New book grades the presidents from Wilson forward

American president Gerald Ford (left) listens as future American president Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004) delivers a speech during the closing session of the Republican National Convention, Kansas City, Missouri, August 19, 1976. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Who was the greatest president of the 20th century?

Steven F. Hayward doesn’t quite answer that in his new book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents: From Wilson to Obama,” but he comes pretty close.

Hayward, the F.K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow in Law and Economics at the American Enterprise Institute, dissects every president from Woodrow Wilson forward in the book, ultimately rendering a verdict on them in the form of a grade. He also discusses how the presidency has changed from what the founders intended.

“It has become a much more populist office, whereas the founders thought it would be a bad idea for presidents to be speaking constantly to the public,” Hayward told The Daily Caller.

“The sheer size of the office — hundreds of people now work at the White House, up from about six for President Grant or just twenty or so for William McKinley — makes it unmanageable. ‘President’ derives from the Latin for ‘preside,’ like the chair of a committee; today ‘president’ is regarded as a synonym for ‘leader,’ taking us to new destinations.”

Hayward talks to TheDC about his book and justifies his grades in an interview below:

Why did you write the book?

The president is at the apex of American politics for both left and right, and I thought there was a need for an iconoclastic book (“politically incorrect”) that re-evaluated the modern presidency against what the founders envisioned for the office which was much more modest – and evaluated individual modern presidents, who changed the character of the office, according to their “constitutional performance.”

You have graded the presidents from Woodrow Wilson onward, giving Fs to five presidents: Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. You also give President Obama a provisional F. What does it take to get a failing grade?

Article II of the Constitution is fairly short, but it contains the specific oath of office to “protect and defend” the Constitution. My three-fold criteria for giving a constitutional grade to presidents according to how well or badly they did in living up to the oath is simple: do they understand — and agree with — the principles of the Constitution as the founders understood them; were their actions in office consistent with the founders’ constitutionalism; and third, were their Supreme Court appointments faithful to the founders’ constitutionalism, or were they liberal judicial activists? Many Republican presidents did very poorly on this last criterion.

Doesn’t FDR get any brownie points for his leadership during World War II? And was Clinton really as bad as Carter!?

If I was grading on wartime leadership, FDR would have indeed done well (as would Obama so far on defense issues), but I chose to apply my grades only to their constitutional performance. Clinton was as bad as Carter but for different reasons. Carter thought the office of the presidency was inadequate, and he sympathized with the view that the Constitution was obsolete and ought to be changed to make the office more powerful. Clinton’s low marks were due largely in part because of his two Supreme Court appointments.

You give Calvin Coolidge the highest mark, an A+. Why was he the best president since Woodrow Wilson? What don’t Americans know about him?

He had the best substantive grasp of, and the most sympathy for, the founders’ constitutionalism, which is evident in his speeches and his autobiography, few people ever read any more. (This is a shame since they are quite good; “silent Cal” is a grave injustice.)

NEXT: Why does Hayward grade Reagan just one notch higher than George W. Bush?