TOP 10 and WORST 10 American Presidents

Presidents’ Day in the U.S. is kind of a all-in-one holiday, you celebrate Lincoln and Washington’s birthdays while honoring all U.S. Presidents.  Some just enjoy the day off too!

On this Presidents’ Day, C-SPAN commemorated the holiday by releasing the results of its 2009 Historians Presidential Leadership Survey (last time they did it was in 2000).  Sixty-five historians chosen by C-SPAN and its academic advisors, ranked the last 42 American Presidents across 10 attributes of presidential leadership.  These attributes ranged from “International Relations” and “Economic Management” to “Moral Authority” and “Public Persuasion”.  There was also a category for “Performance Within Contexts Of Times” to account for the variation in issues encountered by each President.

Drums roll please, the Top Ten Presidents are:
1.    Lincoln                                6. Kennedy
2.    Washington                       7. Jefferson
3.    F.D. Roosevelt                  8. Eisenhower
4.    Theodore Roosevelt      9. Wilson
5.    Truman                               10. Reagan

The Worst Ten Presidents are, blow horn pleaseeee:
33. Hayes (PRETTY BAD)            38. Harding
34. Hoover                                         39. W.H. Harrison
35. Tyler                                              40. Pierce
36. George W. Bush                         41. A. Johnson
37. Fillmore                                       42. Buchanan (REALLY BAD)

In case your wondering who all these white guys are, Wikipedia is the place to begin but NOT end!

Another interesting ranking I found was the categories the Top Ten presidents were worst in during their administration.
1.    Lincoln: Not so good at “Relations With Congress”.
2.    Washington:  His strongest suit wasn’t “Pursing Equal Justice For All”.
3.    F.D. Roosevelt:  The same as Washington.
4.    Theodore Roosevelt:  The same as his Daddy (j/k … Teddy and FD were really 5th cousins and Teddy is older).
5.    Truman:  Found it really hard to have “Relations With Congress”.
6.    Kennedy:  Encountered the same obstacle his predecessor.
7.    Jefferson:  Not a champion in “Pursing Equal Justice For All”.
8.    Eisenhower: Not the best at “Vision/Setting An Agenda”.
9.    Wilson: Not the man to turn to when “Pursuing Justice For All”.
10.  Reagan:  Basically the same category as Wilson and the other 5 top ten presidents. Does this say anything about America and equality for all … hopefully we will see some change now with Obama.

What do you all think of these rankings?