Putrescent Presidents

From the earliest woodcut cartoons of kings and queens to the latest Clinton sketches on Saturday Night Live, leaders have often been the butts of jokes. Now, with the White House producing slightly more articles of scandal than articles of legislation, it seems like a good time to cash in on the craze.

At least that was what Nathan Miller, author of "Star Spangled Men: America's Worst Presidents" must have thought when he authored a listing of the ten worst Presidents the White House has ever seen. Outside of the obvious question of how you can limit yourself to only ten, the obvious objection of whether such a book is premature until the current President qualifies himself for an appearance on that list by finishing his term of office (in one way or another), should be cast as well.

Although Richard Nixon makes the list, most of our favorite candidates do not, and those that do, seem inserted for haphazard and almost trivial reasons. Placing Jimmy Carter as the worst President America has ever had seems a bit of an unnecessary tribute to someone so fundamentally mediocre, and the reasons cited by Miller are far from compelling. Similarly, few of Mr. Miller's choices have much to do with any significant actions by the various presidents; rather he relies on their reputations and the various inefficiencies and corruptions of their administrations.

Many of the tales of Presidents, which have been long forgotten to all but historians and political science majors. are fascinating, yet Miller rarely manages to connect them and their administrations to a greater political picture, or to create a greater relevance to the present day. Many of his analyses of present day Presidents are overly tinged with naiveté and a far too personalized view of politics.

"Star Spangled Men" is written with the sort of genuine enthusiasm, disregard for prose style, and utter absorption in the subject matter which is generally found in popularized science books such as "Controversial Mathematics throughout the ages," "The Dark Voyages of the Blowfish," and "Space, the Academy of the Future."

Discussing and writing on political topics does not by any means require ethics, honesty or even sanity (witness the ever mentally-unstable McLaughlin of the McLaughlin Group.) It does, however, require a readable prose style, the ability to arrange your material into a somewhat coherent statement, and the possession of some nugget of an idea to convey to your potential audience. "Star Spangled Men" fails on all those accounts, making it eligible for…the Star Spangled Books 1998: The ten worst political books on the market this year.

Now that's a book I wouldn't mind reviewing.