The ‘Right’ View by Francis P. Sempa
Ranking 20th Century American Presidents
Periodically, history and political science professors rank U.S. presidents, and the results decidedly favor liberal Democrats. University professors are mostly liberal—many are far-leftists who wear their ideology on their sleeves. Some have used pseudo-science—the late political scientist James David Barber in his book “The Presidential Character” created a typology that categorized 20th century American presidents as “Active-Positive,” “Active-Negative,” Passive-Positive” and “Passive-Negative.” Barber’s book—which I had to read many years ago in college—was heralded by my liberal political science professor and many others around the country as a scientific assessment of the best and worst presidents. Predictably, Barber writes that the best presidents were active-positive and his active-positive presidents are all Democrats: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton. Barber’s typology was nothing more than a supposedly objective assessment that in reality favored liberal presidents.
Barber was typical of university professors, political scientists and most presidential scholars. Consider the 2022 Sienna College Research Institute survey of historians, political scientists and presidential scholars highlighted by CBS News. That survey ranked Franklin Roosevelt the best 20th-century president, and the best overall president in American history—greater than Lincoln, greater than Washington. FDR vastly expanded the role and powers of the federal government, essentially creating the managerial state—that today some call the “deep state.” It apparently didn’t matter to the survey’s participants that FDR left the United States woefully unprepared for World War II in the 1930s; oversaw an administration that was infiltrated by communists, some in very critical government positions, while ignoring information about that infiltration; refused to attempt to rescue Jews before and during the war despite being informed of Hitler’s “final solution”; and whose courtship of Josef Stalin during the war helped to consign the peoples of Eastern Europe to communist enslavement after the war.
The Sienna survey ranks Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, second best of 20th-century presidents (fourth overall). Teddy Roosevelt is probably the only 20th-century Republican that liberals love—he was a trust-buster, an environmentalist and later moved to progressivism. Dwight Eisenhower is third (sixth overall)—not because of his conservative economics or his realist foreign policy, but because he continued to desegregate the armed forces and sent federal troops to enforce the desegregation of Little Rock public schools.
Harry Truman is next (seventh overall), despite his deeply flawed policies in Asia that helped the Chinese Communist Party conquer mainland China, his disastrous role as commander-in-chief during the Korean War and his ineffectual domestic policies. Near the end of his presidency, it was commonplace for people to say, “To err is Truman.”
The fifth best 20th-century president (and eighth best overall), according to the Sienna survey, is Lyndon B. Johnson, the creator of the deeply flawed “Great Society” and whose flawed leadership resulted in the disastrous Americanization of the Vietnam War. Next (and ninth best overall) is John F. Kennedy, who gets credit for “crisis management” even though he contributed significantly to the emergence of crises during his presidency, as liberal historian Michael Beschloss noted in his book “The Crisis Years.”
The Sienna survey ranks Barack Obama the seventh best 20th-century president (and eleventh best overall), perhaps because his administration initiated the woke DEI policies that liberals love, and because he publicly apologized for America’s past sins. Next (and 13th overall) comes Woodrow Wilson, an intellectual, like the survey’s participants who overlooked his overt racism because most of his domestic policies were liberal and resulted in the growth of government, and because he had an idealistic foreign policy that abandoned realism in favor of utopianism. Wilson is followed by Bill Clinton (14th overall), the shameless president who besmirched the White House with sexual escapades (as did Kennedy), did nothing about the growing Islamic threat, and harmed relations with post-Cold War Russia by initiating the enlargement of NATO.
Perhaps the worst example of liberal bias in the Sienna survey is ranking Ronald Reagan ninth (18th overall) among 20th-century presidents. Reagan presided over economic prosperity and won the Cold War without firing a shot. He should be first. And placing FDR, Truman, LBJ, Kennedy, Obama, and Clinton ahead of Reagan is historical malpractice. And he is only one place above Joe Biden (19th overall), who for a portion of his disastrous presidency was not all there.
George H. W. Bush is ranked eleventh (overall 20th) among 20th-century presidents in the Sienna survey. He skillfully managed the end of the Cold War and won a sweeping victory in the first Gulf War, yet the only Democrat he outranks is the hapless Jimmy Carter, whose overall ranking of 24th is ludicrous. Carter deserves to be at the bottom of the list, yet he outranks Richard Nixon (28th overall), perhaps the most accomplished foreign policy president of the 20th century. Nixon should be in the top five of 20th-century presidents.
The bottom of the Sienna survey is, unsurprisingly, occupied by Republicans, including Calvin Coolidge (32nd overall), who presided over five years of peace and prosperity, but wasn’t “active” enough for the liberal scholars.
None of these rankings really matter much, except that many of the participants are the teachers of our children and the writers of history. It’s no wonder that so many of our children are clueless when it comes to history.
Francis P. Sempa is the author of the books “Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century” and “America’s Global Role.” He is a contributing editor to “The American Spectator” and writes a regular column for “Real Clear Defense.”
