Ten Worst Presidents: Introduction
A brief word about the polls themselves. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s 1996 poll surveyed 32 specialists, mostly historians and political scientists but also two politicians. It used the same five categories that his father's did, and, with few exceptions, the respondents were liberal to left in their politics. The 1996 Riding-McGiver survey, conducted by attorney William Ridings and magazine editor Stuart McGiver, polled 719 historians and political scientists as well as selected politicians, activists, and journalists, asking them to rank the presidents in five broad categories of performance and also to list their picks for the 10 best and 10 worst presidents. The 1999 C-Span poll called on approximately 90 historians and presidential experts, asking them to rate the presidents according to 10 criteria adding up to overall performance. (C-Span also ran a viewer poll at the same time.) The 2002 Sienna Research Institute polled more than 200 academic specialists, asking them to consider 20 categories including overall performance. The 2005 Wall Street Journal poll, conducted with the conservative Federalist Society, sought a balance of identifiable liberals and conservatives among the some 130 scholars it approached. Eighty-five scholars responded, rating the president on a five-point scale, the mean scores being adjusted to give equal weight to liberal- and conservative-leaning respondents.
10 worst presidents—actually 11, because of a tie at ninth place. Here is the U.S. News list of the least successful presidencies: as well as a few runners-up. From the bottom up James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore, John Tyler, Ulysses Grant, William Harrison, Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon (in a dead heat for the #9 spot), and Zachary Taylor. The three runners-up, who qualify by dint of receiving at least one point for a bottom-10 spot, are Jimmy Carter, Calvin Coolidge, and, tied for 13th, James Garfield and Chester Arthur.
What immediate lessons can we learn from this ranking? The first is that it tracks very closely with the results of Schlesinger, Sr.'s 1948 poll, with some pointed exceptions. The second is that there is remarkable consistency in the choices across all the more recent polls, particularly for the three worst presidents, even on those polls that would be considered most politically or ideologically shaded: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s to the left, the Wall Street Journal's at least somewhat closer to the right. To be sure, there are some differences in the rankings, even interesting ones. Why, for instance, does Grant, who has climbed out of the bottom-three class of the 1948 Schlesinger poll, continue to climb fairly steadily even across the relatively short chronological span represented by these polls? Does this change reflect the close and largely favorable scholarly attention given to Grant during the last dozen or so years, or does it hint at a subtle shift rightward among historians? (If the latter, the Wall Street Journal poll, which ranks Grant 12th from the bottom, perhaps best captures that shift.)
Beyond generalities, what is it, then, about these particular presidents that earned them their dubious place in history, starting with Buchanan, the 15th president of the Union and Abraham Lincoln's immediate predecessor?
advertisement
