Just in time for Presidents Day we have a chance to spend some of this National holiday learning about our former presidents and their place in history.
CSPANs Historians Presidential Leadership Survey.
Timed for Presidents Day 2009, C-SPAN today releases the results of its second Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership, in which a cross-section of 65 presidential historians ranked the 42 former occupants of the White House on ten attributes of leadership.
Major headlines of the survey include:
Abraham Lincoln Retains Top Position;
Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton Advance Since 2000 Survey; George W. Bush Ranks 36th Overall By Historians
Join me over the fold for more details.
As in 2000, C-SPAN was guided in this effort by a team of academic advisors:
Dr. Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University; Dr. Edna Greene Medford, Associate Professor of History, Howard University; and Richard Norton Smith, Scholar in Residence at George Mason University. The team approved the ten criteria, which were the same used in C-SPAN’s 2000 Survey, reviewed the list of invited participants, and supervised the reporting of the results. Harvey C. Mansfield, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government at Harvard, also consulted on the names of invited historians with an overall goal of geographic, demographic, and ideological diversity.
This isn't a poll, it's a survey. CSPAN did not ask the rabble, in other words they didnt ask us, but rather asked 65 presidential historians. The methodology of the survey is as such:
C-SPAN’s academic advisors devised a survey in which participants used a one ("not effective") to ten ("very effective") scale to rate each president on ten qualities of presidential leadership: "Public Persuasion," "Crisis Leadership," "Economic Management," "Moral Authority," "International Relations," "Administrative Skills," "Relations with Congress," "Vision/Setting An Agenda," "Pursued Equal Justice for All," and "Performance Within the Context of His Times."
Surveys were distributed to 147 historians and other professional observers of the presidency, drawn from a database of C-SPAN's programming, augmented by suggestions from the academic advisors. Sixty-five agreed to participate. Participants were guaranteed that individual survey results remain confidential. Survey responses were tabulated by averaging all responses in a given category for each president. Each of the ten categories was given equal weighting in the total scores. Overseeing the 2000 and 2009 tabulations were C-SPAN CFO Robert Kennedy and Dr. Robert Browning, a political scientist who serves as director of the C-SPAN archives.
Historian Survey Results
Bill Clinton
2009 2000
Total Score 605 539
Overall Rank 15 21
Categories Score Ranking
2009 2000
Public Persuasion 74.3 10 11
Crisis Leadership 60.5 15 20
Economic Management 76.7 3 5
Moral Authority 28.9 37 41
International Relations 64.1 16 21
Administrative Skills 58.0 20 21
Relations with Congress 51.1 19 36
Vision / Setting an Agenda 57.4 15 22
Pursued Equal Justice For All 73.0 4 5
Performance Within Context of Times 60.7 16 21
George W. Bush
2009 2000
Total Score 362 NA
Overall Rank 36 NA
Categories Score Ranking
2009 2000
Public Persuasion 34.8 36 NA
Crisis Leadership 45.2 25 NA
Economic Management 25.3 40 NA
Moral Authority 34.4 35 NA
International Relations 30.7 41 NA
Administrative Skills 34.2 37 NA
Relations with Congress 39.7 36 NA
Vision / Setting an Agenda 44.2 25 NA
Pursued Equal Justice For All 39.8 24 NA
Performance Within Context of Times 33.9 36 NA
President's Name 2009FinalScore Overall Ranking
2009 2000
Abraham Lincoln 902 1 1
George Washington 854 2 3
Franklin D. Roosevelt 837 3 2
Theodore Roosevelt 781 4 4
Harry S. Truman 708 5 5
John F. Kennedy 701 6 8
Thomas Jefferson 698 7 7
Dwight D. Eisenhower 689 8 9
Woodrow Wilson 683 9 6
Ronald Reagan 671 10 11
Lyndon B. Johnson 641 11 10
James K. Polk 606 12 12
Andrew Jackson 606 13 13
James Monroe 605 14 14
Bill Clinton 605 15 21
William McKinley 599 16 15
John Adams 545 17 16
George H. W. Bush 542 18 20
John Quincy Adams 542 19 19
James Madison 535 20 18
Grover Cleveland 523 21 17
Gerald R. Ford 509 22 23
Ulysses S. Grant 490 23 33
William Howard Taft 485 24 24
Jimmy Carter 474 25 22
Calvin Coolidge 469 26 27
Richard M. Nixon 450 27 25
James A. Garfield 445 28 29
Zachary Taylor 443 29 28
Benjamin Harrison 442 30 31
Martin Van Buren 435 31 30
Chester A. Arthur 420 32 32
Rutherford B. Hayes 409 33 26
Herbert Hoover 389 34 34
John Tyler 372 35 36
George W. Bush 362 36 NA
Millard Fillmore 351 37 35
Warren G. Harding 327 38 38
William Henry Harrison 324 39 37
Franklin D. Pierce 287 40 39
Andrew Johnson 258 41 40
James Buchanan 227 42 41
Historian Richard Norton Smith:
Bill Clinton and Ulysses S. Grant aren't often mentioned in the same sentence - until now. Participants in the latest C-SPAN survey of presidential historians have boosted each man significantly higher than in the original survey conducted in 2000. All of which goes to show two things: the fluidity with which presidential reputations are judged, and the difficulty of assessing any president who has only just recently left office...
Historian Dr. Douglas Brinkley:
As much as is possible, we created a poll that was non-partisan, judicious and fair minded, and it’s fitting that for the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln that he remains at the top of these presidential rankings
Historian Dr. Edna Medford:
How we rank our presidents is, to a large extent, influenced by our own times. Today’s concerns shape our views of the past, be it in the area of foreign policy, managing the economy, or human rights. The survey results also reinforce the idea that history is less about agreed-upon facts than about perceptions of who we are as a nation and how our leaders have either enhanced or tarnished that image we have of ourselves. Lincoln continues to rank at the top in all categories because he is perceived to embody the nation’s avowed core values: integrity, moderation, persistence in the pursuit of honorable goals, respect for human rights, compassion; those who collect near the bottom are perceived as having failed to uphold those values," concluded Dr. Edna Medford.
