The top 40 US presidents

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by tater

Any "ranking" of things is pretty absurd (except actual, direct competitions like a race where there is a non-subjective 1st, 2d, 3d, etc).

Best fighter plane in WW2? What metric?

Best submarine?

It's pretty much nonsense. Even a 3-way lumping of good, bad, and neither good nor bad would be subjective. Do they get "bad" credit for starting a program that will later bankrupt the country?

Using things like "effective" where it means getting their own pet legislation enacted is less subjective, but says nothing about their overall value to the nation since the pet project could be a disaster.

How about a "broke things the least" metric?

It's nonsense, as all rankings are.

It is nonsense, but it is what we all do. We rank everything from football teams to late night comedians and all that falls in between. It only seems natural that politicians get rankings as well.