{"id":3772,"date":"2010-02-14T17:38:16","date_gmt":"2010-02-14T22:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=3772"},"modified":"2010-02-14T17:38:16","modified_gmt":"2010-02-14T22:38:16","slug":"how-many-laudatory-one-term-presidents-have-there-been","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/3772\/how-many-laudatory-one-term-presidents-have-there-been\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Laudatory One-Term Presidents Have There Been?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/02\/14\/opinion\/14merry.html?ref=opinion \" target=\"_blank\">an article in the <em>New York Times<\/em><\/a>, only James K. Polk is a consensus top-tier (great or near great) one-term president.\u00a0 All the others (e.g. Lincoln, Washington, FDR) won multiple terms.\u00a0 Polk ranks so high because he actually accomplished his stated goals before voluntarily retiring: reduce tariffs; create an independent treasury; and establish American control of California and most of the Oregon Territory.\u00a0 Though each was very difficult to achieve, Polk did.<\/p>\n<p>Now consider President Obama\u2019s pledge to be a one-term president, even if it means pursuing the \u201cright\u201d policies for America, despite a majority of Americans opposing him.\u00a0 Such a statement misreads Polk\u2019s lesson.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>All this suggests a false dichotomy underlying Mr. Obama\u2019s expressed resolve to render his presidential decisions without regard to his re-election chances \u2014 as if the choice were between political popularity and governmental success. A better approach for any chief executive is to assume that, in presidential politics, as in retailing, the customer is always right, and that the electorate\u2019s verdict will be consonant with history\u2019s consensus. Thus, the aim of every historically minded president, Mr. Obama included, should be to pursue a second term by bundling up voter sentiment into a collection of policies and programs that succeed in the crucial areas most on the minds of the American people.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Obama can certainly anticipate a one-term fate if he gets crosswise with his citizens. And if that happens, it isn\u2019t likely that on future President\u2019s Days he will ever be remembered as a great chief executive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to an article in the New York Times, only James K. Polk is a consensus top-tier (great or near great) one-term president.\u00a0 All the others (e.g. Lincoln, Washington, FDR) won multiple terms.\u00a0 Polk ranks so high because he actually accomplished his stated goals before voluntarily retiring: reduce tariffs; create an independent treasury; and establish [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,855],"class_list":["post-3772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-james-k-polk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3772"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3779,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3772\/revisions\/3779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}