Presidential Greatness (review)

Presidential Greatness. By Marc Landy and Sidney M. Milkis. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000; pp. vii + 278. $27.96 paper.

Landy and Milkis provide a book on presidential greatness very different from what has been written previously. They identify five great presidents using the criteria of having vision and serving as agents for change. These presidents were able to educate the populace and were builders and leaders of their political parties. Public education and party leadership may be important, but they are not necessarily obvious as the sole determinants of great presidents. In chapter one, the authors lay out these two criteria for greatness. Party is called "the most important source of democratic presidential accountability" (4). Obviously, George Washington did not excel in party leadership. The second criterion is that these great presidents also "took the people to school" by providing citizen education.

The next five chapters focus chronologically on the authors' choices of the five greatest presidents: Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. Landy and Milkis could just as easily have identified these five presidents as great by the extraordinary steps each took: Washington simply by precedent; Jefferson as a party leader over Congress; Jackson in using the veto; Lincoln's use of wartime prerogatives; and Roosevelt's assertiveness in domestic and economic policy. The authors choose the same presidents as Stephen Skowronek except that they add Washington to the list. Other greats are left out for inexplicable reasons, but their main point that "the demand for greatness exceeds the supply" (2) does not surprise us.

I do not see much new in the subsequent five biographical chapters in which the authors provide events and their interpretation of the presidents' roles. The chapters range from just 28 pages for Washington to 44 pages for Franklin Roosevelt. The authors point out how all five presidents strengthened the federal government despite other efforts to keep from doing so. They argue that "Washington did not realize he was a party man" (38), but it is hard for the rest of us to see it either. Their emphasis on a recent decline in presidential influence over their political parties is reflected in the work of some scholars, but others argue that growing partisanship in Congress and even among the electorate may require a greater partisan role for presidents as well. Later, Landy and Milkis say that "great democratic leadership transcends a president's time and the program of his party," but they also contend that these presidents largely remade their parties.

In chapter three, Jefferson is seen as sharing some of Washington's reluctance as a party leader. That reluctance would be a surprise to many who view him as exercising the most control over his partisans of any president, including personal selection of congressional party leaders. Obviously Jefferson had moved dramatically from his position in 1789 that "if I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." The authors reveal ambiguities in this leadership by Jefferson and his Republicans in that they both centralize government (the purchase of Louisiana) and decentralize government (reducing federal spending). Jackson reflects the same ambiguities with nullification and the national bank, to which Landy and Milkis attribute Jackson's greatness. They argue that he "clarified even more that the federal government was supreme even as he advocated a more limited role for the national government than Jefferson had" (78). They point out that Jackson was preceded or succeeded by weak presidents, a circumstance that may be true of all the greats.

Landy and Milkis assert that both the people and historians place Abraham Lincoln as our greatest president, which is incorrect based upon most polls of the general public. Despite considerable time spent on his party role, the authors are not successful in convincing readers that it mattered as much to Lincoln as they say it did. In chapter six, Franklin Roosevelt is considered the nation's last great president. He is seen as...