You know what? I'm moving LBJ to the #7 spot, because civil rights, Medicare, and Medicaid are that huge...Ike goes to the #8 spot...
So now I have...
1. Lincoln
2. Washington
3. FDR
4. TR
5. Truman
6. JFK
7. LBJ
8. Ike
9. Reagan
10. Bush 41
CSPAN just released a truly fascinating and fairly authoritative ranking of our forty-three presidents. The best news network on television had sixty-five presidential historians and scholars rank the nation's Chief Executives according to several categories (international relations, economic management, crisis leadership, pursuing equal justice for all, public persuasion, relations with Congress, moral authority, etc.). Presidents were ranked on a scale from 1 to 10 in each category, with one being not effective and ten being very effective. Looking at the list of participants in the survey, it appears that both sides of the ideological spectrum were represented adequately. CSPAN conducted a similar presidential rankings survey in 2000 with fifty-eight presidential historians and scholars, and some rankings have shifted in the past nine years.
The top ten presidents overall, according to CSPAN's survey of presidential historians are as follows...
1. Lincoln (same as in 2000, entirely appropriate)
2. Washington (up from third in 2000, also entirely appropriate)
3. FDR (down from second in 2000...good call)
4. Theodore Roosevelt (same as 2000...safe call)
5. Truman ( same as 2000...good ranking)
6. Kennedy (up from eighth in 2000, long overdue...)
7. Jefferson (same as 2000, Louisiana Purchase aside, does he really belong in the Top Ten?)
8. Eisenhower (up from ninth in 2000, should be in Jefferson's spot at #7)
9. Wilson (down from sixth in 2000, I'd definitely drop him out of the Top Ten altogether)
10. Reagan (up from eleventh in 2000, ending the Cold War peacefully makes this a good call)
The Next Five...
11. LBJ (down from tenth in 2000, should be eighth overall for stunning domestic policy)
12. Polk (holding steady from 2000, should be lower...Manifest Destiny...need I say more?)
13. Jackson (holding steady from 2000, should be out of Top 20, get him off the currency also)
14. Monroe (holding steady from 2000...benign, but really, why?)
15. Clinton (up from 21st in 2000...not sure why...)
My own rankings wouldn't differ too much from the august CSPAN body of historians...here would be my lineup...
1. Lincoln
2. Washington
3. FDR
4. TR
5. Truman
6. JFK
7. Ike
8. LBJ
9. Reagan
10. Bush 41
11. Adams
12. Jefferson
13. Wilson
None of the others really matter that much, at least not in any sort of positive way...
Dubya ranked 36th out of 42, which seems generous at the moment...it will be interesting to see if he goes up at all in ten years...seems unlikely...
Also, CSPAN included William Henry Harrison in their rankings, parking him at a lowly 39th. I'd argue that Harrison's demise after only a month on the job should get him omitted from the rankings altogether...the poor guy didn't have a chance to do anything on the job, good, bad, or otherwise...
I'd also deposit Nixon deeper in the basement...I'd give him Harrison's ranking...with Hoover and Carter just above him (38 for Hoover and 37 for Carter...)
I grow weary of those who exalt college basketball as somehow morally superior to what goes on in the NBA. There's a certain disdain, an upturned nose, a sniffy contempt among a goodly portion of hoops fans for professional roundball, with the apparent assertion being that college basketball is of a higher quality than that practiced in the pros.
I tire of this hoops hauteur. For openers, college basketball is merely a one-to-two year pitstop on the way to the pros.
More on this later...I'm being paged for dinner...
