2009 Presidential Rankings

[Heksagon]

To the extent that these lists are meant for light entertainment, I have no problem with them, but (like I've said earlier), I don't think that there's any reason to take them too seriously.

It is not possible in a consistent way to compare the achievements and failures of politicians. All humans make mistakes, so it's safe to say that all politicians have had failures, and most of them have probably had some successes. But any kind of comparing of failures and successes is completely arbitrary; there are too many uncertainties, and (even if there were no uncertainties) the choices that each president has faced are too different to be compared. It is impossible to know what would have happened if something had been done differently.

[taki15]

With my limited knowledge of American History I can say that while there is little dissent about the top and bottom choices of the list, the middle is much more fluid.

For me the hardest to rank are Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson.

Wilson won WWI, was an idealist and economic progressive and shaped the Democratic foreign policy for years to come. But on the other hand he was a hardcore racist who brought back segregation in the federal government, invaded a host of Latin American nations in order to promote American interests and criminalized dissent during WWI.

Johnson passed the Civili Rights and Voting Rights Act even though he knew it would hurt his party electorally, he established Medicare, Medicaid, and improved education.
But he will be always stigmatized by Vietnam and the urban riots that took place under his watch. And his detractrors accuse him of unleashing inflation with his Great Society programs, and that he was just a corrupt party boss.

[kaytodd]

I have a minor quibble with ranking Grant higher than Arthur, I guess because Grant failed to live up to very high expectations and Arthur far exceeded very low expectations when he was sworn in when Garfield was murdered. Arthur was a true political hack who accomplished very little dring his public career but taking on the enormous burdens of the US presidency seems to have sobered him. He surprised a lot of people and disappointed those who talked Garfield into making him his running mate by taking his job very seriously and trying hard to de well. However, his limited abilities keeps his rank low on the list of Presidents. Grant was a great military leader who was not a good president. But with his popularity he had the opportunity to accomplish a lot.

[dws1982]

Many historians actually now believe that William Henry Harrison's death was not related to his inauguration, and was more likely the result of a common cold. But nothing of note occurred during his month in office, and neither he nor James Garfield (whose six months in office did see a Supreme Court appointment, but little else) should've been included on one of these lists.

I also think it's way too early for any historical perspective on Bush or Clinton.

Franklin Pierce was a falling down drunk in his personal life (who went on the wagon about three years before he died and still died of cirrhosis), but I've always figured that his low ranking in these polls was mainly due to his support of the Confederacy during the Civil War. He wasn't an effective President, was indirectly responsible for the whole Bleeding Kansas thing, and straddled the fence on the big issues of the day. I don't think anyone will ever supplant James Buchannan from the bottom of this list, but I've always felt a measure of sympathy for him--he seemed like a sad, lonely figure to me. But his presidency was a pretty substantial failure.

[flipp525]

why is William Henry Harrison who caught pneumonia at his inauguration and died 9 days later even ranked?

Harrison died 32 days after his inauguration.

[Big Magilla]

I find it hard to believe there were six presidents worse than W. Harding and Buchanan, OK, but not Andrew Johnson. I don't know enough about Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce to rank them, but why is William Henry Harrison who caught pneumonia at his inauguration and died 9 days later even ranked?

[Sabin]

List of presidential rankings
Historians rank the 42 men who have held the office

Presidential rankings according to 65 historians and professional observers of the presidency surveyed by the cable channel C-SPAN. Participants ranked each president by 10 leadership attributes.

President: 2009 rank, 2000 rank

Abraham Lincoln: 1, 1

George Washington: 2, 3

Franklin D. Roosevelt: 3, 2

Theodore Roosevelt: 4, 4

Harry S. Truman: 5, 5

John F. Kennedy: 6, 8

Thomas Jefferson: 7, 7

Dwight D. Eisenhower: 8, 9

Woodrow Wilson: 9, 6

Ronald Reagan: 10, 11

Lyndon B. Johnson: 11, 10

James K. Polk: 12, 12

Andrew Jackson: 13, 13

James Monroe: 14, 14

Bill Clinton: 15, 21

William McKinley: 16, 15

John Adams: 17, 16

George H.W. Bush: 18, 20

John Quincy Adams: 19, 19

James Madison: 20, 18

Grover Cleveland: 21, 17

Gerald R. Ford: 22, 23

Ulysses S. Grant: 23, 33

William Howard Taft: 24, 24

Jimmy Carter: 25, 22

Calvin Coolidge: 26, 27

Richard M. Nixon: 27, 25

James A. Garfield: 28, 29

Zachary Taylor: 29, 28

Benjamin Harrison: 30, 31

Martin Van Buren: 31, 30

Chester A. Arthur: 32, 32

Rutherford B. Hayes: 33, 26

Herbert Hoover: 34, 34

John Tyler: 35, 36

George W. Bush: 36, NA

Millard Fillmore: 37, 35

Warren G. Harding: 38, 38

William Henry Harrison: 39, 37

Franklin D. Pierce: 40, 39

Andrew Johnson: 41, 40

James Buchanan: 42, 41