Every eight years Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y., asks scholars to rank the best and worst presidents in American history, and every survey since 1982 has seen Franklin D. Roosevelt in the number one spot. This year is no exception.
But there's a shakeup at the number two position in the 2010 ranking. For the first time in 20 years, Abraham Lincoln has been supplanted as second-best by another Roosevelt: Teddy.
"Teddy Roosevelt had, more than any other president the 'right stuff', and tops the collective ranking of a cluster of personal qualities, including imagination, integrity, intelligence, luck, background, and being willing to take risks," according to the poll's authors. "Lincoln, according to the experts, demonstrated the greatest presidential abilities while FDR ranks first in overall accomplishments."
Rounding out the top five in the survey of 238 presidential scholars are Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
A couple of years ago I was invited by the SD society to give a speach at Mt. Rushmore to celebrate the Society's 25th Anniversary. Needless to say, the topic was "Three Surveyors and Another Guy". In the course of doing my research I found a great deal of respect for TR. He was much more than I expected and I ended up identifying him as a "true renaissance man". I would concur with the assessment here.
I have the same great opinion of Teddy; I think he would've been a great Land Surveyor if he wasn't so busy creating National Parks and all the other great things he did.
Biased list that shows academias slant for liberalism.
Matt
If my memory serves me correctly Siena College is a conservative Jesuit college. I would say that the poll reflects name recognition more than anything.
Merlin
Would you honestly say that any president who had been for about a year should ever rank in the top 10 of anything. MR. Obama has not been compromising on anything, preferring instead to take the partisan approach of ridiculing any who disagree with him, yet they rank him as #10 in compromise. They placed him as a 12 in integrity, yet he does not accept blame for anything, rather his mantra is "it's not my fault". That is hardly a man of integrity. They put him as 18 in relationship with Congress. That is a laugh. The man himself has said he cannot get anything through Congress, blaming it on Republican leadership while not having the integrity to admit that a good portion of that may be caused by his adversarial and short sighted attacks against members of Congress such as his comments about John Boehner the other week. Then there is the economy. He is listed as 17. He said that if his stimulus bill was not passed that unemployment would go above 9.5% but if it was passed, it would cap unemployment at 8%. So, we have a standard to gauge whether the stimulus bill was a success or not: did it keep unemployment below 9.5%? No, it did not. According to his economists, that is what it would have been without the stimulus. As such, his handling of the economy is rate too high. There are soo many things in this report that Mr. Obama has not truly been tried on yet, but they rated him high. That smacks of bias. If he has not dealt with them, he should have scored no higher than 22 (midpoint).
The issue is not the school that released the rankings. It is the bias of the 238 people polled. And before you ask, I do not think that Mr. Bush should have been rated his first year either, but you do notice that his rating put him at the midpoint at the time, not toward the front of the pack with no real data to back up such a claim.
Merlin
There are soo many things in this report that Mr. Obama has not truly been tried on yet, but they rated him high. That smacks of bias. If he has not dealt with them, he should have scored no higher than 22 (midpoint).
Like I said, it is not necessarily about substance, it is primarily about name recognition. My theory would substantiate why Bush was in the middle of the pack (as you said) and not at the end of it.
Merlin
Your theory should put him higher. Everyone knew who George Bush was a year into his term. But at that time a lot of his policies which would later have some critical of him had yet to even start. So he was a visible name and should have been up there with Mr. Obama by your theory. Instead, like my theory that having done nothing they should be in the middle, he wound up there. He was average his first year.
Merlin
If this was a poll of scholars, then I would think that votes due to name recognition should be the exception, not the norm. Name recognition should only be considerable in a poll of laymen.
DJ, like the avatar
🙂
DJ, like the avatar
Well, thanks, Mr. Jennings!
For those who aren't familiar with him, it is Dr. Thaddeus Venture.
TR took on major moneyed interests of his day.
He broke the monopolies.
Someone like TR is what is needed today to break the power of the major corporations.
