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Those “experts” rate the presidents — 69 Comments

1. It tells you the value added from the professoriate is piss poor. Add political science to the disciplines prudent students should avoid.
   =

2. I have a BA (68) and MA (70) in History. I got them when they were still teaching History. What a shame the profession has collapsed into what it is today. Remember 1968? Yes politics everywhere, but I can not remember any of my Profs letting their personal opinions of VN intrude on their teaching.

3. Anyone who would rank Trump last is being completely emotional, unobjective, and temporally biased. It’d be intersting to see what people will say about Trump’s presidency a hundred years from now. But unfortunately most historians have a tendency to frame everything by the politics of their own time rather than the greater context of history, so it’s likely that any future historian would frame things by whatever the prevailing political winds of their own time happened to be.

   In fairness, if I tried to be as objective as possible, I don’t even think I would rate Biden or even Obama as our worst. I think I’d still have to rate Buchanan as the worst. But I’m not a historian or even much of a history buff.

4. Roosevelt isn’t event the greatest President of the 20th century, if you go by results. Then the honor would go to Reagan.

   Both men won a major world war: World War II for Roosevelt and the Cold War for Reagan. In both cases the adversaries of the United States disintegrated after their loss. Both men faced a major economic downturn, but Roosevelt’s actions prolonged the Depression while Reagan’s ended it. The only reason the Great Depression finally ended was because after 1938 international affairs took up so much of Roosevelt’s time he lacked the time to further mess up the economy. The Depression went away because Roosevelt left the economy alone. And Reagan accomplished everything in 8 years, while it took Roosevelt 12 years and counting.

5. Something like 20 years ago there was a study by UCLA economists that argued that FDR’s policies extended the Great Depression by 7 years.

6. I think this is completely correct on what you say, and in particular the demonization of Trump (and to a lesser degree Nixon) is a good indicator of the sheer derangement involved. Nonapod said it at least as well as I can. It is largley deluded.

   That said I also think it shows the general principle that we can be more dispassionate about things the further we get from them.

   I also think it shows how many “Academic” “Conservatives” or “Republicans” are akin to what Rusesabagina (the hotelier hero of the Rwandan Genocide) called… I forget the term but like “Dress Hutus” to try and alleviate or downplay the Tutsi dominance of Kagame’s dictatorship. Though at least Kagame was better than what came before and has made some decent inroads towards actually unifying Rwandans. In contrast to these clowns.

7. There is no longer a rational basis for attending college for a B.A or B.S. Thanks to Obama and the Dems, everyone goes to college now, even dullards, and our beloved federal government pays, guarantees the way, which makes the profs and administrators very happy. Can’t repay the federal loan? Not to worry. Washington will take care of that, and just keep on funding those “higher education” institutions, of which the vast majority of faculty and administrators are Dems. See how it works!
   What’s a trillion dollars national debt more or less? Our federal debt can never be discharged.
   And Dems love dullards.

8. I would say these historians should be ashamed but then they have no shame. They’re just a bunch of partisan hacks and should be treated as such.

9. Well considering the kagame as student leader was involved in the massacres thats kind of a paradox

   This a is an utterly blinkered survey who knows what they think about lincoln consider how the mob wanted to drag him and even frederick douglass down as well as chamberlain similarly with tr

   There were some corrupt officials in hardings administration notably fall and daughterfy but personally corrupt no evidence

   Pierce was kind of a non entity in the big scheme of things buchanan we know why

10. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

    –George Santayana

    Once upon a time I found that an inspiring aphorism.

    Yes. The real problem is that people don’t know history. If they did, they would Know Better.

    So let’s go to the experts trained in history who do remember the past…

    BRANNNG!

    [Obnoxious You-Got-It-Wrong Buzzer]

11. Something like 20 years ago there was a study by UCLA economists that argued that FDR’s policies extended the Great Depression by 7 years.
    ==
    Stated thus, that particular thesis is absurd.

12. I wouldn’t worry about it. Whoever is the most recent President is usually ranked pretty low, only to move up as tempers cool and memories mellow.

13. Yes harding was perhaps a flawed man but he didnt worship the state like wilson he didnt give thomas dixon the one who wrote the libretto for birth of a nation the stage he pardoned debs fwiw

    Carter is at best a non entity polk did expand at least half of the territory of the americas

14. Academicians do not necessarily use political terminology the way you or I would and faculty ‘Republicans’ in my very limited observation have little nerve or loyalty to each other.
    ==
    The responses reflect the social dynamics of faculties. They should not, but they do. Other-directed, attitudinizing weasels, not scholars. We should not entrust the task of sorting the labor market to the institutions in which they work.

15. Neo: “Does this mean that most college professors who call themselves “conservatives” or “Republicans” are of the NeverTrumper variety?”

    Or are those filling out the survey claiming to be Republicans to make it look like Trump is so bad that even Republicans are against him?

    If so, it would not be the first time folks in academia lied to prove a point.

16. Please note, it’s been plain for four years that Biden probably should not have a drivers license or a workaday job of any kind. He has, for more than 20 years presided over a stupefying pay-to-play scheme. That he’s anywhere but at the bottom is an indication that the respondents are intellectual and moral frauds. There is no social value to them being paid handsome salaries and having comprehensive job security. None. They’re pus. Higher education is a kakistocracy.
    ==

17. Or are those filling out the survey claiming to be Republicans to make it look like Trump is so bad that even Republicans are against him?
    ==
    His summary of the ratings entered by this crew indicate that their self-designation is fake.

18. ArtDeco-
    Agree 100%
    But I learned a new word–
    kakistocracy
    Wow! Too true! Harris and Walz!
    BUT pus is the result of white blood cells killing bacteria, so is the result of a good process!
    Thanks.

19. Both men faced a major economic downturn, but Roosevelt’s actions prolonged the Depression while Reagan’s ended it. The only reason the Great Depression finally ended was because after 1938 international affairs took up so much of Roosevelt’s time he lacked the time to further mess up the economy. The Depression went away because Roosevelt left the economy alone. And Reagan accomplished everything in 8 years, while it took Roosevelt 12 years and counting.
    ==
    For crying out loud. Reagan at the end of 1982 faced a 2% decline in the rate at which goods and services were produced. This was a function of monetary retrenchment that Reagan supported and that was necessary to re-stabilize prices. Roosevelt took office in the wake of a 30% decline in real gross domestic product. The economy grew quite rapidly (increases in domestic product on the order of 9% per year) from mid 1933 to the end of 1936 and from mid 1938 to the end of 1941. For a year and a half in 1937 and 1938 the economy contracted, for reasons that are still debated among economists. The growth in per capita product from the economic nadir (1933) to 1939 was on the order of 5.6% per annum. It was equal to Canada’s and trailing only a few occidental countries if you measure from their nadir (modally 1932) to 1939. Chile, Germany, and Austria improved more rapidly, but that’s about it. The labor market was injured and recovered slowly and that is partially attributable to bad policy.

20. Well. I was an academic conservative. Of course, no one asked physicists to rank presidents. I would probably go with Mt Rushmore.

21. kakistocracy – government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state.

    Holy hell! What a word! Why would anyone even have the need to invent it? Until now anyway.

22. The greeks understood the concept the romans didnt bother with a name, pericles was a rare figure mostly turtles all the way down

    A country where the military is understrength the transport system is very fragile the chirren are illiterate and innumerate what would you call that

23. Sr. Cervantes: Why, I’d call that America!

    OT: Just heard a radio report that the IDF had recovered the bodies of six of their hostages, dead, in a tunnel in Gaza. They are back in Israel for burial now.

    I wonder how many more of the 100+ hostages are dead at his point?

24. I can not remember any of my Profs letting their personal opinions of VN intrude on their teaching.

    I was mostly before Vietnam and had the same experience with politics from my professors. I think Vietnam had a lot to do with the left shift of academics. Most leftist students kept in school to avoid the draft and filled grad schools for years.

    The “progressives” did the same to Harding and Coolidge. I read Arthur Schlessinger’s books on Roosevelt. That was years ago. Of course his take on Coolidge and Harding was negative. Recently, I did a study of Coolidge in a series of blog posts, linked at Chicagoboyz. Well, it used to be. The link for the rest of the series is at the end of each post.

25. Yes but i would call that kakistocracy

    I wouldnt doubt it there was never an up to date accounting of where the hostages were at all times

26. Among many other things we are witnessing the death of the ” Age of Experts”.

27. I’d say suicide. Not like anyone did it to them.

28. Yes schlesinger was a hagiographer like thucydides was for pericles

29. I turn 63 tomorrow, and in my lifetime, I have never observed the levels of hatred as I have seen generated by the Obama and Biden administrations. Yet they claim to be the most inclusive and loving people that this country has ever known.

    Doublespeak rules the news, nowadays.

30. In his college days, Graboyes was a Democrat, and we would tease one another about that. Nice guy, even then.

31. From a book description of Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell:

    Intellectuals and Society not only examines the track record of intellectuals in the things they have advocated but also analyzes the incentives and constraints under which their views and visions have emerged. One of the most surprising aspects of this study is how often intellectuals have been proved not only wrong, but grossly and disastrously wrong in their prescriptions for the ills of society — and how little their views have changed in response to empirical evidence of the disasters entailed by those views.

    In a word, “experts” – especially the “intellectual” variety – are by and large ignoramuses. The lack of accountability (consequences) pretty much bakes in the condition.

32. Anyone here familiar with the writings of Amity Shlaes?

    Art Deco?

33. Anyone here familiar with the writings of Amity Shlaes?

    Oh hell yes.

34. Yes that bio was an eye opener

35. I know I’m cherry picking one of the worst quotes from a consequential presidency that lasted more than a decade, which isn’t fair, but I’ve never overcome my outrage at this – from, I believe, a cabinet meeting:

    “I just have a hunch that Stalin isn’t that kind of man. Harry [Hopkins] said he’s not and that he doesn’t want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I can and ask for nothing in return, noblesse oblige , he won’t try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.”

36. That is from Sean McMeekin’s Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II by the way.

37. Yes fdr did not have a clue about stalin in reality mcmeekin has unraveled a lot of narratives about the Soviet Union like the kornilov plot that salisbury was still shilli v in the 70

    A new novel by graham morse has a more profound view of financial affairs with the ussr and nazi germany included the soviet espionage in the fed

38. Re: Harry Hopkins

    Mike Plaiss:

    To add perspective to your quote:

    Harry Hopkins was FDR’s chief foreign policy advisor, especially with regard to liaison with Allied leaders and helping to shape wartime policies.

    Pity he got Stalin wrong…

    I once had an idea for a fantasy series of mysteries in which FDR and Hopkins retired to LA after WW II to become a detective team solving crimes and tricky moral dilemmas.

39. Wrong graham

    https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/746685/the-wealth-of-shadows-by-graham-moore/

40. @huxley

    That would be quite cool to read. You should give it a go! And I have become more indulgent and generous towards Hopkins over time, and with regards to the Soviets I believe he was fool rather than knave. But he still screwed up badly.

    I do feel it is a shame FDR’s earlier track record (for bad and good) is not focused on more; he had some interesting antics during his time as Secretary of the Navy.

    But for a sort of fantasy or the like, I had thought of a kind of dystopia alternate history, where FDR and Eleanor go full… Cray Cray and the US moves over the thin line from “de facto electoral single party state on the national level” to “actual single party dictatorship”, and their more evident demons show up. Sort of a very twisted take on the New Deal era if they were tempted too much by their worst impulses and gave in.

41. Like nero wolfe and archie goodwin

42. Don’t forget Henry Wallace (avowed communist) was FDR’s vice-president for one term.

43. He wasn’t an avowed communist. He was a popular front blockhead. By 1952 he’d repudiated things he’d advocated during the 1940s.

44. Anyone here familiar with the writings of Amity Shlaes?
    ==
    Not line-by-line. I reviewed her bibliography and her statements of her thesis. Been a while.

45. If Biden is number 14 solely on account of preventing Trump from being reelected, where does he end up if Trump gets reelected in 2024?

    Anyway, the problem with this list, and most list of these types, is defining what it means to be a “great” president. Is it merely doing a lot of consequential things, or do those things have to result in some positive good? If the latter, then how are those good things evaluated and weighed? If these criteria aren’t spelled out in some way, and then consistently applied by the folks who were surveyed, the resulting rankings are completely worthless.

46. The good news is that 70% of those asked refused to participate.

47. @ Art Deco >”Add political science to the disciplines prudent students should avoid.”

    Oops, too late. That’s my MA degree.
    In my defense, I was unable to complete my planned doctorate, and ended up as a computer programmer and later college teacher of same.
    I learned to code first, though. 😉

    @ Shirehome > “I can not remember any of my Profs letting their personal opinions of VN intrude on their teaching.”

    I don’t remember my undergrad teachers revealing much of their ideology in class (1970-1974), by the graduate profs didn’t have any such qualms (1974-1976).
    Of course, I went from the science departments of a modestly liberal college (RIce) to the pseudo-science department of a radically leftist school (UT-Austin).

    My specialty was statistical analysis of the “data” collected about political opinions and behavior, but I eventually decided I couldn’t stand politicians themselves, including the departmental ones, so was just as glad to move out of the halls of academe and into the computer cubicles.

    I still find political dynamics fascinating, though, which is why I stay up way to late reading the interwebz!

48. @ huxley > “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

    …and they keep dragging along those of us who do.

49. @ Scott the Badger > “I turn 63 tomorrow”

    Happy Birthday to you!

50. Reason mag asks “Was FDR a tyrant?” The interview subject is Prof. David T. Beito, author of the important and revisionist new book, “ The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR’s Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance.” Listen or watch HERE
    https://www.independent.org/multimedia/detail.asp?id=7456

    Full disclosure. I’ve edited a couple of Beito’s many books — but not this one, his newest.

51. Biden got only 36 votes for “most polarizing” – and he is in fact extremely polarizing.

    I am reminded of the email my yellow dog Democrat brother sent out right after Biden’s “election.” He hoped, or did he anticipate, that Biden would unify the country.

    ANYONE who had been paying attention to what Biden had said over the years would realize that Biden’s idea, and the Democrat’s idea, of unifying the country was to shout SHUTUP. Biden saying years before to a black audience that Republicans wanted to put them in chains. Etc.

    My brother is a low information voter.

52. F

    Don’t forget Henry Wallace (avowed communist) was FDR’s vice-president for one term.

    Art Deco

    He wasn’t an avowed communist. He was a popular front blockhead. By 1952 he’d repudiated things he’d advocated during the 1940s.

    That’s right.
    Henry A. Wallace (1952), “Where I Was Wrong”, The Week Magazine (September

    Many people have asked me how I reconcile my stand before Korea with my uncompromising anti-Communist attitude of the past two years The answer is simple.
    Before 1949 I thought Russia really wanted and needed peace. After 1949 I became more and more disgusted with the Soviet methods and finally became convinced that the Politburo wanted the Cold War continued indefinitely, even at the peril of accidentally provoking a hot war….
    The future of the world may depend on our ability in America to make it clear through the UN that in order to escape from Soviet domination China does not need to go back to colonialism or feudalism. Instead she can go forward into an era of greatly expanded production and trade with a much higher standard of living than she can ever get by fighting wars for Russia. The time is not yet ripe for this but it will come.
    More and more I am convinced that Russian Communism in its total disregard of truth, in its fanaticism, its intolerance and its resolute denial of God and religion is something utterly evil.

    A recent biography of Henry Wallace is worth perusing. The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century

53. So when wallace was in a position of prominence he only flacked soviet interests then years later when hes out of the spotlight he recants

    His learning curve was better than bertrand russell though i give him that he wanted to nuke the bear before 49 hug it after

54. Thank you, Aesopfan!

55. people like William Bullitt, who did have a similar evolution, he went from praising lenin, to be a strong anticommunist after his time in the Soviet Union, he did loath Wilson to the very end, with his psychobiography, well you learn from that,

    but take most of those who Hollander called Political Pilgrims, they have learned nothing, yet they are smug about it,

56. Thank God Roosevelt replaced Wallace.with Truman as VP in 1944, as he was dying.

57. allen drury, when he wrote his divergent near future histories came up with a character name ted jason, he was the bringer of the collapse of America to the Soviets, Orrin Knox was who saved the nation, did he take Wallace or McGovern as his role model for the former

    Jason was someone who gets involved in two proxy wars in Africa and Central America, and proceeds to surrender on both, to the benevolent Soviet hegemon, it does not end well,

    Wallace seemed able to evolve out of power, when he got beaten like a rented mule, had he taken power in 45 or even improbably in 48, he would have been very bad news,

    not only him but Hiss Remington, Currie et al, who bought the narrative all too readily,

58. The very idea of Wallace becoming POTUS upon FDR’s death makes me shudder.

59. “Stalin’s War” was an interesting book but I take issue with some of its analyses/interpretations. It gives him too much agency in certain situations where in fact he screwed up big-time. He was diabolically intelligent and crafty, but he got many things wrong too.

60. the Mudzik was not perfect by any means, but most who were tasked to determine his motivations were woefully out of their depth, even decades later, Pipes probably had the best grasp on the whole top ruling circle, what the top Sovietologist though they knew was disturbingly off the mark too many clown shoes to count them all, Gareth Jones whose career was all too short, dissidents like Conquest and co, Muggeridge, and the latest generation of scholars are probably even worse,

    it was then, an undiscovered country, ‘a mystery wrapped inside an enigma’ but after the 90s, there is no excuse for getting him wrong

    where do you think McMeekin was most off in the big picture,

61. did he take Wallace or McGovern as his role model for the former
    ==
    Guessing the character was a composite. One inspiration may have been Robert W. Kenny, once Attorney-General of California.

62. I’d agree with IrishOtter49. I love the style of historical writing – state a premise, and go about making your case for it. There is no way to prove McMeekin’s premise – that Stalin was as much, or perhaps even more, of a catalyst for the events of WWII than Hitler.

    Ultimately I just think he comes up short in making that case, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile. The book seems extraordinarily well researched. I thought I knew a lot about Lend-Lease, but I had no idea the scope and the details. And the book is full of tidbits like the one I already referenced.

    David Harsanyi reviewed it for the Federalist, loved it and said, “ I doubt anyone who reads it will think about the Second World War in the same way.” I agree.

63. I do have one caveat in recommending the book. As the author writes of events, he is clearly playing off of those things that “everybody knows”. But what if a given reader doesn’t know? Even outside the holocaust, Nazi atrocities were shocking, but an uninformed reader might come away thinking the Soviets were the only ones committing them. This should NOT be anyone’s introduction into the history of WWII. It is, after all, subtitled “A New History of World War II”. It is unapologetically a revisionist history and should be taken as such.

64. in so far as Stalin targeted the Social Democrats, since the Catholic Center had collapsed he brought the Nazis to power, furthermore he allowed the Wehmacht to train on Soviet soil at least till 1937, now the Abwehr gifted him the contacts of those top officers on the Soviet Staff, hence the purge, which he used as a pretext, the Nazis were the pretext to collect the low hanging fruit of Western intelligentsia, not only the Cambridge 5

    we see the role that Anthony Blunt had in say operation market garden, and how many decades has it taken us to realize that,but analogs in this country, like Michael Straight, the Morgan heir, who ended up editor of the New Republic into the Cold War

    that part isn’t arguable, as to the particulars of his strategy, well that part we can debate, the grand guignol of what happened to who was related by curzio malaparte, almost contemporaneously, a recent translation,

    now this might seem ancient history, but as Keynes spoke about ancient dogmas driving modern policy, these relativist historian
    have shaped modern view of Soviet behavior
    I speak of the likes of Fitzgerald who comes to mind, given too much credence, btim I mean energy

65. corrrection,

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25940894-on-stalin-s-team

    now it’s a tragic circumstance that applebaum as a popular historian has much of the story right, yet TDS has made her unreliable as a contemporary chronicler of events,

    sometimes a certain distance in necessary, hopefully strobe talbott’s codswallop at the Service of fixers like Victor Louis, are not relied as a dutiful account of say the 1980s,
    or say Frances Fitzgerald, but we can’t rely on that assurance,

    Talbott who bought every soviet trope, the later tretyakov had a wry chuckle about this matter, who then styled himself the Mariner about the time of Orange Man, his relatives like Cody Shearer were messengers for the worst sort of fraud, parallel to the Steele Dossier, which they sold to the Company and later the Times, without any trace of shame,

66. I’m all for these revisionist histories. Once one has a solid knowledge of WWII, pair up McMeekin’s Stalin’s War with Hasegawa’s Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan and your mind will be thoroughly blown – in a good way.

67. I think they protest too much
    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54815264-stalin-s-war

    i understand it is easy to get caught up in the ‘wllderness of mirrors’ a line that david martin relayed about angleton, something littell sort of wrestled with,

    in the aftermath of the ames and hanson revelations, the Company seemed to have engaged in another wild goose chase, that left most of the analytical capacities damaged re Putin the Khozayin, having seen Stalin with rosey eyed spectacles, the ones who looked into Putin, I think generously overcorrected, so it’s been a cavalcare of horror stories which help inflate his ego, but little understanding of the man, like Phillip Short has done, so fraudsters like Danchenko and Steele became the Mariners,
    unlike say Tretyakov and Gordievsky, to relate too guides into the previous generation,

68. I am very, VERY wary of self-proclaimed “revisionist histories.” I usually find the best-written ones interesting but flawed, sometimes exceedingly so. In particular most overstate their case and to that end do a lot of cherry picking of facts and information, and this gets them into trouble. I’m especially put off by David Stahel’s book about Operation Barbarossa and the war on the Eastern Front overall. In his estimation the German were doomed from the start: defeat was a foregone conclusion. I disagree strongly with this. Evidently Stalin did as well: even as late as early 1944, when he was relentless in advocating a Second Front in Western Europe (because he was concerned about Red Army’s losses, the Soviet economy, and the Wehmacht’s continued resilience and lethality), he was putting out feelers through neutral parties to secure an armistice with Nazi Germany.

69. I think past experience with Napoleon, would have suggested not to engage in such an enterprise, but the logic of Hitler’s reasoning, as expressed in Mein Kampf and other places made it almost inevitable, without Lend Lease, without the appearance of General Winter he have prevailed, a scenario suggested by Robert Harris in Fatherland, backstory,

    I guess it depends on the weight and the nature of the evidence, Victor Suvorov nee Razin the one who gave us the look at the Spetznaz has a similar view to McMeekin if memory served, I give him props for dismantling some of the premises that John Reed put forward in earlier work, that China Mieville still falls for, hes’ more a science fiction writer, but with this odd delusion about Leninism, hes got this later Highlanderesque mystery with Keanu Reeves,

    wars in the Steppes have often been brutal the First World War as with the Second, the
    Eastern Front did crush both Armies in point of fact, in the previous encounter,

    Gehlen the intel mastermind, undeterred by the most recent outing, did not consider it impossible to engage in such folly neither did Patton, who was taken out of the picture to prevent such an occurance,

    On a different plane, certainly Lemay was not deterred by what confronting the Rodina would entail although this time with air power,

    Brendan Dubois who has found himself in a quandary of later, paints LeMay as a villain if the Cuban Missile Crisis had gone awry,of course peter george of red alert already had that view of Lemay, as General Ripper

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