Ranking Presidents
In honor of President’s Day, here is the latest ranking of Presidents by a group of historians. The data are here, with some explanation. Of course, I’d rather see a graph of the overall “scores” rather than a list with misleading rankings.
The graph shows that plenty of presidents are essentially tied, which is why the rankings are misleading. It would also be nice to have some underlying measure of uncertainty in these scores, which would enable us to tell whether differences in scores among presidents are statistically significant. Something tells me that there’s really not much to distinguish (again, statistically), say, Lincoln, Washington, FDR, and Teddy Roosevelt.
I’ll leave it to commenters to note any curiosities, injustices, etc.
[Hat tip to Daniel Strauss.]
Comments
One reaction based on a quick glance: Grant went from a #33 ranking in 2000 to #23 in 2009. There’s either been some serious revisionism about the Grant administration in the last 9 years, or this survey is, well, ….
(The result is that in ‘09 Grant slightly outranks Jimmy Carter, which seems to me unfair to Carter.)
Posted by: LFC | February 16, 2009 11:23 PM
Bit unfair including W.H. Harrison, considering he only had 40 days in office!
And, yes, there has been revisionism on Grant. See the two-volume biography by Brooks Simpson.
Beyond the Founding Fathers, Lincoln (who almost counts as an extra Founding Father) and Jackson, 19th century Presidents do not feature much in the top flight. One could argue that in the 19th century, Presidents were much more under the thumb of Congress and only particularly strong Presidents were able to forge a path much of their own choosing. Of the top 10, 3 only are 19th century, of the bottom 10, 7 are 19th century.
Bit of “recentism” bias? Or has the “quality” of leadership improved? Or is the electorate just that bit more discerning (though it did elect G.W. Bush twice!).
Posted by: toby | February 17, 2009 11:17 AM
I would argue that recent presidents do better because their conception of what the office should do is closer to that of the historians. Being relatively young myself, I think that the historians are right in their bias towards a president that “does stuff.”
And, I’d like to thank John for the graph. I saw Truman listed as #5 and was suspicious, but am perfectly comfortable with seeing him in the top 1/4 (he could easily be #11 with a tiny error bar), or top 2/5 (with a slightly bigger error bar).
The Grant movement does boggle a bit. What I’ve heard is that it’s because of people trying to take in the whole of Grant, not just his presidency. If so, then it’s very hypocritical not to bump up Madison a great deal. One wonders if Madison isn’t actually the victim of the soft bigotry of high expectations, having a presidency that really can’t measure up to writing much of the Federalist papers and shaping much of the Constitution.
Posted by: Matt Jarvis | February 17, 2009 04:16 PM