Tag Archives: FDR

Who was America’s Greatest President?

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So, today is President’s Day, the day when Americans honor the institution of the presidency and ask that time honored question: “Who is America’s greatest President?” Really? What a waste of time. It reminds me of the classic kid/parent argument:

Kid: “Why is there a Mother’s Day and a Father’s Day but not a Kid’s Day?”

Mom & Dad: “Because everyday is Kid’s Day.”

Do we really need to give high-ranking politicians their own holiday? Good lord, no. I prefer to celebrate a different type of president today, namely entrepreneurs like Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford, and Steve Jobs.

But since the rest of the country is debating the likes of Lincoln and Washington, we might as well add our two cents to the issue. So, who is America’s greatest president? Regardless of political affiliation, scholars almost always rank Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as America’s three greatest presidents in no particular order.

That means they’re the greatest right? It depends on how you define “great.” Here’s a different view from Lew Rockwell at LewRockwell.com.

There have been four huge surveys taken of historians’ views on the presidents: in 1948, in 1962, in 1970, and in 1983. Historians were asked to rank presidents as Great, Near Great, Average, Below Average, and Failure. In every case, number one is Lincoln, the mass murderer and military dictator who is the real father of the present nation. His term was a model of every despot’s dream: spending money without Congressional approval, declaring martial law, arbitrarily arresting thousands and holding them without trial, suppressing free speech and the free press, handing out lucrative war contracts to his cronies, raising taxes, inflating the currency, and killing hundreds of thousands for the crime of desiring self-government. These are just the sort of actions historians love…

Most historians value power accumulation when ranking the greatest presidents. Charisma and crisis confrontation are also considered important. Practically no one values minimal government or the ability to avoid crises. And yet some presidents did fairly well in these areas. These libertarian-type presidents were usually dull and didn’t spend years fighting wars or recessions. Instead, their terms were marked by peace, prosperity, and the respecting of individual liberties. Their ranks include Grover Cleveland as well as Rutherford B. Hayes. Using this definition of greatness (peace, prosperity, and the respecting of individual liberties), the greatest president of all time just might be the little-known John Tyler:

John Tyler was the 10th President of the United States. He was known as “His Accidency,” on account of the fact that he took over after William Henry Harrison’s untimely death. Most of his cabinet resigned during his term and his own party expelled him from its membership. According to Wikipedia, an aggregate of various scholarly polls rate Tyler as one of the worst presidents of all time. Heck, even the extremely controversial George W. Bush outranks him. Who would possibly consider President John Tyler #1?

(See the rest right here at Guerrilla Explorer)

The Switch in Time that Saved Nine?

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In 1937, President Roosevelt proposed his notorious “court-packing plan.” It altered the ideological composition of the Supreme Court and singlehandedly changed the course of a nation. What was “the switch in time that saved nine?”

The Four Horsemen vs. The Three Musketeers?

During the 1930s, the Supreme Court contained two voting blocs. The “Four Horsemen,” which consisted of Justices Pierce Butler, James McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter, believed in upholding the Constitution and personal freedom. They generally opposed Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. The Three Musketeers, Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, and Harlan Stone, supported the New Deal. Chief Justice Charles Hughes and Justice Owen Roberts acted as swing votes with Hughes often siding with the Musketeers and Roberts usually finding equal ground with the Four Horsemen.

From 1935-1937, the Four Horsemen and Justice Roberts struck down several parts of the highly unconstitutional New Deal. Roosevelt and his supporters despised the Horsemen. However, unless one of them retired, there was nothing he could do to stop them. That is, until he and his attorney general came up with the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937.

President Roosevelt’s Court Packing Plan?

This was the infamous “court packing plan.” President Roosevelt proposed that he be given the power to appoint a new justice for every sitting justice that continued to serve six months past his or her 70th birthday. The bill would’ve allowed him to add 44 federal judges as well as 6 Supreme Court justices. It encountered tremendous opposition even from Roosevelt’s supporters. The public lost faith in him and a previously supportive Congress began to question if the President was trying to create a dictatorship.

The Switch in Time that Saved Nine?

Less than two months after the Bill was announced, Justice Roberts joined the Three Musketeers and Chief Justice Hughes in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, which upheld minimum wage legislation. It was a strange vote considering the fact that Roberts had previously been on the other end of several decisions regarding the minimum wage. Since then, it has become known as “the switch in time that saved nine,” alluding to the theory that he switched sides in order to stop Roosevelt from usurping the Supreme Court’s independence.

Guerrilla Explorer’s Analysis

Was the Switch in Time that Saved Nine deliberate? Did Justice Roberts abandon his ideology for political purposes? These questions remain a source of vigorous debate to this day. According to research conducted by Professor G. Edward White, the votes were cast a few days before the court-packing plan was announced. Others point out that Roberts wasn’t a consistent supporter of the Four Horsemen and suggest that his ideology, if indeed he had one to begin with, was actually closer to the Three Musketeers.

On the other hand, there’s some interesting circumstantial evidence to suggest that Chief Justice Hughes engineered the Switch in Time that Saved Nine. Knowing that Roosevelt planned to go after the Supreme Court, Hughes took Roberts under his wing and convinced him to abandon his principles. Also, according to Burt Solomon’s FDR v. The Constitution: The Court-Packing Fight and the Triumph of Democracy, even Roberts’ newly-found allies didn’t understand the Switch in Time that Saved Nine. Harlan Stone, one of the Three Musketeers, wrote a letter to Felix Frankfurter in which he called the Roberts’ vote, “a sad chapter in our judicial history” and referenced “explanations which do not explain.”

The Switch in Time that Saved Nine, as well as the subsequent retirement of Justice Devanter, ultimately led to the defeat of President Roosevelt’s court-packing bill. Still, it could be argued that Roosevelt won in the end as he held the office of President for another eight years, allowing him the opportunity to replace eight Justices and in essence, remake the Supreme Court in his image. But if Roosevelt won, then who lost? Some would say the American people themselves. As Judge Napolitano put it in his book The Constitution in Exile:

“Justice Owen Roberts switched ideological sides and brought a conclusive end to the Constitution as protector of natural rights, the free market, and federalism.” ~ Judge Andrew Napolitano