At the Weekly Standard, Jeffrey Anderson compiled two lists ranking the 10 best presidents and 10 worst presidents, based on the net opinions of likely voters in the latest Newsweek/Daily Beast poll. Both are worth reading. President Obama comes in second on the “worst president” list, right after George W. Bush. Richard Nixon is rated the third worst and Jimmy Carter is fourth.
But any conservatives tempted to gloat about Obama’s low score might want to reconsider. The real story here is that likely voters are appallingly bad at ranking presidents, and, in a just world, would be discouraged from getting anywhere near a voting booth. Brace yourself before reading their list of the 10 best presidents:
1. Abraham Lincoln, +27 points (28 percent place in top-2, 1 percent place in bottom-2)
2. Ronald Reagan, +25 points (31 percent place in top-2, 6 percent place in bottom-2)
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt, +22 points (23 percent place in top-2, 1 percent place in bottom-2)
4. John F. Kennedy, +19 points (19 percent place in top-2, 0 percent place in bottom-2)
5. (tie) George Washington, +15 points (16 percent place in top-2, 1 percent place in bottom-2)
5. (tie) Bill Clinton, +15 points (28 percent place in top-2, 13 percent place in bottom-2)
7. Thomas Jefferson, +6 points (6 percent place in top-2, 0 percent place in bottom-2)
8. (tie) Teddy Roosevelt, +5 points (5 percent place in top-2, 0 percent place in bottom-2)
8. (tie) Harry S Truman, +5 points (5 percent place in top-2, 0 percent place in bottom-2)
10. Dwight D. Eisenhower, +4 points (5 percent place in top-2, 1 percent place in bottom-2)
Lincoln — great; Reagan — good; FDR — definitely not my choice, but okay, let liberals have their guy in the top three. But hold on here, JFK beats out George Washington? Bill Clinton outranks Jefferson, TR, Truman and Eisenhower? What is Bill Clinton even doing on this list, and how is it that he’s tied with the Father of Our Country in fifth place?
Should we care that likely voters think Obama’s terrible, if they’re also this deluded about his predecessors?
Regardless, they did a lot better than a polled group of academic historians who had both Carter and Obama in the top 15.
This doesn't contradict much with polls from the experts. And that's not to say that the likely voters aren't so bad at rating presidents after all. It's that the experts are awful at it too, particularly with the recent presidents. The fact that historians are willing to even rate Obama–as they do in many polls–is verging on ridiculous. n nAlthough, it is surprising that Washington wasn't higher on the list; he's the president that people remember if every other one is forgotten. Personally, I think Lincoln should receive a lower rating than he always receives. He literally always holds a top ten, if not top five, position. Yet, he committed actions during the war which were undeniably impeachable, so much so that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court–a pretty important figure in the impeachment process, since he is essentially the judge in the case–tried to prevent Lincoln from further illegal actions, but the president simply ignored him. If Lincoln had done all that now, he probably wouldn't last very long as president. In his defense, Lincoln broke the law with the intention of preserving the Union, which might have been another failing, since, just maybe, the South had the right to secede, but that's another topic. n nIn the end, it's not just likely voters, all people are frighteningly biased, even the "educated."
Bear in mind three things about Roger Taney: He was "from" Maryland, he was very much pro-slavery and he had decided the Dredd Scott case which is probably (prior to Roberts' recent one) the most stupid decision SCOTUS ever gave. n nTaney wrote in his diary that he fully expected Lincoln to toss him into jail.
Hey, where's James K. Polk? This list doesn't mean much. It's a smattering of canonical presidents, plus a smattering of presidents still within living memory. We should count ourselves lucky Pres. Obama didn't end up on the good list, too.
This, of course, is why we and the world are in the mess that were in now, have been for many a millennium, and will be 'til the end of time'.
It's sort of like a People Magazine list; but I can see why the names are who they are. Most of the names are recent Presidents, one's enough people remember that they come up in conversation still. The others are those we often hear about (compared to those we don't hear about as often).
well first of all, most Americans couldn't name all the presidents if their lives depended on it. (I probably couldn't myself.) so they remember how bad Carter was, and they learned in school how great Washington was, but they don't remember anything about van Buren or Grant or Fillmore or all those "boring" presidents. n nwhy is Clinton on the list? that's easy to figure out. most of us remember the Bill Clinton years as the last time this country was in good shape: happy with itself, doing well, making money, being a world power. compared to the Obama regime, the Clinton era was the golden age.
People are basically stupid, which anybody who deals with the public knows already. n nElections are basically always decided by the middle 20-30%, who ARE the middle 20-30% PRECISELY because they know the least and can easily be swayed back and forth by the simplest crassest political ads.
The well accepted two worst presidents are Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan generally credited with letting the country fall apart in their watch. Neither made the bottom ten list as most people never heard of them.
Certainly cancelling national holidays celebrating Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays and replacing it with the anodyne "Presidents Day" doesn't help the populace learn about America's two greatest presidents. Probably many now think MLK was greater than any of our presidents.
American Presidential Idol?
I am not so sure about Lincoln — there are a lot of things he did that people don't really know about, including almost arresting Roger Taney (SCOTUS Chief Justice), suspending the writ of habeus corpus (and declaring martial law) in Maryland which never was in rebellion — essentially think of all the wild and crazy things that the left accused GWB of wanting to do, Lincoln actually did them. n nFDR only expanded upon what Lincoln started — the Civil War is when we went from having a true Federal Government to a National Government. n nAnd the problem with this list – overall – is that we don't teach US history anymore. We are far to busy teaching political correctness and everything else to bother. So people really don't know who Grant was, let alone how corrupt his administration was.