Posted by
Always To The Right on Monday, February 16, 2009 12:52:30 PM
C-SPAN
celebrates Presidents Day by asking a large panel of historians to rate
the former American Presidents on a series of leadership qualities,
including public persuasion, crisis leadership, “moral authority”, and
performance in context of the times. The man at the top of the leader
board comes as no surprise, but some of the rest might surprise a few
people:
- Abraham Lincoln
- George Washington
- FDR
- Teddy Roosevelt
- Harry Truman
- JFK
- Thomas Jefferson
- Dwight Eisenhower
- Woodrow Wilson
- Ronald Reagan
George Washington recovered from #3 in the 2000 survey, which gives
readers an idea how useless this ranking can be. Washington’s
presidency, and his voluntary retirement after two terms, saved America
from the establishment of a new royalty. FDR, the man who briefly
replaced him, was the only American President to refuse to follow
Washington’s precedent, and Congress eventually had to place explicit
term limits on the office after FDR’s president-for-life ambitions.
Kennedy doesn’t belong on the top ten, either. Kennedy was
definitely an inspirational figure in American politics, but his
presidency was a mess. He fumbled the Cold War badly enough to prompt
the USSR to build the Berlin Wall, and nearly started a nuclear war
over Cuba with his fecklessness. He jumped into the Vietnam War when
France withdrew, and meddled significantly with Vietnam’s government to
exacerbate the crisis. His successor LBJ comes in at #11 despite
making the situation even worse. Reagan ended the Cold War in victory
and restored American economic health, and yet trails JFK by four
positions.
I find it terribly ironic that Harry Truman gets ranked as #5 now.
I don’t have a big issue with that ranking, but when he left office, he
was less popular than George W Bush, who comes in at #36 in this
survey. But was Truman more important than Thomas Jefferson, who
doubled the size of the nation with the Louisiana Purchase and set the
stage for Manifest Destiny? I know JFK wasn’t a better President than Jefferson, which alone makes this survey deeply suspect.
Andrew Malcolm wonders whether the less-famous Presidents have a competitive advantage:
It may not be a coincidence that the top five presidents
of all time, as ranked by the cable channel’s panel of 65 historians,
all come from the era before video clips and television.
Would Abe still be No. 1 if we’d seen a million replays of that
vintage Civil War footage of him hitting his burly head on the log
cabin door?
Or would a bald George Washington be No. 2 if his powdered wig had
gotten blown out of the presidential carriage in a Washington wind,
revealing the shiny presidential pate?
Or FDR, TR and Harry Truman at Nos. 3, 4 and 5 if we’d heard audio
tapes of their candid opinions of Henry Wallace, William Howard Taft
and Strom Thurmond, respectively?
I’d argue the opposite, actually. I think this list is top-heavy
with media favorites rather than a serious look at the accomplishments
of each President. Besides the obligatory mentions of Lincoln,
Washington, and Jefferson, the rest of the top 11 come from the 20th
century. It’s a familiarity and popularity contest, not a real
analysis of accomplishment.