The Last (?) Word on C-SPAN's Rankings

I don't know if, as my headline suggests, this is the last word on the presidential rankings published by C–SPAN during the weekend.

But I read something today that did provide an answer — sort of — to a question I asked, in a roundabout way, the other day.

A CNN.com article has summarized the survey's findings — and suggests that it was appropriate that Abraham Lincoln finished first on the occasion of the bicentennial of his birth.

The article acknowledges, however, that Lincoln also finished first in the survey that was conducted in 2000 — so the fact that he finished first in the latest survey does not appear to be, in any way, connected to the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Lincoln's occupation of the top spot may be the most obvious coincidence, but there are a couple of other ironic anniversaries that haven't — as I recall — been mentioned in any of the articles I've read about the survey, whether those articles appeared in blogs or sites run by professional news organizations.

For example, this year is the 100th anniversary of the conclusion of Theodore Roosevelt's presidency. Roosevelt was ranked fourth in both the 2000 and 2009 surveys.

And, in 1809, the year that Lincoln was born, Thomas Jefferson's presidency came to an end. Jefferson was ranked seventh on C–SPAN's list.

Anyway, the "question" to which I referred had to do with why Ulysses S. Grant jumped from 33rd in the 2000 survey to 23rd in the current one.

Grant's traditionally low marks may be due, as CNN wrote, to the corruption of others in his administration and the record of the Reconstruction effort over which he presided.

But a Howard University historian observed that Grant may be "getting a bounce" from the additional attention that has been paid to Lincoln in his bicentennial year.

"Grant won the war for Lincoln," the historian said. "A new look at the totality of his career may be improving his presidential stature."

I still think, as I mentioned the other day, that Grant may be getting more credit for his support for civil rights and his opposition to the kind of violence practiced by domestic terrorists like the Ku Klux Klan. But Grant's role in winning the Civil War was something I overlooked, largely because it is not something I consider part of his presidential record.

I also mentioned the other day that Bill Clinton is viewed more favorably in the current survey than he was in the one that was conducted in his last year in office. At the same time, I observed that recent presidents should be excluded from such rankings until history has had an opportunity to adequately assess them.

Which brings me to a point made by another historian: "Bill Clinton and Ulysses S. Grant aren't often mentioned in the same sentence — until now. Participants in the latest [survey] 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."

Incidentally, there was another major shift in the presidential rankings that I didn't mention in my post on Sunday.

Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who was Grant's successor, fell from the 26th spot in 2000 to the 33rd spot in the current survey. The reasons for that shift are unclear — although Hayes was sort of the George W. Bush of the 19th century. He lost the popular vote, as Bush did in 2000, but won the electoral vote by a single vote after a congressional commission worked out a deal instead of putting the decision in the hands of the House, as required by the Constitution.

To this day, Hayes is the only president whose election was decided in this fashion.

Democrats referred to Hayes as "Rutherfraud," much like many Democrats referred to Florida as "Fraudia" after the disputed 2000 election.

I don't know if this had any bearing on Hayes' fall in the rankings, but liquor was banned at White House functions during his presidency, largely because Hayes' wife, Lucy, was opposed to it. She was nicknamed "Lemonade Lucy," ostensibly because lemonade — or something equally bland — was served at formal dinners, giving rise to the statement that "water flowed like wine" at the Hayes White House.

More Response to C-SPAN's Presidential Rankings

At the All Spin Zone blog, Steven Reynolds has a very brief rebuttal to C-SPAN's rankings of the presidents — a subject of which I wrote in considerable detail yesterday.

Reynolds seems to take exception to the placement of George W. Bush (36th) in the rankings. I mentioned yesterday that I would advocate not including any president whose term ended less than 20 years earlier, and I stand by that. But I'm not an historian, and I was not included in C-SPAN's survey. And C-SPAN did not ask me about any restrictions I would impose for inclusion in the list.

So, Bush is on the list — even though I still believe that not enough time has passed since the end of his presidency to adequately judge its impact on America and the world. In the years to come, he and his defenders may be proven correct when they say that history will vindicate him.

Reynolds proudly proclaims, in his headline, that "George Bush is NOT the Worst President EVER."

Of course, that is a matter of opinion, like everything else in the survey — and you can see the details of the survey at C-SPAN's website.

But one thing that is not a matter of opinion is the length of William Henry Harrison's presidency. Reynolds says Harrison served 32 days. I'm not a mathematician, but, based on the date that he was sworn in (March 4, 1841) and the date that he died (April 4, 1841), I would say that his presidency was actually 31 days in length.

Although I guess — to use a phrase that is famously attributed to Bill Clinton — that may depend on "what your definition of 'is' is."

A president is typically sworn in at noon. I presume it was done that way when inaugurations were held on March 4 instead of January 20, as they are today. So Harrison would have been president for half of March 4. And it was only minutes past midnight on April 4 when Harrison died, so he really didn't serve as president very long on that day.

That is probably splitting hairs, though. The point is that Harrison's presidential tenure was brief. And, because that is so, I've always tended to reject the notion of including him in a list of presidential rankings. I've always felt much the same way about James Garfield — who, as I mentioned yesterday, had been president for about four months when he was shot, then he lingered for two more months before he died.

Apparently, based on Bush's ranking, Reynolds concluded his very short assessment by asking, "Why do historians hate America?"

If one is dismissed as "hating America" because one disapproves of the job George W. Bush did — and that appears to be the sole criterion Reynolds uses for reaching his conclusion — Reynolds must feel very lonely these days.

Bush's approval rating dropped below 40 permanently — and often dipped below 30 — in the last two years of his presidency.

Polls and surveys are nothing more than snapshots of public opinion. They tell you how the public in general feels about a person or an issue at a particular point in time.

But Bush's approval ratings were consistently low. Does that mean that the vast majority of American citizens hate America? On the contrary. I think the vast majority of Americans love their country — but most of them came to the conclusion that a cretin was in charge.

Ranking the Presidents

Tomorrow is Presidents' Day, so I guess it should come as no surprise that C-SPAN has surveyed a bunch of historians to come up with a ranking of the presidents, from best to worst.

This kind of list is always interesting — and debate-provoking. In 2001, former White House counsel John Dean asserted that such a list "is nothing but high-grade hokum, mixed with a lot of bunkum."

My primary argument would be that C-SPAN's ranking includes every president, and, while it is tempting to pass judgment on George W. Bush, his administration hasn't been over for a full month yet (even though there are certainly those who would argue that Bush simply stopped governing — or attempting to govern — well before his presidency ended on Jan. 20, 2009).

I would establish certain rules that would exclude recent presidents from being ranked — on the grounds that history really hasn't had a chance to fully assess those presidents' contributions.

How much time should be given? Well, I guess history is dynamic in that sense, and interpretations of individual presidents may be subject to change long after their administrations end. Harry Truman and Richard Nixon, for example, were both regarded more favorably about 20 years after they left office than they were when their presidencies ended. C-SPAN's rankings indicate that Truman is still as well regarded as he was in the survey that was taken nearly 10 years ago, while Nixon has slipped a couple of spots.

Anyway, I would say that any presidency that ended in the last 20 years should not be considered. That would remove both of the Bushes and Bill Clinton from consideration, although the elder Bush would be eligible in the first survey that is taken after the next presidential election.

Twenty years is an arbitrary figure, though. Based on my personal observation, it would be wiser to allow 30 years — thus giving history additional time to render its assessment. Using that yardstick, the Reagan and Carter presidencies would not be eligible for ranking this time.

I'm going to stick with the 20-year restriction, though. There are many people who believe that sufficient time has passed to judge the Reagan presidency, which ended on Jan. 20, 1989.

Incidentally, for the record, C-SPAN's Top 10 were:

1. Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865).


2. George Washington (1789-1797).


3. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945).


4. Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909).


5. Harry S. Truman (1945-1953).


6. John F. Kennedy (1961-1963).


7. Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809).


8. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961).


9. Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921).


10. Ronald Reagan (1981-1989).

Also for the record, the rankings of the last three presidents (who, as I've said, I would not consider because not enough time has passed since the conclusions of their presidencies) were 15th (Bill Clinton), 18th (George H.W. Bush) and 36th (George W. Bush).

It's worth noting, however, that George W. Bush was ranked behind nearly every 20th century president (the exception was Warren G. Harding) — and most of the 19th century presidents who finished behind Bush essentially passed the buck in the years before the Civil War — the exceptions to that were Andrew Johnson (next to last), who succeeded Lincoln after the war was over and became the first president to be impeached by the House and tried by the Senate, and William Henry Harrison (ranked 39th), who caught a cold that became pneumonia and took his life one month after he took office in 1841.

In fact, due to the brevity of his presidency, I don't think it's fair to rank Harrison at all. Even Pope John Paul I had a longer reign. But C-SPAN included James Garfield in the rankings, and his presidency wasn't much longer. He was shot four months after taking office and died two months after that — but at least he lived long enough to do something while he was president.

I don't suppose that I have any serious arguments with C-SPAN's Top 10, other than my reservations about including Reagan in such a list. Most of the presidents on the list had to face at least one national crisis — and did so quite well.

C-SPAN rates James Buchanan as the worst American president, which leads me to a technical point. There are 42 names on the list, but there were actually 43 presidents prior to Barack Obama. Grover Cleveland served as president twice, but his terms were not consecutive. I tend to think that his presidencies should be judged separately since they governed over two different time periods. But C-SPAN's list treats him as one president, and he falls right in the middle, at #21 (between James Madison and Gerald Ford).

I can't argue with Buchanan's placement, though. When Southern states began to secede in the waning days of his administration, Buchanan contended that secession was illegal. But he also took the position that going to war to prevent it was illegal — so he did nothing.

While it's far from certain, if Buchanan had taken some sort of action to stop the Southern states from seceding, history might have been changed — and the country might have been spared the anguish of the Civil War. So, based on that particular "what-if" from history, I would rank Buchanan as the worst president in American history.

It's interesting to look at C-SPAN's rankings and see what has changed since the 2000 survey. Most of the rankings haven't changed much. In most cases, a president moved up or fell back a spot or two, if that. But there are a few noteworthy changes.

Clinton, for example, is regarded more favorably than he was just before he left office. In 2000, he was ranked 21st. In 2009, as I mentioned earlier, his ranking is 15th.

And, inexplicably, Ulysses S. Grant jumped 10 spots in the rankings, from 33rd to 23rd. Why? I don't know. Perhaps it is because his presidency took a hard line against domestic violence, particularly the sort practiced by groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and was supportive of civil rights.

But his presidency was still plagued with corruption, and most historians would probably say that he was a better general than he was a president.