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I'm pleased to see that Franklin Roosevelt has recieved his most deserving place of #1. Personally I have always considered him to be quite easily our greatest Chief Executive, and that analysis has nothing to do with what I freely admit is my liberal bias - it comes through in the sheer magnitude of his historical achievement, which probably surpasses that of any statesman in modern history (with the possible exceptions of Otto von Bismarck, Napoleon Bonaparte, and mabye Peter the Great). FDR's achievements as a leader - political, legislative, economic, diplomatic, military, and more - in both the Great Depression years and the WWII years of his presidency are each capable of standing on a par with those of Washington and Lincoln. When they are both taken together however, as the legacy of one man, confined to a wheelchair no less, that legacy can be seen to have been formidable indeed.
I have my own theory for why the greatness of FDR's legacy is sometimes not given all the appreciation that it might deserve in his own country (where he is often subordinated to Lincoln and Washington): it is because he remains a highly partisan figure of history. In this he is almost unique amongst the Presidents who are generally considered to be "great"; most of the others - Lincoln, Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, Jefferson, etc, but the first two in particular - have long since become decidedly "bipartisan" figures of history - it is relatively safe for figures of both the right and the left as well as the center to express admiration for them. FDR by contrast remains palpably a figure of the left, and consequentially while liberals and moderates can celebrate both him and his legacy freely, on the right he remains a far less admirable figure, and this has an effect on our perception of him - that he cannot yet seem to be claimed by all Americans. One can observe a phenomenon similar to this in the development of Abraham Lincoln's historical reputation - we today have become so familiar with thinking of Lincoln in terms of his modern stature that it is easy to forget that he was once a much more controversial figure. For decades after the end of the Civil War, there were large swathes of the body polity that loathed both Lincoln's memory and his legacy, and it is no coincidence that during this time he was consistently ranked second in terms of "greatness" behind Washington. It was only in the 20th Century, when Lincoln became accepted as an admirable figure almost universally, that people finally began ranking him above Washington on a regular basis. As time goes on, and FDR's legacy ceases to become an object of intense partisanship (something which will no doubt take many years), I think that his reputation will continue to rise.
FDR aside, and onto the rest of the rankings, I thought that there were some good and bad ones. To have Lincoln and Washington following Roosevelt as #2 and #3 is should draw little argument from anyone - these three constitute beyond almost all doubt the greatest individuals ever to reach the pinnacle of the American political system, in terms of vision, achievement, and leadership - the argument really just boiling down to which of them should take precedence over the other. I disagree with having Thomas Jefferson ranked fourth - although the 3rd POTUS was undoubtedly a critical and admirable (if sometimes contradictory) figure of American history and belongs in the top ten, there are several others who I believe deserve precedence over him. In order they are Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Andrew Jackson, the former two being the defining figures of the Progressive movement in the early 20th Century and Presidents of both vision and accomplishment of a high order, with ground-breaking domestic and foreign policy agendas, as well as being compelling leaders, for all their faults. Jackson too undoubtedly had his faults, and several of his "accomplishments" as President were decidedly negative ones (particularly his Indian policies and his opposition of the Abolitionist movement). These however are outweighed by his having effectively pioneered the modern presidency, spear-headed the Democratic Revolution, and providing strong and effective leadership that shephered the fledgling US Republic through a number of crises (including the possible outbreak of Civil War three decades early, and a potentially ruinous war with France. After him for me comes Jefferson.
Ronald Reagan is rated far too highly. Although he was not quite as clear-cut a "terrible" President as many seem to believe, his presidency was too much a mix of strengths andd weaknesses for him to be in the top ten. On the foreign policy front, he can claim the enormous positive achievement of the break-throughs in diplomacy with the USSR that he made in his second term, but this is counter-balanced by the horrific consequences of his foreign policy in general, particularly notable in Latin America and the Middle East, as well as in his first term coming closer than any other President to starting a nuclear war. In the final analysis the lasting impact and clear positive implications of the former can be generously conceded as outweighing the former, but not by enough that Reagan can be ranked with the true foreign policy greats of the 20th Century (TR, Wilson, FDR, JFK, and Nixon). On the domestic front, Reagan was responsible for a series of social and economic policies that were nothing short of a disaster, and hardly need to be recounted here. On the positive side can be noted Reagan's effectiveness as a public leader. His status as a "Great Communicator" has been embellished somewhat by conservative propaganda, but he did have a generally positive effect on the popular mood, and he restored a great deal of faith in the Presidency as an institution. All in all, if Reagan's foreign balance ends in a slight credit, domestically he earns a slight negative. He was an important figure of American and World history, and so probably can be rescused from the dustbin of "failed" Presidents, but he cannot truly be said to have been an overly positive one.
Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower are also badly overrated in their rankings here. Although Truman was a highly (indeed surprisingly) capable President who rose the the occaison magnificently for many of the crises and important decisions that he confronted throughout his presidency, he was often a highly ineffective politician (particularly in legislative affairs) and was not nearly as effective on a number of points as he might have been, in some cases making decisions that were particularly unfortunate (one thinks of his abandonment of FDR's vision for post-war diplomacy in favor of a much blunter and more cynical application of containment geopolitical strategy). William Manchester probably said it best: "Truman usually made the right decision. But he did it in the wrong way". He cannot thus for me be ranked as a truly "great" President, at least not top ten material. Eisenhower is a similar story. Just as Truman was a highly capable President, Eisenhower was an unquestionably good one. "Good" however, is not enough to translate into "great". He was a popular and steady political leader, but one who notably failed to do anything in particular to try and stop McCarthy when he was running rampant, and who made no real effort to support Civil Rights, in this latter regard falling badly behind his three subsequent successors, all of whom made significant contributions to Civil Rights. On the whole Eisenhower's only real claim to fame as a domestic President is the Interstate Highway Bill - a notable accomplishment, but not quite enough to establish Ike as "great" in this category. On the foreign policy front he succeeded admirably in extracting the US from the Korean War and subsequently "keeping the peace", as well as acting commendably to shut down the French-British-Israeli attempt to seize control of the Suez Canal via the invasion of Egypt, but one does have to question whether this was balanced out by the ghastly series of extra-legal military and intelligence operations that he authorized across Latin America and the Middle East, the repurcussion from some of which we are still feeling today. In Latin America in particular the network of shadowy "commitments" that grew on Eisenhower'swatch had a deplorable effect on American policy regarding the region for years to come. Unlike FDR and Truman, both of whom had kept an iron-fisted control over the burgeoning Intelligence community, Eisenhower allowed the CIA to comparatively run wild. The disaster of the Bay of Pigs was just as much Ike's legacy as it was JFK's. The 34th POTUS must also be criticized for his most dangerous commitment of all: to Indochina in general, and Vietnam in particular, as well as for his bungling of the possibility of an arms treaty with the Soviet Union. In the final analysis, Eisenhower got a great many things right as President, but not enough for me to consider him a "great" one deserving of the top ten.
I would have included John F. Kennedy in the top ten. Contrary to the unfair view that his concrete achievements "failed to match his rhetoric", one has to consider the context within which that achievement took place. Kennedy had to work with a Congress that was extremely conservative despite its Democratic majorities, a conspicuous lack of a strong mandate from his election, and deeply entrenched opposition to much of his agenda from broad sections of the Intelligence, Military, and Foreign Policy communities, to say nothing as well of the fact that he was assassinated less than three years into his presidency. That he was able to achieve as much as he did in such a context as this speaks volumes of the high quality of JFK's leadership. In the thousand odd days of his Presidency, JFK worked with a prodigal degree of political skill to advance bold initiatives in Civil Rights, Politico-economics (as well as the Keynesian Tax Cut Kennedy also anticipated a great series of socio-economic programs to revitalize the economy and achieve full employment, as well as the War on Poverty), Aid for education and the arts and sciences, environmentalism, the raising of the Minimum Wage, and the establishment of Medicare. By the end of 1963 the success that he had achieved in working these and other initiatives through the political system had already laid a great deal of indispensible groundwork for the early Great Society, and had Kennedy not been assassinated and instead gone on to be elected, as Irving Bernstein has concluded in his excellent biographical study, it is highly likely that he would have been able to secure the passage of this agenda in its entirety and would have been able to move on to still further measures, taking his place alongside Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt as one of the master Presidential Lawmakers of American history (instead that honor would go to Lyndon Johnson).
As it was, Kennedy's successful guiding through Congress of a series of lesser or watered down legislative measures that were far less than he wanted but far more than he might reasonably have expected to achieve, and his overseeing a revitalized American economy growing at a rate of almost 6% each year coupled with booming production levels and great increases in real wages and home ownership rates (Kennedy's policies were responsible for an economic boom that lasted for six years, and even then likely came to an end only because his successor abandoned a number of those policies) were credible enough achievements (it is worth noting that JFK can take credit as the President who did more than any other to solidy incorporate the Keynesian Revolution into the heart of US Economic policymaking). These are overshadowed however by his true achievements, which were of a genuinely historic nature. It took nothing less than a visionary to challange a nation as he did to go to the Moon, to electrify that nation and inspire its people to join him in seeking the New Frontier through such measures as the Peace Corps, and ultimately to do nothing less than seek a peaceful resolution of the Cold War, in the process defying the Cold Warrior Establishment. This last brings us to Kennedy's Foreign Policy legacy, which as a whole is worthy of being labelled as visionary. Despite occaisonal missteps (The Bay of Pigs, an initial escalation in Vietnam), many of them politically motivated, Kennedy for the most part proved as President to be an exceptionally able and farsighted diplomat. His most famous achievement in this regard is of course his success piloting of the Ship of State through the Cuban Missile Crisis, but he can claim far more even than this for his legacy. His foreign policy initiatives included the forming, for the first time, of a coherent US policy towards Africa aimed at the social and economic development of the continent along liberal and democratic lines. He promoted Aid programs for India and the Far East and a great part of the Third World, seeking to strengthen diplomatic ties to these regions. He orchestrated the Alliance For Progress as the start of what was intended to be a veritable revolution in the United States' relationship with Latin America (after Kennedy's death the Alliance would be tragically subverted by the hard-liners in the Johnson administration). He actively pursued both the Peace Process in the Middle East, and a restructuring of the US' alliances with Western Europe. He understood the need for a peaceful rapprochement with China, and hoped in the future to be able to take firmer steps toward this. There is compelling evidence that he was utterly committed to affecting America's withdrawal from Vietnam - intending to truly begin going about this process in 1965 after he had been reelected to a second term (he never doubted that he would be). At the same time he sought an easing of tensions between the US and Cuba - opening and maintaining a series of covert Peace Channels through which he hoped to lay the beginnings of progress towards a peaceful resolution of the tensions between the two countries (Fidel Castro said of Kennedy: "He could have been the greatest of all American Presidents, greater even than Lincoln"). Perhaps most visionary of all was his work seeking a peaceful resolution to the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation - anticipating Detente, at the time of his assassination he was already making plans to travel to Russia in 1964 - the first President to do so since FDR, to further pursue the peace process with Nikita Khruschev, the beginnings of what he hoped would be significant progress over the ensueing years. Visionary foreign and domestic policies aside, perhaps the greatest of all Kennedy's attributes as a leader was his ability to inspire the American people as no other could, perhaps not even FDR. His sadly abreviated Presidency was "one brief shining moment" when we felt that we could not only reach for the stars, but that it was entirely reasonable for us to do so. I would rate John F. Kennedy as being worthy of a place in the top ten American Presidents, just below Thomas Jefferson. Had he lived, I believe that he would deserve to be ranked alongside Theodore Roosevelt as a President whose leadership and accomplishments were second only to those of FDR, Lincoln, and Washington.
Although some might consider it to be apostasy coming from a self-professed liberal Democrat, I would also place Richard Nixon in the top ten, after JFK and then Lyndon Johnson (whose successes with the Great Society are enough to outweigh his failures with Vietnam in particular, and foreign policy in general). The crimes and scandals epitomized by Watergate might obliterate any chance "Tricky Dick" ever had of being considered an effective moral leader of any kind, but he remains for all that one of the boldest, most imaginative, and most brilliant Chief Executives in American history in the realms of both foreign and domestic policy. Great though his failures abroad might have been (particularly in regards to the morass of Vietnam, which he pushed to new heights of blood- and fire-soaked horror) greater still were his successes, centering around the twin accomplishments of achieving the famed Opening to China and Detente with Russia, which arose out of a comprehensive understanding of geopolitics probably rivalled only by Franklin Roosevelt, combined with an astonishing natural brilliance for the nuances of international diplomacy. Domestically Nixon's ruthless politicking often concealed a surprisingly liberal and at times astoundingly successful set of policies that resulted in one of the three or four best environmental records of any President in the 20th Century (successful Nixonian environmental initiatives included the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Saftey and Health Administration, and the Council on Environmental Quality, as well as a variety of technology initiatives that included the pursuit of clean sources of energy), commendable advancements being made in terms of Civil Rights (Nixon was probably the greatest school desgregator of all the Presidents, as well as implementing the first significant federal Affirmative Action program, and pushing for a series of initiatives centered around both the expansion of Great Society programs in this direction, and the creation of new ones that would foster the growing Black Middle Class. Nixon as President also made commendable efforts on behalf of the Hispanic community, as well as the Native Americans), and a wide variety of other initiatives that included radical attempts at government-based reform which in the estimation of several historians put a greater emphasis on social and economic planning than any President since Franklin Roosevelt, the embracing of Keynesianism with the resulting "Nixonomics" featuring a "full employment budget" with a built-in deficit and a series of economic regulations intended to "buck" big business that again probably outstrpped the efforts of any administration since that of Roosevelt, and a series of ground-breaking social policies that included not only the preservation and expansion of much of the Great Society (Nixon was the last President to spend more money on social programs than the military - in fact, he was the last president who actually reduced the military budget), but also such bold proposals as the Social Security Amendments of 1972 (which included the creation of the Supplemental Security Income Program) and comprehensive legislation to reform welfare - which Nixon proposed to replace with a federally guarenteed Minimum Wage - and healthcare - in both of his terms Nixon would advance healthcare reform legislation that would have secured something close to universal coverage. Neither of these commendable initiatives were enacted, largely due to Watergate - had Nixon been able to finish his second term, it is likely that both, and much more besides, would have been signed into law. All in all, Richard Nixon may or may not have been a crook, but he was undeniably one of the most accomplished leaders ever to reside in the White House, and I give his presidency high marks.
A couple of final peeves: I would say that Herbert Hoover, ranked at #26, is far too high - his policies during the onset of the Great Depression were such a patent disaster that he belongs by almost any definition in the bottom five. I would also be inclined to be somewhat more generous to Ulysses S. Grant - although his presidency was horribly marred by corruption and economic downturn, he enjoyed a number of foreign policy successes, and his implementation of Reconstruction establishes him as the most ardent Presidential champion of Civil Rights until the 1960s.
To round off, here is my list, controversial as some parts of it may be around these parts, ranking the Presidents of the United States, excluding William Henry Harrison, James Garfield, and Barack Obama:
1: Franklin D. Roosevelt
2: Abraham Lincoln
3: George Washington
4: Theodore Roosevelt
5: Woodrow Wilson
6: Andrew Jackson
7: Thomas Jefferson
8: John F. Kennedy
9: Lyndon B. Johnson
10: Richard M. Nixon
11: James K. Polk
12: Harry S. Truman
13: Dwight D. Eisenhower
14: Bill Clinton
15: Grover Cleveland
16: James Madison
17: James Monroe
18: John Quincy Adams
19: John Adams
20: Ulysses S. Grant
21: Ronald Reagan
22: Jimmy Carter
23: George H.W. Bush
24: Gerald R. Ford
25: William McKinley
26: Chester A. Arthur
27: William H. Taft
28: Martin van Buren
29: Rutherford B. Hayes
30: Zachary Taylor
31: Benjamin Harrison
32: Millard Fillmore
33: John Tyler
34: Calvin Coolidge
35: George W. Bush
36: Franklin Pierce
37: Andrew Johnson
38: Warren G. Harding
39: James Buchanan
40: Herbert Hoover
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