The roll will pit the shuttle toward an imaginary target in space. The 1981 nasa documentary, Space Shuttle a remarkable flying machine on the voyage of columbia. Sunday morning on road to the white house rewind, the 196 Campaign Film for candidate Richard Nixon. I have decided that i will test my ability to win and my ability to cope with the issues in the fires of the primary. And not just in the smokefilled room of miami. At 1 00, a panel of authors on their books chronicling mix can American Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1970s. This coalition of labor unions, mexican American Civil Rights leaders and religious authorities came together to protest the exploitation of the program and, in fact, accelerated Congress Decision to terminate it the next year in 1964. I think this was a moment of blossoming for the chicano movement. For the complete schedule, go to cspan. Org. On lectures in history, Dickinson College professor David Oconnell examines president ial legacies and what factors contribute to making a president ial term successful. He discusses several rankings of president s and compares the criteria and results. His class is about an hour and ten minutes. Four score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on to this continent a new nation conceived in libber tir and dedicated to proposition all men are created all kwaequal. The brilliance of those words wasnt necessarily recognized at the time. In fact, lincoln was not the featured speaker at gettysburg. It was actually edward evert, a senator from massachusetts, who spoke for two hours while lincoln waited until the end to give his closing words. Today, of course, we recognize the gettysburg address as perhaps the greatest moment of president ial speech in history. I think the fact that people didnt necessarily see the speech that way at the time that lincoln wasnt the featured speaker at gettysburg points to the fact that lincolns greatness wasnt necessarily recognized at the time in general. You have to remember that when lincoln became president , he hadnt served in Public Office for ten years. His Country Style of dress, his speaking mannerism, his selfeducation, all that was meant lincoln was looked upon with some degree of kond session from the eastern elite in the country. Perhaps not much was expected from his presidency. However, today, theres little dispute on lincolns greatness. I encourage my students to see Political Science not as a science but a debate. There are no laws, there are no findings, theres no discoveries. Instead, what you have who are people making argue ulments thay or may not be persuasive to you. Thats important to note when we think about president ial greatness. Were going to look at five different ways of measuring president ial greatness. What he will see these polls, these Academic Studies that involved hundreds of historians, political scientists and others, theres a consensus that lincoln was the greatest president. Today, we may have some concerns about some of the thing ez did. That he certainly took libber tis with the constitution. He suspended the right of habous corpus. He closed newspapers that were printing material critical of the union effort. He spent money that congress hadnt appropriated. The raised the size of the military without congress approva approval. Did he this for a great end. Preserving the union at a time of maximum peril for our country. He had the ee manse indication proclamati proclamation. He nerve lost sight of what the United States was fighting for. There was a lot of pressure in 1864 to call off the president ial election feeling you couldnt go through with an election at a time of war. Lincoln would be justified cancelling this contest. What lincoln said was what lincoln believed was that if the United States were do to do so, the rebellion would have won. What i want us to do today is think about president ial greatness. The whole class has been leading up to this point. We have been studying president ial power, leadership, trying to understand how president s are or are not able to overcome these obstacles in their way when they can successfully navigate the challenges and when they fail to navigate the challenges. The point of doing so is to become great achieve greatness. I want us to think about how we might understand president ial greatness, how we might conceptualize it. We will look at ways that different scholars have tried to rank the president s. From one to 44. And then were going to talk about why potentially today greatness is more difficult to achieve. We may never see another person like Abraham Lincoln. The modern president s, they have been weak. They have not achieved the level of greatness the people like lincoln have. We want to try to understand why that might be. And if there are reasons or if the fault really lies in the individuals who hold the office in recent terms. One thing we know is that americans love to rank things. I estimate that maybe 67 of the contest on the internet are lists of things. This is buzz feed. Its lists. Here are some interesting rankings that i recently came across in the hard work that have i been doing as a professor. The definitive list of stupid people on twitter, let me tell you, version 4. 0, better than 3. 0 and 2. 0. The internets 25 worst pass wortds. If your password is on the liver, its saying enough. Top 25 College Football teams ranked by stupidity of fans. A ranking of every big brother season from worst to lead worst. The 26 best drake meems that have exited. That is kind of cool. The definitive ranking of the 50 worst selfies. I looked at that one. The message is dont take selfies at funerals. Thats the takeaway point there. Americans also love ranking their president s. We have read the president ial power, the most famous book ever written on the presidency. A book that has been influential for scholars and president s alike. A guidebook of how to successfully exercise executive authority. Very first sentence of the book, the United States in the United States, we like to rate a president. We measure him as weak or strong and call what we are measuring his leadership. We do not wait until a man is dead. We rate him from the moment he takes office. Thats true. Gallop begin sur vagveying amers on obamas presidency the day after his inauguration. unh8 that rating, that starts immediately. Of course, there are all these benchmarks that are set in a presidency where we stop and consider their legacy. 100 daze, how does the president s first 100 days compare to Franklin Roosevelt. The reelection campaign, the ultimate opportunity for vote torz cast judgment on president ial performance. You have pundits and columnists who are asking how anything a president does affects their legacy. A way of saying how it affects their place in history. Even though we like do this, ranking the president s is actually really hard to do. So theres some systematic reasons why its difficult to try to rank president s. Its difficult to rate their performance. Number one, were not neutral observ observers. We all have our own opinions. We all have our own biases. That will affect hour we evaluate any president s performance. Research has shown that ideology play a role in assessments of president ial greatness. This does not come as a surprise to you. Conservatives of will think Ronald Reagan say great president. Liberals will think john kennedisy great president. The impact of our biases doesnt stop there. Its also going to impact the criteria we use to determine president ial greatness. What our standards are. Research has shown liberals are more likely than conservatives to think that Something Like idealism is a standard of president ial greatness. Those are two ways that our biases will affect our evaluation of greatness. We also know that context matters. President s take office at different times facing a different set of leadership challenges. Thats going to have to be taken into account when we try to rate their performance. On the one hand, we might give president s sympathy for taking office in difficult circumstances. If we think about barak obama, at the end of his presidency, we may want to step back and say, you know what . He took office at a time of a massive recession, with the United States engaged in two wars, and because of all these challenges, even if he didnt achieve quite as much as other president s, that he deserves to be rated higher because the context in which he served was more difficult. We know that voertz aters are c of doing this. At the time of his reelection, if voters considered obama and bush to be equally responsible for the countrys economic condition, then obama would have been nine points less popular. People seem to be willing to give president s leeway for necessarily have a lot do with. But difficulty is not necessarily a bad thing. Because crises, they can be opportunities for greatness. I dont think its a coincidence that the two greatest president s, we will see in the rankings, that the top three is always the same. Its some combination of lincoln, then washington and then roosevelt or roosevelt and washington. Its always the same. Two of the president s served in perhaps the biggest crises that america has seen. Civil war and then world war ii and great depression. That gave them an opportunity to do things other president s who served in more calm times might not have had the chance to do. Didnt necessarily mean they would meet the challenges. But it was something that they could potentially do that others could not. This is actually clinton lamented. After 99 11, clinton said he wished he was president at that time. You had to have a signature moment of leadership. He never had the opportunity do so. A third problem is that president ial greatness is not set in stone. When we rate president s, those ratings, they will change over time as new information emerges. And as our own values change. An example of a president whose ranking has gone down over time would be john ken dichlt den. When john kennedy died, he was popular. He died under tragic circumstances. And the first appraisals of his presidency were written by people who had worked in kennedys presidency, held him in extremely high regard and didnt criticize really anything that he had done. But over time, we have learned new things about kennedy that has affected our opinion of him. We have learned about his chronic womanizing, womanizing that jeopardized his personal security as he was involved with prostitutes and other people that his staff procured for him. Womanizing that general ard diesed his independent ens. The afear with the mob boss. Womanizing that would be sexual harassment, involved with white house secretaries and employees within the government. We learned he has some responsibility of the unths involvement in vietnam, Foreign Policy that wasnt in Americas National interest. We learned that a lot of the new frontier was more for show than anything echls kennedy didnt have an interest in domestic policy. All the talk that his administration had about culture, those were thing were personally important. He seems to be a president that in the critics eyes showed more profile when he needed to show more courage to play on his book title. As a result, in the last ranking that were going to look at of political scientists in 2014, john kennedy was selected as the most overrated president. The most historically overrated president. Two president s who have gone in the other direction, their reputations have improved, are truman and icen hour. When truman left office, he was unpopular. Approaching where nixon was when he left office as a result of the watergate scandal. In february of 1952, harry truman hit 22 in Public Opinion polls. Just 22 approved of the job he was doing as president. But since then, we have come to see that his foreign policies had a lot of wisdom to them. Establishing nato. Sheparding the marshal plan through congress. These things were seen as essential members to forestall soviet expansion throughout europe. Trumans demeanor, his uponesty, plain spoke b ways, we gained greater appreciation for that when he was succeeded by Lincoln Johnson who lied to the country about the involvement in vietnam and Richard Nixon who was not a crook when he actually was a crook. Eisenhow eisenhower, another press who has been improved, whose ranking improved over time, when eisenhower left office, people thought he had been a nice guy but he had not really worked hard at his presidency. He had spent more time golfing than leading. He was a presider, not a president. New archival evidence has shown that was an image that eisenhower allowed people to have of him. He worked extremely hard behind the scenes to point of pushing himself to heart attacks. He claims to not engage in personalities. But he manipulated people left and right. And generally speaking, we have developed an appreciation for his political skills that people didnt have at the time. We also value some of the decision s eisenhower made as president that back then didnt necessarily seem significant. 1954, the french fall in vietnam, theres pressure on eisenhower to intervene. He says no that a ground war in Southeast Asia cannot be won. Therefore, should not be fought. Ten years later, the United States begins to seriously get involved in vietnam and we have a decadelong conflict that doesnt work out in our national interest, that seemed to be a wise decision with a lot of foresig foresight. In 1958, as people are argue the government needs to boost defense spending in response to sputnik, eisenhower warns against an industrial complex. A warning that seems press enter. This is why i also mention bush. Not saying bush is going to go down as a lincoln. We dont flow where bish is going to go down. When bush left office, people wrote columns, some scholars rated him as the worst president of all time. For me that was preposterous. He had just finished his presidency. So many of the thing ez did, were not going to know the true impact of those decisions until decades from now. If years from now iraq and afghanistan become Free Democratic societies that are bell waerns of change, lead to a spread of freedom, then ultimately, it does away with one of the Key National Security threats facing the United States, terrorism, then bush is going to down as a great president. Is that likely to happen . It doesnt seem that way. But we dont know. We have to wait and see. Its too early to be sure about where bush is going to fall in the pantheon of president s. Another problem is do you get point for trying . There are a lot of president s that successfully identified key issues before they became issues of national concern. They were on the right side of history. They took importance moral stances. But they didnt do anything to actually fix the problems. 194, truman spoerss a strong civil rights plank in the Democratic Party platform. Kennedy in 1963 finally comes out in favor of comprehensive civil rights legislation in congress. Something he dragged his feet on he promised a number of steps for civil rights, including ending public discrimination discrimination in Public Housing which he could do with the stroke of the president ial pen. Didnt actually take action until the pressure got to much in 1963. Theyre on the right side of the issue. But they dont get that legislation through congress. Its not until Lyndon Johnson is president that we see comprehensive receive you will rights legislation. How does that affect aan evaluation of their gradeness. Do they get credit for being on the right side of an issue or do we blame them for not fixing the issue . The issue of credit is a problem in general. A lot of times the accomplishments that were willing to attribute to a given president are debatable accomplishments. Whether they actually had something to do with those things or not. Its something that is open for discussion. A lot of timeless people say the president is great because the economy was great. This is used to make an argument for roosevelt, his great accomplishment is that he ended the great depression. Is that true . Well, not really. Things that roosevelt did certainly helps the United States set itself along a path for recovery. Public works programs are needed in the immediate aftermath of the start of the great depression. His financial reform legislation helped set the contact for more stable economy going forward. But by 1937, country has fallen into a massive recession. You be employment is around 20 . The thing that pulls the United States out depression is, of course, world war ii. Can we fairly say that roosevelt ended the depression . A lot of people think thats a great president do. But its debatable. Similarly, some scholars have said that the reagan winning cold war is the greatest Foreign Policy accomplishment of any president in the postwar period. Did reagan win the cold war . I mean, not really. Did he do things to help end the cold war . Absolutely. Reagans program of increased defense expenditures, including strategic defense initiative, star wars Missile Defense system, forced the soviet union to engage in an arms race at which they were no longer capable of doing so. That triggered reforms that ultimately led to their downfall. But other people had a role, too. Pope john paul ii, you take them out of the picture, maybe we get a different outcome. You can argue the soet jeff union had internal vulnerabilities that meant it was going to collapse some day anyway. Maybe reagan hastened that collapse. But he didnt necessarily cause it. These are two of the biggest accomplish mentes that these president s who are seen as great, reagan is on the edge of the top ten now, are often given credit for. Another problem is is it fair to compare premodern and modern president s . When we look at rankings of prosial greatness, were going to put in the same system barak obama and george washington. But their tasks of leadership, the resources that they had to lead, they were very different. Those premodern president s, president s before Franklin Roosevelt, were more clerks than they were leaders. The 19th century, the main job of the president was to distribute patronage. They would appoint people to government offices. It was a thankless task since a president even gets assassinated for his role. James garfield assassinated in 1881. Theres no instin Institutional Support for the president. Its not until 1857 that congress appropriate aides money for the president to hire a clerk. They wind up paying thur own staff, the few staffers they have, out of their own pocket. George washington hires his nephews to copy his letters. President s have to take loans like thomas jefferson. It leads to andrew saying being president was a situation of dignified slavery. It may be very unfair to compare premodern president s to modern president s. Off the was different, challenges were different. Forget about being leader of the free world. Its not until roosevelt that a president even leaves the country. A related problem is do we just president s by the standards of their time or ours snz our morals have changed. Weaver going to have impressions of greatness. That is going to play a role in terms how we interpret what they did in office. Things that may not have been controversial then are very con electroshell now. I call this a Andrew Jackson problem. By many standards, andrew jk son is a great president. We define a whole age by limb. The age of jackson. Jack sewnian democracy. Jackson imhimself is a symbol. He is a frontiers man who by reaching the presidency sends a powerful message about what is possible in this new country. His common rhetorical support for regular people changes our politics. He democrat of course kra advertises Government Service by ending the practice of treating government jobs as if theyre personal problem, they would hang on to for their entire lives and then pass on to their sons and he builds the first mass base political party, Democratic Party, which is really forging out of his own personal following. He was a slave owner. But, he was a perhaps most closely associated in addition to his democratic impulses with backing forcible remove afl native mens from their triefbal land in open defiance of Supreme Court decisions. When the Cherokee Nation is forced out of their lands in georgia, a forth are going to die on the trail of tears out to the midwest. This leads to a lot of problems in terms of how we interpret this. Owning slaves, not treating native americans with respect, that was not something thaefs controversial in the early 19th center try. Thats why you see a lot of state democratic parties. They are typical yearly fundraiser is the Jefferson Jackson dinner. Many of them have moved to change their name, feeling that associating a dinner with slave owners like jefferson and jackson is not projecting the image of inclusiveness they want today. Finally, can we really understand what its like to be president . This is the monday morning quarterback problem. I watch the dolphins on sunday, as you all know. Tannehill throws an interception. I will blame him. I will get upset. Have i no idea what im talking about. I have never played quarterback in the nfl. I dont know why he through that intersecti intersection, if it was actually the receiver in the wrong place or maybe the defense decided their coverage in a way that wasnt on the scouting report. The coaches need to be blamed. I cant blame him for that interception. Similarly, can we really blame a president for any of their failings . We dont know the pressures they are under. We dont know how decisions were made. We dont no what information they had the to act. It might be kind of unfair of us to cast judgment on something we have no change of understanding until we have walked in those shoes ourselves. And thats why someone like john kennedy when talking with arthur sleshing ger about list system of ranking the president s was dismiss i have. Saying that you dont really know whats going on. Im not even prepared to do this. I would need more study having been in office for just a little time. Now that we have said we cant rank president s, we cant rate them, lets do it 234i weigh. So lets startd by considering some theoretical ways of asse assessiasses assessing greatness. Standards almost of this problem. One book argues that a great president must by ademocrat and a republican. Small d dp, small r republican. What they mean is that you have to involve people in the process and teach people civic virtues. Thats the democrat part. You have to govern within the constitutional system and abide by restrictions on your authority. Thats the Republican Party. For them, the key mechanism to accomplish these as it kz is a political party. A great way to mobilize people into the process. But also a natural check on the president s aristocratic impulses as they see t. For them, great president ial leadership requires Extraordinary Part shan sp. The great president s are those who built up their political parties. And thus people like washington, jefferson, jackson, lincoln and fdr are great president s. You can see using the standard, why Andrew Jackson is a great president. Building the not earn Democratic Party out of his personal following. If they included Something Like president ial character, maybe its not going to mean that jackson is a great president. No president since fdr according to them has achieved this level of greatness. Two closest would be lyndon kron son and Ronald Reagan, johnson fails they say because his embrace of civil rights split apart of the Democratic Party, drives southern democrats eventually to the republicans. And reagan fails because hes not really interested in helping the Republican Party. He is more interested in protecting his personal populari popularity. An ill tur naive way would be why moderates make the best president. Which you are all familiar with now. He argue that the key to greatness is muscular moderation. That does not mean simply doing what is pop ou lar as the moment. That would be spineless centerism. He attacks clinton for. Muscular moderation is boldly governing from the center. Its charting a leedzership path between the extremes and bidding the consensus around your political position. This leads him to reinterpret the politics of president s like fdr. Fdr is seen as potentially the most liberal chief executive in the modern era. But according to troy, he was really awe moderate. Because on the left, he is dealing with people who want to create a socialist society in america. On the right, he is dealing with individuals who want to do nothing. Who want to make tan a laissezfaire system of economic regulation like that which flourishes under coolidge and hoover. By charting a course between the two, he was quite moderate. Something like Social Security, troy says its a moderate poll six people on right dont like it because it may destroy individual responsibility. People dont love it because it is finances in a pay as you go where the taxes of workers go to pay benefits of current beneficiaries. So as a result, its a moderate policy. His approach towards regulating banks another moderate policy. Left wanted them nationalized. The right wanted fewer regulations. Roosevelt falls smrl somewhere in the middle. Moderation anot enough to achieve greatness. You have moderate president s like nixon and cart bhoer fail for reasons specific to themselves. But it offers best path to president ial greatness. I chose these two in particular because i think it illustrates the problem of even setting standards of president ial greatness. These are diametrically opposed standards. One scholar is saying, to be great president , you have to be partisan. The other scholar is saying to be a great president , you have to do the exact opposite. You have to be in the middle. If we then try to actually rank president s, from one to 44, we have five i think really important historical studies that have try dodd this. I think looking at each of them is useful. 1988, send questionnaires to about 2,000 ph. D. Holding assisted professors of history who were listed in the american historical associations guidebook. These questions nairs were intense. 19 pages, 180 dwes, toor more than an hour to complete. Theyre not only asking people to assign a level of greatness to each presidency. What theyre also asking them are specific questions about events and policies. Was hoover right to value balancing the budget and controlling the federal deficit . Why was kennedy successful . What skills were important . By asking those additional questions, they also want to determine why a president is great. Not only if they are great. Im not going to look at that part of the argument. Were going to focus on these evaluations of whether scholars assigned ranking of great, near great, above average, average, below average or failure to each president. Ultimately, have 846 surveys. Be wear that this isnt necessarily a representative sample. Only 59 women actually participated in the survey. Abraham lincoln is one. Franklin roosevelt is two. George washington is three. Thomas jefferson is four. Those are the four president s that had an average score of being a great president. The near greats were theodore roosevelt,ing will son, gentleman sock and harry truman. Then i think the bottom two are interesting inclusions. John adams and Lyndon Johnson. We will not see these president s on other rankings. This is partly because in the study, scholars tended to more favorably rate the president s that severaled in the area in the era in which they did their research. If you did research on colonial america and the early american republic, you would be more likely to think john adams was a great president. We today perhaps criticize him harshly for the alien acts. It criminalized dissent as the United States was gearing up for a war with france enforcement was mrit kalt. Onned amanies opponents affiliated with jefferson. Lyndon johnson, another president who servely will be a controversial. Scholars like his domestic policies. Find a lot to desire in his prosecution of the vietnam war where he conceals the true extend of the United States involvement from the public. And makes a number of tactical decisions that potentially under mine the chances of the United States prevailing. In 1997, published rating the president s. They take a poll of 719 people. 97 of these individuals were professors of American History or political signs. The other individuals would be some public officials, attorneys, and so forth. They are asking the sample to rate president s on five different dimensions. Leadership qualities, accomplishments in crisis management, political skill, appointments, character and integrity. Participants in the event asked to rank the relative importance of the five dimensions. If you think character was most important to president ial greatness or leadership qualities. According to this system, again, lincoln is number one. Roosevelt is number two. George washington number three. Thomas jefferson is number four. Roosevelt number five. Woodrow wilson six. Harry truman number seven. Andrew jackson number eight. Eisenhower number nine. Madison number ten. A couple of interesting things to note here, one is that roosevelt actually might have prevailed over lincoln if it werent for concerns about list character. That he was rated 15th best president in terms of character. He is one or two on the other four dimensions. Similarly, Andrew Jackson would rate higher if it wasnt for those concerns about character and appointments. Obviously, a reflection of the spoil system where all government officials were fired and then people loyal to jackson were put in these positions. This leads ultimately to a lot of corruption in the longrun. I would point out the appearance of eisenhower. You can see this is published in 1997. Now as be learn aboutize hour, you see his rating improve and he starts to emerge as bottom of the lists. An article in 1997 taking a poll of 32 experts. I put experts in quotations because theyre his friends. Not that theyre not experts. But mostly they are historians, some practicing politicians were included march mario cuomo, paul simon, United States senator. Participants are allowed to develop their own criteria for greatness in the article he actually uses Justice Potter stewarts definition of obscenity. You know it when you see it. Scholars will know greatness when they see it. All people have to do is rate each president as great, near great, average, below average or failure. And then they will be assigned the appropriate numerical score which allows us to come up with an average. His father actually did an early study of ranking the president s in 1948 that was published in life magazine. He was kind of following in his fathers footsteps. According to this study, lincoln is number one. Washington is number two. Franklin roosevelt is number three. All three achieve great averages. You can see that all 32 individuals gave lincoln a score of four. A ranking of great. Then its jefferson, jackson, roosevelt, wilson, truman, polk and icen hour. Cspan actually did a president ial Leadership Survey in 2009. Surveying 65 president ial historians. I mentioned this because we read and talked about the scholars ourselves in this class earlier in the semester. Historians are asked to rate the president on ten different attributes. Public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, inder national relations, administrative skills, relations with congress, vision sending agenda, whether they pursued equal justice and performance within the context of their time. You may be saying, thats a lot. Ten attributes is a lot for any scholar. It tests the limits of the knowledge of even experts. Do people know enough about, say, Franklin Pierce to assign him a score on all ten of these demention snz what hands in studies like is that people wind up making a global judgment and then thats going to affect their score on every individual standard. If you think that lincoln was a great president , you will give hmm a great score and all ten categories. Participants are assigned eachs president score of one. What will happen then is that an average will be provided. If clinton was give an average of, say, an 8. 2 for economic management, that will be multiplied by ten and he will get 82 points. What that means is that you are total possible greatness score is 1,000. 100 points for each category. According to this system, Abraham Lincoln number one, with a score of 902. George washington number two. Roosevelt number three. You can see the scores pretty quickly drop off after that point. Roosevelt four. Truman five. Kennedy six. Jefferson seven. Eisenhower eight, wilson nine and reagan ten. First appearance of Ronald Reagan at the very boundary of greatness. Finally, we have a survey in 2014 of 162 members of the american Political Science Association President and executive politics session. That includes me. I participated in the survey. You cant tell you that much about it unfortunately because it has not been push lished as far as i can tell. They have had newspaper stories in the Washington Post and so forth about the research. They emailed all the participants in the study. The final rankings. But i dont really remember what it was like. I remember it took me a long time. It took me 45 to to an hour. I remember being kind of surprised by some of the decisions i made. For instance, i found myself being a lot more positive towards barak obama than i thought i would be when i was challenging to think about him on individual dimensions instead of a global judgment of his performance. Some of the attributes that were measures would be diplomatic skill, integrity. Legislative skill. You can see thats reflecting a political scientists mind set when you include legislative skill. Something we know that political scientists have tried to mesh and quality tie. Each president receives a possible score out of 100. The results, lincoln is number one. Almost a perfect score, 95. 27. Washington number two. Roosevelt three. Theodore. Truman, eisenhower. A first appearance for bill clinton. Andrew jackson and Woodrow Wilson ten. Again, you see down here the score is lower even though they are not separated that far in the rankings. The scores are actually quite lower. Some patterns then that we may have noticed. Lincoln is number one in all five rankings. Consensus, lincoln is the greatest president. All five rankings also agreed that the top three greatest president s are lincoln, washington and fdr. You probably notice that washington and fdr alternated between two and three. Evenly split among the five. Jefferson and roosevelt did well. They were pretty commonly four and five. Neither president fellower that be seven in any of the five rankings. And we didnt look at this. But i thought you should know that theres agreement on the worst president s. The two worst president s would be harding, who spent his time writing love letters embarrassing love letters to his mistress while his friends robbed the government blind. His most famous quotation, i am not fit for this office and i should never have been here. And james buchanan. Could be grat lagss america, dickinsons own james buchanan. Who did nothing as the country lurched toward civil war out of a misguided sense of constitutionalism. One of the other things we may have noticed in the pattern, were not seeing many modern president s postFranklin Roosevelt show up on the rankings. Clinton shows up once. Reagan shows up once. Truman is there. Eisenhower is here and there. Theyre at the bottom. Its not consistent. What i did here is i took the president s since roosevelt, all five ratings. I averaged out their score. Bear in mind that these are taken at different times. The total number of president s that are going to be ranked is not constant throughout this. President s there are more president s in 2014 than in 1988. That will affect the average, maybe somewhat. If great president s came after that point. That really doesnt turn out to be the case. What we can see here is that only two president s have an average ranking in the top ten. Harry truman and Dwight Eisenhower as i said earlier, both of them have enjoyed a renaissance, rehabilitation of their reputation after they left office. Even then, the rankings arent that impressive. If you are the seventh greatest president of all time, then you are not even in the top 20 . Right . Going down the list, we can see that it gets pretty bad. Nixon is 32. Ford, 25. Reagan, 18. Bush, 20. 25. Clinton, 17. Bush, 36. If we took the average ranking of all these president s, its 19th. These president s since Franklin Roosevelt receive an average ranking of 19th greatest. Why is that . Is that the result of their individual flaws . Well, to some extent, sure. Over the course fts semester, i have been very critical of jimmy carter. Not out any personal opposition to anything he tried to accomplish. But out of a criticism of his understanding of executive authority and his use of the powers of the leadership. Carters ranking as we saw we flip back for a second. Not good. 25, 19, 27, 25, 26. Pretty consistently mediocre. And we can identify very specific reasons that carter fell short of greatness that only he can be blamed for. One is he under mined the prestige of the presidency. Prestige is key. How the president is viewed by people outside or rather how the president is viewed by people in washington trying to determine how the public views him. Thats key to barg ang. Whether the president is able to successfully convince people that what he wants is in their own interest. Carter didnt seem to understand that. He did things like carrying his own luggage. Ending the practice of playing hail to the chief when the president arrives at a public event. Selling the president ial yacht. Giving a National Address in a cardigan sweater. Say that being someone who loves cardigan sweaters. He doesnt necessarily understand that these things make him seem more like a regular person instead of someone who is above the public. He made poor staffing choices. Carter decides to bring the individuals who would work with him in georgia to washington. The socalled georgia mafia. Who didnt fit in with their scenes and shaggy hair cuts. They owe fepded the sensibilities of washington. pointed poorly prepared people who had no National Experience to the jobs where you needed National Experience. When it came to specific individuals. He picks Hamilton Jordan as hir chief of staff. He is known for unsaufshry personal behavior. Spitting on women. Making lewd comments about the cleveland of the wife of the. Using cocaine at a disco. He appointed burt lance to run management and budget. He is a friend from georgia who describes himself as a country banker. He is put in charge of shepardsing the federal government when he is 2 million in debt personally. He is going to be involved in a series of investigations about list own personal finances that are going to drag down carters entire first year in office. Third problem that carter had is that he thought he could run the whietd house on his own. Despite ford having learned quickly that you need a chief of staff, carder comes into office and he accesses his own chief of staff having all hig top aides report directly to him. And then he is trying to make every decision limbself. That winds up bogging carter down in a series of unnecessary details. This is a true story. Carter would actually approve the playing schedule at the white house tennis courts. Why would a president bother themselves with that detail . Carter also had some character flaws. He had some degree of arrogance. You have that in the troy reading that you did where when people disagreed with limb, he would say, then i would rather not talk with you if you cant agree with me. Not the con sense suss building approach that you need as a president. He had somewhat of a mean streak which really emerged in the 1980 president ial campaign where he says if reagan is elected, you will see a return to segregation in the United States. Carter didnt realize that a president s best resource for working with congress is his own party. He comes into office. You have a democratic congress. Speaker of the house tip oneill. Thats a relationship you need to cultivate. Oneill says, give me four or five priorities and we will work on them. Caster says here is 12. We will do all. Oneill says dont try to govern over our heads. Carter says, i will do what worksed for me in georgia. Oneill is aggravated by little slights like his ticket at the inauguration that carter took away breakfast because even nixon gave them breakfast. Ult patly what winds up is that carter gets primary by ted kennedy. Mangen that. A sitting president who has to fight who his own renomination within his party. Thats a direct consequence of the way that carter failed to nurture those relationships with Democratic Leaders in congress. Finally, he overestimated his speaking powers. Did he try to power over congress. Carter gives five National Addresses. Each one shows a smaller and smaller audience. We know that speaking powers, grossly overestimated. When the president goes pub lik, they cant move opinion on their Approval Ratings. They certainly cant move issue opinion either. Carter didnt recognize that. I would ask you as well, who are some of the great quarterbacks . Im going a little football theme today. Who are some of the great quarterbacks of nfl history . I imagine that you are going to say moderntype quarterbacks. Tom brady, peyton manning. Someone who would have said dan marino, because they would have tried to suck up to me. That would have been a good answer. Dan marino was the best he would have been greatest president because of his Quick Release and his fiery demeanor on the field. These are modern president s. Modern quarterbacks. And that is a reasonable thing when you look at statistics. These are the top ten quarterbacks in terms of yards in a season. What we see here is that all besides dan marino historical season in 1984 where he threw for 5,084 yards and 48 touchdowns, they have all happened since 2008. These great seasons in terms of the yardage that president s have thrown for. And you see quarterbacks that simply are not going to go down as great quarterbacks like matthew stafford, drew brees, ben roethlisberger, probably not hall of fametype quarterbacks. Whats happening here . The difference is that the game changed to help quarterbacks. You have seen an emphasis on officiating that makes it easier to throw the ball. Officials are concerned with concussions. So they are going to Police Contact over the middle of the field. Brian dau kins, allpro safety for the eagless, he felt cono longer play the position because he had to constantly be worried about getting a penalty. He can no longer react. You cant touch a quarterback. You cant hit him up high. Cant make contact with the helmet. You cant lead with the crown of your helmet. You cant hit him at the knees. That makes quarterbacks more comfortable in the pocket. You have seen new offensive systems that preference short passes. Instead of runs. It makes it easier to rack up yards. You see quarterbacks get to the nfl with more preparation because colleges and high schools have adopted sophisticated offensive systems. So quarterbacks are better prepared to read defenses. When they reach that level. You see a change in personnel that teams have. Someone like gronkowski, the pe teams have. Tom brady gets to throw to somebody thats kun everable by safeties and linebackers. But if we lack at those systemic changes, when it comes to the presidency, things are changed to make it more difficult for president to achieve greatness. Some of this things to think about. One, congress has polarized at the roots of polarization are long standing. You can date it back to the 1960s as the Democratic Party fully embraces civil rights with, you see a migration of the southern democrats to the Republican Party and ultimately thats going to leave a Democratic Party that is just left with liberals and a Republican Party much more conservative. When you throw in the increase of gerrymandering where youve got the safe districts that mean a very radical republican or democrat can win a seat that they wouldnt be able to win if it was fairly drawn, you see harsh use of congressional rules and procedures that create pa larized outcomes in congress. All of this means its more difficult for president s to get what they want out of congress. Polarization made speed up action in the house but it slows it down in the senator. Weve seen a steady increase in filibusters over times. The senate is the barrier ground. Who are you going to negotiate with . Theres no one left in the middle. The Affordable Care act passes with zero republican votes in the house and zero votes in the senate. How is obama going to get it through congress now that he doesnt have the huge democratic joorts that he had when he took office in twain. A related problem. Divided government, the president of one party and congress of the other. Thats become the norm. Weve seen divided government two thirds of the time since 1952. Theres a debate about that means. Some argue that divided government doesnt have an effect on significant legislation. David mahue has categorized laws in terms of significance by looking at a if they were judged significant at the time they were pass and if they were judged significantly later over history. When you come up with that data set, you see about 11 to 12 significant laws are going to be adopted every twoyear of government. If thats true, there is Strong Research that shows that legislation, significant legislation is more likely to fail under conditions of divided government, an additional 6. 7 potentially significant laws fail in every period of divided government. It increases the muo  of potentially significant legislation failing by 45 . The fact that the president s are, like obama now, having to deal with a divided government with a congress controlled by the opposite party and a congress that is polarized being led by the opposite party is going to make it difficult to get your agenda through congress. The president also has a worse relationship with the media. Think about all of the things that the media covered up for john kennedy. They covered up his affairs which they knew about. They covered up his health problems, his addisons disease and a variety of ailments that would have shock the public if thad known at the time. They covered up the fact that he didnt write his books and that his book was only a best seller because his dad bought thousands of copy which he stored up at an attic in their place. Ive been unable to persuade my dad to buy hundreds of copies of my books to make it a best seller but its a good ideas. That changes. You have things like the pentagon papers, secret government study about the United States involvement in vietnam which shows that president s has misrepresented u. S. Policy. You have the aftermath of watergate and nixons repeated lies about his involvement a coverup, so much so that his press secretary is going to hav9 to later say that all previous statements were inoperative. And that you see then because of the impact of exposing watergate, reporters now all want to be bob woodward and karl bernstein. They want to break the next scan l. The media is much more hostile towards the president. Theres no longer the collaborative relationship that the president s counted on. The amount of negative news that the president has to face has gone up and the president s total share of News Coverage have gone down. Both of which make it more difficult for the president to lead publicly. Thats related to this fourth problem. People are paying less attention to president ial addresses. We might think that now that you can watch a president ial speech on so many different platforms, broadcast, cable, on your phone, on your tablet, on your computer that youre going to see higher ratings for president ial speeches. Thats not what has happened. President s used to benefit by a having a captive audience where there were just a few channels and if the president comes on to give a National Address, people would just watch because what else were they going to do, turn off the tv and talk with their families . I dont think so. They were going to watch the president on television. Now you can opt out. You change the channel, fire up your xbox, cue up netflix, whatever you want to do. So obamas recent 2015 state of the Union Address had the lowest rating in 20something years, only 31 Million People decided to tune in. I always like to remind people of this problem with bill clinton in 2000, preparing to give a National Address, its coming on right after who wants to be a millionaire on abc which was the hottest show of the time. I told you i auditioned for it. That 19 Million People are watching who wants to be a millionaire. Clinton comes on and immediately 10 Million People change the channel. Another problem is that the Permanent Campaign is a permanent distraction. Running for office today, running for reelection, its expensive. It costs money. These are billion dollar campaigns were talking about now. And that means that the president has to constantly raise money. Barack obama, according to research has attended a fundraiser every 7. 5 days, every 7. 5 days hes attended a fundraiser. Bill clinton attends his first fun raid raiser as president 12 days in into his administration. How are president s supposed to govern when theyre so busy raising money. Theyre too because zi trying to keep their job to potentially do their job. There are also powerful fiscal pressures that any president has to deal with. About 70 of the budget today goes to four things, medicare, medicaid, Social Security and payments on the national debt. Throw in defense spending, which is something that cant be adjusted, all that much, especially in light of recent events, that leaves very little money for the president to fund new domestic policy initiatives, types of great activist programs that we often associate with president ial greatness. Were running, this year, if were lucky wbts a 400 billion deficit and those problems are going to worsen until he gain control over the entitlement programs. President s also struggle to fill their administrations. They cant get their appointments confirmed. If were talking about appointment to the federal judiciary, the rate of confirmation for the appointments has gone down over time. Where a president like eisenhower would get every appointment to the federal court system confirmed. Now youre lucky to get 50 to 60 confirmed. And the amount of time it takes to confirm a justice has gone up dramatically. The the New York Times last week had an editorial criticizing republicans for not acting more quickly on some of the nominations that obama made to the Judicial Branch since some of the seats are judicial emergencies. Theyve been vacant for four years. Look agent the executive branch, those appointments have run into obstacles forcing president to use debatable techniques to get people into office, things like recess appointments, czars and so forth. Were talking about their staff, right, cant get them to stick around. Right now were seeing that 30 of the white house staff in any given year is going to change jobs. If you add the two together, that that means is you really have a government of strangers, individuals are not in their office long enough to learn whats necessary to do well in their jobs, nor are they in office long enough to learn who they need to work with to get things done. They cant be an Effective Team when they serve for such a short period of time. Finally, people say well the way around this, the way to achieve greatness is just to act on your own. Unilateral president ial power. This is a fallacy too. These unilateral powers are consistently overrated. People say governed by executive order. Well studies show that only 15 of executive orders are significant. There are exceptions, of course. Truman desegregating the military, bushs Stem Cell Research executive order. Certainly some significant policy established by executive order. And we know that new president consist come in and change these things, sometimes theyre durable, like clinton changing the arsenic standards in drinking water, when bush wants to go back to the previous standard because he thinks its cost effective, it makes him look like he wants more arsenic in drinking water. These sometimes have a good way to make policy but only 15 are significant. And president s statistically are more likely to govern by executive order at the end of their administration and when theyre unpopular which makes perfect sense given their limitations. Think about obamas experience that he doesnt turn to executive orders on immigration and Climate Change until he failed on attempt to get congress to do things on these problems. Whats happening . His immigration plans are tied up in the court system and the outcome remains to be seen. If youre talking about president ial proclamations, 88 of these are symbolic, only 12 are significant. The 12 tend to be on things like park and trade and nothing else. Were talking about executive agreements, these are much less useful to a president than treaties which are much more binding and bind the president s successor as well. So to govern unilaterally is a debatable strategy as well. What i would ask you then is first if we take a step back, what are your standards of president ial greatness . Weve seen how different scholars have tried to defined president ial greatness, that they say its about Building Political powers, troy says its about moderation. The different systems include political skill, character, legislative skill and so forth. This is the first question how to defined president ial greatness and well consider whether greatness is still possible. Yeah. The way i defined president ial greatness was based off whether a path was able to set and pass a meaningful legislative agenda quickly and then whether theyre able to mitigate outside Events National and international that would distract nem from being able to pass their legislative agenda. I think for me one of the shis with troys argument and with a lot of the way that we look at president s is that over time their ability to do things decreases regardless of the president. You see that in jfks last two years of his presidency he was unable to pass civil rights. He was unable to pass any of his economic legislation and it took johnson to get that through. What i look for is rapid action and being able to mitigate things that would prevent people from acting quickly. Do you think its somewhat of an issue though that a president s ability to get things through congress is going to be out of their control depending on the numbers that they have in congress . So johnson had a great advantage in that he had these huge democratic majorities that other president s had not had. Right. I mean, i think that the thing is, i dont think it really matters whether or not they have substantial majorities, because you see people like reagan who, correct me if im wrong, didnt have huge substantial republican joorts and never has. No. He was able to get through most of his agenda in the First Six Months by using the budget process. I was really incredible. I dont think it really matters the actual number of people in your party. I think it matters whether youre able to use the legislative process to get things done that you want to get done. Reagan had conjectural factors working in his favor too after carters failed presidency. Where he saw the peak of conservatism in american politics and he gets a boost of his surviving the assassination attempt and the likable way that he handled that too. Other standards of greatness . Yeah, jerry. I believe that great president s come down to timing because of great events. Kind of like fdr, you might think about going into the Second World War that made for greatness on his part. We might think of when president reagan came into his office, he was dealing with an economy that was tanking. Other events might be president obama, he was able to pass something that other president s for 60 years could not do which was health care reform. All those are great events that allow them to prove their greatness. So i think as much comes down to timing and circumstances is what it comes down to the actual president. So do you agree with clinton that you kind of need a crisis to be a great president . I do agree with that assumption that you need a crisis or something that you can prove yourself. You might have the potential, but if you dont have the circumstance or the event happen, theres no way to actually prove that youre a great president. Its a return to the football analogy ive been using. You dont know if a team is great until they beat another great team. You need to have that challenge. Other standards of greatness that people would propose . I think it depends more on how you handle yourself as a person. So i think, you know, i think its really great if you can get legislative matters through and the crisis youre afforded as a president. But to able to manage that with other political advisers in the private scene and then in the public to kind of portray this, you know, character of oh i have it all under control and its all going smoothly. But then to have those political deals in private because of polarization in congress. I think thats a really good point too. You have the public and private dimensions of leadership and each presents different challenges but you probably cant be successful unless you successfully navigate each part. So what do people think . Is greatness possible anymore . Is greatness possible or is this average ranking of 19th just the result of individual failures people like carter, not living up to our expectations . I think that i think that with the standards that you put out, i think that a lot of them you can overcome. So like the powerful fiscal pressures if you a great president they can overcome those pressures and deal with them. Or if they were able to use unilateral powers that stuck. And i think doe vieded government and polarization, i dont think theyre permanent conditions. And even if they are, i mean, you see president s like obama and bush being able to get an incredible amount done in their first year. That advantage hasnt gone away, which most president s during a unified government have been able to take advantage of. So i think that you know, a great president can use those same that same kind of momentum and overcome some of the challenges you mentioned. Thats a good point. We talked about polarization. But even obama, he had a very productive first year. President s still have able to make the system work, right, not all the time and it becomes much more difficult later on. Yeah. I think the president s nowadays can be great in certain areas with but i dont think they can achieve greatness overall. I think a president can be good in the public sector, the private sector, good at using unilateral powers or negotiating with congress but i dont think they can do it all. Theres so many different roles of the presidency nowadays, i dont think one president can manage all of them and be great at everything. Thats a really good point too. We know that the roles, the expectations for these roles often conflict. If youre going to be chief of state you have to be broadly popular and you have to participate in these ceremony observanc observances. But if youre going to be chief executive and leader of your party, you have to take tough positions and upset people, manipulate people and ultimately that can undermine your ability to be chief of state. Now people like eisenhower came up with creative ways of solving that. But all of those roles theyre diflth to play and they often conflict. I think the constant News Coverage that we have today will bar us on what we consider a great president. If they were under the same scrutiny, these ones like fdr and others perhaps our view of them would be completely different. If we knew their faults, may we would think they arent all that great. But they had the benefit of not having that whereas now we have constant News Coverage. Yeah, matt. I think potentially the next president we have could be great in the sense that were fighting terrorism pretty seriously, especially with what recently just happened. And the idea that if a republican is elected theyre going to try to do something with the budget. Those are two pretty serious things right when they step in. But then at the same time, theres things that exist now, such as abortion and the gay marriage aspects that are so different from what certain people if you dont tackle that issue versus tackling that issue, maybe i think youll a great president but overall somebody else will think the complete opposite because you didnt handle the social issues the same as you handled the economic issues. Yeah, the compromise is much more difficult. You said that value shifts over time. Maybe it will shift with the future and well look back at bush, oh, i mean, maybe but but going into iraq was a great idea. It all worked out. He did great. And so maybe well look back on obama in ten years and his Approval Rating will go up because well have a president thats just worse than he was or something. Does anybody think that there is a president in this postroosevelt group that is going to be rehabilitation of their reputation by truman and eisenhower have had . Does anyone think that theres a president that as time goes on were going to really look more favorable at . I think that Lyndon Johnson is kind of undergoing this shift in his repetition. A and i think that will continue. I think that a lot of people reveer his legislative skills and the fact that he was able to get a lot done. So long as the gift continued to be divided and polarized i think that reputation will continue to improve. I think obama is one thats overly criticized and obviously his presidency is still going on. Its hard to rank him in greatness yet. But i think that for the situation he adopted when he became president and all that hes done, you know, as ryan said in his first year, or you know, whatever else hes done socially, i think hes accomplished a lot for what he had to deal with and the times hes been president in. So i think hes maybe one that will look back and be a little less critical of after weve realized all that hes accomplished and faced in his presiden presidency. I think potentially in the future all of the president s recently will undergo this in some circumstances considering now we have just what has happened immediately after and as time goes on we may see that these things, these issues arent as drastic as they once were, that, for instance, the bush going into iraq and all of those things, like no president has had to deal with that type of terror attack. Maybe down the road well see maybe his decision wasnt as bad as we originally thought it was. And one of the things that helps too, as were talking about that they play this post presidency now. Every president has a long period of time outside the office where they can take on new challenges that often rehabilitate their reputation. I think an important difference with modern president s is that people know a lot more about what the president is doing now. Of 0 the president s that rehabilitat rehabilitated, at the time people didnt have that much information about the president. People go back and say now we know. But now we know a lot more that the president is thinking, the data that he has to base his nufgs off of. We could look back and know a lot more about bush than maybe they would have with some of the older president s immediately yards. So i think that will mean theres less of that rehabilitation simply because theres not as much to rehabilitate. Theres not that much information to come out. So it works the other way, too, that were not going to have the revelations that hurt their image over the long term because we already know that stuff. Clintons indiscretions were revealed at the time. Not years later. Okay. I will see you all on thursday. American history tv in prime time continues thursday with the people and events that shaped the civil war and reconstruction. 8 00 p. M. Eastern, a look at sherman oohs march, 9 00 p. M. Lectures features the story of civil war veteran, 9 55 examining john brown and the election of 1860, and 11 30 p. M. Elections in history on slavery, women and the civil war. American history tv in prime time 8 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan3. Cspans washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up thursday morning, executive director at the Mccain Institute and mike. Breen, president and ceo of the truman National Security project on u. S. Policy and the fight against isis and jihadist terrorism. Theyll examine the immigration pollies here and abroad. And then the security recordpor talks about the status of the Syrian Refugees who are already in the u. S. And those who want to come here. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal beginning live at 7 00 a. M. Thursday morning. Join the discussion. I am a history buff. I do enjoy seeing the fabric of our country and how things, just how they work and how theyre made. I love American History tv. Presidency, american artifacts theyre fantastic shows. Thats probably something i would really enjoy. With American History tv it gist you that perspective. On a cspan fan. Up next, west point history instructor captain Benjamin Griffin talks about the influence that tom clancy and president reagan had on each other. The new York Military Affairs Symposium hosted this hour and 40 minute event. And now let me introduce ben griffin who graduated from the United States