Two hundred and thirty-four years ago, if I'm doing my math correctly, a bunch of politicians got together in Philadelphia and decided to start a new country. So, on this patriotic weekend, I think it's fitting to celebrate the Americans who have involved themselves in politics and public affairs: the state legislators and the convention delegates, the judges and the congressional staff, the campaign managers and the mayors, the activists and the cabinet secretaries. The great Americans who served their nation in Congress without becoming president...just to pick a few of my favorites: Ted Kennedy, Bob Dole, Hubert Humphrey, Tip O'Neill.
Oh, and the presidents. And what could be more fun and frivolous for the Fourth of July weekend than spending a little time with the brand new Siena College poll of "presidential scholars, historians, and political scientists" ranking the presidents (via Political Wire). So I'm going to write a few items just looking in at what they found, and using it as an excuse for a few comments.
I wouldn't, by the way, put a huge amount of stock in any of this. I was invited to participate in one of these, once (not the Siena version, another one). The questions weren't exactly the same as what Sienna throws at their respondents, but it was similar in that there's nothing that will humble you quickly than having to produce opinions of (in my case at least) the presidents, say, after Lincoln through the rest of the 19th century. And not just on them in general, but opinions about a whole lot of different aspects of their presidencies. I mean, first of all, Siena includes Barack Obama...I don't know exactly when their window closed, but I'm guessing that those data are about as meaningless as -- but wait! You think that's bad -- try giving your opinion about William Henry Harrison's presidency. Uh, er, well...he was inaugurated, he talked forever, and then he died. Doesn't that cover it? I suppose it care of "luck" (yes, that's one of their categories), where he oddly enough comes in only next-to-last, with the various experts deeming Herbert Hoover even less lucky than W. H. Harrison. That leaves only eighteen more categories to go! The one I did had me rate them all on (if I recall correctly) a one-to-five scale on various things; Siena just asks respondents to rank them all 1-43 in each category, and then they average across categories to get the winners and losers. Everything counts the same: luck, "domestic accomplishments", integrity, party leadership, and, I think my favorite, "overall ability." Whatever. I see two bits of value in these things: one, it's fun to look at (if you like that sort of thing, which I do); and two, if you keep doing it over time, you wind up with a quick and easy (if not overly rigorous) sense of how historical reputations change. The good news, then, is that Siena has been at this for a while, with this now the fifth iteration in a series they began in 1982. At any rate, I wouldn't put much stock in the details of this, as far as it revealing with any reliability what scholars actually think. We don't know how the sample of scholars worked, and I certainly think that the construction of their categories and of the overall index are pretty arbitrary. That's fine; I'm not complaining at all (and I'm glad that they've stuck to the same categories, if that's what they've done, even if they were iffy to begin with). Just saying that this is, as far as I'm concerned, good fun but not much more.
I'll start, in this post, by discussing one Siena oddity: something about their system seems to work against George Washington, who has finished 4th each time. Every other poll of scholars has put him in the top three. For what it's worth, I think that Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt are without a doubt the top three (if asked, I put them in that order, but I'm open to arguments about it). Washington's weaknesses in the Siena poll are party leadership (fair enough), communication ability (ridiculous), imagination (preposterous), and intelligence (just silly, I'd say...not that I know, obviously, how smart, oh, Garfield was). Respondents do believe that Washington was very lucky -- in fact, the luckiest president ever. Well, I'll grant that he was luckier than 'ole Garfield, anyway. Beyond that, I'm glad I don't have to rank every president on luck. Or intelligence.
As long as I'm on Washington, though, I had better recommend Garry Wills on Washington: Cincinnatus. Highly recommended for everyone, but especially for anyone who lives in Washington DC or is planning a visit -- Wills is a brilliant guide to many of the sculptures and paintings you'll see in there.
(Various typos and such fixed)
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query siena. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query siena. Sort by date Show all posts
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Presidents for the Fourth 6
I did overrated, so I guess it's time to talk about underrated presidents in the new Siena College survey experts.
Once again, I'll just by looking at the other similar surveys. Who does worse by Siena than they do elsewhere?
Start with Ronald Reagan, who Siena has at #18 (he was at 17 last time around for them, in 2002).. Reagan's been doing a bit better than that in other surveys...he's been around 10th in most of these things over the last fifteen years. Siena has William McKinley at #21, about half a dozen spots lower than the other surveys. Neither Siena nor last year's CSPAN survey like Rutherford Hayes very much (#31 and #33); Hayes usually comes in mid-20s. That one seems like the flip side of moving Grant up, no? And Siena is down on Benjamin Harrison, placing him at #34 while most others have him at or above #30.
Who do I think is underrated? Well, I've already said that I think putting Washington at #4 is awful -- comparisons are tricky enough that I'm not going to complain if he's #3, but I usually place him right at the top -- and yes, I see a very large gap between the third and fourth spots, so I think putting any of Washington, Lincoln, or FDR fourth or lower is a major mistake.
Who else? Siena places George H.W. Bush at #22, and Gerald Ford at #28. I think both of these men, neither of whom I think was really cut out to be a president, could both be a bit higher. Bush really was a conservative, interested in preserving the status quo and managing necessary change wisely. That worked well for him in the major events of his presidency, the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union. It worked out less-well in the Middle East, especially, I think, with respect to Iraq, and it generally worked out badly for him with regard to the economy, where Bush will get credit from deficit hawks for long-term responsible management, but he did little about short-term suffering. I also think Bush...well, he wasn't quite a demagogue, but I think that he really didn't have much commitment to democracy. That he's remembered for looking at his watch during his debate with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot in 1992 is appropriate: he never gave much indication that he cared what ordinary people thought about things, apparently having as little regard for the activists and grass-roots interest within his own party has he had for those of the other party.
The things is: the events in Europe was really very important, and one can imagine all sorts of ways they could have gone wrong; Bush deserves, in my view, enormous credit for it. He's hurt in these sorts of ratings because ideological conservatives -- or should I say "conservatives" -- have decided to give Ronald Reagan all the credit for the end of the Cold War. I may do a separate item about Reagan, but for now I'll just say that to me, everyone from Ike through Reagan was just carrying out the strategy established during the Truman administration, so if anyone gets credit for winning the Cold War is should be Truman. Bush, however, had a very different and difficult challenge, and I've never seen an argument against giving him very high marks for it.
As for Ford: it's hard to think of anyone else who had worse luck in the situation he inherited. A mess of an economy, the last stages of losing a war, a Congress completely aligned against him, and his predecessor and half his administration in legal trouble. And, of course, no president has ever taken office with less of a mandate from the people. Sure, mandates are largely fictional, but sometimes fiction helps. Let's just say that there wasn't anyone in Congress who even considered the possibility that he owed his election to Gerald Ford. Given all that, I think Ford acquitted himself reasonably well.
Of course, with Ford, all anyone is really focused on is the pardon. I think it was the right thing to do; I think that the trial of Richard Nixon would, in fact, have consumed the nation. Nixon famously tried to argue that one year of Watergate was enough, and he was wrong about that as long as he was in office, but once he was gone I think there's a fair argument to be made that two years of Watergate was, in fact, enough. Yes, Nixon richly deserved prison, but the nation deserved a functioning political system, and the pardon helped that to happen. So overall, on Ford, I think he did well with what he faced, and that's really all anyone can ask of a president.
Once again, I'll just by looking at the other similar surveys. Who does worse by Siena than they do elsewhere?
Start with Ronald Reagan, who Siena has at #18 (he was at 17 last time around for them, in 2002).. Reagan's been doing a bit better than that in other surveys...he's been around 10th in most of these things over the last fifteen years. Siena has William McKinley at #21, about half a dozen spots lower than the other surveys. Neither Siena nor last year's CSPAN survey like Rutherford Hayes very much (#31 and #33); Hayes usually comes in mid-20s. That one seems like the flip side of moving Grant up, no? And Siena is down on Benjamin Harrison, placing him at #34 while most others have him at or above #30.
Who do I think is underrated? Well, I've already said that I think putting Washington at #4 is awful -- comparisons are tricky enough that I'm not going to complain if he's #3, but I usually place him right at the top -- and yes, I see a very large gap between the third and fourth spots, so I think putting any of Washington, Lincoln, or FDR fourth or lower is a major mistake.
Who else? Siena places George H.W. Bush at #22, and Gerald Ford at #28. I think both of these men, neither of whom I think was really cut out to be a president, could both be a bit higher. Bush really was a conservative, interested in preserving the status quo and managing necessary change wisely. That worked well for him in the major events of his presidency, the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union. It worked out less-well in the Middle East, especially, I think, with respect to Iraq, and it generally worked out badly for him with regard to the economy, where Bush will get credit from deficit hawks for long-term responsible management, but he did little about short-term suffering. I also think Bush...well, he wasn't quite a demagogue, but I think that he really didn't have much commitment to democracy. That he's remembered for looking at his watch during his debate with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot in 1992 is appropriate: he never gave much indication that he cared what ordinary people thought about things, apparently having as little regard for the activists and grass-roots interest within his own party has he had for those of the other party.
The things is: the events in Europe was really very important, and one can imagine all sorts of ways they could have gone wrong; Bush deserves, in my view, enormous credit for it. He's hurt in these sorts of ratings because ideological conservatives -- or should I say "conservatives" -- have decided to give Ronald Reagan all the credit for the end of the Cold War. I may do a separate item about Reagan, but for now I'll just say that to me, everyone from Ike through Reagan was just carrying out the strategy established during the Truman administration, so if anyone gets credit for winning the Cold War is should be Truman. Bush, however, had a very different and difficult challenge, and I've never seen an argument against giving him very high marks for it.
As for Ford: it's hard to think of anyone else who had worse luck in the situation he inherited. A mess of an economy, the last stages of losing a war, a Congress completely aligned against him, and his predecessor and half his administration in legal trouble. And, of course, no president has ever taken office with less of a mandate from the people. Sure, mandates are largely fictional, but sometimes fiction helps. Let's just say that there wasn't anyone in Congress who even considered the possibility that he owed his election to Gerald Ford. Given all that, I think Ford acquitted himself reasonably well.
Of course, with Ford, all anyone is really focused on is the pardon. I think it was the right thing to do; I think that the trial of Richard Nixon would, in fact, have consumed the nation. Nixon famously tried to argue that one year of Watergate was enough, and he was wrong about that as long as he was in office, but once he was gone I think there's a fair argument to be made that two years of Watergate was, in fact, enough. Yes, Nixon richly deserved prison, but the nation deserved a functioning political system, and the pardon helped that to happen. So overall, on Ford, I think he did well with what he faced, and that's really all anyone can ask of a president.
Presidents for the Fourth Johnson/Jackson
Andrew Jackson's stock is falling. New Deal historians loved Jackson, which makes sense in the same way that it makes sense that they loved Woodrow Wilson. As the Democratic Party moved away from its traditional defense of bigotry, however, loving Wilson and Jackson has become far more problematic for newer generations of historians. Jackson used to be a great president, finishing comfortably in the top ten in these sorts of surveys; Siena College now has him in the next tier down, at #14, which is consistent with where others have placed him recently. In Siena's categories, Jackson scores very high on Leadership (#5), Party Leadership (#2), and Executive Ability (#6); he's at the low end on Ability to Compromise (#38), the economy (#28), and low on Integrity and Intelligence (#23, on each).
Lyndon Johnson has settled in more or less in the same area. He's 16th in Siena's survey;.in the fourteen such surveys in wikipedia's entry, he's as high as 10th and as low as 18th. Within the rankings, however, Johnson is like Jackson, with plenty of extremes. Siena has him the very best at Relationship with Congress, and third at Party Leadership. He's 5th in Domestic Accomplishments. On the other hand...he's dead last in Foreign Policy Accomplishments, 37th in "Avoid Crucial Mistakes," 34th in Integrity.
Let's see...first of all, on LBJ, I think the party leadership score is way too high; they don't (at least in their release) define what "Relationship with Congress" means but it deteriorated pretty badly by the end, so I'm not sure that I'd put it in the top ten -- although he obviously had as much legislative success as any other president. Again, it's how you define the terms, and how you count things.
Which is sort of my overall point in this post. Granted, this is just a parlor game to begin with, but even as a parlor game it basically breaks down when you try to deal with these two presidents. How do you average out Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Immigration...and Vietnam? How do you average out the achievement of, well, Jacksonian democracy, with all that that implies, positive and negative? Yes, Siena includes a category for "integrity," but there's no category for "Actions of a Moral Monster" -- and if there were, how would you weigh it?
So I can't say that either Jackson or Johnson is overrated, or underrated...they just don't work in the Rating the Presidents Game, as far as I can tell.
Lyndon Johnson has settled in more or less in the same area. He's 16th in Siena's survey;.in the fourteen such surveys in wikipedia's entry, he's as high as 10th and as low as 18th. Within the rankings, however, Johnson is like Jackson, with plenty of extremes. Siena has him the very best at Relationship with Congress, and third at Party Leadership. He's 5th in Domestic Accomplishments. On the other hand...he's dead last in Foreign Policy Accomplishments, 37th in "Avoid Crucial Mistakes," 34th in Integrity.
Let's see...first of all, on LBJ, I think the party leadership score is way too high; they don't (at least in their release) define what "Relationship with Congress" means but it deteriorated pretty badly by the end, so I'm not sure that I'd put it in the top ten -- although he obviously had as much legislative success as any other president. Again, it's how you define the terms, and how you count things.
Which is sort of my overall point in this post. Granted, this is just a parlor game to begin with, but even as a parlor game it basically breaks down when you try to deal with these two presidents. How do you average out Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Immigration...and Vietnam? How do you average out the achievement of, well, Jacksonian democracy, with all that that implies, positive and negative? Yes, Siena includes a category for "integrity," but there's no category for "Actions of a Moral Monster" -- and if there were, how would you weigh it?
So I can't say that either Jackson or Johnson is overrated, or underrated...they just don't work in the Rating the Presidents Game, as far as I can tell.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Presidents for the Fourth 4
Who is overrated in the Siena College survey of presidents?
There are a few ways of going about this. I'll start with an easy one: who rates significantly higher in the Siena study than in other, more or less similar, surveys of experts?
Start right at the top. Well, almost at the top: #2, Teddy Roosevelt. Sienna moves him from #3 to #2 this year, but every other recent survey has him 4th or 5th. Siena loves the last two Virginians, Madison (#6) and Monroe(#7); the 2009 C-SPAN survey was much more typical, placing Monroe at 14th and Madison 20th. I don't know why they do better in Siena, but for Madison especially that's consistent going back to the original Siena survey in 1982, when he ranked 9th. Moving down the list, Bill Clinton is at 13, which is a bit higher than he's placed in other such studies.
What do I think? I don't really get TR worship; successful president, yes, but top three material? I don't see it at all, although again I have more knowledge of Wilson on to the present than I do of TR. Top ten, fine, I think, but he's not close to the top three. I think there's a strong case for Madison, as the president who first had to deal with how to fight a war in a democracy -- and I think he acquitted himself reasonably well, if you take the fact of the war as a given. I'll go along with Monroe being overrated at #7.
The big overrating, however, is easy: John F. Kennedy, ranked 11th. I keep thinking that the Kennedy mystique will start to fade, but here we are fifty years down the road and there's no sign of Camelot's pull getting any weaker. Just to pick one thing...respondents rank Kennedy #6 at "executive appointments." Uh, McNamara? Bundy? Really? Nor was the Kennedy White House particularly distinguished, except for their loyalty to the president; I think there were some able people, but they hardly stand out from other presidents (well, except I suppose for Nixon) in the era of the Presidential Branch. I can imagine average, or even above average, but close to the top? No way. Calling his relationship with Congress well above average (#13) seems odd to me, too; Kennedy is much better known for failing to get things through Congress than he is for passing legislation. And given how short his presidency was, a 16th in "avoiding crucial mistakes" seems awfully generous, given the Bay of Pigs -- and that would be without taking a Kennedy-friendly view on Vietnam. I don't think Kennedy was a failed president at all, and one you get past the top few the bar gets surprisingly low surprisingly quickly, but a #11 for Kennedy seems far too high.
The other president who I think is seriously overrated here is Richard Nixon, at #30. Looking at the individual ratings, respondents place him higher than I would almost across the board. Nixon is mid-pack as a communicator (#26)? I don't see it -- I know that the (pre-presidential, of course) Checkers speech was a massive hit, but as president I think he must have been worse, unless you're just giving all the TV-era guys a break. 20th in party leadership? I'll spot you Tyler, but outside of that, Nixon has to be competitive for the bottom spot -- easily the worst, I'd say, in the 20th century. Relationship with Congress? They give him a very low 36th, but I think that's several spots too high. Similarly, are there really six presidents with worse executive appointments than Nixon? Granted, there are some solid choices, especially for those who like Kissinger, but Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Dean, Mitchell, Kleindienst, Stans, Gray, Spiro T. Agnew...that's quite a list. And the idea that Richard Nixon is the 11th greatest president in foreign policy accomplishments strikes me as missing the elephant in the room (that would be Vietnam), and at the same time overplaying Nixon's accomplishments. I'm not sure that Nixon is really a bottom five president, but I'm not sure he isn't, and I think he's easily a bottom ten president.
There are a few ways of going about this. I'll start with an easy one: who rates significantly higher in the Siena study than in other, more or less similar, surveys of experts?
Start right at the top. Well, almost at the top: #2, Teddy Roosevelt. Sienna moves him from #3 to #2 this year, but every other recent survey has him 4th or 5th. Siena loves the last two Virginians, Madison (#6) and Monroe(#7); the 2009 C-SPAN survey was much more typical, placing Monroe at 14th and Madison 20th. I don't know why they do better in Siena, but for Madison especially that's consistent going back to the original Siena survey in 1982, when he ranked 9th. Moving down the list, Bill Clinton is at 13, which is a bit higher than he's placed in other such studies.
What do I think? I don't really get TR worship; successful president, yes, but top three material? I don't see it at all, although again I have more knowledge of Wilson on to the present than I do of TR. Top ten, fine, I think, but he's not close to the top three. I think there's a strong case for Madison, as the president who first had to deal with how to fight a war in a democracy -- and I think he acquitted himself reasonably well, if you take the fact of the war as a given. I'll go along with Monroe being overrated at #7.
The big overrating, however, is easy: John F. Kennedy, ranked 11th. I keep thinking that the Kennedy mystique will start to fade, but here we are fifty years down the road and there's no sign of Camelot's pull getting any weaker. Just to pick one thing...respondents rank Kennedy #6 at "executive appointments." Uh, McNamara? Bundy? Really? Nor was the Kennedy White House particularly distinguished, except for their loyalty to the president; I think there were some able people, but they hardly stand out from other presidents (well, except I suppose for Nixon) in the era of the Presidential Branch. I can imagine average, or even above average, but close to the top? No way. Calling his relationship with Congress well above average (#13) seems odd to me, too; Kennedy is much better known for failing to get things through Congress than he is for passing legislation. And given how short his presidency was, a 16th in "avoiding crucial mistakes" seems awfully generous, given the Bay of Pigs -- and that would be without taking a Kennedy-friendly view on Vietnam. I don't think Kennedy was a failed president at all, and one you get past the top few the bar gets surprisingly low surprisingly quickly, but a #11 for Kennedy seems far too high.
The other president who I think is seriously overrated here is Richard Nixon, at #30. Looking at the individual ratings, respondents place him higher than I would almost across the board. Nixon is mid-pack as a communicator (#26)? I don't see it -- I know that the (pre-presidential, of course) Checkers speech was a massive hit, but as president I think he must have been worse, unless you're just giving all the TV-era guys a break. 20th in party leadership? I'll spot you Tyler, but outside of that, Nixon has to be competitive for the bottom spot -- easily the worst, I'd say, in the 20th century. Relationship with Congress? They give him a very low 36th, but I think that's several spots too high. Similarly, are there really six presidents with worse executive appointments than Nixon? Granted, there are some solid choices, especially for those who like Kissinger, but Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Dean, Mitchell, Kleindienst, Stans, Gray, Spiro T. Agnew...that's quite a list. And the idea that Richard Nixon is the 11th greatest president in foreign policy accomplishments strikes me as missing the elephant in the room (that would be Vietnam), and at the same time overplaying Nixon's accomplishments. I'm not sure that Nixon is really a bottom five president, but I'm not sure he isn't, and I think he's easily a bottom ten president.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Presidents for the Fourth 2
Oh, Ta-Nehisi Coates is gonna like this...guess which president's stock has improved the most since the last Siena College survey? That's right, it's Ulysses S. Grant.
Grant was close to the bottom in the first three Siena polls (1982, 1990, 1994), beating out just three presidents each time. In the 2002 edition, he moved up the 35th (of 42). Now, he's escaped the ranks of the failed presidents entirely, rising to a respectable 26th. This matches what other surveys have been showing. The very first such study, conducted in 1948 by Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., had Grant second-to-last, and up until recently he was invariably a bottom-five choice. Now, with Siena joining the crowd, he's a mid-pack president. Siena's respondents docked him for his executive appointments and executive ability, and didn't really give him strong marks anywhere, with it all averaging out to 26th place.
I have to admit that I probably know more about the historiography here than about the actual history of the Grant presidency. The historiography is straightforward: Southern-dominated history cast Grant as the scapegoat for pretty much everything. Grant was uncouth and brutal while Lee was civilized and tragic. Grant spent eight years drunk while crooks raided the treasury and crazies took revenge on the South. Something like that. Lincoln was sainted -- that almost couldn't be helped -- but his death left the presidency in the hands of buffoons who allowed the greedy carpetbaggers and clown-like (at best) ex-slaves to punish the South even more over that tariff-dispute thing that tragically divided honorable Americans.
Of course, that was all nonsense, and it's finally starting to recede, and with that Grant's ratings are improving. I have only the vaguest of notions, however, about where he really should be in this sort of ranking. My geuss is that I'd probably wind up putting him somewhat higher, somewhere in the broad range of 13th-22nd, if I was doing a ranking right now, but I'd be stabbing at it..
The obvious recommendations for Grant are his memoirs, which I haven't read, and TNC"s recent series of posts as he was reading the memoirs, which I have (links to the last one, I'm not aware of any index, alas). But really, since what interests me in this post is the historiography, there's only one place to send you: you really have to watch Birth of a Nation. It's all you think it is...you just have to watch it, and understand that it was White House-sanctioned history, of a piece with most grade school and high school American history texts, and not the ravings of some loony remnant faction.
Grant was close to the bottom in the first three Siena polls (1982, 1990, 1994), beating out just three presidents each time. In the 2002 edition, he moved up the 35th (of 42). Now, he's escaped the ranks of the failed presidents entirely, rising to a respectable 26th. This matches what other surveys have been showing. The very first such study, conducted in 1948 by Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., had Grant second-to-last, and up until recently he was invariably a bottom-five choice. Now, with Siena joining the crowd, he's a mid-pack president. Siena's respondents docked him for his executive appointments and executive ability, and didn't really give him strong marks anywhere, with it all averaging out to 26th place.
I have to admit that I probably know more about the historiography here than about the actual history of the Grant presidency. The historiography is straightforward: Southern-dominated history cast Grant as the scapegoat for pretty much everything. Grant was uncouth and brutal while Lee was civilized and tragic. Grant spent eight years drunk while crooks raided the treasury and crazies took revenge on the South. Something like that. Lincoln was sainted -- that almost couldn't be helped -- but his death left the presidency in the hands of buffoons who allowed the greedy carpetbaggers and clown-like (at best) ex-slaves to punish the South even more over that tariff-dispute thing that tragically divided honorable Americans.
Of course, that was all nonsense, and it's finally starting to recede, and with that Grant's ratings are improving. I have only the vaguest of notions, however, about where he really should be in this sort of ranking. My geuss is that I'd probably wind up putting him somewhat higher, somewhere in the broad range of 13th-22nd, if I was doing a ranking right now, but I'd be stabbing at it..
The obvious recommendations for Grant are his memoirs, which I haven't read, and TNC"s recent series of posts as he was reading the memoirs, which I have (links to the last one, I'm not aware of any index, alas). But really, since what interests me in this post is the historiography, there's only one place to send you: you really have to watch Birth of a Nation. It's all you think it is...you just have to watch it, and understand that it was White House-sanctioned history, of a piece with most grade school and high school American history texts, and not the ravings of some loony remnant faction.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Are Govs Better Presidents?
In his complaint about Barack Obama's failures on executive appointments, Brad DeLong says:
The details: I looked at the modern presidents, F. Roosevelt through Obama, because I really do think the job before that is different enough that I wouldn't expect the same qualities to be useful, especially when it comes to executive skills. I count George H.W. Bush as having experience, although it's a close call (and, as it turns out, it doesn't affect the results). The other VPs, however -- Truman, Ford, Johnson, and Nixon -- I think have very weak cases for having executive experience. They're legislators.
The first check is how the executive experience presidents stack up overall against the legislators. The seven "executive experience" presidents rank 1, 10, 13, 18, 22, 32, and 39; the six legislators rank 9, 11, 15, 16, 28, 30. Dead heat! The former average 19.3; the latter, 18.2 (and Bush I is at 22, so moving him around isn't going to do much one way or another). The legislators have a slim lead, but I chalk that up to JFK's inflated reputation.
And at any rate, as I've said, I think that the exact ranks here are really more of a parlor game than serious analysis...they do tell us something about presidential reputation, and if there was a huge gap I'd be interested, but there are a lot of oddities in the rankings, so I wouldn't pay too much attention to that result.
On the other hand, as those who read my obsessive presidential survey blogging may recall, Siena asks historians, political scientists, and "presidential scholars" to rank each president on twenty different categories, including one which seems particularly relevant here: "Executive Ability."* Looking at it by itself is sort of pointless, because it generally tracks the president's overall rank (no Exec Ability rank is more than six removed from overall rank).** However, indexing it by comparing it to the overall rank may actually yield something pretty interesting. That is, knowing that Harry Truman's reputation is pretty high overall isn't all that interesting, and certainly that he ranks exactly 9th based on this particular set of respondents and this particular survey is really pretty useless. However, it seems somewhat more likely to me that one can really learn something by looking at Executive Ability in comparison to the rest of the rating. So we know that historians et al. like Truman -- and we can learn, perhaps, by his #8 rating for Executive Ability that they think that it was (slightly) relative strengths of his presidency.
And the answer is...legislators seem to do a bit better on "Executive Ability" than they do on overall rank, while governors (and Ike) do a bit worse. The cumulative score for governors (rank - Exec Ability) is -7; for legislators, it's +4.
Is that something we should take seriously? Heh -- I have no idea. The two scores that are really helping legislators are for Nixon and Johnson, and I think those are awful results; I don't think "executive ability" was a strength for either of them. So perhaps the data are just not useful, after all. Certainly take it with a grain of salt. Still, one might suspect that if there was some sort of very large effect, the kind that would make DeLong's voting rule make sense in a contested primary, that it would show up here,, or at least that the arrow would point in the correct direction. So I'm going to call this one against DeLong: plain blog advises you to feel free to support presidential candidates from any sort of background, as long as there's some good indication of mastery of politics and public affairs.
(UPDATE: John Sides, more politely than I deserve, points to some recent research on the related issue of experience in general that I should have mentioned here).
*There is a second category that appears to be relevant, "Executive Appointments." Unfortunately for the purposes of this study, all that category seems to reveal is a massive partisan bias: Republicans except for Ford all do badly on that one, and Democrats all do well. I don't really see a lot of heavy partisan bias in general in the survey, but it sure seems to be there on this one.
**There's a slight bounding problem; FDR is #1 overall in the Siena survey, which means that all of the component ranks must be either neutral or negative (that is, his Executive Ability can only be #1 or lower, meaning that by this method he counts as worse in Executive Ability based on his #3 rank in that category. I think it's safe to ignore, but I figured it's worth mentioning.
I think that the general rule in the future should be that nobody who has not served a full term as a state governor or managed a similarly large organization should be supported in any presidential run. FDR and DDE are certainly the class acts of the twentieth century.Well, I agree that FDR and Ike were excellent presidents, but I also think Truman was an excellent president, and he had little or no executive experience. But since I have that Siena College survey on my mind, I figured I might as well do a quick test. I'll put the answer up front: there's not much of a difference, but what differences there are tend to suggest that legislators, and not governors, have a small advantage.
The details: I looked at the modern presidents, F. Roosevelt through Obama, because I really do think the job before that is different enough that I wouldn't expect the same qualities to be useful, especially when it comes to executive skills. I count George H.W. Bush as having experience, although it's a close call (and, as it turns out, it doesn't affect the results). The other VPs, however -- Truman, Ford, Johnson, and Nixon -- I think have very weak cases for having executive experience. They're legislators.
The first check is how the executive experience presidents stack up overall against the legislators. The seven "executive experience" presidents rank 1, 10, 13, 18, 22, 32, and 39; the six legislators rank 9, 11, 15, 16, 28, 30. Dead heat! The former average 19.3; the latter, 18.2 (and Bush I is at 22, so moving him around isn't going to do much one way or another). The legislators have a slim lead, but I chalk that up to JFK's inflated reputation.
And at any rate, as I've said, I think that the exact ranks here are really more of a parlor game than serious analysis...they do tell us something about presidential reputation, and if there was a huge gap I'd be interested, but there are a lot of oddities in the rankings, so I wouldn't pay too much attention to that result.
On the other hand, as those who read my obsessive presidential survey blogging may recall, Siena asks historians, political scientists, and "presidential scholars" to rank each president on twenty different categories, including one which seems particularly relevant here: "Executive Ability."* Looking at it by itself is sort of pointless, because it generally tracks the president's overall rank (no Exec Ability rank is more than six removed from overall rank).** However, indexing it by comparing it to the overall rank may actually yield something pretty interesting. That is, knowing that Harry Truman's reputation is pretty high overall isn't all that interesting, and certainly that he ranks exactly 9th based on this particular set of respondents and this particular survey is really pretty useless. However, it seems somewhat more likely to me that one can really learn something by looking at Executive Ability in comparison to the rest of the rating. So we know that historians et al. like Truman -- and we can learn, perhaps, by his #8 rating for Executive Ability that they think that it was (slightly) relative strengths of his presidency.
And the answer is...legislators seem to do a bit better on "Executive Ability" than they do on overall rank, while governors (and Ike) do a bit worse. The cumulative score for governors (rank - Exec Ability) is -7; for legislators, it's +4.
Is that something we should take seriously? Heh -- I have no idea. The two scores that are really helping legislators are for Nixon and Johnson, and I think those are awful results; I don't think "executive ability" was a strength for either of them. So perhaps the data are just not useful, after all. Certainly take it with a grain of salt. Still, one might suspect that if there was some sort of very large effect, the kind that would make DeLong's voting rule make sense in a contested primary, that it would show up here,, or at least that the arrow would point in the correct direction. So I'm going to call this one against DeLong: plain blog advises you to feel free to support presidential candidates from any sort of background, as long as there's some good indication of mastery of politics and public affairs.
(UPDATE: John Sides, more politely than I deserve, points to some recent research on the related issue of experience in general that I should have mentioned here).
*There is a second category that appears to be relevant, "Executive Appointments." Unfortunately for the purposes of this study, all that category seems to reveal is a massive partisan bias: Republicans except for Ford all do badly on that one, and Democrats all do well. I don't really see a lot of heavy partisan bias in general in the survey, but it sure seems to be there on this one.
**There's a slight bounding problem; FDR is #1 overall in the Siena survey, which means that all of the component ranks must be either neutral or negative (that is, his Executive Ability can only be #1 or lower, meaning that by this method he counts as worse in Executive Ability based on his #3 rank in that category. I think it's safe to ignore, but I figured it's worth mentioning.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Presidents for the Fourth Wilson/Harding
I mistakenly omitted mentioning in the previous post that I think Woodrow Wilson is overrated, but I'm glad, because while I was figuring out whether to do a whole item or just update the previous post, I saw what Matt Yglesias argued on the subject:
Now, as for Harding...I think I more or less agree. Harding sat dead last in the first three Siena surveys, and third-to-last in 2002 and the brand new edition. As far as I know, Harding was pretty much of a dud as a president, but bottom five does seem like overkill to me. I'm confident that the Buchanan, Pierce, and Andrew Johnson richly deserve their spots in the bottom five. Beyond that, I think that I'd prefer to fill the bottom spots with more active and consequential malfeasance than what Harding did. I'm fairly confident that Harding was safely below average, but beyond that, I don't really know. But I'm open to argument, here; if anyone has anything to recommend on Harding, I'd be interested in adding it to my reading list. In exchange, I'll recommend Al Stewart's solid track, "Warren Harding", which may not be as good as TMBG's better-known "James K. Polk," but I do think Stewart gets into the head of what it must sometimes feel like to be president: "I just want someone to talk to. To talk to. To talk to."
I think the other president primed for a historiographical re-evaluation is the little remembered Warren Harding. Arthur Schlesinger and the project of post-WWII Cold War liberalism casts a long shadow over popular understanding of a lot of American history, and that project almost requires an underrating of Harding and an overrating of his predecessor Woodrow Wilson. But the Harding administration is an example of the historically rare phenomenon of the civil liberties ratchet shifting in the direction of more freedom. Harding also began the process of raising the status of African-Americans from the low point we reached under Wilson—promoting, for example, an anti-lynching bill that passed the House of Representatives only to be filibustered to death in the Senate.Interesting! I fully agree with him on Wilson, as long-time readers may recall. And I agree on the historiography: Wilson was boosted by New Deal and then Cold War Democrats, who wanted to ground American foreign policy in a story about the total and complete failure of isolationism. New Deal-era historians, too, were hardly eager to emphasize either civil liberties or race, since neither was particularly an FDR strength (although he wasn't nearly as awful as Wilson on either count). Moreover, Wilson's mobilization looks better if you're seeking a patriotic precedent for FDR's National Recovery Administration. One can overstate the extent to which the Blue Eagle version of the New Deal was fascistic, but it's not wrong, in my view, to say that it shared some family resemblance to Mussolini, even if it's more third cousin once removed than it is sibling -- and so if you're a historian trying to Americanize it, playing up Wilson makes a lot of sense. Of course, on the biggest issue, New Deal and Cold War historians were eager to see American entry into World War I as an easy call, thinking through FDR's difficulty in moving the nation to war in 1939-1941. However, the facts of 1914-1917 aren't even remotely similar, and in fact I've never really heard a convincing argument for why anyone should think of Wilson's path to war as a success.
Now, as for Harding...I think I more or less agree. Harding sat dead last in the first three Siena surveys, and third-to-last in 2002 and the brand new edition. As far as I know, Harding was pretty much of a dud as a president, but bottom five does seem like overkill to me. I'm confident that the Buchanan, Pierce, and Andrew Johnson richly deserve their spots in the bottom five. Beyond that, I think that I'd prefer to fill the bottom spots with more active and consequential malfeasance than what Harding did. I'm fairly confident that Harding was safely below average, but beyond that, I don't really know. But I'm open to argument, here; if anyone has anything to recommend on Harding, I'd be interested in adding it to my reading list. In exchange, I'll recommend Al Stewart's solid track, "Warren Harding", which may not be as good as TMBG's better-known "James K. Polk," but I do think Stewart gets into the head of what it must sometimes feel like to be president: "I just want someone to talk to. To talk to. To talk to."
Monday, November 16, 2009
Toast, Defined
Ouch. I don't think I've ever seen an incumbent (via Goddard) polling 60 points behind for an upcoming election -- even worse, really, 60 points behind for a primary. That's David Paterson's situation now. As always, you can never really tell what's in the mind of any particular pol when they decide whether to run for not, but my guess is that Paterson will soon be hearing the call of Family Reasons for not seeking a full term. I'll be surprised if he goes through with the shellacking he's in for if he runs.
Speaking of which, I'll be even more surprised if Rudy Giuliani winds up running. Siena has Andrew Cuomo solidly beating him in a general election, and while it's not an insurmountable lead, no one has ever lost money betting against anyone taking the leap from NYC Mayor to NY Governor, and I see no reason to expect that to change. Giuliani, it seems to me, has plenty to lose here; no one holds it against you if you fail to win the presidency, but his reputation would take a real hit if he gets clobbered in a gubernatorial contest. He'd be a two-time loser, and he'd also have to do plenty of back-flips and other complex maneuvers to square his old issue positions with his presidential campaign positions, and then again with the things he'd have to say to stand a chance first in the primary, and then in November. He's mostly so far retained his 9/11 aura, but there's a good chance he'd lose a large part of it if he makes this campaign and loses.
Speaking of which, I'll be even more surprised if Rudy Giuliani winds up running. Siena has Andrew Cuomo solidly beating him in a general election, and while it's not an insurmountable lead, no one has ever lost money betting against anyone taking the leap from NYC Mayor to NY Governor, and I see no reason to expect that to change. Giuliani, it seems to me, has plenty to lose here; no one holds it against you if you fail to win the presidency, but his reputation would take a real hit if he gets clobbered in a gubernatorial contest. He'd be a two-time loser, and he'd also have to do plenty of back-flips and other complex maneuvers to square his old issue positions with his presidential campaign positions, and then again with the things he'd have to say to stand a chance first in the primary, and then in November. He's mostly so far retained his 9/11 aura, but there's a good chance he'd lose a large part of it if he makes this campaign and loses.
Monday, February 28, 2011
The Brits Rate the Presidents
Via Matthew Dickinson, there's a new expert ranking of the presidents. This time, it's the Brits getting in on the act -- it's a survey of "UK specialists in US history and political studies." I should start off by reminding everyone that ranking presidents, while lots of fun, is essentially a game, not serious analysis. Nevertheless, it's a fun game, and one that I've posted about before, so I'll run through the news we can wring out of this one.
If I had to come up with a headline, it's that the Brits rank Ronald Reagan higher than most similar surveys over in the colonies have -- he's at #8, while the Siena poll last year had him #18. Alas, they love Woodrow Wilson, putting him at #6, which is a bit higher than most, but in my view he's just overrated by everyone. Perhaps similarly, they like Andrew Jackson, who has fallen from the top ten in most recent surveys; they make him #9.
They rank the Big Three FDR first, then Lincoln, then Washington. While if I'm asked I'll reverse that order, I have no real argument with anyone who has those three on top, in any order -- the big gap, as far as I'm concerned, is between 3 and 4.
Of the postwar presidents, the UK survey shows what I'd consider an inexplicable fondness for Jimmy Carter (#18!), and Richard Nixon (#23). Neither has ever ranked that high in an American expert survey. But while Reagan, Carter, and Nixon do well, Bill Clinton (#19) is at the low end of his usual range. This could be an effect of construction...the survey asks scholars to rank the presidents on five qualities, and then averages the results, and Clinton scores extremely low on "moral authority." A different system less interested in that dimension would have him several slots higher. On the other hand, it's interesting that the respondents put Clinton so low (34th of the 40 presidents rated) on moral authority. Especially with Andrew Jackson at 18th and Woodrow Wilson at 5th. For that matter, JFK is 21th on moral authority, so it can't be based on marital fidelity alone (or on honesty with the electorate).
Last note...the Grant rehabilitation stalls a bit on this one, with USG rating a respectable #29, which is better than how he's usually done but not as well as recent American expert surveys rank him.
If I had to come up with a headline, it's that the Brits rank Ronald Reagan higher than most similar surveys over in the colonies have -- he's at #8, while the Siena poll last year had him #18. Alas, they love Woodrow Wilson, putting him at #6, which is a bit higher than most, but in my view he's just overrated by everyone. Perhaps similarly, they like Andrew Jackson, who has fallen from the top ten in most recent surveys; they make him #9.
They rank the Big Three FDR first, then Lincoln, then Washington. While if I'm asked I'll reverse that order, I have no real argument with anyone who has those three on top, in any order -- the big gap, as far as I'm concerned, is between 3 and 4.
Of the postwar presidents, the UK survey shows what I'd consider an inexplicable fondness for Jimmy Carter (#18!), and Richard Nixon (#23). Neither has ever ranked that high in an American expert survey. But while Reagan, Carter, and Nixon do well, Bill Clinton (#19) is at the low end of his usual range. This could be an effect of construction...the survey asks scholars to rank the presidents on five qualities, and then averages the results, and Clinton scores extremely low on "moral authority." A different system less interested in that dimension would have him several slots higher. On the other hand, it's interesting that the respondents put Clinton so low (34th of the 40 presidents rated) on moral authority. Especially with Andrew Jackson at 18th and Woodrow Wilson at 5th. For that matter, JFK is 21th on moral authority, so it can't be based on marital fidelity alone (or on honesty with the electorate).
Last note...the Grant rehabilitation stalls a bit on this one, with USG rating a respectable #29, which is better than how he's usually done but not as well as recent American expert surveys rank him.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Presidents for the Fourth Final
Odds and ends remaining from the Presidents for the Fourth series.
First, I enjoyed Alex Massie's version of overrated and underrated -- from a while back, but I hadn't seen it before. Massie is championing Cleveland, Coolidge, and Harding to join Grant as presidents who are moving up. We'll see!
I said I'd say something about Ronald Reagan. Well, (as he would say)...
Four of the postwar presidents have been the subjects of post-presidential campaigns to improve their reputations: Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, who did it themselves, and John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, who had it done on their behalf. Apparently, it works; I think they've all achieved higher ratings than they deserve, to varying degrees. Nixon's campaign basically died with him. I expect Carter's to do so as well...Carter's campaign is a bit different than the other three, because it's focused on proving himself a Great Man, as opposed to having been a good president, and for better or worse I expect that Carter's post-presidency will have a lot less pull on his presidential reputation as time goes on. I have no idea what to think of the future of Kennedy and Reagan hagiography. One would have thought that it would ebb over time, but it sure seems to be a self-sustaining industry. I really don't know where I'd put Reagan, but I think that the various academic polls are too high (he's at #18, per Siena, which is a bit lower than where others put him). Beyond that...I've posted about Reagan several times, so I'll leave it at that, for now. I'm sure not for long; of the modern presidents, the ones I find particularly fascinating are Reagan, Clinton, Johnson, and Nixon, so I'm sure I'll return to one of them before long.
Is Bill Clinton engaged in a campaign to raise his reputation? I don't really consider his post-presidency to be self-advertisement. I think, and of course this is nothing but complete speculation, that he's mostly just doing stuff he wants to do. Which includes the global activism, but also includes getting to go to the World Cup, and other such events. Unless, of course, you count staying married as something that he's doing for his presidential reputation...I don't happen to believe that, and my rule of thumb for these things is to remember that we really have no idea what goes on inside a marriage, but, you know, I did have to mention it. Of course, Clinton shares with George H.W. Bush and the Kennedy family a continuing political dynasty, so that's a factor, too.
At any rate: since I've now devoted eight (!) posts to this topic over the holiday weekend, I suppose I might as well repeat my original disclaimer: this is a diversion, a good topic of conversation. That's fine -- obviously, readers can tell that I like this stuff -- but it's not careful analysis, although I certainly try to stick to what I know. There's a tendency once we get into these conversations to begin to attribute everything that happened during these presidencies to the man in office, when we know that he does not, in fact, have control of everything that the United States government does, much less whatever happens in the rest of the nation and in the wider world. Presidents matter, but...well, regular readers know what I think.
I'll also remind everyone that it really is too soon to know many things about the recent presidents. Not, at least mostly not, because we don't know how things will turn out, but because we don't know, in many cases, what actually happened. That goes with the previous point we don't know, in some cases, which side of a fight a president was really on. Of course, sometimes we never really can know, but there are plenty of times that new studies add quite a bit to our original understandings of what a president was up to.
Oh, last thing, before the weekend is over: so far at least, there have been some excellent discussions in the comments to these posts. I recommend peeking into them, and please join in, especially if you are a student of any of these presidents. And thanks to all those who have participated; with only a few exceptions, the conversation has been not only interesting but civil. My only requests are to please be respectful to other posters, and, if you don't mind, please give yourself some name -- even if you want to be anonymous, it's easier for everyone if you pick something to call yourself.
And once again, I hope everyone (or at least, I guess, all the American citizens here) had a great holiday. Happy Fourth of July!
First, I enjoyed Alex Massie's version of overrated and underrated -- from a while back, but I hadn't seen it before. Massie is championing Cleveland, Coolidge, and Harding to join Grant as presidents who are moving up. We'll see!
I said I'd say something about Ronald Reagan. Well, (as he would say)...
Four of the postwar presidents have been the subjects of post-presidential campaigns to improve their reputations: Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, who did it themselves, and John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, who had it done on their behalf. Apparently, it works; I think they've all achieved higher ratings than they deserve, to varying degrees. Nixon's campaign basically died with him. I expect Carter's to do so as well...Carter's campaign is a bit different than the other three, because it's focused on proving himself a Great Man, as opposed to having been a good president, and for better or worse I expect that Carter's post-presidency will have a lot less pull on his presidential reputation as time goes on. I have no idea what to think of the future of Kennedy and Reagan hagiography. One would have thought that it would ebb over time, but it sure seems to be a self-sustaining industry. I really don't know where I'd put Reagan, but I think that the various academic polls are too high (he's at #18, per Siena, which is a bit lower than where others put him). Beyond that...I've posted about Reagan several times, so I'll leave it at that, for now. I'm sure not for long; of the modern presidents, the ones I find particularly fascinating are Reagan, Clinton, Johnson, and Nixon, so I'm sure I'll return to one of them before long.
Is Bill Clinton engaged in a campaign to raise his reputation? I don't really consider his post-presidency to be self-advertisement. I think, and of course this is nothing but complete speculation, that he's mostly just doing stuff he wants to do. Which includes the global activism, but also includes getting to go to the World Cup, and other such events. Unless, of course, you count staying married as something that he's doing for his presidential reputation...I don't happen to believe that, and my rule of thumb for these things is to remember that we really have no idea what goes on inside a marriage, but, you know, I did have to mention it. Of course, Clinton shares with George H.W. Bush and the Kennedy family a continuing political dynasty, so that's a factor, too.
At any rate: since I've now devoted eight (!) posts to this topic over the holiday weekend, I suppose I might as well repeat my original disclaimer: this is a diversion, a good topic of conversation. That's fine -- obviously, readers can tell that I like this stuff -- but it's not careful analysis, although I certainly try to stick to what I know. There's a tendency once we get into these conversations to begin to attribute everything that happened during these presidencies to the man in office, when we know that he does not, in fact, have control of everything that the United States government does, much less whatever happens in the rest of the nation and in the wider world. Presidents matter, but...well, regular readers know what I think.
I'll also remind everyone that it really is too soon to know many things about the recent presidents. Not, at least mostly not, because we don't know how things will turn out, but because we don't know, in many cases, what actually happened. That goes with the previous point we don't know, in some cases, which side of a fight a president was really on. Of course, sometimes we never really can know, but there are plenty of times that new studies add quite a bit to our original understandings of what a president was up to.
Oh, last thing, before the weekend is over: so far at least, there have been some excellent discussions in the comments to these posts. I recommend peeking into them, and please join in, especially if you are a student of any of these presidents. And thanks to all those who have participated; with only a few exceptions, the conversation has been not only interesting but civil. My only requests are to please be respectful to other posters, and, if you don't mind, please give yourself some name -- even if you want to be anonymous, it's easier for everyone if you pick something to call yourself.
And once again, I hope everyone (or at least, I guess, all the American citizens here) had a great holiday. Happy Fourth of July!
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Presidents for the Fourth 3
Happy Independence Day, everyone!
Two presidents fell more than five spots in the new Siena College survey: George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, to a dismal 39th and 32nd, respectively.
Well deserved! Terrible presidents, both. I'm not sure that they're in exactly the correct places, but both were, at least in my view, clearly failed presidents -- two people who never should have been in that office, and were quickly and decisively overwhelmed by the job.
This does bring up a point in rating presidents, and I should make my own point of view clear; to me, what we're looking at is the ability of presidents to do the job. It's pretty obvious that partisan Democrats, and ideological liberals, would prefer Jimmy Carter as president to George W. Bush -- or, to put it another way, would have voted for Carter over Gerald Ford in 1976, and voted for Carter over Ronald Reagan, even if they were certain that Ford and Reagan were more capable of doing the job of president than Carter. And they would be quite right to do so (and the same with conservatives and Bush). As voters, we're at the mercy of the selections that the parties make -- which is a good reason to be active in one's party, in order to affect those selections. But generally when I'm talking about presidents, it's not whether they're in the party I vote for or agree with me on policy, but whether they're good at doing the job. That can be a fine line sometimes...it can be hard to distinguish, often, between policies which one just disagrees with and policies that are in some sense (some "objective" sense? I'll leave that alone for now) a sign of presidential failure. However, I do think that such analysis is possible. If you don't, that's fine -- but just be aware that I do think it can be done, and that's what I'm mostly talking about here.
At any rate, both Bush and Carter were terrible presidents...I'm mostly just going to send you to what I've already posted on them (Bush here, Carter here). I'll also say that while it's always difficult to see outside one's own time and place, it's very hard for me to see a significant Bush revival in the future. Is Bush's record on the economy likely to improve? Seems unlikely. Are there important bills passed under Bush that have been overlooked so far? I'll take suggestions, but I don't really think so. Will his handling of terrorism look better down the road? I can imagine (not endorsing it, just saying I can imagine) scenarios in which some of his civil liberties policies are thought to be necessary steps -- but those scenarios would, I think, lead to judging Bush more harshly overall for his failures in his campaign against bin Laden. It's also easy to imagine that Bush's excesses in the areas of civil liberties will wind up thought of like those of Wilson, FDR, and others, as terrible mistakes. And if I had to guess, I'd say it's fairly likely that many of the people in the Bush administration, including the president himself, will be thought of as war criminals for implementing a policy of torture. As for Carter, his ratings are propped up by high scores for integrity (#7) and intelligence (#13). My guess is that both of these will fall as we move into the future -- they're both helped, I would guess, by his post-presidential reputation, which I'd assume will play a much smaller role in future historian's assessments of his presidency. So, yes, I'm going to guess that Carter and Bush will continue to be safely in the bottom fifteen for some time.
Two presidents fell more than five spots in the new Siena College survey: George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, to a dismal 39th and 32nd, respectively.
Well deserved! Terrible presidents, both. I'm not sure that they're in exactly the correct places, but both were, at least in my view, clearly failed presidents -- two people who never should have been in that office, and were quickly and decisively overwhelmed by the job.
This does bring up a point in rating presidents, and I should make my own point of view clear; to me, what we're looking at is the ability of presidents to do the job. It's pretty obvious that partisan Democrats, and ideological liberals, would prefer Jimmy Carter as president to George W. Bush -- or, to put it another way, would have voted for Carter over Gerald Ford in 1976, and voted for Carter over Ronald Reagan, even if they were certain that Ford and Reagan were more capable of doing the job of president than Carter. And they would be quite right to do so (and the same with conservatives and Bush). As voters, we're at the mercy of the selections that the parties make -- which is a good reason to be active in one's party, in order to affect those selections. But generally when I'm talking about presidents, it's not whether they're in the party I vote for or agree with me on policy, but whether they're good at doing the job. That can be a fine line sometimes...it can be hard to distinguish, often, between policies which one just disagrees with and policies that are in some sense (some "objective" sense? I'll leave that alone for now) a sign of presidential failure. However, I do think that such analysis is possible. If you don't, that's fine -- but just be aware that I do think it can be done, and that's what I'm mostly talking about here.
At any rate, both Bush and Carter were terrible presidents...I'm mostly just going to send you to what I've already posted on them (Bush here, Carter here). I'll also say that while it's always difficult to see outside one's own time and place, it's very hard for me to see a significant Bush revival in the future. Is Bush's record on the economy likely to improve? Seems unlikely. Are there important bills passed under Bush that have been overlooked so far? I'll take suggestions, but I don't really think so. Will his handling of terrorism look better down the road? I can imagine (not endorsing it, just saying I can imagine) scenarios in which some of his civil liberties policies are thought to be necessary steps -- but those scenarios would, I think, lead to judging Bush more harshly overall for his failures in his campaign against bin Laden. It's also easy to imagine that Bush's excesses in the areas of civil liberties will wind up thought of like those of Wilson, FDR, and others, as terrible mistakes. And if I had to guess, I'd say it's fairly likely that many of the people in the Bush administration, including the president himself, will be thought of as war criminals for implementing a policy of torture. As for Carter, his ratings are propped up by high scores for integrity (#7) and intelligence (#13). My guess is that both of these will fall as we move into the future -- they're both helped, I would guess, by his post-presidential reputation, which I'd assume will play a much smaller role in future historian's assessments of his presidency. So, yes, I'm going to guess that Carter and Bush will continue to be safely in the bottom fifteen for some time.
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