Well, hey, this is Old Hickory's Weblog, you know! Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., historian and Andy Jackson biographer, had an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times Wednesday. He managed to say something nice about Bush's astronauts-on-Mars program, probably thinking when he wrote it that Bush might propose something about it in his State of the Union address. Or at least mention it.
But he also included an observation about the General (Jackson, not Clark).
State of the 'Vision Thing' Los Angeles Times 01/21/04
The presidency, FDR said, "is not merely an administrative office. That's the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is predominantly a place of moral leadership. All our great presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified." In other words, they were possessed by their visions.
So, FDR continued, Washington personified the idea of federal union. Jefferson typified the theory of democracy, which Jackson reaffirmed. Lincoln, by condemning slavery and secession, put two great principles of government forever beyond question. Cleveland embodied rugged honesty in a corrupt age. Theodore Roosevelt and Wilson were both moral leaders using the presidency as a pulpit. "Without leadership alert and sensitive to change," FDR wrote, "we are bogged up or lose our way[.]" [my emphasis]
Roosevelt may have been a bit generous to Grover Cleveland, who was surely the most reactionary Democrat in the White House since James Buchanan.
But his Jackson comment was right on.
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