[Vision2020] Harding & McCain: academic vs Presidential performance

[lfalen]

Ken 
You are correct in saying that Grant was a poor president. As far as sheer incompetents goes it is probably Buchanan.
Roger
-----Original message-----
From: Kenneth Marcy kmmos1 at verizon.net
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2008 13:23:17 -0700
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Harding & McCain: academic vs Presidential performance

> On Monday 06 October 2008 12:31:18 lfalen wrote:
> > It has been said that John McCain was a poor student. It may be worth
> > noting that Grant was near the bottom of his West Point Class. He beat
> > those that were at the top of the class. Roger
> 
> Many observers, both conservative and liberal, rank the Grant presidency quite 
> poorly. One listing shows only Harding and Nixon exceeding Grant's failures, 
> particularly his tolerance of corruption. Grant and McCain may have similar 
> academic performance at a military academy, but Grant's presidency is hardly 
> a positive recommendation as a template for a presidential successor.
> 
> Here are three paragraphs from the Wikipedia article on U. S. Grant:
> 
> "The first scandal to taint the Grant administration was Black Friday, a 
> gold-speculation financial crisis in September 1869, set up by Wall Street 
> manipulators Jay Gould and James Fisk. They tried to corner the gold market 
> and tricked Grant into preventing his treasury secretary from stopping the 
> fraud. However, Grant eventually released large amounts of gold back onto the 
> market, causing a large-scale financial crisis for many gold investors. Jay 
> Gould had already prepared and quietly sold out while Fisk denied many 
> agreements and hired thugs to intimidate his creditors.
> 
> The most famous scandal was the Whiskey Ring of 1875, exposed by Secretary of 
> the Treasury Benjamin H. Bristow, in which over 3 million dollars in taxes 
> were stolen from the federal government with the aid of high government 
> officials. Orville E. Babcock, the private secretary to the President, was 
> indicted as a member of the ring but escaped conviction because of a 
> presidential pardon. Grant's earlier statement, "Let no guilty man escape" 
> rang hollow. Secretary of War William W. Belknap was discovered to have taken 
> bribes in exchange for the sale of Native American trading posts. Grant's 
> acceptance of the resignation of Belknap allowed Belknap, after he was 
> impeached by Congress for his actions, to escape conviction, since he was no 
> longer a government official.
> 
> Other scandals included the Sanborn Incident involving Treasury Secretary 
> William Adams Richardson and his assistant John D. Sanborn. Another was a 
> problem with U.S. Attorney Cyrus I. Scofield. The Crédit Mobilier of America 
> scandal also ruined the political career of his first vice president, 
> Schuyler Colfax, who was replaced on the Republican ticket in the 1872 
> election with Henry Wilson, who was also involved in the scandal."
> 
> 
> Ken
> 
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