Letter: Good and bad presidents
1986:
Congress passes and President Ronald Reagan signs into law COBRA, a requirement that employers let former workers stay on the company health care plan for 18 months after leaving a job, with the worker bearing the cost.
Credit: AP, 1985
I read Daniel Akst's column "Businessman presidents gave us the business" [Opinion, April 16] and it is my opinion that it was very misguided to use a poll of presidential scholars to determine who was a good president and who wasn't.
Take Woodrow Wilson. The column listed him as a great president and said one of his great accomplishments was creating the Federal Reserve. The Fed bankers have managed to devalue the dollar by more than 90 percent since the Fed was created.
Also, part of Wilson's legacy is that he let the British and French walk all over him at the end of the Great War. The British and French demanded, and got, such huge reparations from Germany that it weakened the German government and paved the way for Adolf Hitler to seize power. Part of Wilson's legacy is a cause of World War II.
The poll also said that Ronald Reagan was not a good president. Yet, he was the last president to tackle the country's tax problems. He sat the Republicans and the Democrats down and forced the two sides to come up with reforms to the federal tax code that removed many loopholes. No other president has had the fortitude to do that since, and look at all of the loopholes and favorable deductions that have crept back into the code.
Do you think President Barack Obama can fix this? I don't think he has the stature or determination to force the two parties to do something that unpleasent. At least under Reagan, for all his faults, the country did not drift aimlessly.
Does a businessman make a better president? I guess it all depends on the man. But I think you need to find a better measuring stick to determine who was a good president and who wasn't.
David Lorthioir, Sayville
