Ranking Presidents

It seems as I can never get anything done. When I’m doing research for my various writings (no, I don’t just write here) I always run across something more interesting than what I’m writing about. Oh well.

Today’s distraction is: Historical rankings of Presidents of the United States

It’s a chart I’ve viewed many times before. I’m not going to detail all the problems with it. I’ll just tell you there are problems with it. Like ranking the guy that is still in office and the guy that just left. That isn’t very “historical”. But still, they’re on there. And it is interesting. You have to manipulate the chart to see whatever numbers you might be interested in. Each column on the chart has a little up and down arrow on it. I clicked on the “Aggr.” button (aggregate) to get an overall view from top to bottom and took a picture. (Don’t get distracted by the number. That’s their sequential number. Lincoln was the 16th President, Roosevelt the 32nd, etc.)



Franklin D. Roosevelt (my personal favorite) has moved up a notch to the #2 slot. I like that fact but I’m not sure it’s deserved. I mention it only to show that these rankings do change.

What I find most interesting at the moment is the fact that Barrack Obama is ranked just ahead of Ronald Reagan and just behind Lyndon Johnson. Johnson gave us the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 along with several other major accomplishments. Barrack Obama -- besides being the first African-American President in history -- passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act -- better known (at the moment) as “Obamacare”. The rest of the civilized world refers to it as universal healthcare. (Mark my words, the pejorative use of Obamacare will come back to haunt the Republicans. Imagine if we called Social Security checks “Roosevelt checks”.) I can’t remember anything Ronald Reagan did of equal historical significance -- despite his undeniable popularity.

Oh, and the guy that just left the Presidency? His ranking was off the page so I couldn’t take a picture of it. You’ll have to find it yourself I guess. But let me help you out. Look a couple of slots below Richard Nixon.

Don Brown
March 9, 2012