong Republican majorities. While it is possible that Biden will be facing an opposition party in the House, his public statements thus far have colored the election results as a win. In fact, he has gone so far as to say, “I’m not going to change anything in any fundamental way” during the second half of his presidency. It’s clear that for President Biden, the greatness of a transformative administration still beckons, and so it is unlikely that he will be dissuaded either from his current path or from seeking a second term. As it stands, due perhaps more to poor candidate selections in several key races on the part of the Republicans rather than support for Biden’s progressive agenda, the current administration perceives no reason to depart from the advice of the historians, or its descent toward historical mediocrity.

 

Greatness is the siren song for the modern presidency. Ever since Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. published his poll in 1948 of 75 historians evaluating the performance of previous presidents, the allure of presidential greatness has been a factor in presidential performance. Each White House occupant who followed, apart from Dwight Eisenhower, whose greatness and historical position had been established outside of the Oval Office, came into the West Wing and immediately began to be concerned about his “legacy.” Biden’s pursuit of his has doomed him to a probable one-term, below-average historical position forevermore. History is not kind, but it will serve as a warning to his successors and to the nation.

 

His successors, and the historians who advise them, should pay more attention to objective reality and the upper and lower limits of what can be done within their current political environments. The nation, for its part, perhaps should focus more on electing great men and women to the office of the president rather than depending on the office to lend mediocre performers its greatness.