C-SPAN RELEASES THIRD PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIANS SURVEY

C-SPAN RELEASES THIRD PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIANS SURVEY

By Christopher Shuttlesworth

As the United States continues to move under the leadership of its 45th President Donald Trump, C-SPAN released the results of its third Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership, in which a cross-section of 91 presidential historians ranked the 43 former occupants of the White House on ten attributes of leadership.

As a result, former President Abraham Lincoln ranked #1 for the third consecutive time with former Presidents “George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower,” completing the top five list of C-SPAN’s Presidential Historians Survey, according to C-SPAN.org.

Dr. Edna Medford, who serves on C-SPAN’s Presidential Historians Survey Academic Advisory Team, noted that it’s rare that any other former President comes above #1 ranked Former President Abraham Lincoln and said it’s significant that C-SPAN continues to determine through the Presidential Historians Survey how former Presidents have fared over a period of time.

“It’s important because it helps us get in touch with what our leaders have done,” Medford said. “What we see is that the more time that goes by, more peoples’ attitudes about those leaders change for good or bad.”

Former President Barack Obama was selected and ranked #12 on the Presidential Historians Survey, according to C-SPAN.org.

Medford said she believes Obama’s ranking in the survey shows how much America really valued him as President.

While she acknowledged that Obama didn’t do everything right, Medford said she expects his ranking to go up during the next Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership.

“It’s a very good start,” Medford said. “What it means is that people already see the importance of his Presidency. [But], I would have ranked him a little higher within the top ten because I think his accomplishments were truly exceptional.”

“The advisors used a one (“not effective”) to ten (“very effective”) scale to rate each president on ten qualities of presidential leadership: “Public Persuasion,” “Crisis Leadership,” “Economic Management,” “Moral Authority,” “International Relations,” “Administrative Skills,” “Relations

with Congress,” “Vision/Setting An Agenda,” “Pursued Equal Justice for All,” and “Performance Within the Context of His Times,” according to C-SPAN.org.

Medford said over 150 historians were invited to participate in the survey, but only 91 historians responded. “This is a very complicated survey that takes time to do in a thoughtful way,” she said. “So, the people who did this were people who were truly committed to having their voices heard and had some understanding of the Presidency.”

“Participants were guaranteed that individual survey results remain confidential. Survey responses were tabulated by averaging all responses in a given category for each president. Each of the ten categories was given equal weighting in arriving at a President’s total score,” according to C-SPAN.org

Medford said as much as she thinks Washington deserved to be in the top ten because he was the first President and the one to write the book on the Presidency, she still doesn’t know if she would’ve ranked him #2 and even Roosevelt at #3.

“It doesn’t surprise me that people go up and down in the ranking,” Medford said. “Each generation interprets history according to its own interest so we [will] see this over and over again in these surveys.”

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