America’s Best President

Americans reflect on the office of the presidency and its finest occupants this time of year with the Presidents Day holiday nestled between Lincoln’s birthday on February 12th and Washington’s birthday on February 22nd. Certainly those two contend for the top positions – both men of good character and essential to the nation in their own ways. Feel free to explain your choice for “Best President” in the comments.

Although others will disagree, I’d like to put in a good word for James K. Polk, both for the westward expansion of the United States he achieved (but I would say that, being the “Western Chauvinist”) and having the decency to serve one term and work himself to death so that America didn’t have to suffer his post-presidency. Think how much better things might have gone if others had done the same. Ahem.

But, I’m here to offer a contemporary “Best.” I say President Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College is America’s Best President today, and I’m here to offer evidence.

First, he has led one of America’s finest institutions of learning for nearly a quarter century and has only enhanced its reputation by his clear vision of what a university is for, in harmony with one John Henry Newman. As President Arnn states in a recent volume of Imprimis, Hilldale’s Mission and the Politics of Freedom:

All the while Hillsdale’s core activity remains unchanged. The job before us is to make ourselves and our students into excellent human beings. This is an activity of joy, and it will make us stronger against any storm.

Ask anyone who’s hired a Hillsdale graduate as a teacher at your local classical charter high school, or an assistant at a conservative think tank, or a clerk at the Supreme Court whether he thinks Hillsdale is helping to produce “excellent human beings.” I suspect you’d get a unanimous, “yes!”

Second, his administration of Hillsdale has solicitous effects on the national stage all the way down to the individual student. At our recent visit to the College, President Arnn spoke briefly to us supporters about an encounter with a student wanting to demonstrate (one presumes) on behalf of the Palestinians (a la Harvard’s anti-Semites?) after the October 7th Hamas massacre. I’m retelling the story in my own words, but it went something like this:

Student [knowing he’s talking to a friend of the Constitution and the 1st Amendment]: “Don’t I have the right to demonstrate?” President Arnn: “You absolutely have the right to demonstrate. What you don’t have a right to do is attend Hillsdale College.”

For the “tolerance” just give them whatever they desire crowd, this is what authentic love looks like. Correction with a healthy dose of truth for the good of the other. I bet that kid is still attending Hillsdale and is getting formed in ways Harvard students can’t even imagine. President Arnn’s response was precisely what the Ivies should have been when their students exhibited such ignorant maliciousness (one hopes they didn’t know “from the river to sea” is a call for the genocide of Jews).

And last, President Arnn makes all the right enemies. I’m not going to subscribe to find it, but someone at the New York Times called Larry Arnn “the most dangerous man in America” a few years back. If you’re in the business of bulldozing the American Founding and its underlying Judeo-Christian and small-r republican principles – as the NYTs and the rest of progressives are – he is one of the most dangerous figures at this American moment – to your nihilistic cause. That's true.

He gets my vote for America’s Best President today. Think what a benefit to its students and the country if Harvard had such a leader. . .