My Assessments of Presidential Greatness Based on Historical Rankings, Part 1: Introduction and Adams to Van Buren

 

Last week a group of historians working for a project known as ‘Presidential Greatness’ released their most recent ranking of the 46 men who have served in the White House since Washington. I have some opinion on that ranking – but they’re not what you think.

As I am from a family of historians and a student of history myself, I am very aware of how the opinions of Presidents can change in the course of time. I also know that trying to view the past through a modern lens is not the correct way to do things. And I am also aware that the nostalgia factor has often been a major factor in how we view the past – even the recent past.

I’ve been aware of rankings of Presidents from a ridiculously early age. At some point, probably when I wasn’t out of second grade, I was given a children’s book called the Pop-Up Book of Presidents. That book did exactly what you would think, but in the back was a listing of the forty Presidents who had served to that point (Reagan had just been elected to his second term) and how historians chose to rank them. What I found notable – and was few historians have done since – is that whoever did so chose to stop after Eisenhower’s presidency. Perhaps they felt, rightly, that not enough time had gone by to fairly rank the most recent crop of Presidents, even when in the case of someone like Richard Nixon, it seemed obvious what kind of President he had been.

Every ranking of Presidents that has happened since has not used these same standards, which I truly believe is a mistake. Barack Obama’s presidency ended less than seven years ago. Now I know how horrible the past seven years have felt like to many Americans and I realize the nostalgia factor is great within them. But the idea that somehow Barack Obama is the seventh greatest President in history. I don’t think Obama thinks that and he knows that in his heart of hearts, he doesn’t deserve to be ranks ahead of, among others, Eisenhower and Woodrow Wilson.

I knew, when I saw the most recent ranking of the Presidents, that I was going to have to weigh in and this article is going to do just that. But before I get started, I have to tell you what I won’t be doing:

1.      No matter what people think, I think we need to wait longer than twenty years to determine the true legacy of Presidents. So this ranking will including none of the four Presidents who have served in this century. (And for the record, including Biden in that ranking at all, should have not been done. We certainly don’t historically rank a President before their Presidency is over.)

2.    I have no dispute at all with the five Presidents that are ranked by the survey as the greatest. Lincoln, FDR, Washington have always been the three greatest of Presidents and Teddy Roosevelt and Jefferson have always been changing four or five ever since. I see no reason to split hairs on this.

3.     William Henry Harrison and James Garfield are ranked. Harrison gave died 31 days after being sworn in; Garfield was shot within two months of being sworn in and spent the next three months dying before he did. They should have been marked absent because they don’t deserve to be considered by those standards.

 

So what will I be doing? I will be looking at how the 35 remaining Presidents currently rank in the most recent survey, how they were ranked in other surveys (I have records going as far back as 1981, so I think that’s far enough) and whether I think the upward or downward ranking is correct in my opinion. Since the only President from this period that I have any personal memory of is Bill Clinton, I think I can consider myself impartial. I will also list factors that might have led to many considering their original rankings, why they might have changed and whether that opinion was merited.

I will be going in chronological order with the exceptions I’ve listed above. This section will deal with the Founding Fathers to the start of sectional crisis.

 

John Adams (1797-1801)

John Adams has ranked among the ‘near great’ to ‘above average’ in most polls I’ve seen. The most recent poll ranks him at thirteenth, which is actually two higher than he was in 2015 which basically puts him around the same as before.

I think the overall ranking is correct: Adams deserves his reputation among the founding fathers and one of the great historical families. He had the misfortune of coming second and after one of the greatest Presidents in history. He managed to build after Washington’s legacy and was willing to do things – including the signing of the Alien and Sedition Act – that no doubt cost him the Presidency. He is a great man, but not one of the greatest Presidents. That seems a fair assessment.

Current Assessment: Correct.

 

James Madison (1809-1817)

He has ranked from average to above average in many polls and the current ranking has him eleventh, which is more or less the same.

How much of his reputation you think fits depends on your opinion of his handling of the War of 1812. And considering how disastrous that war was for us – the Capitol and The White House were burned by the British, and Madison had to flee for his life – we may be overrating him a bit. His reputation as a Founding Father may be carrying him more than it has in the past, but I’m not inclined to disagree that much.

Current Assessment: Basically Correct

 

 

James Monroe (1817-1825)

Monroe’s reputation has fluctuating a bit over time. He is ranked in a 1981 poll as ‘above average’ but his current ranking has him at eighteenth which is just above the statistical norm. A lot of it may have to do with his being the beneficiary of the so-called ‘Era of Good Feelings’ where there were no real political parties and Monroe ran unopposed for reelection. He also created the Monroe Doctrine, which has never been questioned. That said, he was also President during the crisis over the Missouri Compromise and the fact that it ended up being resolved was more due to the work of men such as Henry Clay then himself.

I think it is better to simply call him what one poll did ‘the best of the average presidents’. He did fine but not spectacular.

Assessment: Slightly Overrated.

 

John Quincy Adams (1825-1829)

After his Presidency John Quincy Adams had been considered a failure by most Americans. Much of it had to do with the circumstances of his election in 1824 and the so-called ‘Corrupt Bargain’ that left Andrew Jackson, winner of the popular and electoral vote, out of the White House. (We’ll get to him in a minute.) But Adams’ Presidency was better than it looked. He was the first president to advocate a network of roads and canals,  a national university and an astronomical observatory. He fought for the establishment of the metric system. His reputation was that of an elitist, which he was to be fair, but that didn’t make him a bad man or a bad president. Just a prickly one. And his career as a Congressman made him the first truly successful ex-President in history.

He's been moving up in the polls and has gone from average to above average. Right now, he’s very close to the middle at 20. I think that history has caught up with Adams and I think that’s right.

Assessment: Correct.

 

Andrew Jackson (1829-1837)

And talk about ironies. In the most recent poll, Jackson is ranked the 21^st among Presidents below Adams. This would seem a huge drop for the President who for a long time was ranked as either great or near great as well as the man who ushered in the age of modern democracy. But recent polls shows he’s been dropping for a while. In the past ten years, he has dropped all the way from ninth.

The thing is, I think history has caught up with Jackson. I don’t deny he did great things as President, but he was also a pretty horrible human being. Sure he enlarged the power of the Presidency by standing up to Congress and secessionists, but he also more or less formed the two party system as a result. The Whigs eventually formed out of unity to the hatred towards Andrew Jackson and the way he was determined to run over the power of Congress. It took a lot to get Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster to agree on anything – they spent their collective careers working against each other – but the one thing that did unify them was their collective hatred of Jackson. Indeed, their actions led him to be the first President to be censured by Congress, something Jackson’s acolytes went out of their way to make sure was expunged before he left office.

I can understand why 45 admires Jackosn so much: the two are more alike than they want to admit. Jackson was violent towards anyone who offended him, prominent in fights and duels, was a soldier who loved massacring Native Americans, and his national reputation was built on winning a battle after the peace treaty had been negotiated. Jackson had a similar hold over the people and the only difference between the two is occasionally he worked towards the public good – and then only because those interests and his contempt for his enemies would overlap.

Jackson has essentially dropped down to the middle of the pack right now and this is one of those cases I actually think the revisionist version of history is correct. That Jackson did great things for democracy is a great thing, whether or not he truly believed in it is another.

My Assessment: Current Ranking is Closer to Accurate Than Historical.

 

Martin Van Buren (1837-1841)

Van Buren’s historical reputation, like quite a few Presidents, is an unfair one. Jackson’s hand picked Vice President and his chosen successor, he won an easy election and then ran headfirst into America’s first depression. Though these circumstances were not his fault, he bore the blame and was easily defeated by William Henry Harrison in 1840.

This is not truly fair to him for he was a capable politician and had foresight. He was opposed to the annexation of Texas, fearing it would lead to war with Mexico (a fear that was proven accurate) and would lead to much larger problems for the country down the road.

He has always ranked among the average and slightly below average Presidents and that hasn’t changed much over time. He’s currently ranked 28^th and that’s a slight drop. The ranking isn’t entirely fair to Van Buren but it’s hard to argue with it.

My Assessment: Mostly Accurate

 

In the next part I will deal with the Presidents that served in the twenty years leading up to the  Civil War. Spoiler alert: most of them were the worst of the worst.