Still fuming about the ranking of presidents by the Presidential Greatness Project, economist Robert F. Graboyes has produced his own ratings of presidents at Bastiat’s Window:
Two recent BW posts (“Polls, Pols, and Poli-Sci” and “Presidential Prodigiousness Potpourri”) lambasted the Bizarro World of presidential rankings from the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey.
Such ratings are bound to be fraught, influenced as they are by recency bias, ideology, partisan preference, and just plain personal taste. I suspect that some of Dr. Graboyes’s dissatisfaction stems from the peculiarly high ratings in the PGP of Clinton, Obama, and Biden along with the lower ratings of recent Republican presidents with Trump at the very bottom of the pack.
I actually prefer Dr. Graboyes’s “tier” system (top tier with at least one major, distinctive accomplishment; second tier in which the positive accomplishments outweigh the negative, etc.) to absolute ratings (first, second, third). His top tier presidents are Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Polk, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Reagan) while his bottom tier consists of Pierce, Buchanan, A. Johnson, Wilson, Hoover, and Carter.
I think that both the PGP and Dr. Graboyes have more of an appetite for American Empire than I. Is it possible for the United States to be secure and promote international institutions without American hegemony? We’ll never know because that’s the policy we’ve been pursuing for the last 40 years. Maybe there’s a better description of our official policy of “military primacy in every theater” than “American hegemony” but that’s how it looks to me. The irony of such a policy is that neither of our political parties are willing to admit the implications of such a policy.
Anyhow I found the post interesting with some fun graphics. Produce your own rankings as you will. My pick for the greatest president of the post-war period would be Eisenhower and the worst Carter.
I like the structure with the tiers, but also eliminating Presidents who didn’t serve long. It’s always unfair for William H. Harrison to be ranked poorly because of his early death. Though I wonder where to draw the line.
I also like the conceptual framework of “accomplishments minus harm.” I disagree with ranking Polk in the top tier with that framework. His accomplishments are high in terms of westward expansion, but it was possibly one of the most momentous steps towards Civil War as warned by slavery-enthusiast Calhoun. I would drop him a tier, noting that he places Pierce in the bottom tier largely because of things Polk set in motion.
Similarly I question putting LBJ in the second to last tier. I could understand putting him the middle tier if you think the civil rights and social welfare legislation was offset by the Vietnam War and some other negatives.
I’d put Grant in the top tier as one of the greatest Presidents given his role in promoting civil rights for freedman. I don’t think there is any indication that he was corrupt, at least any more so than any other President.
His rankings tend toward libertarianism, ranking a lot of lesser known late 19th century Presidents higher than normal, who governed at a time of divided government. The traditional rankings always rate Grover Cleveland high in this period, for no apparent reason than that he was the only Democrat elected for almost 60 years. Anyway . . . Coolidge, check. Reagan, check.
Meh. If you set the metrics and then get to selectively choose what to include, use talking points instead of what actually happened, and then exclude stuff you dont like, you can always end up with the results you want. (Seems more conservative than libertarian. Most libertarians seem to understand that most of the deregulation credited to Reagan occurred with Carter. Reagan mostly deregulated the finance sector, closely followed the S&L crisis.)
Steve