C-SPAN asked historians to rank the presidents on leadership. The results said more about historians than the presidents. Pauline Maier? Robert Dallek? Stephen B. Oates? If Obama had been on the list, these characters might have ranked him one before day one. As demonstrated by my Deep Blue Campuses, employees at top colleges overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates. This applies, I suspect, not just to liberals present but to their forerunners as well. If not, why is failed president Woodrow Wilson ahead of Ronald Wilson Reagan? Why do the partisans of big government--the Roosevelts, Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman--dominate the top ten? Why do friends of liberty such as Calvin Coolidge, Grover Cleveland, and Warren Harding dwell below the presidential Mendoza line?

James Buchanan... once again at the bottom. Man, they really hate this guy.

Excellent point about Coolidge, Cleveland, and Harding.

Since Woodrow Wilson is the man we can thank for Nazi Germany, I can't even imagine how anyone could rate him higher than second-worst. (I'd place either Wilson or Lyndon Johnson at the bottom, with the Bushes and the Roosevelts not far behind.)

The list runs strictly along overwhelmingly partisan lines, as you would expect when academics or media types form them as even when support data is used, subjectivity rules.

I hear you on the Obama thing and if they wouldn't look totally foolish (although, when have libs cared about looking foolish), I'm sure they were champing at the bit to put him on as one of our greatest Presidents. Already! I saw top ten yesterday and was expecting him on it.

But I'm guessing that they too can see the coming disasters with the One and won't put their credibility on the line.

Wilson? He was a liberal, an academic, once President of Princeton, was a strong proponent of the League of Nations (yesteryear's U.N.). Need more be said? What's not for historians/academics not to like?

Couple of comments: Carter over Nixon? Pluueease.

And, of course, GW toward the bottom and ironically below Martin Van Buren who, very much unlike Bush, could not make a decision.

They don't like Buchanan because he was gay.

"If all of this seems like a great deal of trouble, think what's at stake. We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation."

It's odd to see Hoover so near the bottom. The man fed a continent (Europe, WWI) and was the early-20th-century equivalent to Colin Powell. In fact, both parties courted him. ( Wikipedia is my reference not my source. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover#Secretary_of_Commerce. )

Man! It would be so great if only a man like Herbert Hoover would run! That's kind of the sentiment.

If they are only ranking the leadership demonstrated as president, then I have to agree that he had little effect as a leader. But he is "The Man Who Fed a Continent". Is President Washington being considered totally apart from General Washington? President Jefferson apart from attorney and Declaration-writer Jefferson?

Historians should know better than anybody the shadow cast by the pre-presidential Hoover.

It can't happen here???

"Now we applaud dictators?
Jeanette Colville

A power-hungry Marxist removes a barrier to becoming president-for-life, and the United States applauds:

'The United States Tuesday welcomed Venezuela's "civic" referendum lifting term limits for the president and all politicians, but urged support for democracy and tolerance in the country.

"We congratulate the civic and participatory spirit of the millions of Venezuelans who exercized their democratic right to vote," State Department spokesman Noel Clay told AFP.

Venezuelans on Sunday voted 54 percent in favor of constitutional reform sought by President Hugo Chavez to run for unlimited reelection, in his bid to consolidate his brand of socialism critics compare to Cuba's communism.'

Hillary's State Department thus lays the ground work for Obama's upcoming love-in with Chavez. How nice that we are globally praising monster dictators. I suppose it makes Jimmy Carter happy."