Where Have All the George Washingtons Gone? Five reasons why America doesn’t have great presidents anymore.

Foreign Policy:

Happy Presidents Day, a holiday that ranks somewhere between Groundhog Day and Opening Day at the ballpark in the list of Americans’ priorities. It’s easy to see why. Even though Americans admire their great presidents, they’ve been frustrated for quite a while now by their Disappointers in Chief. Those presidents seem to have become experts in taking Americans to the Mount Everest of hope and expectations and then letting them down in the valley of executive despair. Americans’ own expectations, of course, have always been too high. Still, of late, Americans haven’t had what presidential scholars would describe as a parade of great presidents occupying the White House.

Indeed, since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, America’s last undeniably great president, the history of the presidency has resembled much more a bumpy and often wild ride than a consistent tale of top performers. It has been a story of scandal, impeachment, assassination, and transitional presidencies — and also one of dedicated, intelligent, and able presidents, some of whom were not actually great presidents but who were great at appearing presidential. But since FDR, the greatness of consistent and incomparable achievement has eluded all of his successors.

Why? Are Americans just in a bad patch — like in the 19th century for a decade or so on either side of Abraham Lincoln, when faceless chief executives came and went without much of a trace of significant accomplishment? Are Americans just between great presidents, waiting for another FDR? Or is something else afoot?

I think it’s the latter. And as Americans celebrate President’s Day, more likely at the shopping mall than the National Mall, here are five reasons that presidential greatness has become harder now than ever.

1. Americans are ambivalent about greatness.

The American system, creed, and political culture works against greatness. There’s an anti-greatness and anti-authority trope that courses throughout U.S. history. Unlike the European story (literally filled with Greats — Catherine, Alexander, Peter, Charles, and a handful of English kings), American history was not peopled by the royal or the entitled. There was no real tradition of grandiosity (sorry Newt) and certainly few of the monarchial trappings of power. George Washington rode around in an ornate coach with a large GW embossed on its top, but he shunned the more elaborate titles of the office in favor of a simple Mr. President. Americans have always liked leaders with a common touch and a dose of humility, even just for show.

Indeed, much to the dismay of the British ambassador, Thomas Jefferson would regularly greet him in bedroom slippers, sometimes opening the White House door in his stocking feet. Grover Cleveland answered his own phone; and Harry Truman, after leaving the White House in the summer of 1953, packed up the wife and drove himself to New England without handlers or Secret Service protection. Not until 1906, after three U.S. presidents (Lincoln, James Garfield, and William McKinley) had been assassinated, did Congress even authorize formal statutory authority for presidential protection.

2. FDR was a tough act to follow.

Let’s face it. Following a four-term president who overcame polio to lead America through its greatest economic calamity and to victory in its greatest war sets a pretty high bar. None of his successors would measure up. Truman, who likely had the third-hardest job in American politics (following FDR — No. 3 after John Adams, who followed Washington, and Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln), did pretty well, particularly in fashioning a wise set of Cold War policies. But the idea that any president would best Roosevelt in the achievement department died with him. That all of FDR’s successors are still judged by his remarkable 100 Days is a testament to the reality that all would live in his shadow. In 1951, driven by Republicans and southern Democrats, the 22nd Amendment was ratified, restricting a president’s tenure to two terms. FDR’s enemies thought they were getting even, but what they really did in ensuring that there would be no more FDRs was to elevate the real one into presidential immortality.

3. America’s modern crises make greatness very hard.

Greatness in the presidency is driven by severe crisis that encumbers the nation for a sustained period of time. Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt were America’s greatest presidents because they faced and overcame the three greatest challenges in America’s history: the birth and consolidation of the republic; civil war; and the Great Depression and World War II. The Founders wanted a strong executive, but one who was accountable also, constrained by checks and balances as well as shared and separated powers. The American system moves only when it’s shocked, and it allows a president to tame what is an inherently unruly political structure.

But crisis only opens the door. Unless a president also has the character and the capacity to know what to do and how to do it, they will fail. James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover weren’t up to the challenges; Lincoln and FDR were. Since FDR, America hasn’t had the kind of emergency that has offered the chance for both heroic crisis management and the fashioning of some transformational legacy that would change the country in a fundamental way…

Read it all.