The Case For Letting Academia Burn To The Ground
By Mitch Berg
The “American Political Science Association” has released the quadrennial cesspool that is their rankings of American presidents.
You may have already figured out it’d be a leftist screed. You’d have figured largely right.
From top to bottom, with my comments interspersed:
1 Lincoln – Couldln’t see that one coming…
2 FD Roosevelt – Are you kidding? He prolonged the depression, and gave Eastern Europe to his buddy, Stalin? And he’s ahead of…
3 Washington – the guy who could have been king, and chose representative democracy?
4 T Roosevelt – Naturally – a greater triumph of image over Iprogressive) accomlishment than even Wilson. Real shocker there.
5 Jefferson
6 Truman – The victory of Democrat narrative over substance – one of many.
7 Obama – The person who did more to exacerbate America’s decline than any President of my lifetime? Of course they put him in the top ten.
8 Eisenhower
9 LB Johnson – The man who went long on Vietnam, laying the cultural groundwork for the modern “Progressive” movement? The man whose “Great Society” destroyed the black Middle Class?
10 Kennedy – The victory of romantic narrative over hard fact.
11 Madison – That he’s this far down the list shows us the APSA doesn’t really care much for federalism.
12 Clinton – Actual intellectual honesty would call for making Newt Gingrich – who was actually responsible for most of Clinton’s success – at least a co-president for purposes of this exercise.
13 J Adams
14 Biden – Biden. A potato. Ahead of Reagan, Adams, Coolidge, and over a dozen merely mediocre presidents?
15 Wilson – Without him, there’d have been no rise of Naziism. No explosion in central power. No federalization of Jijm Crow, and quite likely an acceleration of desegregation. And they put him ahead of…
16 Reagan – …the man who did more than any to bring about the fall of the Soviet Union – which was the only reason Clinton was able to reign in such prosperity.
17 Grant – 17? Perhaps this pack of historians at least figured that Grant had among the toughest jobs a President has had, and generally did well?
18 Monroe
19 GHW Bush
20 JQ Adams
21 Jackson
22 Carter – About 20 places too high. A poor president, and a few Habitat houses notwithstanding, a fairly loathsome ex-president (speechwriter for Yassir Arafat, supporter of Hamas, and a disaster in foreign policy).
23 Taft
24 McKinley
25 Polk
26 Cleveland
27 Ford
28 Van Buren
29 Hayes
30 Garfield
31 Harrison
32 GW Bush
33 Arthur
34 Coolidge – Absolutely criminal. Coolidge was in the top five, in policy terms. More later.
35 Nixon
36 Hoover
37 Tyler
38 Taylor
39 Fillmore
40 Harding
41 Harrison
42 Pierce
43 Johnson
44 Buchanan
45 Trump – Let this be your warning – no matter what your policy accomplishments, mind those tweets!
The real best and worst lists – coming tomorrow.
February 23rd, 2024 at 12:14 pm
When they went over this list on Advisory Opinions, they talked about the partisan splits between the progressives and the “conservatives” in the APSA. The most interesting difference between the two sides is that the “conservatives” ranked Bill Clinton higher than the progressives did. I’d put that down as further proof of your Gingrich co-president statement.
Both groups ranked Trump down at the bottom of their lists, though I don’t remember if he was the “conservatives’ ” worst or merely second worst choice.
February 23rd, 2024 at 12:36 pm
I don’t see a problem with that list; it’s Science!
February 23rd, 2024 at 12:40 pm
… oh, yeah, I saw a headline or something the other day that indicated that Lincoln is in the progressive’s spotlight. I didn’t read to find out what ol’ Abe did wrong, but he better enjoy his time as the best-est president ‘cuz it may not last.
February 23rd, 2024 at 3:24 pm
If these scholars want a Democrat worthy of respect, they ought to consider Grover Cleveland.
February 24th, 2024 at 12:57 am
[…] “If You Don’t Have A Border You Don’t Have A Country” Shot In The Dark: The Case For Letting Academia Burn To The Ground, also, Data Point The Political Hat: This Ain’t Hell: Odds and sods part I, Joe Biden cancels […]
February 24th, 2024 at 9:23 am
As a former elementary teacher I would recommend burning down the present education system. (To the NSA–I mean that figuratively not literally. Just wanted to make that clear to you guys). WE need to encourage different models-vouchers, pods, anything that wrests control from the communist unions.
I was also reminded recently with all of the campus anti-semitism that it was the German universities in the 30’s that supported Hitler in his anti-semitism.
February 24th, 2024 at 4:05 pm
They made it the equivalent of the competition for class president at a typical high school, but a step worse. This is education?