Thread by @BrooksDSimpson

My bottom four presidents remain the same ... Pierce, Buchanan, A. Johnson, and Trump, with AJ and the Donald in the finals.

President who is sliding down? Andrew Jackson. Upward and onward? Grant, although perhaps too far in the opposite direction.

Presidential reputation remains shaped primarily by biographers and historians. Ask Truman and Eisenhower. Ask JFK and LBJ.

Who lives, who dies, who writes your story ... indeed.

For example, if Bush 43 gets a biographer like Bush 41 did, expect a kinder reevaluation but little ratings movement. 43 has benefited much from 45.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. did much to boost Jackson, FDR, and JFK, although he never did finish FDR. Robert Dallek helped FDR and JFK. A series of Nixon biographies lead to a more nuanced assessment.

As for Grant, I think people will be surprised by what I have to say. Let's just say that my thinking has deepened over time. Not into writing to rehabilitate. I write to understand. Others can judge.

I think that how we see and discuss presidents tells us at least as much about us as it does them.

After all, when I was in Tennessee I saw three documentary projects swoon over Jackson, Polk, and A. Johnson.

However, I am also aware that imaginative empathy or understanding a perspective can get one in trouble ... sometimes unfairly.

Harold Holzer came close to labeling me a neo-Confederate in a review of Advice After Appomattox, which contained correspondence concerning what was going on in the South in 1865-66 generated by people who had been dispatched there by Johnson.

All I did in the introductory essays is show how certain people catered to Johnson's selective assessment. Schurz and Chase tried to persuade him to change course. Grant sought middle ground.

Describing and understanding isn't endorsing.

Harold didn't understand that. Perhaps he thought I was a white southern apologist, although all three co-editors were northern-born.

But he gave me street cred as being objective. :) No one else would ever imagine me as neo-Confederate or a Lost Cause apologist.