Underrated presidents and overrated ones
In sports, talk of underrated athletes always raises this question: Underrated by whom? Fifty years ago, outfielder Joe Rudi was commonly said to be underrated. But after hearing that refrain for a while, I started to wonder whether Rudi was overrated.
With U.S. presidents, the difficulty doesn’t arise, at least not as acutely, because historians regularly rate our presidents. So the answer to the question, underrated by whom is: Underrated by the mainstream historians who rate the presidents.
The ratings do change over time, of course. Thus, fifty years ago, Dwight Eisenhower was vastly underrated. Nowadays, with historians holding him in much higher esteem, not as much.
The mainstream historians who rate our presidents lean left. As an antidote to their ratings, The Committee to Unleash Prosperity recently polled more than 100 influential conservatives, including U.S. Senators, members of the U.S. House, governors, think tank scholars, business leaders, and prominent conservative writers and economists. The question posed was:
Who would you rank as the single most overrated political figure in history and who would you rank as the single most underrated?
U.S. presidents dominated both lists. The most underrated president, according to the panel of conservatives, is Calvin Coolidge. He’s followed, in order, by Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, and (surprisingly) Bill Clinton.
The runaway winner for most overrated president will surprise no one. It’s Barack Obama. He is followed by FDR, Woodrow Wilson, JFK, and Joe Biden.
I agree with the selection of Coolidge as most underrated. However, my list of runner-ups differs from the panel’s.
I would include Warren Harding, Ulysses Grant (much more highly rated than in the past but still underrated, I believe), and William McKinley in the top four of the underrated. All three, by the way, received votes from the panel.
What do Coolidge, Harding, Grant, and McKinley have in common? Why, they were all Republicans and none could fairly be described as a liberal president.
Joining Obama at the top of my list of the overrated would be Wilson and JFK (to the extent he’s still highly rated by mainstream historians), both of whom made the panel’s top five.
However, I would also include Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson. Not because they were bad presidents, but because both are consistently ranked near the top of mainstream lists, and I question whether either deserves it.
To be fair to Jefferson, one could argue that the Louisiana Purchase alone justifies his high ranking. I can see that argument. In my view, however, Jefferson’s second term was so bad as to render him overrated by mainstream historians — and probably by conservative ones, as well.
As for Joe Rudi, with a
lifetime 25.4 WAR and three consecutive Golden Gloves, but no gaudy batting stats, he probably was underrated.
HAT TIP: Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation.
I agree with most of the ratings, by Paul and by the other conservatives, with one exception. I don't think FDR is overrated. It can be and has been argued that FDR's policies and alphabet soup agencies didn't shorten the Great Depression, and may have lengthened it. He did, however, rally the American people, and he enacted some needed reforms, like the securities laws and the FDIC. But he was a great wartime president, better perhaps than Lincoln, though it's not fair to compare the two as war leaders, for FDR had more and better help, and Lincoln's "office of the president" was John Hay and John Nicolay. In a three volume history of FDR as commander in chief, NIgel Hamilton makes a compelling case for FDR as war leader, with a better grasp of strategy than his generals, more faith in the ability of Great Britain and the Soviet Union to withstand the German onslaught than his advisors, civil and military, and an uncanny ability to reorganize and mobilize the American economy and sent it to war.
It's a little unfair to rank Kennedy, because his was a dramatically shortened tenure. From what I read, he probably wouldn't have led us into the Vietnam War, which is a huge feather in his cap. On the negative side are the Bay of Pigs, a weak posture against the Soviets, and by some accounts even the Cuban Missile Crisis. He handled it very well, but some have argued his policies led to the crisis.
The quest for greatness can go beyond the American presidency. When Jefferson told Hamilton Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and John Locke were the greatest men of all time, Hamilton responded that "The greatest man who ever lived was Julius Caesar." My response to Hamilton: You didn't know Abraham Lincoln. Jim Dueholm
I rate presidents by how well they led. And how well the country was served by their presidency. Sometimes presidents that accomplished a lot have their presidencies ruined by one thing or another. JFK is definitionally overrated since he has always been thought of as near the top of all lists because of his murder. But in my view and reading many good books about him (not liberal hagiographies) I think he was a good effective president who likely would have been reelected. What would have happened who can say. Regarding presidents since FDR, I realize conservatives hate his expansion of the federal government but I regard him as an effective leader who led the country through two deep potentially existential crises. You know else felt this way? Reagan. I once read a book which rated the presidents from FDR to Bush II solely on their emotional intelligence. FDR Truman Ike and JFK were held to have high emotional intelligence. This enabled them to lead both the nation and their administrations through challenges and crises. The next bunch? Not so good. Johnson Nixon and Carter were rated to have low emotional intelligence. This lack of EI helped destroy their presidencies. Reagan Bush and Clinton were held to have high EI. Bush II was early in his first term but the author thought he exhibited high EI. Using his criteria it is clear Obama had very low EI. Trump even lower. Biden possibly the lowest. EI (as opposed to the more generalized "character" is the best judge of presidential success in the modern era.)