The Greatest Presidents
Background
The Fall 1985 issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly, published by the Center for the Study of the Presidency, had an article called, "Rating Presidents and Diplomats in Chief." In this article, Presidents are assessed.
In 1948, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. polled fifty-five prominent scholars in American history and government, and again in 1962 he asked seventy-five to rank Presidents within five categories - as great, near great, average, below average and failure. Another poll, conducted among nearly 850 members of the United States Historical Society in 1977, asked respondents to name the ten greatest Presidents. There were three other group polls in 1970, 1981, and 1982, and twelve more individual assessments discussed in that article. So, out of eighteen lists, the results were:
Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt were on all 18 lists. Wilson and Jefferson were on 17 lists. Then Truman on 9, Polk on 7, John Adams on 6, Grover Cleveland on 5 and Kennedy on 2.
In 1956, the popular poll results were: Franklin Roosevelt, Lincoln, Washington, Eisenhower, Truman, Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and Jefferson.
In 1976, popular poll results were: Kennedy, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Washington, Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Jefferson, Wilson and Nixon.
Nowhere in that article were the election results, or voters opinions, considered.
The Electoral College
Because Electoral College vote is the only measure by which all Presidents can be compared, we devised a formula. The cumulative percentage of Electoral votes received by a President, divided by the number of elections in which he received any Electoral votes.
The Second Term
Not surprisingly, the highest percentage of Electoral votes were won by Presidents winning re-election: Roosevelt's second term - 98.49%; Monroe's second term - 98.3%; Washington's second term - 97.77%; Reagan's second term - 97.58%; Nixon's second term - 96.65%; Washington's first term - 94.52%; and Jefferson's second term - 92.05%. Then Reagan's first term, Lincoln's second term, and so on.
Conclusion, our greatest
Presidents are the two-term Presidents. There have been sixteen two-term
Presidents, twenty-three one-term Presidents, five Presidents who were never
elected, and two people who were elected president but were never allowed to
take office (Tilden and Gore). [For purposes of this analysis, which is based
on voters choices, George W. Bush is a one-term president, because he was only
elected to one term. He is the only
two-term president to have less than a 50% electoral vote average, less than
seventeen of the other twenty-one one-term presidents. According to voters, George W. Bush belongs
at number 35 of the 44 presidents so far.]
The Greatest Presidents
Using average percentage of Electoral vote, the list of the United States' greatest Presidents generally agrees with historians. But the voters gave very high marks to two, James Monroe and Ulysses Grant, who don't appear on any expert list or popular poll.
The list of Presidents and their average percentage ratings are:
|
Rank |
President |
Percent |
|
1. |
George Washington |
96.14% |
|
2. |
James Monroe |
90.55% |
|
3. |
Franklin Roosevelt |
88.32% |
|
4. |
Dwight Eisenhower |
84.65% |
|
5. |
Ulysses S. Grant |
75.40% |
|
6. |
Bill Clinton |
69.65% |
|
7. |
Woodrow Wilson |
67.04% |
|
8. |
Barack Hussein Obama |
65.03% |
|
9. |
Thomas Jefferson |
64.71% |
|
10. |
Richard Nixon |
64.46% |
|
11. |
Abraham Lincoln (75.0%)* |
64.18% |
|
12. |
James Madison |
64.02% |
|
13. |
Ronald Reagan (94.23%)** |
63.44% |
|
14. |
William McKinley |
62.97% |
|
15. |
Andrew Jackson |
60.72% |
|
16. |
Grover Cleveland |
58.50% |
|
One Term Presidents |
||
|
17. |
Lyndon Johnson |
90.33% |
|
18. |
Franklin Pierce |
85.81% |
|
19. |
William H. Harrison |
79.59% |
|
20. |
Warren Harding |
76.08% |
|
21. |
Calvin Coolidge |
71.94% |
|
22. |
Theodore Roosevelt |
70.59% |
|
23. |
William Howard Taft |
66.46% |
|
24. |
James Polk |
61.82% |
|
25. |
James Buchanan |
58.78% |
|
26. |
James Garfield |
57.99% |
|
27. |
Martin Van Buren |
57.82% |
|
28. |
Harry S. Truman |
57.06% |
|
29. |
Joseph R. Biden, Jr. |
56.87% |
|
30. |
Donald J. Trump |
56.50% |
|
31. |
John F. Kennedy |
56.42% |
|
32. |
Zachary Taylor |
56.21% |
|
33. |
Jimmy Carter |
55.2% |
|
34. |
George H. W. Bush Albert J. Gore, Jr. (never took office) |
55.14% 54.09% |
|
35. |
John Adams |
51.45% |
Samuel J. Tilden (never took office) 50.90 %
|
36. |
George W. Bush |
49.43% |
|
37. |
Rutherford B. Hayes |
49.05% |
|
38. |
Herbert Hoover |
48.06% |
|
39. |
Benjamin Harrison |
45.37% |
|
40. |
John Q. Adams |
15.79% |
|
Never Elected Presidents |
||
|
41. |
Gerald Ford |
44.6%, H |
|
42. |
Millard Fillmore |
2.7%,H,VP |
|
43. |
Andrew Johnson |
H,S,G,VP |
|
44. |
John Tyler |
H,S,G,VP |
|
45. |
Chester A. Arthur |
VP |
Elected Offices: H= U.S. House, S= U.S. Senate, G=Governor, VP=Vice-President
* Abraham Lincoln actually had 75.0%, but that is only because the southern states that seceded from the union did not vote in the 1864 election. Lincoln's 64.18% is based on the number of electoral votes including the South where he would have lost.
** Reagan's two term total of 94.23% from his two successful elections would make him number 2 in the Presidential listings. However, he received 1 electoral vote in 1976 from a faithless Ford elector. So, the 1980 and 1984 elections were more like Roosevelt's second and third campaigns. Reagan should have been nominated in 1976.
What Washington, Eisenhower and Grant have in common.
Does this list make sense? Is Grant really one of our greatest Presidents, when his administration was riddled with scandal?
Yes. Washington, Eisenhower and Grant all have two things in common. They were the commanding Generals in the three indisputably "good" wars the United States ever fought: the War for Independence, the Civil War, and World War II.
Then, they presided over two peacetime economic boom terms.
Also, according to Geoffrey Perret's biography of Ulysses S. Grant, Grant virtually invented the modern army organization.
Peace and Prosperity, the two winning issues in politics
Why is Lincoln so low on the totem pole? Because he got a lot of people killed. Lincoln was undoubtedly a great human being, a great person; but no one who leads his country into a carnage like the Civil War, which left scars that still endure, can be considered a great President. A great President would have prevented the war. Of course, there was probably no one up to the task.
And why is Monroe so high on the
list? His name is still attached to our foreign policy in Central and South
America - the Monroe Doctrine.
And why is Jackson so low? He committed genocide against the Cherokee Indians.
Proof That This Election Analysis has Merit
Does this ranking of the Presidents ring true? Some might argue that Lincoln is too low, or Clinton is too high. Remember, these 44 people all reached the top of their profession, so they are all huge successes by any normal standard.
But the proof that this analysis of presidential greatness is correct lies in the Winternitz postulate. Washington and Monroe, the two greatest presidents, bracket the thirty-five years when the United States was successfully launched as a nation.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight David Eisenhower bracket the twenty-eight years during which the United States emerged as a world superpower. They were all peacetime presidents for their first two terms. It was only the impact of World War II that enabled FDR to disrupt the historical pattern of presidential elections by winning a third and fourth term.
On the other end of the scale, look at the five presidents who were never elected: John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, Millard Fillmore, Chester A. Arthur and Gerald Ford. What a collection of non-entities, especially compared with Washington, Monroe, FDR and Ike. The ranking of those never elected is based on their performance with the voters prior to becoming president. (A special note of thanks is due to Ivan Trotsky of Takoma Park, Maryland; for his assistance in ranking the non-elected presidents.)
This proves that being elected President is the source of much of the office's power. Electoral votes are the most important measure, although popular vote is a secondary standard. When selecting the most powerful person in the world, having two or more standards by which to judge is a safeguard. So, George W. Bush, who lost the 2000 election but was awarded the office by clerical error, was responsible for the United States being attacked from abroad for the first time since 1812, launched two disastrous wars, and plunged the world into the worst economic crisis in seventy years. These events followed directly from the Supreme Court picking the loser in the presidential race. The Electoral College was not the problem in the 2000 election, it was the solution; but Al Gore was too much of a coward, or an idiot, to fight for his victory with all the tools available.