Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 13, 1990 TAG: 9004130891
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By now, however, the standings of most of the presidents of a more distant American past seem relatively fixed. Now and then a surprising reversal occurs, as with James K. Polk, whose reputation seems to rise yearly; but mostly presidential reputation seems fixed: Grant and Harding are improbable candidates for rehabilitation, and so are Buchanan, Hayes and Benjamin Harrison, while Coolidge seems, despite the odd worship of Ronald Reagan, unlikely to rise in the public mind above the level of hopeless inadequacy.
With more recent presidents one cannot be so confident. Hoover has recovered a standing he lost during the Depression, not so much because of his presidency as because of the farsighted recommendations he made for reorganization of the federal government for President Harry S. Truman. Truman himself has attained a status he scarcely enjoyed in office: His decisiveness and boldness, not to speak of his extraordinary candor, seem to a later time to be refreshing traits in the Oval Office.
The ongoing re-evaluation of two presidential reputations is described at some length by Everett Carll Ladd, executive director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, in a recent article in The Christian Science Monitor. Ladd, whose Roper research tracks the state of public thinking on a variety of matters, argues that the presidencies of both Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon are in the process of being restudied and reassessed - in both cases to the advantages of the men themselves.
Eisenhower's case is the least surprising. Immensely popular - from his successful leadership of the Allied forces that reconquered Europe from Hitler during 1944 and 1945 - he won the 1952 Republican presidential nomination and almost literally sailed into the Oval Office the next January. Americans were tired of the wartime atmosphere in which they had lived since 1939, tired too of the ongoing Korean "police action," and Eisenhower, who had a winning manner as well as a military record, seemed to promise relief.
He provided it too, to a degree, and his presidency proved to be not only peaceful - the war in Korea was indeed brought to a close under him - but modestly progressive: American business and industry flourished, many of the New Deal's unfinished undertakings were completed if not extended, and prosperity seemed universal. The darker side was that Eisenhower was widely seen as a remote and detached figure who left government up to his staff; and despite continued personal popularity there was widespread conviction that the nation had stalled itself into complacency. Yet as Ladd points out, continuing scholarship reveals that he was hardly as detached as he seemed, that he kept his hands on everything done, and that his sunny good will did not prevent him from sharp leadership when he thought it was needed. All of this cannot help but re-establish his reputation.
Nixon is a more curious case, for he left office in 1972 in the face of near-certain removal for offenses against the Constitution. Yet Nixon has lived on, writing books and advising his followers, and the passage of time has somewhat dimmed the darkness of his weaknesses. His obvious grasp of foreign affairs - his ability to win and keep detente with the Soviet Union, and his reopening of American relations with China - seem to many today more important than his crimes. The ultimate verdict is obviously still to come, but Nixon has risen, says Ladd - the "last great leader of the old `moderate' wing of the Republican Party."
Ladd does not tell us what re-evaluation may be taking place in the standing of Jimmy Carter, who left office in 1981 almost as unpopular as Hoover had been in 1933. In the eyes of many, however, his post-presidential career, still busy and effective, may prove as important as anything he did, or failed to do, in the Oval Office. What the future will make of Ronald Reagan is anybody's guess.
***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on April 20, 1990 on commentary page\ Correction
In some editions April 13, Paxton Davis' column said President Nixon left office in 1972. Nixon stepped down in 1974.
Memo: correction