In honor of Presidents’ Day, listen to some songs about the presidents, including Johnny Cash singing about James Garfield and Electric Needle Room’s tribute to Jimmy Carter.
(Speaking of Jimmy Carter, and unfortunately for you, I don’t have a way to share Kirk and Preston’s “We Love You Jimmy Carter.” Apparently, I am the only person alive who has this song, and it’s on vinyl.)
My favorite song about a president is They Might Be Giants’ “James K. Polk”:
Nate Silver, who won accolades for his electoral predictions during the 2012 presidential election, has analyzed and predicted where Barack Obama will place in future presidential rankings. Longtime readers may remember my discussion of these rankings here and here, and my students in the American Presidency courses that I’ve taught hopefully recall that our initial discussion starts with presidential rankings.
Silver contends “winning a second term is something of a prerequisite for presidential greatness, at least as historians have evaluated the question. . . . [T]he eight presidents who are currently regarded most favorably by historians” all served two or more terms. He concludes that “there is a positive relationship between a president’s performance in the Electoral College when seeking a second term, and how the historians have ranked him” and suggests that Obama will land on the borderline between being regarded as either a good or average president.
Personally, barring something unforeseen, I think Obama will probably be safely ensconced in the good category for at least the first decade after his second term ends. Silver rightly notes that John Kennedy has been evaluated more for his potential than his actual accomplishments. For good or ill, I suspect Obama will be treated in a similar fashion–evaluated favorably for his call for hope and change during the 2008 campaign and path-breaking election as the first African-American president more than his actual successes or failures, whatever they turn out to be.
Now, if we wanted real fun, we could ask Silver to rank Joe Biden . . .
Tony Petersen, editor-in-chief of the CSU Fresno Collegian, has given his opinion on some of the best and worst U.S. presidents.
Petersen’s favorite president is John Adams, who had a distinguished pre-presidential career but wasn’t so great as chief executive, if you ask me. The XYZ Affair, the Quasi-War with France, and the Alien and Sedition Acts, for example, all occurred during his administration.
I can’t argue with Petersen over the indispensability of Washington and Lincoln, but Jackson and Wilson were our two worst presidents?! I can think of ten others who were worse.
Regarding Jackson, Petersen writes:
Andrew Jackson was our first non-statesman president. Every president before Jackson had distinguished careers as diplomats, governors, congressmen and cabinet members. Jackson was none of these, only a war hero. His presidency was the first that descended into populism and set us on the path we are on today, where politicians are beholden to special interests and presidential campaigns are an all-encompassing feature of our republic.
Jackson actually served in both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate, and one could argue that he was a diplomat, having negotiated treaties with various Native American groups in the Southeast during the 1810s. Granted, Jackson’s congressional terms weren’t notable for anything that he did, and his conduct in, and motives for, treaty negotiations weren’t exactly flawless. I’m also not sure how Jackson could embody both populism and special interest politics. He certainly believed that he supported the former and not the latter. I suppose it depends on how one defines “special interests.”
While I disagree with some of Petersen’s assessment, it’s interesting to get a student’s perspective on U.S. presidents. Heck, I’m just glad a student recognizes that there is a Presidents’ Day coming up!
(HT to Kevin D. McCann for tweeting the link.)
The Institute for the Study of the Americas recently conducted a survey of U.S. presidents:
Through the agency of its United States Presidency Centre [USPC], the Institute for the Study of the Americas (located in the University of London’s School of Advanced Study) has undertaken the first ever UK academic survey to rate US presidents. This polled the opinion of UK specialists in US history and political studies to assess presidential performance and produced an overall rating on the basis of the responses. They also gave an interim assessment of Barack Obama but his unfinished presidency was not included in the survey.
Compare these rankings*, particularly of the Early Republic presidents, to the ones I posted about last July:
Siena ISA
4. George Washington 3. Washington
5. Thomas Jefferson 4. Jefferson
6. James Madison 9. Jackson
7. James Monroe 12. J. Adams
12. James K. Polk 13. Monroe
14. Andrew Jackson 14. Madison
17. John Adams 16. Polk
19. John Quincy Adams 20. J.Q. Adams
23. Martin Van Buren 27. Van Buren
33. Zachary Taylor 33. Taylor
35. William Henry Harrison 35. Fillmore
37. John Tyler 37. Tyler
38. Millard Fillmore 39. Pierce
40. Franklin Pierce 40. Buchanan
43. James Buchanan
I find it interesting that Jackson and the elder Adams are rated higher in the ISA survey. The rest of the rankings of the Early Republic presidents are very similar.
* Unlike the Siena survey, the ISA survey did not evaluate William Henry Harrison, James Garfield, or Barack Obama.
Yesterday, the New York Times ran reviewed the new exhibit, “The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,” which opens today. The exhibit treats the Philadelphia house where George Washington and John Adams lived as presidents during the 1790s. (The U.S. had several capital cities in its early years before the compromise was reached that created the District of Columbia.)
As you can read, the exhibit has had a convoluted history, much of it centering on how best to remember the slaves who were present in the president’s mansion. It’s hard to please everyone, and in trying to do so, often everyone is dissatisfied. That seems to be the case here, which is unfortunate, since the site offers a convenient opportunity to juxtapose the creation of a new government founded on liberty and freedom by men who held other men and women in bondage.
A colleague and I are working on revamping the American presidency course that is in our course catalog. Currently, it is listed as under political science, but we have requested that it be crosslisted with history. Our hope is to use the course to rebuild the political science program, which disappeared into academic purgatory several years ago. It makes logical sense to me, given the various ways that students could use a political science degree in their future.
I’ve taught a crosslisted American presidency course before, interweaving biographical studies with the evolution of the executive branch. I’m hoping to take a similar approach, so I’m asking my readers for recommendations for useful, concise presidential biographies. I’m particularly interested in suggestions for the pre-1877 period, but feel free to make post-1877 recommendations as well.
Found this on Twitter and thought it was irreverently hilarious.
Personally, I like the Polk song the best:
HT to @USHistoryBlog.com.
Earlier this year, The Atlantic published a list calculating the net worth of all 43 U.S. presidents (in 2010 dollars). By way of explanation, note the following from the article:
Because a number of presidents, particularly in the early nineteenth century, made and lost huge fortunes in a matter of a few years, the number for each man is based on his net worth at its peak.
We have taken into account hard assets like land, estimated lifetime savings based on work history, inheritance, homes, and money paid for services, which include things as diverse as their salary as collector of customs at the Port of New York to membership on Fortune 500 boards. Royalties on books have also been taken into account, along with ownership of companies and yields from family estates.
Like with the presidential rankings, take this list for what it’s worth (ordered by net worth):
Siena Research Institute, housed at Siena College in Loudonville, New York, recently released its presidential expert poll. The SRI press release explains the methodology used:
The Siena College Research Institute (SRI) Survey of U.S. Presidents is based on responses from 238 presidential scholars, historians and political scientists that responded via mail or web to an invitation to participate. Respondents ranked each of 43 presidents on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) on each of twenty presidential attributes, abilities and accomplishments. Overall rankings were computed by assigning equal weight to each of those twenty categories.
Previous polls were taken in 1982, 1990, 1994, and 2002. The complete list of ranked categories can be found at the link above.
The 2010 poll finds four Early Republic presidents holding down the 4-7 spots in the top-10: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. James K. Polk is in 12th place, just ahead of Bill Clinton, while Andrew Jackson is 14th, followed by Barack Obama. John Adams (17), John Quincy Adams (19), Martin Van Buren (23), Zachary Taylor (33), William Henry Harrison (35), John Tyler (37), Millard Fillmore (38), Franklin Pierce (40), and James Buchanan (43) are the other Early Republic presidents.
Personally, I don’t find these polls very relevant, but they make great fodder for conversation. I find it funny every time one of these polls ranks W.H. Harrison anywhere above last. A presidential administration of one month seems like it should receive an automatic last-place finish. Other rankings are puzzling as well. Jefferson was a brilliant thinker, but a top-10 president?! Madison and Monroe also weren’t top-10 presidential material. I would have moved Polk into the top-10 over any of those three; a successful one-term president trumps a mediocre two-term president in my book. The rest probably deserve their rankings, although I’m surprised Van Buren wasn’t ranked lower.
