C-SPAN '21 Presidential Survey Skewed

The C-SPAN 2021 Survey of Presidential Leadership was recently released and, given the makeup of the panel of historians/authors/biographers who ranked the presidents, contained very few surprises. Liberals and progressives generally rank higher than conservatives. Ideology and political philosophy mostly rule the day.  

The 2021 advisory team for the survey included three liberals (Douglas Brinkley, Edna Greene Medford, and Richard Norton Smith) and one conservative (Amity Shlaes).  The advisory team chose the categories within which the presidents were ranked — public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision/setting an agenda, pursued equal justice for all, and performance within the context of the time. 

I don’t profess to recognize all of the 142 academic/journalistic participants, but the list of conservatives is small: Brad Birzer, Lee Edwards, Robert George, Allen Guelzo, Paul Kengor, Robert Merry, Paul Rahe, Craig Shirley, and Shlaes. There may be a few others. It is a mystery why conservatives even bother to participate in such an ideologically unbalanced “survey.” By doing so, they lend an air of legitimacy to an otherwise propagandistic endeavor. There is little “diverse” about the survey participants.

And there is very little diversity in the results. 

Lincoln and Washington ranked No. 1 and No. 2 on the list — no surprise there, though I would reverse the rankings, placing Washington No. 1 and Lincoln No. 2. Donald Trump is No. 41 out of 44 (Grover Cleveland was President twice so the list has 44 names instead of 45) — the only surprise here is that he was not No. 44. Trump derangement syndrome is widespread among academics and journalists. And Franklin Roosevelt ranks third, despite the failure of the New Deal to end the Great Depression (it probably made it last longer than it otherwise would have), the unpreparedness for war when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Philippines and other U.S. territories, the unwillingness to detect and confront communist infiltration of the U.S. government, the moral callousness when confronted with evidence of Hitler’s “final solution,” and what Robert Nisbet called FDR’s “failed courtship” of Stalin during the latter phase of the Second World War. 

The highest-ranking Republican (other than Lincoln) is Theodore Roosevelt (4th) — again, no surprise there. TR was a progressive Republican, the kind of Republican liberals most admire. Dwight Eisenhower was No. 5, proving that sometimes peace and prosperity are ranked higher than at other times. Conversely, Warren Harding is 37th and Calvin Coolidge is 24th, even though both presided over years of peace and prosperity. But among liberals and progressives, their uninspiring leadership contrasts with the sainted FDR and, for that matter, with the darling of progressives Woodrow Wilson (an academic like most of the survey participants) who ranks No. 13 despite his overt racism, his foreign policy failure at the end of the First World War, his domestic repression during that war, and his deceitful hiding of his crippling strokes from the American people. 

Ronald Reagan, who presided over an economic resurgence and our victory in the Cold War, ranks only No. 9, behind Harry Truman (6th) and even, laughably, John F. Kennedy (8th). Truman, to be sure, showed strong foreign policy leadership in Europe, but his policies in Asia were disastrous and, like FDR, he ignored for too long communist infiltration of the U.S. government. And it seems the Kennedy mystique will never die. Kennedy while president courted academics and journalists, and ever since they have rarely let him down. The myth of Camelot endures.

The C-SPAN survey ranks Barack Obama No. 10 and Lyndon Johnson No. 11, rankings that perhaps reveal most about the ideological sympathies of most of the survey’s participants. Obama continued wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that liberals and progressives decried when George W. Bush waged them. He also fueled racial divisions and anti-police campaigns that reached their apogees during the Trump presidency. Obama’s partly successful push for socialized medicine undoubtedly warmed the hearts of the progressives in the survey. And like Kennedy, he could deliver a well-prepared speech, even though his speechwriters didn’t achieve the soaring heights of mindless rhetoric reached by Kennedy’s wordsmith Theodore Sorensen. 

Lyndon Johnson, meanwhile, inflicted on the country Great Society federal programs that produced generations of families dependent on federal largesse, and waged war in Southeast Asia that proved disastrous for both the people in the region and for Americans, especially the 58,000-plus soldiers who died in a war Johnson refused to win. Indeed, it is arguable that Lyndon Johnson should be ranked No. 44 on the list, instead of No. 11.  Johnson certainly did more harm to our country than William Henry Harrison (ranked 40th, who died shortly after being sworn into office), Trump (ranked 41st) Franklin Pierce (ranked 42nd), Andrew Johnson (ranked 43rd), and James Buchanan (ranked 44th). 

The C-SPAN survey ranks Jimmy Carter No. 26 and Richard Nixon No. 31. Carter, who presided over a miserable economy and an ineffective, if not disastrous, foreign policy, somehow ranks higher than Nixon, one of our very best foreign policy presidents. But progressives’ love of John F. Kennedy is only equaled by their hatred of Nixon. Nixon will never get his due by academics or journalists. Watergate is the excuse they use to ignore an otherwise effective and successful presidency.

So what would the C-SPAN survey look like if conservative scholars dominated the ranks of the participants? Here are my top ten: Washington, Lincoln, Reagan, Jefferson, Polk, Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt (mostly for his foreign policy), Coolidge, Nixon, and Monroe. The four worst presidents would be: Wilson, Carter, Buchanan, and Lyndon Johnson.  It is probably too early to rank Trump and Obama, though most, if not all, conservatives would rank the former higher than the latter. 

In the end, all such surveys are entirely subjective, but that is not how they will be presented by liberal journalists and progressive professors.