Clinton is Tops with Historians
For those of you who enjoy bashing academia, this may provide some ammunition for your cannons of criticism. We know it gets our goat. The press release posted below, among other things, claims the Reaganesque conservative movement is over. No one here has an opinion on that but we’re sure someone does.
Everyone has probably heard at least one argument over historic references as well as one criticism of what is fact or fiction in texts used to teach history. That criticism has a tendency to point to the critic as holding a bias toward the historic reference or that the historians got it wrong. This press release should help stoke the fire.
Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com
Among Recent Presidents, Clinton is Tops With Historians
READING, Pa., March 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Ask historians to rank
the presidents and you will get varied opinions. Limit their choices to
only the four most recent occupants of the White House and interesting
patterns emerge.
In a recent poll, more than 250 college and university history
professors placed former President Bill Clinton as the best president of
the last quarter century, Ronald Reagan as the second best, followed by
Jimmy Carter and then the first President Bush. (The current president was
excluded since his term of office had not yet ended.) The survey also asked
the historians to rank the recent Secretaries of State and Supreme Court
justices as well as the relative threat to constitutional liberties posed
by presidential actions.
Dr. Tim H. Blessing, Professor of History and Political Science at
Alvernia College, Reading, Pa., has conducted presidential polls for many
years as part of the Presidential Performance Study. Since 2001, he has
been joined in ranking presidents by Dr. Anne Skleder, Associate Professor
of Psychology. They asked historians, all with doctoral degrees and all
teaching full-time at a college or university, to rank these four
presidents as “great,” “near great,” “above average,” “average,” “below
average,” or “failing.” Using this system, Clinton received the highest
average score, though no historian ranked him as one of the “Greats.”
Reagan garnered a number of “great” marks, but also received numerous
“below average” marks, dragging down his score and indicating that he is
still a polarizing figure.
For Carter and Bush, “losing the confidence of the people” during their
terms contributed to their trailing numbers. “A one-term president does not
have the time to collect successes and move up in the ranks,” Blessing and
Skleder note. They also suspect that the waning popularity of the current
President Bush may have caused a slight “suppression” of his father’s
ratings. Likewise Carter’s rating might have been still lower had it not
been for a “lift due to his post-presidential humanitarian activities.”
What makes a president rank above others is how well they embody the
hopes and dreams of the people. “Sometimes, people don’t know what they
want,” Blessing claims. “What presidents mean to the people is more than
the sum of their policies. Presidents who can voice the people’s hopes and
ideals and help them give voice to their aspirations” rank highest.
Even though Reagan ranks behind Clinton, Blessing says the Reagan
presidency was one of the frequent ‘revolutions’ that occur in American
politics. “Significant” presidents, such as Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln
and both Roosevelts “set a style and create goals that linger long past
their presidency.” Subsequent presidents seek to capture that spirit until,
years later, the people seek another dramatic change. Blessing and Skleder
observe this is the twenty-sixth year of the Reagan presidency, as the
elder Bush, Clinton, and the current President Bush have each campaigned on
elements leftover from the Reagan platform. “The Reagan presidency’s legacy
has pretty much run its course,” they state. “We cannot expect the policies
and approaches of a very different era to be continued into this one.”
None of the candidates in the race for next year’s presidential
nominations appear to be promoting Reaganesque ideals. While Blessing and
Skleder are unsure whether the American electorate is moving strongly to
the left or will find some moderate middle ground, they are sure that “the
cycle for the Reaganesque style of conservatism is over.”
SOURCE Alvernia College.
the presidents and you will get varied opinions. Limit their choices to
only the four most recent occupants of the White House and interesting
patterns emerge.
In a recent poll, more than 250 college and university history
professors placed former President Bill Clinton as the best president of
the last quarter century, Ronald Reagan as the second best, followed by
Jimmy Carter and then the first President Bush. (The current president was
excluded since his term of office had not yet ended.) The survey also asked
the historians to rank the recent Secretaries of State and Supreme Court
justices as well as the relative threat to constitutional liberties posed
by presidential actions.
Dr. Tim H. Blessing, Professor of History and Political Science at
Alvernia College, Reading, Pa., has conducted presidential polls for many
years as part of the Presidential Performance Study. Since 2001, he has
been joined in ranking presidents by Dr. Anne Skleder, Associate Professor
of Psychology. They asked historians, all with doctoral degrees and all
teaching full-time at a college or university, to rank these four
presidents as “great,” “near great,” “above average,” “average,” “below
average,” or “failing.” Using this system, Clinton received the highest
average score, though no historian ranked him as one of the “Greats.”
Reagan garnered a number of “great” marks, but also received numerous
“below average” marks, dragging down his score and indicating that he is
still a polarizing figure.
For Carter and Bush, “losing the confidence of the people” during their
terms contributed to their trailing numbers. “A one-term president does not
have the time to collect successes and move up in the ranks,” Blessing and
Skleder note. They also suspect that the waning popularity of the current
President Bush may have caused a slight “suppression” of his father’s
ratings. Likewise Carter’s rating might have been still lower had it not
been for a “lift due to his post-presidential humanitarian activities.”
What makes a president rank above others is how well they embody the
hopes and dreams of the people. “Sometimes, people don’t know what they
want,” Blessing claims. “What presidents mean to the people is more than
the sum of their policies. Presidents who can voice the people’s hopes and
ideals and help them give voice to their aspirations” rank highest.
Even though Reagan ranks behind Clinton, Blessing says the Reagan
presidency was one of the frequent ‘revolutions’ that occur in American
politics. “Significant” presidents, such as Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln
and both Roosevelts “set a style and create goals that linger long past
their presidency.” Subsequent presidents seek to capture that spirit until,
years later, the people seek another dramatic change. Blessing and Skleder
observe this is the twenty-sixth year of the Reagan presidency, as the
elder Bush, Clinton, and the current President Bush have each campaigned on
elements leftover from the Reagan platform. “The Reagan presidency’s legacy
has pretty much run its course,” they state. “We cannot expect the policies
and approaches of a very different era to be continued into this one.”
None of the candidates in the race for next year’s presidential
nominations appear to be promoting Reaganesque ideals. While Blessing and
Skleder are unsure whether the American electorate is moving strongly to
the left or will find some moderate middle ground, they are sure that “the
cycle for the Reaganesque style of conservatism is over.”
SOURCE Alvernia College.
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