EX-PRESIDENTIAL CRITICISM OF INCUMBENTS:

Josh Chafetz links to a transcript of Bush, Sr.'s speech and notes that the Times (UK) article (on which I based my vituperative comments yesterday) may have overstated Sr.'s criticism. Josh also wonders whether it's actually been historical practice for ex-presidents to refrain from criticism of current office holders, and whether it's even a good idea for them to do so.

As to the first, there's an article by Thomas Fleming called "Presidents on Presidents" in the November 1992 edition of American Heritage that describes the long history of ex-presidential criticism of incumbents. Washington refrained from such criticisms, and Fleming seems to indicate that public criticism was generally eschewed by ex-presidents until the mid-nineteenth century. But ex-presidents made many criticisms in private that became public, including a series of letters from John Adams to a friend about Thomas Jefferson; the letters were later published by opponents of John Q Adams, in an attempt to derail his presidential bid.

On Franklin Pierce's criticisms of Lincoln:

Like Buchanan, Millard Fillmore and his successor, Franklin Pierce, are remembered today chiefly for their timidity in handling the slavery issue. But when Civil War finally resulted, neither man was timid about expressing his opinion of Abraham Lincoln. Pierce was particularly vehement; the climax of his opposition came on July 4, 1863. At a five-hour rally in Concord, New Hampshire, he assailed Lincoln, denounced the war as an attack on the Constitution, and ended by virtually urging his fellow Democrats to launch a Northern insurrection.

While Pierce was speaking, the news filtered through the crowd that a great victory had been won at Gettysburg. The speech became a political humiliation from which the former President never recovered.

On Teddy Roosevelt's criticisms of Taft (poor Taft!):

But Talt's concept of the Presidency turned out to be utterly opposed to Roosevelt's. By January 1912 TR decided that Taft must go and he himself ran against him as the candidate ol the impromptu Progressive party. In the course of the campaign TR called Taft a "puzzlewit" and a "fathead." Taft called his erstwhile best friend an "egotist' and a "demagogue." Roosevelt, convinced he had found his moment in history, seemed unvexed by these exchanges, but one reporter told of finding Taft, alter a speech damning Roosevelt, slumped with his head in his hands, weeping.

On Ike's criticism of JFK:

When Dwight Eisenhower left office, in 1961, he was unimpressed with the man elected to succeed him, and he stayed that way for the next two years. He thought Kennedy's show-business friends sullied the dignity of the White House, and he was appalled by JFK's deficit spending. In 1963 he wrote a magazine article violently attacking the idea. Deficit finance, he warned, "through history has lured nations to ... economic disaster." Ike liked to repeat the old saw "You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can't tell him much."

In addition, at a speech in a San Antonio middle school in October, 1993, George Bush, Sr. criticized Bill Clinton for mucking up the Somalia operation. The following quote is from a newspaper story dated Oct 15, 1993, by Sandy Grady, called "Bush throws stones from glass house.".

``What's the mission? In the Gulf it was to get Saddam out of Kuwait ... Then you got to know how they're going to do it ... Then you've got to know how they're going to get out of there.''

Bush said his humane approach _ feed starving Somalis until United Nations peacekeepers took over _ was being scrambled.

``They (U.S. troops) took food in. They weren't fighting ... I just hope the mission doesn't get messed up now, that we get into an equation where we don't know the answer to those three questions.''

No awestruck kid raised a hand and said, ``Now wait a minute, Mr. Ex-President ...

Bush had apparently promised to refrain from criticism of Clinton "for one year." The year wasn't quite up.

As to the second point, it seems to me that Josh is right to argue that ex-presidents shouldn't be muzzled; they may have wisdom to share, after all. The quotes above don't clearly tend in the direction of showing that ex-presidents are productive or wise in their public criticisms, however. But whatever you think about that, it seems to me (and, I gather, to Josh) that the fear of ex-presidential criticism of incumbents is based on a weird political sociology: that public criticism is unseemly because it is undignified, and, ultimately, will lead to a loss of public respect for the current commander in chief. I don't buy it.