AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL RANKINGS

(Although the first impression of this entry may be that it is informative-technical, rather than substantial, it would be wrong. This entry is certainly original, as its table of Presidential Rankings is of my own making, and I am not sure that, despite its apparent simplicity, a similar table exists anywhere.)

Later on we shall have an entry on the hundred most influential Americans in history under the amusing title Greatest American Century. This is a different kind of entry: to begin with, it fully belongs in this series on American Presidents and makes sure that none of the highest-rated of them have been cheated of a separate entry of their own.

The reader knows already that I have a particular affection for the first six American Presidents. It is much more difficult to launch a good ship of state than to keep it afloat and therefore those first six must be given special credit for being the launchers, as opposed to being the maintenance crew. It was for this reason that I had an original plan to name this entry, with some Biblical allusions, And The First Shall Be The Best. On a serious note, however, this ought to be a more or less formal entry and so must be its title, which now it is.

And so, what follows next is the complete list of American presidents from number one to the current forty-four. Each name is checked against its rank in a broad variety of polls of such nature. The two figures that accompany each name (i.e. 01-04) reflect the highest and the lowest ranking of the particular president in all these polls. Next, the presidents are grouped in the order of their ranking importance, but without breaking their consecutive numbering. I do this by color-tagging each in the following manner:

The presidents whose rankings put them consistently in the top ten receive the dark-blue color-code. Those who consistently stay in the top twenty-two receive the green code. Those who never enter the top twenty-two receive the orange code. Those fluctuating between the upper and lower echelons are colored in lilac.

I do realize, of course, that I have to write separate entries for each president in the highest two groups. But I reserve the right to give separate entries to my sentimental favorites or those important enough, negatively speaking, to require such separate entries for political and historical reasons.

After this preamble, here is my complete list of the forty-three presidential entrants. (Grover Cleveland has the special historical privilege to be counted twice in this list, as #22 and #24.)---

01. George Washington. -------1789-1797---01-06.

02. John Adams. -----------------1797-1801---07-17.

03. Thomas Jefferson. ----------1801-1809---03-10.

04. James Madison. -------------1809-1817---06-15.

05. James Monroe. --------------1817-1825---07-21.

06. John Quincy Adams. -------1825-1829---16-19.

07. Andrew Jackson. ------------1829-1837---06-14.

08. Martin Van Buren. ---------1837-1841---23-40.

09. William Henry Harrison. -1841-1841---35-39.

10. John Tyler. -------------------1841-1845---31-42.

11. James K. Polk. ---------------1845-1849---09-36.

12. Zachary Taylor. -------------1849-1850---28-37.

13. Millard Fillmore. ------------1850-1853---33-41.

14. Franklin Pierce. --------------1853-1857---31-41.

15. James Buchanan. ------------1857-1861---32-42.

16. Abraham Lincoln. -----------1861-1865---01-03.

17. Andrew Johnson. ------------1865-1869---24-43.

18. Ulysses S. Grant. -------------1869-1877---06-37.

19. Rutherford B. Hayes. -------1877-1881---25-31.

20. James A. Garfield. -----------1881-1881---26-34.

21. Chester A. Arthur. -----------1881-1885---22-28.

22. Grover Cleveland. -----------1885-1889---19-29.

23. Benjamin Harrison. ---------1889-1893---29-34.

24. Grover Cleveland. ------------1893-1897---19-29.

25. William McKinley. -----------1897-1901---17-27.

26. Theodore Roosevelt. ---------1901-1909---02-08.

27. William Howard Taft. -------1909-1913---18-29.

28. Woodrow Wilson. ------------1913-1921---05-19.

29. Warren G. Harding. ---------1921-1923---34-43.

30. Calvin Coolidge. --------------1923-1929---26-31.

31. Herbert Hoover. --------------1929-1933---22-36.

32. Franklin D. Roosevelt. -------1933-1945---01-05.

33. Harry S. Truman. -------------1945-1953---07-11.

34. Dwight D. Eisenhower. ------1953-1961---06-14.

35. John F. Kennedy. -------------1961-1963---02-11.

36. Lyndon B. Johnson. ----------1963-1969---09-23.

37. Richard Nixon. ----------------1969-1974---12-37.

38. Gerald Ford. -------------------1974-1977---13-28.

39. Jimmy Carter. -----------------1977-1981---13-32.

40. Ronald Reagan. ---------------1981-1989---05-18.

41. George H. W. Bush. ----------1989-1993---09-22.

42. Bill Clinton. --------------------1993-2001---07-23.

43. George W. Bush. --------------2001-2009---28-39.

44. Barack Obama. ----------------2009-2017---14-15.

One last note before I end this entry. The last entrant here, President Obama, is a work in progress and he is not supposed to get a ranking yet. However, some polls have included him, and even the presumably high-falutin’ Nobel Committee has awarded him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, virtually sight-unseen. With these rather odd developments, we cannot but take serious notice, although, even without these, we would never have withheld from the current President of the United States a most intense and scrutinizing consideration.