The Presidents Ranked by Historians

[Psychic Octopus]

I've always liked JFK, but he is very overrated.  He wasn't even a great President, like Lincoln or FDR.  I just don't see why people love him so much.

He was young, handsome, a symbol of hope, and tragically died. If he had lived, he *may* have made that list, but Vietnam could have hurt him and his popularity ala LBJ. I very much like JFK, he is my second favorite Democratic President of last century.

(Tons of People do not know the TRUE JFK however, as in cheating on his wife, losing classified information, etc.)

[Keystone Phil]

I've always liked JFK, but he is very overrated.  He wasn't even a great President, like Lincoln or FDR.  I just don't see why people love him so much.

He was young, handsome, a symbol of hope, and tragically died.

LOL

And he posts this just a few posts after my comments. Classic. I didn't include the whole "OH...WELL...HE DIED AND IT WAS SO SAD" line but that is an obvious reason why he's "great" and a "favorite" as well.

[Reaganfan]

The list is horrible.

What the hell is with the love for Woodrow Wilson?  The man was, even by the standards of his time, a vehement racist (and in the 1910s that took some doing), had to be almost literally dragged into supporting women's suffrage, put the country into an unnecessary war that he campaigned to keep us out of, and completely screwed up the peace settlement, right up to his attitude leading the Senate voting down the Paris Peace Accords.

I also didn't like it how for years he basically let his wife run the country when in all honesty, Tom Marshall should have becoming Acting President if not the actual President of the United States.

[paul718]

I think everyone really admires the Cuban Missile Crisis too, that whole episode is very romanticized in the American mythology

Eh, ok, but that probably only really matters to the older people that lived through it and really remember it.

Listen, I think most people admire Presidents and other leaders for very vague reasons. It's just that JFK seems to take the cake.

Don't underestimate the Cuban Missile Crisis, Phil.  I really think it was the best example of leadership by a President since WWII.  People fail to appreciate how close we actually came to a nuclear sh**tshow.  Kennedy was able to pull us through safely and with dignity, despite the fact that he had a number of forces within his circle (including his own brother) trying to prod him in every which direction.

And yeah, he was right on the economy and the civil rights movement. 

I like to judge Presidents on what they had to deal with during their adminstration.  George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter were dealt bad hands.  Eisenhower and Clinton were not.  While I'll agree that the "young, handsome, Catholic" mythos factors into a lot of JFK opinions, I think he performed extremely well during a turbulent, while brief, time in office.

[Keystone Phil]

I think everyone really admires the Cuban Missile Crisis too, that whole episode is very romanticized in the American mythology

Eh, ok, but that probably only really matters to the older people that lived through it and really remember it.

Listen, I think most people admire Presidents and other leaders for very vague reasons. It's just that JFK seems to take the cake.

Don't underestimate the Cuban Missile Crisis, Phil.  I really think it was the best example of leadership by a President since WWII.  People fail to appreciate how close we actually came to a nuclear sh**tshow.  Kennedy was able to pull us through safely and with dignity, despite the fact that he had a number of forces within his circle (including his own brother) trying to prod him in every which direction.

I'm not debating his accomplishments. I'm obviously thankful that he was able to handle the situation. I'm just pointing out the ignorance among the masses when it comes to this guy. 

[paul718]

I'm not debating his accomplishments. I'm obviously thankful that he was able to handle the situation. I'm just pointing out the ignorance among the masses when it comes to this guy. 

Fair enough.

[Beet]

The list is horrible.

What the hell is with the love for Woodrow Wilson?  The man was, even by the standards of his time, a vehement racist (and in the 1910s that took some doing)

By the same token though, can't it be said that pretty much everyone was a racist back then? He may be a vehement racist by today's standards, but he by the standards of the 1910s he was only somewhat more racist than his compatriots. Yes, he segregated the federal workforce, but segregation did not begin with him. His presidency was only the culmination of a long trend that began with the election of 1876.

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Isn't this like saying Eisenhower had to be almost literally dragged into intervening at Little Rock? Yes, it'd be better if he had supported it from the outset, but of his two predecessors only TR became a champion and only after he'd long left the Presidency.

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Ah, the war. Yet this war the war that launched the U.S. into position as the world's foremost power, and New York City as the world's new financial center. It ranks #2 only behind WWII in establishing he American century. For a lesser sacrifice in time, men and materials committed, we gained more than any other country involved, and the economy boomed. As for his campaigning to keep us out of it-- well yes, but after Germany launched unrestricted submarine warfare the decision to go in could hardly have been called unprovoked.

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Shouldn't the Senate be responsible for the Senate's actions?

One of Wilson's greatest legacies was in the realm of foreign policies. This is a good summation of why historians might consider him good-

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/01/03/woodrow_wilson_at_150_fourteen/

[WillK]

Why is Andrew Johnson so low?  He did a lot to ease tensions after the Civil War...

I think the opposite is true.  By causing such a crisis with congress he made tensions worse.

[WillK]

]

One of Wilson's greatest legacies was in the realm of foreign policies.

His foreign policy was a failure.  This modern love of the 14 points is odd to me.

Furthermore what hasn't been mentioned is his repressive domestic policies.  People get their knickers in a twist over the Sedition act during the Adams administration.  That was mild compared to the Sedition act under Wilson.  He also intervened heavily in the economy with price controls, nationalizing railroads, etc.

[WillK]

Here's the website ...
Grant (Up 10 positions.  Why?  There haven't been any major historical discoveries about the reconstruction era recently, have there?)

Scholarship on Grant and reconstruction has evolved quite a bit in the last decade.

[WillK]

Truman better than Jefferson? Could someone remind my why he's considered such a remarkable success nowadays?

Why is Jefferson considered a success these days?  His image has certainly been transformed since Representative John Randolph declared "Never has there been an administration which went out of office and left the nation in a state so deplorable and calamitous".

[Antonio the Sixth]

I think that it wouldn't be useless to make appear political affiliation of the presidents :

Abraham Lincoln
George Washington
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Harry S. Truman
John F. Kennedy
Thomas Jefferson
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Woodrow Wilson
Ronald Reagan
Lyndon B. Johnson
James K. Polk
Andrew Jackson
James Monroe
Bill Clinton
William McKinley
John Adams
George H.W. Bush
John Quincy Adams
James Madison
Grover Cleveland
Gerald R. Ford
Ulysses S. Grant
William Howard Taft
Jimmy Carter
Calvin Coolidge
Richard M. Nixon
James A. Garfield
Zachary Taylor
Benjamin Harrison
Martin Van Buren
Chester A. Arthur
Rutherford B. Hayes
Herbert Hoover
John Tyler
George W. Bush
Millard Fillmore
Warren G. Harding
William Henry Harrison
Franklin D. Pierce
Andrew Johnson
James Buchanan

So, let's divide this list in 3 groups :

groups	Dems	Reps	Others
14 better	7	4	3
Median	3	8	3
14 worse	4	6	4

I couloured the party who is more overrepresented is each group. So, any conclusion ?

[Purple State]

Higher: Polk, Coolidge, Clinton

Lower: JFK (over Jefferson? Really?), Reagan, Carter, Wilson


To address the above, no correlation in those because Democrats and Republicans have historically flipped, meaning that many of the Democrats or Republicans on that list would be in the opposite campe in today's world.