Ranking Presidents Essay

The task of ranking presidents has traditionally been one fraught with peril; the historian must be assumed to have disengaged all personal political preferences, all deeply held personal beliefs, in order to evaluate those men who so often stood at the forefront of history and who have, to a large degree, shaped the world in which we live. Given that such historians are necessarily human, and thus prone to the very human tendencies of bias and opinion, such perfect lists are indeed almost impossible. Besides, even the idea of what, exactly, constitutes a “good” or “great” president is in itself very much up for debate, though it seems present historians have a tendency towards outspoken, irrepressible personalities and bold (some might say authoritarian) action. John F. Kennedy famously called the whole idea ludicrous, stating, "No one …show more content…
Such rankings ultimately are important in that they offer a quick, easy interpretation of the past, thus, many students of history tend to rely on them to form their ultimate opinions of an era or a presidency. One such individual who has been the subject of almost widespread dismissal, even condemnation, is the thirtieth president of the United States, Calvin Coolidge. He, alongside the other “inept” Republican presidents of the 1920’s, has been almost universally ranked in the bottom quartile of presidents, alongside such “notables” as James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce (Silver, 1982, p.3). In recent years, however, Coolidge, that stout, implacable “man from Vermont”, has seen somewhat of a resurgence in the public mind and in scholarly works, leading many historians to question whether such such typically dismissive representations are a fair, or even accurate, portrayal of