In Pursuit of the Presidential Pantheon

by ROBERT W. MERRY, online.wsj.com
June 29th 2012 7:08 AM

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Historians have reached a consensus. A 1996 poll ranked at the top, from left to right: Presidents Lincoln, Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Jefferson, Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, Truman, Polk and Eisenhower.

In 2010, President Obama told Diane Sawyer that he would "rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." Now, of course, he's doing everything he can to make sure that he gets a second term. No president wants the humiliation of getting tossed out of office.

More than that, in terms of his legacy, Mr. Obama is right to look for vindication from the people instead of from history's judgment, as measured in those periodic polls in which historians rate presidential performance. The professional history-makers, it turns out, generally follow the sentiments of the electorate, at least once the smoke of the recent past has cleared.

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Consider Dwight Eisenhower, initially pegged by historians as a mediocre two-termer. In 1962, a year after Ike relinquished the presidency, a poll by Harvard's Arthur Schlesinger Sr. ranked him 22nd—between Chester A. Arthur, largely a presidential nonentity, and Andrew Johnson, impeached by the House and nearly convicted by the Senate. Republicans were outraged; Democrats laughed. By the time a 1981 poll was taken, however, Eisenhower had moved up to 12th. The following year he was ninth. In three subsequent polls he came in 11th, 10th and eighth.

Ranking presidents through academic polls is an imperfect tool, of course. But over time even the academics filter out extraneous considerations—like the cloud of contemporary sentiment and the acrimony of recent political battles—to render judgment on a chief executive's place in history.

Academics initially slammed Reagan, as they had Eisenhower. One survey of 750 historians taken between 1988 and 1990 ranked him as "below average." A 1996 poll ranked him at 25th, between George H.W. Bush, the one-termer who succeeded him, and that selfsame Chester Arthur. Reagan's standing is now on the rise. But the initial disparity should serve as a lesson for presidential scholars: Academic polls need the added perspective that comes with a look at the electorate's contemporaneous judgment.

Was a president tossed out after one term or re-elected? If re-elected, did his party retain the White House following his second term? What about midterm elections? Here we can distinguish between, say, Jimmy Carter, a one-termer expelled by the voters, and Reagan, a two-term president succeeded by his own vice president.

Consider the nine presidents most often cited by historians as the greatest—Lincoln, Washington and FDR, followed in various rank order by Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and Truman. Not a one-termer in the bunch—except for Polk, who ran on a one-term promise. Historians seldom give rankings that defy the voters' judgments.

But intriguing disparities do emerge. Wilson's high marks from historians belie the fact that voters in 1920 delivered to his party one of the starkest repudiations ever visited upon an incumbent party. Similarly, historians consistently mark Harding as a failure, though he presided over remarkably good times and was very popular.

Historians differ from voters in how they look at a president's overall record. Voters judge their chief executive in four-year increments. In Truman's case, historians place him in the "near great" category despite the fact that he suffered a second-term Gallup approval rating of just 22%. Why the disparity?

Truman's first term was heroic, marked by saving Western civilization from the Soviets, poised menacingly on Western Europe's doorstep. His second term was a disaster—a sputtering economy, a war in Korea that he couldn't win or abandon, and petty corruption. Voters re-elected him in 1948 based on his first-term record, then judged him ineligible for rehire in 1952. He got the message and didn't run.

Or consider Grover Cleveland, ranked eighth in Schlesinger's initial 1948 poll. We all know he was the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. Less known is that after each term the voters tossed out his party, first with him on the ticket, then after his party rejected his bid for renomination. Cleveland is the country's only two-time, one-term president—hardly a strong recommendation in terms of the electorate's assessment.

There is a sort of collective wisdom in the electorate. The academics' views deserve respect, but the voters seem to have a better grasp of the grand flow of American history, as Mr. Obama now seems to understand.

—Mr. Merry, editor of the National Interest, is the author most recently of "Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians" (Simon & Schuster).

A version of this article appeared June 30, 2012, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: In Pursuit of the Presidential Pantheon.

Original Page: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303561504577494952787447554.html

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