Wednesday, December 14, 2016

The Least Bad Presidents

EconTalk has an episode with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita Bruce on the Spoils of War

Unlike many who commented on the podcast, I like his take even if it is flawed. It is much better to skilfully avoid war than to win wars but people who rate presidents rate war presidents higher. 
A similar thing is true for domestic issues. I think that those who created the greenback and then the Federal Reserve are to be blamed for the Great Depression and not so much Hoozer, and FDR's response to the great depression was far from great and should not make him a great president.
  I will take Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Warren G. Harding over FDR and some the other so called great presidents. 

Lincoln looks like a mixed bag, he was great in that he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but in many other respects kind of bad. Maybe most of what he did, including creating the greenback, was necessary to end slavery and maybe he would have undone most of it after the war had he lived. I will call him great but not being there it's hard to say.


Jeremiah 17:9-10 - The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?  

Luke 18:19 Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone.