Seacoast History Blog #21
December 16, 2008

Symbols loom large in the rearview mirror of history. The image of George Bush avoiding two size-10 boots thrown by an angry Iraqi journalist last weekend may stick forever in our collective memory. One pundit has already noted that the outgoing president ducked the boots with all the agility that he has ducked the media and the issues for eight years. A radio forum on Maine Public Broadcasting tomorrow (1pm EST) asks the question "Was Bush the Worst US President in the Last 50 Years?". Karl Rove, architect and "brain" of the administration, and Conservative journalist Bill Kristol defend Bush’s place in history against reporters from the liberal Slate.com and The Guardian. The up-side for New Hampshire is that – the lower the current president sinks – the higher our native son, 14^th president Franklin Pierce, rises on the charts. (Continued below) 

New Hampshire ranking rising?

George Bush believes that history will judge his presidency more kindly than those pesky public opinion polls. That historic rating has already begun. Political scientists love ranking our chief executives and have been watching the numbers shift since the first comparative poll in 1948.

Franklin Pierce (1804 – 1869), NH’s only offering, ends up on many "10 Worst Presidents" lists. Along with James Buchanan, he is credited with doing nothing about slavery and making the Civil War inevitable. Lincoln, who took on the slavery issue, has been ranked, with George Washington, as the best president in history. Thomas Jefferson and the two Roosevelts usually fill out the Top 5. Richard Nixon, Andrew Johnson, Zachery Taylor and Warren G. Harding are inevitably at the bottom of the list.

A grassroots movement now wants to rank George Bush as the very worst president in American history. Professional historians are not rising to the bait. They know it will take time for the impact of the Bush years to filter out. They are more interested in the long-range impact of work accomplished by the chief executive. For the same reason John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, often beloved by the public, are not at the top of the list.

Since WWII the reputation of Franklin Pierce has been sinking in the eyes of historians. Wikipedia offers a fascinating comparison of a dozen scholarly rankings from 1948 to 2005. Pierce has dropped slowly from #27 to #39. That’s especially bad since two presidents – Garfield and Harrison – served so briefly that they are often not counted. That makes #41 the bottom until Barak Obama takes office, adding one more president to the list.

SEE ALSO: Pierce in the Seacoast

Despite his reputation, I remain fascinated by Pierce -- and not just because he once lived in Portsmouth. I’ve toured his family homestead and keep meaning to visit his private historic house in Concord. I own Peter Wallner’s biography and the campaign biography by Franklin’s friend Nathaniel Hawthorne. I keep meaning to spend more time with the man who has been called "overlooked and misunderstood".

We don’t want to get overconfident, but since the War in Iraq, Franklin Pierce has reversed his long slide, inching up one place in the opinion of historians to #38. It’s probably just a blip. But if pop culture continues to chip away at "W" with an ever-expanding catalog of unflattering films and books, you never know. Maybe serious historians will demote him too. If you believe Barack Obama, then there is always hope.

In the recent radio broadcast sponsored by Intelligence Squared, a New York venue for Oxford-style debate, Karl Rove vigorously defended his president. "The weight of history seemed firmly on his mind," according to The Huffington Post. If you believe Rove and Kristol, history will record that Bush achieved victory in his war in Iraq. An Iraqi journalist this week vigorously disagreed right down to his shoes, and made a little history to boot.