You mean that political scholars lean left!? Shocker.
Claiming FDR > Washington is ridiculous.
Scraped from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States) into R, visualized with ggplot2. Out of the 26 surveys over the last ~70 years, I took the average ranking for each president, averaged, found the max/min for the range lines. Looking for a bit of guidance from my more statistically-minded friends here, as I know there’s some bias going on that I should be accounting for. Newer presidents have fewer surveys available, and more variance available due to there being a higher number of presidents over time. The changes over time aren’t really reflected as well as I’d like due to this. Any thoughts on ways to show this/calculate this better?
Anyone who ranks Buchanan or Johnson as anything less than the two worst presidents ever is a best ignorant and at worst a moron.
Calvin Coolidge being so far down is criminal. This list clearly shows a definitive left-leaning bias.
Who is putting James Buchanan in the mid 20s ranking?
What psychotic political scholar is ranking Buchanan all the way up to ~26, and fucking JOHNSON up to ~19???
This seems like pretty shit data
Is a ranking *actually* going to make me say that Biden is too high and Trump is too low? I didnāt think that was possible but here we are.
Edit: Downvote if you want but Trump, despite his best efforts, failed to actively bring about the dissolution of the union. Buchanan managed it.
The gap between Clinton and Obama is probably too big. George Bush below *Nixon* seems wrong. Trump as the worst can probably be defended, when he *tried to overthrow democracy*
Trump is not great but putting him dead last reveals the absolute institutional brain rot of the alleged scholars surveyed.
Why is JFK rated so high? Wasn’t his foreign policy pretty shitty?
Such complete and total BS
What a piece of shit post.
Using old surveys makes this misleading. Crap presidents like Johnson and Buchanan would have been included in rankings where there were far fewer presidents, so they had a higher floor.
Meanwhile Trump only appeared on surveys with a floor of 45 or 46.
If Biden is ranked that high i think I can disregard this data lol.
Truman ahead of JFK? And GWB up that high? I completely disregard the validity of this graph
it looks like that was the survey of Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. in 1948, which only ranked 29 presidents – the ones through FDR, who was #32, but omitting Garfield and W. H. Harrison presumably due to the short lengths of their presidents and only counting Cleveland once.
The ones behind him are Pierce, Grant, and Harding – Grant is the surprise here, but from the data source it looks like Grant had a bad reputation before ~2000 at which point he was elected to mediocre.
āSo scholars, whoās your Mt Rushmore of American Presidents?ā
This isnāt data, itās a joke.
I think we can justify Tippecanoe’s low ranking because he was a dumbass who got himself killed by weather. But I feel for Garfield, who had all of the makings of a once-in-a-generation politician, and got himself shot by a crazy person and then killed by backwards physicians who wanted to prove that germs didn’t exist.
Garfield really was an example (maybe America’s best, along with maybe Lincoln, LBJ and Barack Obama) of someone coming from limited means and, because they’re really talented, rising to the presidency. He was set to snuff out corruption within his own party and continue the Republican promotion of political equity for freed slaves. And then he was replaced by his VP, who was the lacky of the Republican machine and had never really held public office before (though, to Arthur’s credit, he didn’t let Roscoe Conkling act as a shadow president).
I will never understand how Ronald Reagan continues to be well regarded when his economic policies failed working people so spectacularly. He directly caused the cartoonish gap in wealth and income in America, and that issue fuels so many other divides.
Then again, we just elected Trump _because_ of the economy, so I guess we truly have not learned our lesson.
Sorting them by inauguration year:
First nine average 16th
Next nine average 32nd
Middle nine average 22nd
Next nine average 20th
Most recent nine average 25th (but look more like the previous 18 with Trump ignored)
why tf is andrew āgenocideā jackson so high up
I’m not from the US and not to well versed in US politics, but if almost all presidents from one party rank in the top half, while almost all presidents from the second party rank in the bottom half, then I’m questioning the validity/reliability of the underlying data.
I’ll be controversial here: FDR does not deserve the reputation he has. Many of the New Deal policies that American History classes tout so highly lead directly to the downfall of small and medium businesses and the growth of major corporate domination. New Deal agricultural policies benefited huge corporate farms over small family farms.
Many of the issues we are facing today, and have been facing increasingly for generations, are the result of New Deal programs and of political ideologies based on FDR’s New Deal.
He also was a major player in normalizing the growth of presidential power and the increasing irrelevance and unwillingness-to-legislate that is rife today. At the end of the day, as populist as he was, many of his policies were pro-corporate and leaning closer to authoritarian than democratic.
I’m not saying he should be at the bottom or anything, but his place in the American cultural zeitgeist as a hero of the common people and champion of mid century pro-labor populism is, at least partly, untrue and undeserved.
Why is Calvin Coolidge so low? Seems like heād be a lot higher given the roaring 20s economy/optimism and no wars and such.Ā
Look, I’m just gonna say it:
William Henry Harrison being so low is criminal. Yes, he did absolutely nothing and that’s the beauty of it. Win and celebrate your win *so* hard that you can’t screw it up for anyone. Go out on top. I wish more presidents would do that.
Wouldnāt it make more sense to flip the data presentation here from worst to best, not best to worst? Seems counterintuitive but Iām no data analyst.
I’m sure I’ll get downvoted on lefty-reddit, but this list is an abomination…
FDR is consistently over-rated, and was one of the US’s worst presidents, effectively extending the depression by 7 years, interning US citizens in camps, and being the US’s only actual dictator… Four terms…? Good gravy…
And Wilson being in the top10 is even more laughable. The guy is arguably the US’s single worst president, spear-heading the early “expertocracy” movement in the US which has lead directly to the modern unelected bureaucracy in DC which has way too much power and is not subject to elections.
What an unimaginably terrible ranking.
“Political Scholar Survey Results” Hahahaha
the fact that FDR ranks about George Washington tells you a little bit about the politics of the scholars.
How shocking, more left wing bias āproveā how terrible Trump is.
Forgive me if it take these things with a mountain of salt.
Misleading title and old data
Biden above Clinton lol
Clinton balanced the budget while Biden spends into oblivion and depletes our strategic oil reserve.
Iām sorry but Biden being anywhere in the top half delegitimizes the whole chart
36 comments
You mean that political scholars lean left!? Shocker.
Claiming FDR > Washington is ridiculous.
Scraped from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States) into R, visualized with ggplot2. Out of the 26 surveys over the last ~70 years, I took the average ranking for each president, averaged, found the max/min for the range lines. Looking for a bit of guidance from my more statistically-minded friends here, as I know there’s some bias going on that I should be accounting for. Newer presidents have fewer surveys available, and more variance available due to there being a higher number of presidents over time. The changes over time aren’t really reflected as well as I’d like due to this. Any thoughts on ways to show this/calculate this better?
Anyone who ranks Buchanan or Johnson as anything less than the two worst presidents ever is a best ignorant and at worst a moron.
Calvin Coolidge being so far down is criminal. This list clearly shows a definitive left-leaning bias.
Who is putting James Buchanan in the mid 20s ranking?
What psychotic political scholar is ranking Buchanan all the way up to ~26, and fucking JOHNSON up to ~19???
This seems like pretty shit data
Is a ranking *actually* going to make me say that Biden is too high and Trump is too low? I didnāt think that was possible but here we are.
Edit: Downvote if you want but Trump, despite his best efforts, failed to actively bring about the dissolution of the union. Buchanan managed it.
The gap between Clinton and Obama is probably too big. George Bush below *Nixon* seems wrong. Trump as the worst can probably be defended, when he *tried to overthrow democracy*
Trump is not great but putting him dead last reveals the absolute institutional brain rot of the alleged scholars surveyed.
Why is JFK rated so high? Wasn’t his foreign policy pretty shitty?
Such complete and total BS
What a piece of shit post.
Using old surveys makes this misleading. Crap presidents like Johnson and Buchanan would have been included in rankings where there were far fewer presidents, so they had a higher floor.
Meanwhile Trump only appeared on surveys with a floor of 45 or 46.
If Biden is ranked that high i think I can disregard this data lol.
Truman ahead of JFK? And GWB up that high? I completely disregard the validity of this graph
Why is Van Buren so high? He committed genocide.
“Who ranked Buchanan 26th” – the source here seems to be [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States#Scholar_survey_summary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States#Scholar_survey_summary)
it looks like that was the survey of Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. in 1948, which only ranked 29 presidents – the ones through FDR, who was #32, but omitting Garfield and W. H. Harrison presumably due to the short lengths of their presidents and only counting Cleveland once.
The ones behind him are Pierce, Grant, and Harding – Grant is the surprise here, but from the data source it looks like Grant had a bad reputation before ~2000 at which point he was elected to mediocre.
āSo scholars, whoās your Mt Rushmore of American Presidents?ā
This isnāt data, itās a joke.
I think we can justify Tippecanoe’s low ranking because he was a dumbass who got himself killed by weather. But I feel for Garfield, who had all of the makings of a once-in-a-generation politician, and got himself shot by a crazy person and then killed by backwards physicians who wanted to prove that germs didn’t exist.
Garfield really was an example (maybe America’s best, along with maybe Lincoln, LBJ and Barack Obama) of someone coming from limited means and, because they’re really talented, rising to the presidency. He was set to snuff out corruption within his own party and continue the Republican promotion of political equity for freed slaves. And then he was replaced by his VP, who was the lacky of the Republican machine and had never really held public office before (though, to Arthur’s credit, he didn’t let Roscoe Conkling act as a shadow president).
I will never understand how Ronald Reagan continues to be well regarded when his economic policies failed working people so spectacularly. He directly caused the cartoonish gap in wealth and income in America, and that issue fuels so many other divides.
Then again, we just elected Trump _because_ of the economy, so I guess we truly have not learned our lesson.
Sorting them by inauguration year:
First nine average 16th
Next nine average 32nd
Middle nine average 22nd
Next nine average 20th
Most recent nine average 25th (but look more like the previous 18 with Trump ignored)
why tf is andrew āgenocideā jackson so high up
I’m not from the US and not to well versed in US politics, but if almost all presidents from one party rank in the top half, while almost all presidents from the second party rank in the bottom half, then I’m questioning the validity/reliability of the underlying data.
I’ll be controversial here: FDR does not deserve the reputation he has. Many of the New Deal policies that American History classes tout so highly lead directly to the downfall of small and medium businesses and the growth of major corporate domination. New Deal agricultural policies benefited huge corporate farms over small family farms.
Many of the issues we are facing today, and have been facing increasingly for generations, are the result of New Deal programs and of political ideologies based on FDR’s New Deal.
He also was a major player in normalizing the growth of presidential power and the increasing irrelevance and unwillingness-to-legislate that is rife today. At the end of the day, as populist as he was, many of his policies were pro-corporate and leaning closer to authoritarian than democratic.
I’m not saying he should be at the bottom or anything, but his place in the American cultural zeitgeist as a hero of the common people and champion of mid century pro-labor populism is, at least partly, untrue and undeserved.
Why is Calvin Coolidge so low? Seems like heād be a lot higher given the roaring 20s economy/optimism and no wars and such.Ā
Look, I’m just gonna say it:
William Henry Harrison being so low is criminal. Yes, he did absolutely nothing and that’s the beauty of it. Win and celebrate your win *so* hard that you can’t screw it up for anyone. Go out on top. I wish more presidents would do that.
Wouldnāt it make more sense to flip the data presentation here from worst to best, not best to worst? Seems counterintuitive but Iām no data analyst.
I’m sure I’ll get downvoted on lefty-reddit, but this list is an abomination…
FDR is consistently over-rated, and was one of the US’s worst presidents, effectively extending the depression by 7 years, interning US citizens in camps, and being the US’s only actual dictator… Four terms…? Good gravy…
And Wilson being in the top10 is even more laughable. The guy is arguably the US’s single worst president, spear-heading the early “expertocracy” movement in the US which has lead directly to the modern unelected bureaucracy in DC which has way too much power and is not subject to elections.
What an unimaginably terrible ranking.
“Political Scholar Survey Results” Hahahaha
the fact that FDR ranks about George Washington tells you a little bit about the politics of the scholars.
How shocking, more left wing bias āproveā how terrible Trump is.
Forgive me if it take these things with a mountain of salt.
Misleading title and old data
Biden above Clinton lol
Clinton balanced the budget while Biden spends into oblivion and depletes our strategic oil reserve.
Iām sorry but Biden being anywhere in the top half delegitimizes the whole chart
Comments are closed.