Wednesday, September 03, 2008
I normally don't do this till February but to cheer myself up from the impending election of Herbert Hoover or Al Smith (oh, sorry, I thought I was in the 1920s for a minute), I've decided to again retreat from the political abyss and talk some history. I recently read a book entitled "The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't)" by Alvin Felzenberg which challenged the way historians rank the presidents as far too dependent on the individual historians' point of view. He is right. Since Arthur Schlesinger introduced the idea in the late 50s, the strategy of lumping the presidents into Great, Near-Great, Above Average, Average, Below Average, and Failure categories requires the historian to make a values judgment on some mythical single-issue presidency. What Felzenberg suggests is a way to make the ranking at least slightly more objective: by ranking all the presidents by six different criterion: character, competence, foreign policy, economic policy, spreading liberty to others, and national defense. By breaking into these categories, Felzenberg hopes to force historians to defend their choices by appealing to facts, rather than merely abusing their authority by decreeing which presidents are the greatest. I like the idea--in fact, I'm going to take it one step further. After ranking each president on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being great, 4 being near-great, 3 being average, 2 being below average and 1 being failure, I have totaled their scores and averaged them out to reach a mathematical consensus on a ranking of the presidents.
Now, of course, I do not claim to be free from partiality in this. I am attempting merely to constrain my natural opinions a bit and hope other historians will soon take up the call. Some presidents ended up statistically tied. Where I felt qualified to make a judgment, I broke the tie; where I was less informed, I left them tied. Obviously, my bias played a bit into that but I attempted to keep it based as much as possible on facts.
The best thing about ranking the presidents this way is the number of pedestals that fall. This country has survived more than 200 years being run by mostly idiots (or at least, well below average) leaders. This is encouraging given the two candidates for this election. The surprising thing is that, while Washington and Lincoln escape unscathed, the normal idols of the historian--Jefferson, Jackson, and Wilson--sink down the list considerably. Meanwhile, the historians' favorite scapegoats--U.S. Grant, William McKinley and Warren Harding--actually earn much higher rankings than traditionally given.
Now that I have you tantalized: I'm not starting the actual list until tomorrow. Stew in your juices till then!
Now, of course, I do not claim to be free from partiality in this. I am attempting merely to constrain my natural opinions a bit and hope other historians will soon take up the call. Some presidents ended up statistically tied. Where I felt qualified to make a judgment, I broke the tie; where I was less informed, I left them tied. Obviously, my bias played a bit into that but I attempted to keep it based as much as possible on facts.
The best thing about ranking the presidents this way is the number of pedestals that fall. This country has survived more than 200 years being run by mostly idiots (or at least, well below average) leaders. This is encouraging given the two candidates for this election. The surprising thing is that, while Washington and Lincoln escape unscathed, the normal idols of the historian--Jefferson, Jackson, and Wilson--sink down the list considerably. Meanwhile, the historians' favorite scapegoats--U.S. Grant, William McKinley and Warren Harding--actually earn much higher rankings than traditionally given.
Now that I have you tantalized: I'm not starting the actual list until tomorrow. Stew in your juices till then!
// posted by The Pendragon @ 10:33 PM 
