Every time I hear someone in the media comment on "great presidents", I have to wonder what criteria they could possibly use to make the claim. How could FDR be considered great by some historians, and among the worst by others.
It's clear that there would be differences of opinion sometimes big, and sometimes small, and most of those split along ideological lines. So, no list is going to be correct. That said, I did find one (from this posting by Justin Buell ) that has a lot of potential; mostly because it is derived from entirely objective measures.
A couple of observations: I had been going along with the notion that Ronald Reagan was easily in the top 5; only to see him in this list as #17 overall. Was he merely the best in our lifetime? That gives me pause. If in the future we could count on the statistical likelihood of having more presidents better than Reagan, there would indeed be hope for the shining city on the hill.
William Henry Harrison (Tippecanoe) is the best ever. He was in office one month, and thus did not do enough damage to fall down the list. All present and future presidents should learn from this.
I have to agree, possibly even endorse this list, but would add the 44th one somewhere in the bottom 5. It certainly didn't take him long to find his place.
Here is the complete list.
1. William Henry Harrison
2. Grover Cleveland
3. Calvin Coolidge
4. John Tyler
5. Franklin Pierce
6. James Buchanan
7. Warren G. Harding
8. Zachary Taylor
9. James Monroe
10. William Howard Taft
11. Thomas Jefferson
12. Martin Van Buren
13. Benjamin Harrison
14. John Quincy Adams
15. George Washington
16. Rutherford B. Hayes
17. Ronald Reagan
18. Gerald Ford
19. Chester A. Arthur
20. James Garfield
21. Dwight D. Eisenhower
22. John Adams
23. James K. Polk
24. James Madison
25. Andrew Jackson
26. William McKinley
27. Jimmy Carter
28. Herbert Hoover
29. Millard Fillmore
30. John F. Kennedy
31. Andrew Johnson
32. U.S. Grant
33. Bill Clinton
34. George H.W. Bush
35. Richard Nixon
36. Theodore Roosevelt
37. Harry Truman
38. George W. Bush
39. Woodrow Wilson
40. Lyndon Johnson
41. Abraham Lincoln
42. Franklin D. Roosevelt
3 comments:
Why is Jimmy Carter even on this list?
I meant to say at 27th.
Yes, I certainly thought he deserved a bigger number. He started the Department of Education, and the Department of Energy, two of the biggest wastes of time, energy, and money, even by Washington standards. We are however, fortunate that he never appointed a supreme court justice, and he actually did see the problems with inflation, and made the Volcker appointment. Fortunately, perhaps he was too distracted by trivial pursuits (Camp David, Panama Canal, Oil embargoes) to break much.
Post a Comment