From FDR to Obama, John Dingell rates the presidents

John Dingle is retiring at age 87 and in this article rates Presidents he has known. I found this quite interesting. You may too.

From USA Today: RATING THE PRESIDENTS

The people who can claim to have worked with a dozen presidents form what is surely a very exclusive club. In the interview with the weekly video newsmaker series, Dingell obliges when asked to make a quick assessment of each of the presidents he has known.

In a rundown of the 13 presidents he has known, Rep. John Dingell describes Franklin D. Roosevelt as “the giant, one of probably the three greatest.” 

FDR: “The giant, one of probably the three greatest” presidents in U.S. history.

• Harry Truman: “Right behind him. He saved the country.” Not to mention his own life, Dingell says. “I was scheduled to be in the first wave into Japan” as a second lieutenant in the Army during World War II, “and if it hadn’t been for Harry Truman dropping the (atomic) bomb on the Japanese, I wouldn’t be here talking to you today.”

• Dwight Eisenhower: “A fine chairman of the board, a pretty good golfer, but didn’t do much.”

• John Kennedy: “Ran a very, very, very, very exciting, pleasant White House. But he was killed before he could actually show what he could do.”

• Lyndon Johnson: “Johnson could say that he had largely completed the New Deal: Federal aid to education, War on Poverty, Medicare, Medicaid, whole bunch of other things that he did.”

• Richard Nixon: “Nixon in the cold light of history looks like a better president than he did when he was there. Had some considerable foresight on things like health and the environment.” But Dingell cites an academic study that concluded Nixon was a paranoid schizophrenic. “If you looked at his behavior, you would have to come to the conclusion — and I speak as a layman, not as a doctor — that that was a right conclusion.”

• Gerald Ford: “Gerald Ford was a good president, not to say a great president. But unfortunately he carried the pardon that he gave to Nixon, which I thought was a terrible thing but which I now think was a necessary thing. And Ford brought the country down, calmed it, settled it down.”

• Jimmy Carter: “Very decent, good-hearted human being. Regrettably he could see every tree in the woods but he couldn’t see the woods, and that handicapped in terms of dealing with complex legislation.”

• Ronald Reagan: “I thought he was a very mediocre president. I thought he had the misfortune of being a president who showed signs of senility much earlier than it came out that he was.”

• George H.W. Bush: “Accomplished decent things. He knew how to work across the aisle.”

• Bill Clinton: “Delightful fellow. If Bill Clinton had not had one fault, he would have gone down as a great president.” What fault? “I don’t need to tell you. Ask any man or ask any woman and they’ll tell you.”

• George W. Bush: “I was very fond of both Bushes. … Unfortunately George W. Bush allowed people to lie to him about Iraq and about going into battle in the Middle East. He didn’t read history and he had the misfortune of being probably the least concerned and historically interested presidents in the history of the country.”

• Barack Obama: “He has the misfortune of not having had the experience and not having had the scar tissue. This means that he wasn’t hurt. You have to get cut up and sliced as you go through public life, and if you’re not hurt, you don’t get to understand what these things mean to the country and to the average guy. I don’t think he really had that.”

Still, Dingell predicts history will judge Obama more kindly than pundits do now, calling the Affordable Care Act “a triumph.” He adds, “I think he is a very decent, good-hearted, honorable man who is trying hard but his staff is, I think, not as strong as they should be.”

via From FDR to Obama, John Dingell rates the presidents.