Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History 20160327 : vimars

CSPAN3 Lectures In History March 27, 2016

10 minutes. Prof. Oconnell four score and several years ago, our forefathers brought a new continent and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. It is with those were sent Abraham Lincoln consecrated a battlefield not far from recent today. The brilliance of those words wasnt necessarily recognized at the time. Lincoln was not the featured speaker. Lincoln waited until the very end to give his poignant closing words. The gettysburg address is the greatest moment of a speech in history. The fact that people did not see the speech that way at the time, that lincoln was not the featured speaker at gettysburg, after the fact that he was not necessarily recognized in general. When he became president , he had served in Public Office in 10 years. Address,ry style speaking mannerisms, some education, all that meant that lincoln was looked upon with condemnation. There is little dispute on lincolns greatness. There are no laws, no findings, no discoveries, instead we have people making arguments that may earn may not be persuasive that may or may not be persuasive. We are going to look at five different ways of measuring president ial greatness. We are going to see these Academic Studies that involved hundreds of historians that there is a consensus, that lincoln was the greatest president. Today, we may have some concern about some of the things he did. Theook liberties with constitution. He forcibly closed some Newspapers Printing materials critical of the union effort. Had. Ent my that congress he raised the size of the military without the congresss approval. But he preserved the union and gave the civil war in more of the tests with the emancipation proclamation. He never lost sight of what the United States was fighting for. Of pressure in 1964 1864 to call off the election. What lincoln said, if the United States did not do so, the country would have lost its character as a Free Democratic people. The whole class has been leading up to this point. We have been studied president ial leadership, trying to understand how president s are , or can overcome obstacles. The whole point is to achieve greatness. I want you to think about how we might conceptualize president ial greatness, and you are going to look at different scholars have tried to rank president s from one to 44. We are one to talk about have greatness is more difficult to achieve. We may never see another person like Abraham Lincoln. The modern president s, they have been weak, and not achieved the like lincolntness did. One thing we know, americans love to rank things. I estimate that may be 67 of the content on the internet is a list of things. Here are some interesting rankings i came across in the hard work i have been doing this as a professor. The definitive list of stupid people on twitter version 4. 0. Version 4. 0 is better than version 2. 0. Here is your password and what it says about you. 25 College Football teams went by stupidity of fans. Three 26 best draped b eams. Selfies at take funerals. Americans also leveraging their president s. The most famous book ever written, the book that has been influential for scholars and residents alike. Valley f a mecca very first sentence of the book, in the United States, we like to rate a president. We measure him as weak or strong and call what we are measuring his leadership. We do not wait until a man is dead, the rate him from the moment he takes office. That is true. The rating starts immediately. There are all these benchmarks set in the presidency where we stop and consider their legacy. President s first 100 days compare . Campaign, theion ultimate opportunity for voters to cast judgment on president ial performance. All along, you have pundits and ifumnists who are asking anything a president does affect their legacy . How it affects her place in history . Ranking the president is really hard to do. Reasons some systematic why it is difficult to try to rank president s. Is difficult to rate their performance. Number one, we are not neutral observers. We all have our own opinions, biases and that will effect how we evaluate any president s performance. Research has shown that ideology plays a role in assessments of president ial greatness. I am sure that does not come as a surprise. Conservatives are likely to think Ronald Reagan is a great president. Liberals are more let me to is a greatf. Kennedy president. It will affect the criteria we need to determine president ial greatness. What are. Research has shown liberals are much more likely than conservatives to think that Something Like idealism is a standard of president ial greatness. Right . Those are two ways that biases idea greatness. President take office at different times facing different challenges. That will have to be taken into account when we try to rate their performance. On the one hand, he may give president s sympathy taking office in difficult circumstances. At the end of president Barack Obamas presidency, he took office when United States engaged in two wars. Even if he did not achieve quite as much as other president s have, he deserves to be rated a little higher because the context in which he served was more complicated. At the time of his reelection, and voters have considered obama and bush to be equally responsible of countrys economic condition, obama would have been nine points less popular. People seem to give president s leeway for things they dont have a lot to do with. Difficulty is not necessarily a bad thing. It can give opportunities for greatness. It is not a coincidence that the two greatest president s, or the top three are always the same. Combination of lincoln and a combination of lincoln and roosevelt. To do them an opportunity things other president s may not have had an opportunity to do. It was something they could potentially do that others cannot. This is something that clinton to ben was said to a great president , you had to have a signature moment of leadership. The third problem is set president ial greatness is not set in stone. , those rate president s ratings will change over time as new information emerges and as our own values change. Kennedyle would be john. When john kennedy died, he was a streaming popular. He died under tragic circumstances. And the first appraisals of his presidency that were written, were written by people like salinger. Helton and extreme high regard and did not criticize anything he had done. Over time, we learn new things about kennedy that infected our opinion of him. We learned about his chronic womanizing. It jeopardize his personal security. Womanizing that jeopardized his independence. Chicagos mobh boss wife. Learned of his. Esponsibility in vietnam we learned that a lot of the new frontier was more for show than anything else. That kennedy did not have much of an interest in domestic policy and all the talk his administration had about culture , those were things that were personally important to kennedy. He seems to be a president that needsmore profile when he to show more courage in his book title. Ranking, in 2014, john kennedy was elected the most overrated president. Two president s who have gone in the other direction, where there reputations have improved work treatment and eisenhower. Improved were truman and eisenhower. Since then, we have come to see of policies had a lot political wisdom. , weans demeanor, honesty gained greater appreciation when he was succeeded by Lyndon Johnson, who repeatedly lied. And richard nixon, who was not a crook when he actually was a crook. Eisenhower, another president whose linking improved whose ranking improved. Wasevidence has shown that workede that eisenhower extremely hard behind the scenes. He claimed to not engaging personalities, but manipulated people left and right. We gained an appreciation for his political skills. We also value some of the decisions eisenhower made as president that did not seem significant. 1954, the french fall and vietnam. For him toressure intervene. He said, no, a ground war cannot be won and should not be fought. We have a decadelong conflict that does not work in our national interest. That seems to be a really wide decision with a lot of foresight. In 1958, as people are arguing the government must boost defense spending, eisenhower warns against militaryindustrial complex. Another warning. This is why i mentioned bush. Not saying bush is going to go down as a lincoln. We dont know where bush is going to go down. When he left office, some people wrote columns and rated him as the worst president of all time. For me, that was preposterous because he just finished his presidency and so many of the things he did, we will not know the true impact of those decisions until decades from now. And afghanistan will change across the middle east, lead to a spread of freedom that does away with one of the Key National Security threats facing the United States terrorism, then bush will go down as the greatest president. We dont know. We have to wait to see. Little too early to see where bush is going to fall in the pantheon of president s. Do you get points for trying . There are a lot of president s that identify key issues before they became issues as national concern, they were on the right side of history and took important moral stances, but did not fix the problems. 1948, truman supports a strong civil rights plank. Kennedy in 1963, kennedy comes supporting civil rights. The dark take action until the in 1963. Came out until Lyndon Johnson becomes president that we see comprehensive rights. Do they get credit for being on the right side of the issue . The issue of credit is a problem in general. A lot of times, accomplishments we are willing to attribute to a president are debatable accomplishments, whether they had something to do with those things are not, it is something that is open to discussion. A lot of times people say president is great because the economy was great when they were in office. Roosevelts great accomplishment that he ended the great depression. Is that true . Not really. Things that roosevelt. Help the United States set it supple set itself on a long path to recovery. His financial reform legislation. Elped set the context unemployment is back up around 20 . Can we say that roosevelt ended the depression . It is a debatable claim. Said ragan winning the cold war is the greatest foreign policy, spent of any president in the postwar period. Did he win the cold war . No, not really. Other people had a role, too. You can argue that the soviet union had some internal vulnerabilities. Send thegan he collapse, maybe reagan hast ened the collapse, but did not cause it. Fair toproblem, is it compare premodern and of modern president s . Are going to put in the system barack obama and george washington. They had very different. The premodern president s before Franklin Roosevelt were more clerks than meters. Leaders. James garfield, 1881. There is no Institutional Support for president until 1857 that Congress Appropriates money for the president to hire a single click. Staffersd up paying out of their own pocket. Some president had to take loans , like andrew jefferson. It may be very unfair to compare premodern president s to modern president s because the challenges were different. Forget about the leaders of the free world. Teddy roosevelt that he president left the country. Our morals have changed. To play a role as how we interpret how they did in congress in office. I call it the Andrew Jackson problem. But many standards, Andrew Jackson is going to be a great president. We define a whole age by jackson. , who byfrontiersman reaching the presidency, sends a powerful message about what is possible. ,is support for regular people that changes the tenor of our politics. He built the first mass political party, the Democratic Party forming out of his own personal following. He was a slave owner. Associated closely removal ofg forcible native americans from their land. When the Cherokee Nation is forced out of their historical a fifth oforgia, them will die in the trail of tears. This leads to a lot of problems in terms of how we interpret this because owning slaves, not treating native americans with respect, that was not something that was controversial in the early 19th century. That is why you are seeing state democratic parties, the typical yearly fundraiser is the jackson dinner. They have moved to change the name. Can we understand what it is like to be president . This is the monday morning quarterback problem. I watched the dolphins on sunday, as you all know. He threw an interception. I have never played quarterback in the nfl. I dont know why he threw that interception. Maybe the defense disguise their coverage in a way that was not on the report. Maybe the coaches need to be blamed. Can we blame a president for any of their failures . We dont know the pressures they are under. We dont know what information they had at the time. It might be unfair of us to cast judgment on something we have no chance of understanding until we have walked in those shoes ourselves. Likeis like when someone you dont believe no one is going on. I am not prepared to do this now. Cantat we of said, we rank president s. We cant rate them. Lets do it anyway. Lets start by considering some theoretical ways of assessing greatness. The standards element of the problem. A great president must be a democrat and republican. What they mean by that is you have to involve people in the process and teach people civic virtue. That is the Democratic Party. But you have to govern within the constitutional system and abide by restrictions. Does the republican park. The key mechanism that is the republican parts. Key mechanism great residential leadership was based on great bipartisan. You can see why Andrew Jackson is a great president. Building modern Democratic Party out of his personal following. That included president ial character. Maybe it does not mean that he will be a great president. Reaganjohnson and Ronald Johnson ultimately failed. Reagan failed because he was not interested in helping the republican party. Interested and protecting his public popularity. Book why moderates make the best president. He argues that the key to being a president as muscular moderation. That means not doing what is popular at the moment. He attacks clinton four. It is boldly governing from the center. Charting a leadership path between extremes of politics. This leads them to reinterpret the politics of president s like fdr. He is seen as one of the most liberal chief executive in the modern era. But according to gilroy, he was really a moderate. On the right, he is dealing with individuals who want to do nothing, want to maintain a wentezfaire of that that under coolidge and hoover. By charting a course between the two, he was quite moderate. People on the right dont like it because it may destroy individual responsibility. People on the left dont love it because it is financed in a payasyougo manner. Result, its a moderate policy. His approach toward regulating banks, another moderate policy. It modernized. Yet modern president s like nixon and carter who failed for reasons specific to themselves, but it offers the best the the best path to president ial greatness. These are diametrically opposed standards. One set of scholars is saying to be a great president , you have to be fully partisan. If we tried to rank president s from one to 44. We have five important historical looking at each of them is useful. 1988, sent questionnaires to 2000 phd holding professors of history. These questionnaires were intense. Questions, did more than an hour to complete. They are not just asking people to assign a level of greatness, but asking specific questions about events and policies. Was hoover right to value balancing the budget and controlling the federal investment . Why was kennedy successful . What skills were important . By asking those questions, they want to determine why a president is great. Not only if they are great. Not necessarily looking at that part of the argument, we are to focus instead on the evaluations of whether scholars assigned to breaking up great, but average, below average, or failure. Be aware that this is not a representative sample. Only 59 women participated in the survey. Goes ibrahim linking is one. Breath in roosevelts two. George washington is three. Thomas jefferson is four. Those are the four president that had a never score of being a great president. The near greats were theodore roosevelt, Andrew Jackson, and harry truman. The bottom two were john adams and Lyndon Johnson. We are not going to series president s on other rankings. That is partly because in this study, scholars tended to more favorably great a resident that served in the era in which they did their research. If you did research on colonial america and the early american republic, you would be more likely to think john adams is a great president. Theriticize him harshly for alien act. Lyndon johnson, another president that is a controversial one. They found a lot to desire in the vietnam war were he conceal the truth of the United Statess involvement. 1997, they take a poll of 719 people. Other people would be Public Officials and attorneys. A are asking their sample to rate president s on five different standards. Leadership qualities. Accomplishments and crisis management. Lyrical skill. Appointments. If you think leadership qualities, etc. Ording to this system lincolns number one. Franklin roosevelt is number two. George washington, number three. Thomas jefferson, number four. Andrew jackson, number eight. Eisenhower number nine. Medicine number 10. Might have prevailed over lincoln if it werent for concerns about his character. All right . He was rated the 15th best president in terms of character. Were he is one or two in the other dimensions. Andrew jackson would rate higher

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