Acad. Quest. DOI 10.1007/s12129-014-9410-y INEQUALITIES Ranking the Presidents: Scholars versus The People Clifford F. Thies # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Since Arthur Schlesinger s 1948 survey, Historians Rate U.S. Presidents, published in Life,scholars mostly historians have been rating the presidents. 1 In this first survey, the instant assessment of scholars was that Franklin D. Roosevelt was worthy of joining the pantheon of Great Presidents, following only Abraham Lincoln and George Washington in greatness. Contrariwise, in a survey immediately following Ronald Reagan s presidency, the instant assessment was that Reagan was mediocre. 2 As to why Reagan was reelected in a landslide and succeeded by a candidate of his party, well, as one survey put it, he ranked very high in luck. 3 Of course, every scholarly ranking involves the implicit values of the rankers. To what extent, for example, do scholars value economic performance when rating presidents? The same kinds of questions can be asked of presidential elections and surveys of the general population: To what extent do voters value economic performance when considering a sitting president for reelection, or when considering the nominee of the president s party when he is not running for 1 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Historians Rate U.S. Presidents, Life, November 1, 1948, 65 66, 73 74. Some presidential scholars have, individually, undertaken assessments of the presidents involving quantifying aspects of their performance, for example: Thomas A. Bailey, Presidential Greatness: The Image and the Man from George Washington to the Present (New York: Appleton-Century, 1966); Alvin S. Felzenberg, The Leaders We Deserved (And a Few We Didn t): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game (New York: Basic Books, 2008); and Ivan Eland, Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity and Liberty (Oakland, CA: Independence Institute, 2009). 2 William J. Ridings Jr. and Stuart B. McIver, Ratings the Presidents: From the Great and Honorable to the Dishonest and Incompetent (New York: Citadel Press, 1997). 3 This information comes from unpublished data provided by the Siena Research Institute (http://www. siena.edu/sri) for the 2002 Siena Research Institute survey. Clifford F. Thies is Eldon R. Lindsey Chair of Free Enterprise and Professor of Economics and Finance at Shenandoah University, Winchester, VA 22601; cthies@su.edu. The author thanks Bruce Goudley, Mike Holmes, and Gary Pecquet for comments on prior versions of this paper.
Thies reelection? These questions lead to a larger one: Should the judgments of scholars matter to voters, if the scholars values differ from those of voters? Or, to put this more pointedly, are scholarly rankings of presidents worthy contributions that the public should take seriously or are they a self-serving exercise by a relatively small, isolated, and privileged community? Assessing Greatness From the mid- to late twentieth century, the alignment of the most highly ranked presidents with electoral success was mixed. As shown in table 1, in the 1996 survey conducted by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the six highest-ranked presidents Washington, Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and both Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt were all elected to second terms and succeeded by the candidates of their party. 4 Nevertheless, three other presidents meeting this definition of electoral success James Madison, William McKinley, and Reagan were rated as average, and two more Ulysses S. Grant and Calvin Coolidge ranked as below average. It might be supposed that the cleavage between contemporary endorsement by the general public and scholarly ranking reflects the difference between expert judgment and popular opinion, and, with respect to early U.S. presidents, the effect on assessments of the prism of time. Consider the case of Madison. In real time, Federalists opposed the War of 1812, but the war s conclusion in brilliant victories at Baltimore, Lake Champlain, and especially New Orleans, as well as the restoration of the status quo antebellum in the Treaty of Ghent, doomed the Federalists to extinction. Years later, there seems to be a consensus that that war should have been avoided. The cleavage between expert judgment and popular opinion may also reflect differences in interests. Scholars, being drawn from the intellectual elite, may be disposed to those who are like them in terms of intellectual giftedness. Scholars may also be drawn to a progressive political agenda. And presidential scholars may, in particular, be disposed to executive power as distinct from legislative or judicial power, and to the exercise of government power at the national as opposed to the state level. In Schlesinger s 1948 survey of a small, carefully chosen panel of historians, panelists were asked simply to describe presidents as Great, Near Great, 4 Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Rating the Presidents: Washington to Clinton, Political Science Quarterly 112, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 179 90.
Ranking the Presidents: Scholars versus The People Table 1 Rank and Electoral Success of U.S. Presidents: Schlesinger and Schlesinger Jr. Surveys Elected to a second term and succeeded by the candidate of their party in the next following election Rank in Schlesinger 1948 Rank in Schlesinger 1962 Rank in Schlesinger Jr. 1996 Washington 2 2 2 (tie) Jefferson 5 5 4 Madison 14 12 17 Jackson 6 6 5 Lincoln 1 1 1 Grant 28 30 36 McKinley 18 15 15 Roosevelt, T. 7 7 6 Coolidge 23 27 29 Roosevelt, F.D. 3 3 2 (tie) Reagan NA NA 19 Source: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Historians Rate U.S. Presidents, Life, November 1, 1948; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Our Presidents: A Rating by Seventy-Five Historians, New York Times Magazine, July 29, 1962; Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Rating the Presidents: Washington to Clinton, Political Science Quarterly (Summer 1997). Average, Below Average, or Failure. Schlesinger specifically asked participants to consider performance as president only. 5 The responses were then coded as 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, the numerical scores averaged, and the averages ranked, giving a complete ranking of the presidents from Washington to Franklin D. Roosevelt, except for William Henry Harrison and James Garfield, who died shortly after taking office. Schlesinger s second survey (published by the New York Times in 1962) followed the same pattern, 6 as did his son s 1996 survey, except that Schlesinger Jr. coded Failure as 2 instead of as 1. The only consequence of this change was that it diminished Reagan s ranking. 7 Some subsequent surveys have followed the simple method developed by Schlesinger, while others have gotten more complicated. Two types can be distinguished: The first, as with Schlesinger s 1948 survey, leaves the overall assessment to the scholar. The second queries scholars about certain aspects of presidents and forms an overall assessment by summing or averaging the assessments of these aspects. This type of survey imposes a weighting scheme onto detailed assessments that may differ from the weighting scheme the scholars themselves would choose. 5 This request, of course, is no guarantee that a president s personality or achievements prior to or following his tenure as president will have no impact on the scholar s rating. 6 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Our Presidents: A Rating by Seventy-Five Historians, New York Times Magazine, July 29, 1962, 12 13, 40 41, 43. 7 In the analysis reported below, Failure in Schlesinger Jr. s survey has been coded as 1 and the presidents reranked.
Thies To demonstrate that these two types of surveys are not the same, a 1982 Chicago Tribune survey asked scholars to rate presidents in five categories leadership, accomplishments, political skill, appointments, and character in addition to asking for an overall rating. 8 Franklin D. Roosevelt ranked second according to the average of the scores in the five categories, but he ranked third in the overall assessment. On the other end of the spectrum, Richard Nixon ranked fourth from the bottom according to the average of the scores in the five categories, but he ranked second worst in the overall assessment. More dramatically, in the 2002 Siena Research Institute survey, the published ranking based on twenty underlying categories placed Nixon as somewhat less than average. 9 But an examination of the underlying categories reveals that he ranked near the bottom in the your present overall view category. In the underlying categories, Nixon s scores range from relatively high in foreign policy accomplishments to the lowest in integrity. In forming an overall assessment, scholars clearly put more weight on integrity than the formula in the Siena survey allowed. The first, scholar-centric, type of survey includes the three conducted by Schlesinger and by his son, the Chicago Tribune survey, and eight others: Organization of American Historians (OAH; Maranell, 1970), Murray-Blessing (1983), Ridings-McIver (1996), Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI; Gregg, 1996), the Wall Street Journal 2000 and 2005 surveys (Lindgren and Calabresi, 2001), and the category described as your present overall view in the 2002 and 2010 Siena Research Institute surveys. 10 The ISI survey was targeted specifically to right-of-center scholars, and both Wall Street Journal surveys queried panels in which left- and right-of-center scholars were equally represented. The OAH survey asked three questions on 8 Steve Neal, Our Best and Worst Presidents, Chicago Tribune Magazine, January 10, 1982, 8 13, 15, 18. 9 This information comes from unpublished data provide to me by the Siena Research Institute (http:// www.siena.edu/sri) for the 2002 Siena Research Institute survey. 10 Gary M. Maranell, The Evaluation of Presidents: An Extension of the Schlesinger Polls, Journal of American History 57, no. 1 (June 1970): 104 13; Robert K. Murray and Tim H. Blessing, The Presidential Performance Study: A Progress Report, Journal of American History 70, no. 3 (December 1983): 535 55; Ridings and McIver, Ratings the Presidents; Gary L. Gregg Jr. Liberals, Conservatives and the Presidency, Intercollegiate Review (Spring 1998): 26 31; James Lindgren and Steven G. Calabresi, Rating the Presidents of the United States, 1789 2000: A Survey of Scholars in Political Science, History and Law, Constitutional Commentary 18, no. 3 (Winter 2001): 583 606 (from Lindgren and Calabresi, Ranking the Presidents, Wall Street Journal, November 16, 2000, http://online.wsj.com/ article/sb974336784441980753.html); James Taranto, Presidential Leadership: How s He Doing? Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2005, http://www.jamestaranto.com/average.htm; and unpublished data provided by the Siena Research Institute for the 2002 and 2010 Siena Research Institute surveys.
Ranking the Presidents: Scholars versus The People prestige, strength of action, and accomplishments that could be interpreted as reflecting an overall assessment the responses to which were very highly correlated. 11 The Ridings-McIver survey used a hybrid method to obtain overall rankings, including a five-part assessment scale, a listing of the top and bottom ten presidents, and ratings based on categories with scholar-provided weights. OAH, Murray-Blessing, Ridings-McIver, and Siena polled large samples of scholars, while the other surveys queried relatively small, carefully chosen panels. The second, survey-centric, type of survey includes the first few conducted by the Siena Research Institute (Lonnstrom and Kelly, 1997, 2003), and two conducted by C-Span. 12 In the C-Span surveys, scholars assessed the presidents in ten categories: public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, setting the agenda, equal justice, and performance within the times. Assessments in these categories are summed, and the sum is used to rank presidents. This process is kind to Nixon, whose very low score in moral authority is partially offset by his high score in international relations. Determinants of Greatness Survey-takers appear to agree on the criteria. After his first survey, Schlesinger said that great presidents are associated with turning points in history, and are idealistic but not doctrinaire, strong moral leaders, and expanders of executive power. 13 According to Murray and Blessing, all of the great and near-great presidents are action-oriented and progressive, meaning willing and able to promote fundamental change. 14 Henry Steele Commager, who conducted a survey published in Parade in 1977, said great 11 The responses to the several other questions ranged from uncorrelated to less than highly correlated with the responses to these three. 12 Douglas A. Lonnstrom and Thomas O. Kelly II, The Contemporary Presidents: Rating the Presidents: A Tracking Study, Presidential Studies Quarterly 27, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 591 98; The Contemporary Presidents: Rating the Presidents: A Tracking Study, Presidential Studies Quarterly 33, no. 3 (September 2003): 625 34. C-SPAN Survey of Presidential Leadership: Historian Survey Results, American Presidents: Life Portraits, C-Span.org, http://www.americanpresidents.org/survey/historians/; C-Span 2009 Historians Presidential Leadership Survey, C-Span.org, released February 16, 2009, http://legacy.cspan.org/presidentialsurvey/index.aspx. 13 Schlesinger, Historians Rate U.S. Presidents, 65 66. 14 Murray and Blessing, Presidential Performance Study, 57.
Thies presidents are on the side of the people and push for progress through reform. 15 This study seeks to determine the extent to which the values implicit in the ranking of presidents by scholars align with the values implicit in voting and other choices made by the general population. Accordingly, outcomes are examined, rather than personality and achievements before or after serving as president, 16 using a four-factor model involving (1) real GDP growth, (2) federal non-defense expenditures, (3) war, and (4) scandal. Operational definitions and sources are given in a data appendix. In terms of economic performance over presidential terms, real GDP growth has varied: 3.9 and 4.1 percent during the Reagan and the Bill Clinton administrations, for example, and 2.6 and 1.9 percent during the tenures of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. With regard to the ratio of federal expenditure to GDP, it is dominated by spikes associated with war-time spending. To distinguish the growth of government from the conduct of war, this study focuses on non-defense expenditure. The ratio of non-defense expenditure to trend GDP rose from the 1950s to the 1970s, leveled off during the 1980s, and declined during the 1990s into the early 2000s. 17 The scale of war, presented in table 2, is relative taking into account the length, cost, and number of casualties in a war relative to the average length, cost, 15 Henry Steele Commager, Our Greatest Presidents, Parade, May 8, 1977, 16, 19. 16 Dean Keith Simonton, a psychologist, has developed models in which presidential greatness is a function, among other things, of the intellectual brilliance a person brings to the office. In some of his later work, Simonton develops models that use both input-type (e.g., intellectual brilliance ) and output-type variables (e.g., war) to explain ratings by scholars. In my study at the risk of a low goodness of fit only output-type variables are used as explanatory variables. Dean Keith Simonton, Presidential Greatness and Performance: Can We Predict Leadership in the White House? Journal of Personality 49, no. 3 (September 1981): 306 22; Presidential Greatness: The Historical Consensus and Its Psychological Consensus, Political Psychology 7, no. 2 (June 1986): 259 83; Predicting Presidential Greatness: An Alternative to the Kenney and Rice Contextual Index, Presidential Studies Quarterly 21, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 301 5; Presidential Greatness and Personality: A Response to McCann (1992), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 63, no. 4 (1992): 676 79; Predicting Presidential Performance in the United States: Equation Replication on Recent Survey Results, Journal of Social Psychology 141, no. 3 (2001): 293 307; Intelligence and Presidential Greatness: Equation Replication Using Updated IQ Estimates, Advances in Psychology Research 13 (2002): 143 53; Presidential IQ, Openness, Intellectual Brilliance, and Leadership: Estimates and Correlations for 42 U.S. Chief Executives, Political Psychology 27, no. 4 (August 2006): 511 26. 17 While spending is an important part of the size of government, also significant are activities such as price controls of nominally private economic activity, credit controls and guarantees, marginal (as opposed to average) tax rates and tax preferences, the regulation of business and labor, and international trade policy. While something like the Index of Economic Freedom developed by the Economic Freedom Network would be ideal to measure the size of government, as of this time only the expenditure series is available.
Ranking the Presidents: Scholars versus The People Table 2 Scale of Wars War From To President(s) Scale American Revolution 1775 1782 0.30 War of 1812 1812 1815 Madison 0.07 Mexican-American War 1846 1848 Polk 0.07 Civil War 1861 1865 Lincoln 1.00 Spanish-American War 1898 1898 McKinley 0.01 Philippine-American War 1899 1903 Roosevelt, T. 0.01 WWI 1817 1818 Wilson 0.76 WWII 1941 1945 Roosevelt, F.D. 1.00 Korean War 1950 1953 Truman 0.43 Vietnam War 1963 1972 Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon 0.78 Persian Gulf War 1990 1991 Bush, G.H.W. 0.01 Afghanistan and Iraq Wars 2001 2013 Bush, G.W., Obama 0.34 Scale = MIN(1,Cost^½ times Length^½ times Casualties^½) where Cost is the ratio of the Cost of a war (including an imputation for the economic loss due to those killed and wounded during the war) to the average cost of wars; Length is the ratio of the length of a war in years to the average length of wars; and Casualties is the ratio of the Americans killed and wounded during a war to the average number of casualties during wars. and number of casualties in wars in which the United States has been involved. The square root of each of the three ratios is calculated to account for diminishing marginal utility; then the three are multiplied, subject to a maximum of one for the product sum. Not surprisingly, the Civil War and World War II are indicated to be the largest two wars. Somewhat surprisingly, the Vietnam War joins World War I as almost as large (remember, this scale is nonlinear; its indicated differences are not proportional). The American Revolutionary War (not associated with any president), Korean War, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan constitute a third tier. This study s scale of scandal, presented in table 3, is also relative, taking into account who, what, and the disposition of each scandal listed in the relevant Wikipedia article. A scandal involving the president and a high crime resulting in impeachment by the House and removal by the Senate or in a forced resignation is accorded the value 1. Scandals that involve persons a bit removed from the president and run-of-the-mill bribery, corruption, or a sex scandal that result in something less than a conviction or its equivalent get smaller numbers. Some of the listed scandals get a value of zero. The values of the scandals during each president s tenure are totaled, subject to a maximum of 1. The worst presidents in terms of scandal are clearly Nixon, Grant, and Warren Harding. Andrew Johnson, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush also wind up with large numbers (in the latter three cases, due almost exclusively to scandals during their second terms).
Thies Table 3 Scale of Scandals Scandal President Description Scale Hamilton affair Washington Sec. of Treasury blackmailed over affair and 0.06 confesses Petticoat affair Jackson Sec. of War John Henry Eaton has affair 0.11 leading to suicide of cuckolded husband Cameron Lincoln Sec. of War resigns due to corruption charges 0.22 Impeachment Johnson, A. House impeaches president for violating 0.50 Tenure of Office Act, Senate does not remove Credit Mobilier Grant Congressman Oakes Ames censured by 0.11 House of Representatives Sanborn contract Grant kickbacks to Sec. of War 0.22 Whiskey ring Grant massive corruption during Grant administration 0.00 Belknap Grant Sec. of War impeached and resigned for bribery 0.44 Hayt Hayes Commissioner of Indian Affairs forced to resign 0.11 because of corruption Forbes Harding Director of Veterans Bureau found guilty of fraud 0.17 and bribery Harding affair Harding President involved with a mistress 0.00 Teapot Dome Harding Sec. of Navy resigns for his part in scandal 0.22 Teapot Dome Harding Sec. of Interior Albert B. Fall convicted and goes 0.33 to jail Adams Eisenhower Chief of Staff resigns after not answering Congress 0.22 about certain gifts Bobby Baker Johnson, L.B. Aide to Pres. resigns after charges of favoritism 0.11 Jenkins Johnson, L.B. Aide to Pres. caught in gay liaison in YMCA 0.06 bathroom Agnew Nixon VP convicted of bribery while he was Gov. of 0.33 Maryland, and resigns Watergate Nixon President forced to resign 1.00 Bert Lance Carter Dir. of OMB resigns amidst allegations of misuse 0.22 of funds of a bank in Georgia Iran-Contra Reagan various members of administration resign and/or 0.25 convicted HUD Reagan various members of administration resign and/or 0.17 convicted Wedtech Reagan various members of administration resign and/or 0.17 convicted Villalpando Bush, G.H.W. Treasurer of the US convicted of tax evasion 0.17 Hubbell Clinton Assoc. Attorney General convicted of tax evasion 0.17 Clinton affair Clinton House impeaches president for lying under oath 0.17 about a mistress, Senate does not remove Cisneros affair Clinton Sec of HUD resigns, convicted of false statements 0.17 in conjunction with a mistress Abramoff Bush, G.W. various members of administration resign and/or 0.17 convicted Plame Bush, G.W. Chief of Staff of VP guilty of false statements 0.25 Tobias affair Bush, G.W. Dep. Sec of State resigns after revelation he had frequented the DC Madam 0.06 Scale = Who times What times Disposition, where Who equals 1 if president, 2/3 if VP, cabinet officer, or chief of staff, and 1/3 if aide, subcabinet officer or member of Congress associated with the administration; What equals 1 if High Crime, 2/3 if bribery or other ordinary corruption, and 1/3 if sex scandal; and, Disposition equals 1 if impeached and removed or forced to resign, ¾ if convicted in a court of law, ½ if impeached and not removed, or if resigned or censured, and ¼ if indicted in a court of law but not convicted or if a public confession.
Ranking the Presidents: Scholars versus The People Scholars versus the General Public The first column of table 4 presents a regression analysis of the 434 rankings of presidents by scholars in twelve surveys, relative to the above-discussed performance measures. The second and third columns present regressions of the popular votes and Electoral College votes received by the candidate of the incumbent party, relative to the performance measures of the prior term. 18 The results indicate that scholars are not impressed by presidents associated with a vibrant economy. Indeed, the coefficient on GDP growth is wrong-signed and significant. In contrast, GDP growth is positive and significant in both the popular and Electoral College vote regressions. With regard to the change in federal non-defense expenditure, similar results are obtained in all three regressions, although significance varies. In one of only two instances in which conservative scholars appear to distinguish themselves from their fellow, predominantly liberal colleagues, they oppose increasing the size of government relative to other scholars. 19 With regard to war, scholars appear to love wars and liberal scholars appear to love war without discrimination. Conservative scholars show some discrimination in their taste for war, liking good wars a bit more and bad wars a bit less. In contrast, the people appear to dislike bad wars and react to bad wars differently than they react to good wars, although these findings fail to meet an acceptable level of significance. With regard to scandal, scholars strongly penalize presidents who become associated with scandals. By contrast, the people do not appear to punish candidates of parties whose sitting presidents were associated with scandals. The variables X and X 2 are designed to reflect any tendency of the ranking of presidents by scholars to change during the twenty years following departure from office. It appears that presidents begin about ten percentiles below where they ultimately wind up, and that the path is nonlinear, first rising and then settling back a bit. 18 For the Vietnam War, the war variable is set equal to 25 percent of the value given in table 3 for the 1964 election, 50 percent for the 1968 election, and 50 percent for the 1972 election, reflecting the cumulative cost of the war and the change of administration. Similarly, for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war variable is set equal to 25 percent of the value given in table 3 for the 2004 election, 75 percent for the 2008 election, and 25 percent for the 2012 election. 19 Originally, all variables were interacted with the variable denoting the survey specifically of right-of-center scholars and the two equally-balanced between left- and right-of-center scholars. However, only two of the interacted variables achieved t-statistics as high as 1.
Thies Table 4 Regression Analysis: Scholar Rankings versus Contemporary Popular Assessments (absolute values of t-statistics in parentheses) Scholar Rankings Popular Vote 1824 2012 Electoral Vote 1796 2012 Intercept 54.38 (24.954) 46.80 (24.98) Average Rate of -0.81 1.01 Real GDP Growth (2.69) (3.41) Change in Federal non-defense -2.71-0.95 Exp/Trend GDP (2.32) (1.37) Good War 60.68 0.09 (9.65) (0.02) Bad War 58.31-5.58 (6.85) (0.92) Scandal -49.20 2.57 (9.88) (0.74) Conservatives times Change in Fed -6.78 non-defense Exp/Trend GDP (2.56) Conservatives times 18.18 Good versus Bad War (1.39) Incumbent 3.22 (1.99) X 64.77 (1.51) X 2-83.62 (1.40) R 2 36.9 35.6 19.7 N 434 48 57 42.20 (5.39) 2.63 (2.05) -2.22 (0.72) 22.37 (1.13) -17.66 (0.65) 4.95 (0.32) 10.35 (1.47) Surveys of the General Public What about the values implicit in the choices made in surveys asking the general public for retrospective assessments of presidents? Scholars have generally dismissed such surveys; for example, Elmer Plischke wrote in 1985 that few participants in a 1956 Gallup Poll could even name three presidents. 20 Mindful of this and other limitations in surveys of the general population, this study examined responses from two types of questions that pertain to approval ratings and four- or five-part assessments, while avoiding the data from a third, frequently-used type of question, which involves ranking by the percent naming which president is the greatest. Table 5 presents regression analysis of retrospective surveys of the general population. Many of these surveys are posted on the Polling Report website 20 Elmer Plischke, Rating Presidents and Diplomats in Chief, Presidential Studies Quarterly 15, no. 4 (Fall 1985): 725 42.
Ranking the Presidents: Scholars versus The People (http://www.pollingreport.com/) and others were obtained from diverse places. 21 Column 1 of table 5 presents retrospective approval ratings of presidents whose last full year of office was at least twenty years prior to the date of the survey. The approval rating is the percent saying approve minus the percent saying disapprove to a question such as, Do you approve or disapprove of the way NAME handled his job as president? Of the fifty-two retrospective assessments of long-past presidents, thirty-six are from a 2007 Rasmussen poll that (amazingly!) queried the public about the performance of every past president. 22 Most of the other assessments are from Gallup polls. Many participants in the 2007 Rasmussen Poll declined to offer an opinion regarding the lesser known presidents of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Based on the responses of those offering an opinion, it appears from the first column of table 5 that with regard to the performance of presidents of the distant past the general public like scholars does not much care about economic performance, loves good wars, does not dislike bad wars (which are loved by scholars), and deeply dislikes scandals. These results may reflect the impact of scholars on the general public in the teaching of history and other ways. 23 The second column of table 5 examines the values implicit in retrospective approval ratings of recent presidents; the third column examines the values implicit in four- or five-part ratings of presidents no earlier than Franklin D. Roosevelt. Most of the data analyzed in the last column come from Zogby Polls conducted between 1997 and 2008. 24 The first two such surveys, 21 I found a number of general public surveys on the Zogby Poll website (http://www.zogby.com/features/ featuredtables.dbm?id=32, accessed March 5, 2008, no longer available). The Wikipedia entry, Historical Rankings of Presidents of the United States, includes the numbers from a 2007 Rasmussen Poll: Washington, Lincoln Most Popular Presidents: Nixon, Bush Least Popular, Rasmussen Reports, July 4, 2007, http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/people2/2007/ washington_lincoln_most_popular_presidents_nixon_bush_least_popular, accessed December 12, 2013, http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_united_states. The earlier Gallup Poll data are published in George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll, Public Opinion, 1935 1971 (New York: Random House, 1972); and the earlier Harris Poll data are found on the website of the Howard W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (http:// www.irss.unc.edu/odum/home2.jsp). 22 Washington, Lincoln Most Popular Presidents. 23 By similar reasoning, the cohesion in ratings between C-Span viewers and C-Span experts following in-depth discussions with authors of book-length biographies of each of the presidents should not be too surprising. See Jeffrey E. Cohen, The Polls: Presidential Greatness as Seen in the Mass Public: An Extension of the Simonton Model, Presidential Studies Quarterly 33, no. 4 (December 2003): 913 24. 24 See note 21.
Thies Table 5 Regression Analysis: Surveys of the General Public (absolute values of t-statistics in parentheses) Retrospective Net Approval Rating: Past Presidents Retrospective Net Approval Rating: Recent Presidents Popular Greatness Assessment (on a scale 0 to 4) Intercept 36.32 (5.14) -18.26 (0.91) 1.94 (14.23) Average Rate of Real GDP Growth 0.08 (0.08) 2.73 (1.33) 0.09 (4.01) Change in Federal non-defense Exp/Trend GDP -4.16 (1.44) -3.06 (0.80) -0.12 (4.71) Good War 56.65 (2.67) NA 0.69 (3.96) Bad War -3.45 (0.15) -126.50 (2.44) -1.14 (5.16) Scandal -51.73 (4.12) 32.25 (1.26) -0.43 (3.68) X -150.30 (3.22) 0.43 (0.99) X 2 145.14 (2.43) -0.58 (1.39) R 2 34.7 85.5 56.5 N 62 27 130 however, are Gallup Polls conducted in 1956 and 1957 that concerned Harry Truman. 25 The third, also a Gallup Poll, was conducted in 1960 and concerned Dwight Eisenhower. 26 And the fourth is a 1983 Harris Poll that concerned Kennedy, on the twentieth anniversary of his assassination. 27 Beginning in the mid-1980s, Gallup began to inquire periodically about the greatness of Reagan and, later, of other current and recent presidents. This study uses the responses to surveys conducted in at least the seventh year of two-term presidents or following a president s last full year in office. In examining columns 2 and 3 of table 5 it is clear that the general public is positively impressed by a vibrant economy, hates bad wars, and distinguishes bad wars from good wars. Other findings are inconsistent or insignificant, perhaps due to small sample size. The consistent and significant results are consistent with those obtained with the popular and Electoral College vote (reported in table 4), and inconsistent with the findings obtained with scholars (reported in column 1 of table 4), and with approval ratings of long-past presidents (reported in column 1 of table 5). 25 See Gallup, Gallup Poll, Public Opinion. 26 Ibid. 27 See note 21.
Ranking the Presidents: Scholars versus The People Focusing on popular assessment of greatness (table 5, column 4), where assembling a large number of assessments was possible, allows for two additional observations: All coefficients are significant except the two that would reflect any tendency of ratings to evolve over time. Unlike scholars, the general public does not tend to underrate very recent presidents. Scandals, however, diminish the general public s view of a president, even though voters do not penalize the candidates of parties whose sitting presidents were associated with scandals. Summary and Discussion Regression analysis reveals significant differences between the values implicit in the rankings of presidents by scholars and the values implicit in contemporary popular endorsement, with regard to voting and retrospective assessment of recent presidents. The people care a lot about the economy, while scholars do not. Scholars are drawn to war, whereas the people are repulsed by most wars. Scholars heavily discount presidents whose administrations are marred by scandal, while the people do not harshly judge the candidates nominated by the parties of these presidents. Although several differences are indicated between conservative and liberal scholars, the differences are only marginally significant. It seems fair to say that the concerns of the people are ordinary and involve going about the business of life and not getting swept up in the affairs of state, whether this involves war-making, sexual intrigue, or petty corruption. By contrast, scholars seem fixated on drama. The distinction between elite and popular opinion on war is well-known. In his speech at Moscow State University, Ronald Reagan put it this way, People do not make wars, governments do. 28 The classical liberal supports democracy specifically because of the opportunity it provides to subordinate government to the interests of the ordinary person and, these interests are, almost always, peace and prosperity. 28 Ronald Wilson Reagan, Address at Moscow State University (May 31, 1988), transcription available at Miller Center of the University of Virginia, http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3416.
Thies Data Appendix Average Rate of Real GDP Growth: Over the tenure of the president (table 4, column 1) or over the prior four years (table 4, columns 2 and 3; table 5), from EH.net. Conservatives: 1 for ISI 1996 survey and ½ for Wall Street Journal 2000 and 2005 surveys. Electoral College Vote: Percentage of the Electoral College votes won by the candidates of the two major parties, won by the candidate of the incumbent party, from David Leip s Atlas of U.S Presidential Elections (http:// uselectionatlas.org/). Good War: Civil War and WWII. Incumbent: 1 if the current president is the candidate of the incumbent party. Popular Vote: Percentage of the votes received by the candidates of the two major parties, won by the candidate of the incumbent party, from David Leip s Atlas. Popular Greatness Assessment: Mean rating of presidents on a scale of 0 to 4 in surveys of the general population conducted during the seventh year of two-term presidents or at least the year following a president s last full year in office. Retrospective Net Approval Rating, Past Presidents: Percentage responding Approve minus percentage responding Disapprove of president in surveys of the general population conducted at least twenty years following a president s last full year in office. Retrospective Net Approval Rating, Recent Presidents: Percentage responding Approve minus percentage responding Disapprove of president in surveys of the general population conducted at least in the year following and not more than twenty years following a president s last full year in office. Scholar Rankings: Percentile rankings in Schlesinger 1948 and 1962, Schlesinger Jr. 1996, OAH 1970, Chicago Tribune 1982, Murray-Blessing 1982, Ridings-McIver 1996, ISI 1996, Wall Street Journal 2000 and 2005, and Siena 2002 and 2010. Rankings exclusive of Harrison, Garfield, and current president. Rankings in OAH survey based on average of prestige,
Ranking the Presidents: Scholars versus The People strength of action, and accomplishments. Rankings in Siena 2002 and 2010 based on category your present overall assessment. Rankings in Schlesinger Jr. 1996 based on recoding Failure as1onascaleof1to5. War: Scale given in table 2 of War of 1812, Mexican-American War, American Civil War, Spanish-American War, Philippine-American War, WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Scandal: Scale given in table 3 of political scandals listed in Wikipedia. Trend GDP: GDP Price Deflator times Trend Real GDP, where Ln(Trend Real GDP) = 1.4953 + 0.0385*(Year 1789) 0.0043*s 1,andwheres 1 = Year 1886 if > 0, 1886 beingdeterminedbyagridsearch. X = MAX(0, 1-(Year of survey Last full year in office)/20