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Who were the best American Presidents? Emeritus Harvard Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., 74, asks the question in the New York Times Magazine and answers it with a poll of 75 men described as "students of American history." Among them: James B. Conant, Denis Brogan, Henry Steele Commager, Felix Frankfurter, and Schlesinger's own historian son, Arthur Jr., who now tinkers around the White House for a President who was not included in the rating. On a scale ranging from Great to Failure, five were called Great. F.D.R. finished third, after Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, but ahead of Woodrow Wilson and Thomas Jefferson. Harry Truman, in the historians' view, belongs among the Near Greats, in ninth place, not quite up to James Polk but more highly regarded than John Adams or Grover Cleveland. Next to the last among twelve Average Presidents was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who ranks 22nd, and comes in ahead only of the impeached Andrew Johnson. The two complete failures on the list: postwar Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding. The criterion was achievement, said Schlesinger: whether a President's statecraft was creative, his work affected the nation's destiny. And if it made anyone feel better, Greats and Near Greats occupied the White House for nearly half the 172-year lifetime of the Republic.
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Flanked by his wife and two grandchildren, Dwight Eisenhower, 71, was on a six-week sentimental journey to Europe, his first trip abroad as a private citizen. Cornered by a group of Danish newsmen in Copenhagen, he said he did not intend to be drawn into a discussion of U.S. politics, but when he was asked if he regretted any of his decisions during his two terms in office, Ike answered: "The worst mistake I made was in not working harder to elect the man I thought should be my successor."
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Iranian embassies around the world firmly denied the press reports that Queen Farah, 24, was expecting a second child—until someone thought to check with the lady herself. "Yes," said the young Queen, "some time in March." Two years ago, when Farah presented the Shah with his first male heir in three marriages, he cut income taxes by 20%, and his subjects went wild with joy. But with Iran's Peacock Throne already promised to the tiny crown prince, Teheran took the news of a second blessed event in stride. The Queen says she hopes for a girl this time and wants three children all told.
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Down to the bowling alleys in his London constituency of Streathan to meet the mums and local blokes went Tory Stalwart Duncan Sandys, 54, once the husband of Winston Churchill's daughter Diana, but now showing off his French-born bride of three months, Marie-Claire, 33. His silk-sheathed wife knocked down eight at a blow. Then she looked on with pride as Prime Minister Macmillan's Commonwealth Secretary doffed his coat and on his very first roll bowled a tenpin strike.
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