Who was the greatest American president? Starting in 1982, Siena College has been publishing periodic surveys of presidential scholars to find out how they rank American presidents, from top to bottom. There have now been five surveys (this year’s was just published). In each survey, Franklin D. Roosevelt ended up ranked greatest. Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln have alternately been ranked second greatest, but this year Teddy Roosevelt beat them both out for second place. (The pollsters explain Teddy’s rise by saying, “Teddy Roosevelt had, more than any other president the ‘right stuff’, and tops the collective ranking of a cluster of personal qualities, including imagination, integrity, intelligence, luck, background, and being willing to take risks.”) Meanwhile, George Washington? He’s never risen above being ranked in fourth place.
Fourth? George Washington fourth? After reading the list of qualities the presidential scholars used to come up with their rankings, and then weighing them against the fact that George Washington has never managed to rise in their estimation to higher than fourth place, I was reminded of Nietzsche’s observation that judgments about history always end up the property of people who could never create history themselves.
Even if the survey is a bit of a silly exercise—one that reveals more about the drift of scholarship, and scholars’ political attitudes, than it does about American presidents—and even if Washington has been monumentalized (to use Nietzsche’s term) to the point of parody, it takes only a little imagination to recognize that to do what Washington did was astonishing. We’re not talking about some mythical founder—like Romulus and Remus—but a real-life leader who breathed life into the presidency by being president when there was no model for what a president should be. This sort of political creativity is possible only rarely, and much of the time it’s botched (think of the French Revolution, for comparison).
Acting in the spirit of the day (it’s the Fourth of July), I say, forget the surveys. George Washington was the greatest president ever.
2 Responses to A Question for the Fourth of July
jffoster - July 5, 2010 at 8:19 am
Until he put the Whiskey Rebellion down.
livefreeordie2 - July 5, 2010 at 9:53 am
You are absolutely correct! When one reviews his record of accomplishments, it is the only possible conclusion. Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. . . victorious in the Revolutionary War. . . President of the Constitutional Convention. . .the President who set the customs and precedents for that office to which most of his successors adhered. He was undoubtedly the greatest President we will ever have!Of course, he really didn’t have a choice. After all, he didn’t have George W. Bush to blame if he had failed.