Every bisected tenth-score and an impending President's Day ago, an esteemed news organization will inevitably assign itself to the task of polling America's supposed scholars on the matter of "Presidential Greatness." While ostensibly marketed as an attempt to rank-order the performance of 40-something occupants of the executive office, the resulting product is terribly mundane. Even Alexander Hamilton would be pressed to match the
monarchial prowess of this annual self-indulgent affair in which the venerable likes of
Doris Kearns Goodwin predictably affix the Iron Crown of Lombardy to the brows of the Washington, Lincoln and other similarly exalted greenback portraiture.
In lesser times, such surveys provide "expert" vindication for all matter of political miscreants, invariably seeking out authoritative demonstration that George W. Bush is indeed the lesser man than Millard Fillmore that they always believed him to be. Your humble correspondent proudly maintains that the "Exalted 44" is largely devoid of commendable characteristics save the solitary counterargument of the only truly great president, Grover Cleveland. And while a scanty few beyond him may similarly merit rescue from that sea of wretchedness, certainly the executive office has not produced a bearable personality since the departure of Calvin Coolidge. It is foregone certitude that the year of Big O would be such a lesser one, and C-Span has spit forth the present
survey.
And yes, the results are the usual surety. Great: Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt. Not-so-great: Buchanan, Pierce,
Dubya. Rising Stars: Truman, Clinton. Not included, but unspoken
annointer of Honest Abe himself: Obama.
Perhaps of greater interest to the inquisitive among us is the constitution of expertise that deemed such a list. Though certain matters of presidential assessment may be beyond dispensation and thus limited to various exemplars of numismatic recognition, one would expect such a survey to be conducted among scholars who specialize in the presidency itself as an institution or, perhaps, a general historian of the office from its insipid creation to the present coronation. Perhaps choose a
James Pfiffner. Or a
Paul Boller. Such a survey might exhibit a modicum of analytical value. C-Span's "expert"
list is nothing of the sort though, rather consisting mostly of biographers who specialize in single presidents or narrow, focused, and defined periods of history. Furthermore, those narrow
expertises tend to be skewed around presidents that, unsurprisingly, land themselves near the top of the list.
The case of Abraham Lincoln may serve as a demonstration. Suppose one were to design a presidential survey to be distributed to a list of 65 "experts." Further suppose one chose for that list a total of 10 experts on Abraham Lincoln, each of whom specializes only in Lincoln and the Civil War era. Naturally, the results would tend to rank Lincoln above all else, would they not? It is the nature of specialized scholars stick to their specialties, and a survey that skews toward certain specialists will naturally name their subject as its "Greatest President." Thus, we find the C-Span survey included the following specialists on Lincoln, the Civil War, and...well, little if anything else:
Jean Baker, author of
Mary Todd Lincoln: A BiographyVernon Burton, author of
The Age of Lincoln
Andrew Ferguson, author of
Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America
Debra Goodrich, author of
The Day Dixie DiedAllen
Guelzo, author of
Lincoln: Redeemer PresidentHarold
Holzer, chairman of the
Lincoln Bicentennial CommissionJames McPherson, author of
Tried By War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in ChiefEdna Greene
Medford, co-author of
The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views
Stephen Oates, author of
With Malice Toward None: A Life of Abraham LincolnBrooks D. Simpson, author of
Think Anew, Act Anew: Abraham Lincoln on Slavery, Freedom, and UnionIt may come as little surprise that the next most populated "expertise" categories are in the Revolutionary War/Constitutional Convention era or the Great Depression/World War II period. FDR and George Washington were numbers 2 and 3 on the list, respectively.
In similar vein, the Lincoln-dominated list of experts selected him as their top choice for categories well beyond the scope of his reputation. Lincoln might appear to be an obvious frontrunner for his widely acknowledged strength in "
Crisis Leadership." But does he also deserve to dominate the category of "
Economic Management," a policy area that (1) barely even registered in his presidency due to the Civil War, and (2) had little to commend its actual economic merit given its preference for the long-discarded dogmas of Whiggish mercantilism? Does Lincoln, a president who went through a half-dozen notoriously inept generals before he settled on Ulysses S. Grant, really qualify for high marks in "
Administrative Skills"? And should he truly outrank such
foreign policy heavyweights as Reagan, Nixon, Wilson, and Eisenhower?
Only in the mind of a biographer who knows Lincoln and little else beyond Lincoln.
Not to deprecate George, or Franklin, or Abe undeservedly, but with such stacked balloting how does poor Chester A. Arthur even stand a chance of rising above 32
nd place on the list? And for that matter, why is an expert on the life of Abe Lincoln any more
equipped to evaluate the
economic policies of Ronald Reagan than a biographer of Caracalla? Such questions are particularly pertinent given that many "expert" historians are known for holding unconventional political affiliations outside of their narrow biographical fields and may thus be prone to evaluate other presidencies in which they possess absolutely no credentialed specialty through the lens of radical left wing activism. James McPherson may know Lincoln well, but the closest thing he has to expertise in the Roaring Twenties is being a
prime candidate for the Palmer Raids.
