Ranking of U.S. Presidents by historians

[Torvald Von Mansee]

Originally Posted by tater

It was certainly bound to do so. As I said way up there, any "ranking" is absurd. It's no different than the idiotic shows on the History ( Military?) Channel that rank the "Ten best Submarines." It's not like they pick some simple, objective standard like, "total tonnage sunk by the class," or better, the tonnage sunk per submarine in class lost. No, they add stuff like "fear factor" (whatever the hell that is), then rank submarines that are without question deadly, but have NEVER proven themselves in combat.

Meaningless.

As is any ranking of Presidents, it is in fact a popularity contest that measures not the Presidents, but the historians. The relative rankings show the overall bias of the academic historians polled, and tell us virtually nothing about the Presidents in question.

Could it be Presidents you philosophically agree with are ranked lower than you'd want?

I thought these kinds of surveys polled historians from all kinds of philosophical backgrounds.