In his latest Bastiat’s Window post, Robert Graboyes ponders the way our supposed experts rate our presidents. Presidents who expand federal power tend to get high marks, no matter how much harm they do, and presidents who stick to the Constitution get low marks, no matter how much the people prosper.
He writes:
In February, 154 political scientists ranked all 45 U.S. presidents in terms of “greatness,” yielding a dog’s lunch of clickbait. The results are discredited most clearly by the fact that respondents (“experts”) placed Woodrow Wilson near the sunlit peak of Mount Olympus (#15) and Warren Harding in the gloomy depths of Hades (#40). . . .
One needn’t admire Trump nor despise Biden to recognize that placing the hapless, doddering Biden 31 rungs higher than Trump [the survey ranked Biden 14th-best and Trump last] represents boosterism, not scholarship. . . . Any ranking that doesn’t place Woodrow Wilson at or near the bottom is best suited for birdcages.
Wilson — racist, authoritarian, warmonger — was a “progressive,” with a vision for a controlled society, so he merits high marks.
I particularly like Graboyes on James K. Polk and Jimmy Carter:
James K. Polk (#25) was arguably the single most successful president in U.S. history and walked away from the office after one term; Jimmy Carter (#22) was a petulant blunderer whom the voters hurled from office like an ox on a trebuchet.
As he notes toward the end of his post, which is worth reading in full, “expert rankings often tell you much about the experts filling out the surveys and relatively little about the subjects they are ranking.”