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Lincoln ranked best President by historians

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Anonymous

Guest
GW wasn't ranked last....Yet.. James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, William Henry Harrison and Warren G. Harding beat him out for that spot...


Feb 15, 2:05 PM EST


Lincoln ranked best president by historians

By NATASHA T. METZLER
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Just days after the nation honored the 200th anniversary of his birth, 65 historians ranked Abraham Lincoln as the nation's best president.

Former President George W. Bush, who left office last month, was ranked 36th out of the 42 men who had been chief executive by the end of 2008, according to a survey conducted by the cable channel C-SPAN.

Bush scored lowest in international relations, where he was ranked 41st, and in economic management, where he was ranked 40th. His highest ranking, 24th, was in the category of pursuing equal justice for all. He was ranked 25th in crisis leadership and vision and agenda setting.

In contrast, Lincoln was ranked in the top three in each of the 10 categories evaluated by participants.

In C-SPAN's only other ranking of presidents, in 2000, former President Bill Clinton jumped six spots from No. 21 to 15. Other recent presidents moved positions as well: Ronald Reagan advanced from No. 11 to 10, George H.W. Bush rose from No. 20 to 18 and Jimmy Carter fell from No. 22 to 25.

This movement illustrates that presidential reputations are influenced by present-day concerns, said survey adviser and participant Edna Medford.

"Today's concerns shape our views of the past, be it in the area of foreign policy, managing the economy or human rights," Medford said in a statement.

After Lincoln, the academics rated George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman as the best leaders overall. The same five received top spots in the 2000 survey, although Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt swapped spots this year.

Rated worst overall were James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, William Henry Harrison and Warren G. Harding.

The survey was conducted in December and January. Participants ranked each president on a scale of one, "not effective" to 10, "very effective," on a list of 10 leadership qualities including relations with Congress, public persuasion and moral authority.
 

Tam

Well-known member
Looking at Lincoln: Ultimately, just human
by Clayton Hardiman | The Muskegon Chronicle
Sunday February 15, 2009, 7:14 AM

Clayton HardimanAbraham Lincoln celebrated his birthday by making like a young Barry Sanders, giving us a feint here, a snake-hipped shimmy there.

More than 140 years after dying, he still seems elusive as a football scatback. The man's still got game.

Of course, part of that is our doing. We're constantly re-imagining history, and in our reconstituted analysis of Lincoln, we find new flaws and blemishes at the same time we discover new causes for inspiration. He keeps readjusting, because we do.

Perhaps more has been written about Lincoln than any historical figure this side of Jesus Christ. And yet, each year new books surface by the dozen. Historians can't help remaking him. They take fourth and fifth looks at his marriage and his mammoth bouts with depression. They reconsider everything from his religion to his sexuality.

That's a danger of being an icon in modern-day America. You become a target as well.

Lincoln's is still the voice politicians love to evoke -- homespun, unassuming, shot through with insight and wit. And so, on Lincoln's 200th birthday, the 44th president hailed the 16th, citing him as an example of unity for 21st century America.

"What Lincoln never forgot, not even in the midst of civil war, was that despite all that divides us -- North and South, black and white -- we were, at heart, one nation and one people, sharing a bond as Americans that could bend but would not break," President Obama said in Springfield, Ill.

Of course, that's one story. Another envisions Lincoln as the ultimate American myth.

"No other American story is so enduring. No other American story is so comforting. No other American story is so false," writes African-American historian Lerone Bennett Jr.

Both visions are accurate -- Obama's and Bennett's. But which is true?

Typically, we are introduced to Lincoln in elementary school. We meet him as the Great Emancipator, the kindly father figure who ends slavery and brings the Founding Fathers' vision a step closer to reality.

But when we look again, we discover Lincoln the 19th century white supremacist, a comfortable resident of his time. That Lincoln, convinced of black people's inferiority, favored exporting them from the country.

"Even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race," he told a group of black leaders at the White House. "... It is better for us to be separated."

But look again. Here is another Lincoln, just days before his death, advocating voting rights for black Americans who had fought for the Union. In the crowd that day was an irate John Wilkes Booth, commenting, "That is the last speech he will ever make."

This is more than a debate among historians. It's a dialogue between eras. I've been in the anti-Lincoln camp. I've marveled that God could take someone so mean-spirited and bigoted and make him an instrument for freedom.

But time is teaching me that history is never so black-and-white.

As human beings, we are all fragmented. All of us are products of a kind of temporal multiple personality disorder, and history will judge us all. It may not be fair, but we will be judged by standards we can't yet imagine.

So, maybe it's good for us to turn in our tracks and look back at people like Lincoln. Maybe it benefits us to be both inspired and disillusioned -- to experience historical figures as both targets and icons, and ultimately just human after all.

There is always two sides to every story and it Looks like some historians are disagreeing with your poll Oldtimer. I'd hazard to bet alot of US citizens are disagreeing with you on Bush's ranking too.
Only history will tell if the truth is not changed to fit some bodies hate for the real man and what he did to keep the US safe. :wink:
 

VanC

Well-known member
It should be noted that Truman's approval rating was 22% when he left office, yet was ranked as our fifth best president by these historians, whoever they are. My point being that, fifty years from now, fair and objective historians will likely see Bush in a better light than he is seen now.

As for Lincoln being rated the best, I have no doubt that Mike would heartily agree. :lol:
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
To me the best President was Teddy Roosevelt- who ironically became President because his party, at the bequest of the Big Corporates/Business and the corrupt party officials, gave him the V.P. spot to get him out of their hair as Governor -thinking he'd just fade away in that position.... But he became President after McKinleys assassination- and made his crusade against the Corporate crooks/political corruption a national issue..
 

Larrry

Well-known member
By todays standards or standards from fifty years agoor 100 years ago ir 150 years ago. Purely coffee shop talk at best.
 

Tam

Well-known member
Rating the Presidents
by Patrick J. Buchanan

With the passing of President Reagan, historians, scholars and journalists have again taken to rating our presidents.

Invariably, greatness is ascribed to only three: Washington, Lincoln and FDR. Which reveals as much about American historians, scholars and journalists as it does about American presidents.

Certainly, Washington is our greatest president, the father of our country and the captain who set our course. But Lincoln is great only if one believes that preventing South Carolina, Georgia and the Gulf states from peacefully seceding justified the suspension of the Constitution, a dictatorship, 600,000 dead and a resort to a total war that ravaged the South for generations.

As for FDR, he was the greatest politician of the 20th century. But why call a president great whose government was honeycombed with spies and traitors, and whose war diplomacy lead to the loss of 10 Christian countries of Eastern Europe to a Muscovite despot whose terrorist regime was the greatest enemy of human freedom in modern history?

FDR restored the nation's confidence in his first term and won a 46-state landslide to a second. But by 1937, the Depression was back and we were rescued only by the vast expenditures of World War II into which, even admirers now admit, FDR lied his country. The man talked peace as he plotted war.


None of the historians, scholars or journalists rate Reagan a great president. Yet his leadership led to the peaceful liberation of a hundred million children and grandchildren of the people FDR sold down the river at Teheran and Yalta, as well as of the 300 million people of the Soviet Union.

And why are Wilson and Truman always listed among the "near great" presidents?

While our entry into World War I ensured Allied victory, Wilson brought home from Versailles a vindictive peace that betrayed his principles, his 14 Points and his solemn word to the German government when it agreed to an armistice. That treaty tore Germany apart and led directly to Hitler and a horrific war of revenge 20 years later. Moreover, Wilson's stubborn refusal to accept any compromise language to protect U.S. sovereignty led to Senate rejection of both his treaty and the League of Nations. Why, then, is this obdurate man "near great"?

As for Truman, he dropped two atom bombs on defenseless cities, sent back 2 million Russian dissidents and POWs to his "Uncle Joe," death and the Gulag, offered to send the USS Missouri to Russia to bring Stalin over to give him equal time to answer Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech, lost China to communism, fired Gen. MacArthur for demanding victory in Korea, presided over a corrupt administration, left us mired down in a "no-win war" and left office with 23 percent approval.

What is near great about that? Why is Eisenhower, who ended the Korean War in six months, restored America's military might and presided over eight years of secure peace not the greater man?

Now consider one of the men whom all the raters judge a "failure" and among our worst presidents, Warren G. Harding.

Harding served five months less than JFK, before dying in office in 1923. Yet his diplomatic and economic triumphs were of the first order. He negotiated the greatest disarmament treaty of the century, the Washington Naval Agreement, which gave the United States superiority in battleships and left us and Great Britain with capital-ship strength more than three times as great as Japan's. Even Tokyo conceded a U.S. diplomatic victory.

With Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, Harding cut Wilson's wartime income tax rates, which had gone as high as 63 percent, to 25 percent, ended the stagflation of the Wilson presidency and set off the greatest boom of the century, the Roaring Twenties. When Harding took his oath, unemployment was at 12 percent. When he died, 29 months later, it was at 3 percent. This is a failure?

If it is because of Harding's White House dalliance with Nan Britton, why does not JFK's White House dalliance with Judith Exner make him a failure? And if Teapot Dome, which broke after Harding's death – and in which he was not involved – makes him a failure, why does not the Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to his impeachment make Clinton a failure? Of the seven Democratic presidents in the 20th century, only Truman and Carter did not have lady friends in the White House.

Harding's vice president, Calvin Coolidge, succeeded him, won one of the great landslides in U.S. history and was, as Jude Wanniski writes, an inspiration for Ronald Reagan, who considered Silent Cal a role model and put his portrait up in the Cabinet Room as a mark of respect.

Harding, Coolidge, Eisenhower and Reagan were men who kept us out of war and presided over times of peace, security and often of soaring prosperity. Yet, the 20th century presidents who took us into war and who lost the fruits of war – Wilson, FDR, Truman – are "great" or "near great." These ratings tell us less about presidents than they do about historians, scholars and journalists.
 
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