Faves Of Conservatives

After seeing over at Attaturk that several attendees of a NRO symposium had discussed their favorite presidents, I figured I had to go check it out. Yes, Calvin Coolidge had indeed garnered a couple of votes, but at first I was completely baffled that someone had picked William Henry Harrison (You know, the guy that died a month into the term) until I read Bruce Frohnen's rationale for that particular pick. From the NRO:

William Henry Harrison was only president for about a month. And he spent that month in a sick bed, dying of pneumonia. Why is he my favorite president? No other president has done so much to live up to the original intent of the framers, that ours was to be a republic, with a representative assembly at its center and at the apex of power. Ironically, Harrison entered office with the intention of increasing congressional responsibility and power. Unfortunately, his death brought in the Jacksonian John Tyler who sought to act as an Imperial President.

I guess there are a couple of ways you could interpret this. It could simply be a veiled dig at the current Imperial President and his policies, nothing more. But the more I thought about it, Harrison is really the perfect conservative president. Why? The wheels of his policies never had to be put to the asphalt, or in this case, the hooves to the dirt. Frohnen is only judging Harrison on how he might have governed. And for the fact that his ideals never had to interact with reality, or compromise, or scandal, Harrison is really the Superman of conservative presidents. He died before he could screw anything up.

It's an interesting pick if only for the fact that I never thought I would have an occasion to blog about Harrison.