Ranking the third ten presidents of the USA.

As I did in earlier posts when I ranked the first ten presidents one through ten and followed with ranking the second ten presidents one through ten, today I will rank the third ten presidents using quotes from a variety of sources:

1. Grover Cleveland - Robert Higgs, Research Director for the Independent Institute, said this of Clevelsnd, "He kept the country at peace. He respected the Constitution, acknowledging that the national government has only a limited mission to perform and shaping his policies accordingly. He fought to lower tariffs; preserved the gold standard in its time of crisis; and restored order forcibly when hoodlums disturbed the peace on a wide front during the great railroad strike of 1894." Though I disagree with Mr. Higgs on many fronts, he nails my opinion of Cleveland perfectly.

2. (tie) Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge - It's hard to seperate Harding and Coolidge because Coolidge was an extension of Harding. A former Reagan economics advisor said this about the Harding/Coolidge term: "In another 50 years, Harding will look much better than he does today. His most sensational move was to name Andrew Mellon, the Pittsburgh banker, Treasury Secretary, which is why the Twenties roared. Mellon was the best Treasury Secretary after Alexander Hamilton. Harding's second great move (which preceded his Mellon pick) was to name Calvin Coolidge his running mate. Coolidge is derided because he didn't advocate Big Government, but he was Reagan's hero. RR was in high school in the Coolidge years, when Coolidge best expressed the ideas of low tax rates producing greater tax revenues than high tax rates. It was Mellon who inspired the JFK tax cuts of 1964 and the Reagan Revolution that followed. The only reason Harding is reviled by today's historians is that he MUST be entombed along with Hoover (and Coolidge) in order to elevate FDR." My thoughts precisely.

4. William McKinley - Karl Rove, George W. Bush's close friend and advisor, said this of McKinley (which I wholeheartedly agree with), "He modernized the presidency, he modernized the Treasury to deal with the modern economy, he changed dramatically the policies of his party by creating a durable governing coalition for 40 years, he took a special interest in finding the rising generation of young leaders and putting them into the government, he attempted deliberately to break with the Gilded Age politics, he was inclusive and he was the first Republican candidate for president to be endorsed by a leader in the Catholic hierarchy."

5. Theodore Roosevelt - His anti-Trust, big government policies hurt the nation's economy significantly. However, when it came to foreign policy, TR got it right in the sense that he wanted to protect democracies from tyranny around the world. And his conservation policies turned millions of acres into our National Park system. A mixed legacy of unnecessary big government, sound foreign policy and visionary conservationist ideals makes TR just an average president in my book.

6. Chester Arthur - Arthur established the federal Civil Service which took thousands of federal jobs out of the patronage system so that their occupants would not be thrown out whenever a new president came into power. He deserves credit for starting the process of taking politics out of the day-to-day operations of the Federal government.

7. Benjamin Harrison - A presidency with mixed results, positive accomplishments include support for the annexation of Hawaii, establishment of the first American protectorate in Samoa, and pushing for an ocean-to-ocean canal in Central America. However, Harrison's support for the McKinley Tariff and Sherman Silver Purchase Act likely contributed to the economic collapse of 1893--the worst depression in US history up to that time.

8. Howard H. Taft - Though Teddy Roosevelt ended up despising his hand-picked successor, Taft was in most ways a carbon copy of TR. He continued TR's so-called "progressive" policies which further damaged the economy by busting more trusts than any president in history. But where TR had some redeeming qualities which made him a fair president, Taft did not.

9. Woodrow Wilson - Though a Democrat, Wilson was made from the same mold that produced TR and Taft. And Wilson continued the haphazard economic policies set up by TR and Taft. Wilson delayed US involvement in WWI costing Europe hundreds of thousands of young men. He was for a big centralized government and during the war, he seized much of the US economy. His Fourteen Points that he introduced after the war were vague and therefore meaningless.

10. Herbert Hoover - Hoover's economic policies led us to the Depression. Oddly, FDR continued to use those same economic policies for the first six years of his presidency which deepened the Depression. Like TR, Taft and Wilson, Hoover expanded the size and power of the Federal government.