The Debatable Land has an interesting post asking readers and other bloggers to name the most overrated and under-rated Presidents in history:
1. You may nominate up to three Presidents in each category.
2. Three points will be awarded to your first selection, two to your second and one to your third. If you do not state an order of preference, each nominee will receive two points.
3. Nominations should be emailed to me by clicking here .Or you can leave them in the comments section below.
4. If you indicated whether you are an American citizen or not, that would be helpful. Equally, if you felt like including your own political leaning (conservative, liberal, libertarian, socialist etc) then that could also be useful. It’s far from required however. You may also, of course, give your reasons and I’ll endeavour to publish a representative sample of those too. All personal information will, obviously, also be kept confidential… (So, yeah, US government employees can vote too!)
5. The closing date for submissions is on or around Sunday May 11th.
6. Remember: you are not choosing the best or worst Presidents, but those whom you think history and pundits have over-rated and under-rated respectively.
7. If you have a blog yourself, let me know the URL and I’ll include a link to your site when the results are published.
8. That is all. Again, email me! (debatableland-AT-googlemail.com)
Here are my picks:
Over-rated:
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Woodrow Wilson
- John F. Kennedy
Under-rated:
- Calvin Coolidge
- James Monroe
- Grover Cleveland
If you participate, be sure to leave your picks in the comment section as well.
Over-rated:
1. Abraham Lincoln – “The Great Centralizer”, Not “The Great Emancipator”. The Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves. It offered the promise of freedom to slaves in seven southern states, over which he did not, at the time, have jurisdiction.
2. Theodore Roosevelt – Redefined, no, mis-defined the word monopoly for every generation that has followed.
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt – Socialist. Period.
Under-rated:
1. Calvin Coolidge – Two words: laissez-faire
2. Grover Cleveland – Supported the Gold Standard; opposed Free Silver. Look ‘em up on Wikipedia
3. James Madison – Stretching the definition of underrated a bit, maybe, but he doesn’t get credit for doing so much of the political legwork for Jefferson. He’s thought of as a federalist, because, well, he was. But he became an anti-federalist following the ratification of the constitution, and almost single handedly stopped Hamilton from centralizing the states under federal authority…which would eventually happen under Lincoln, but still…
[...] Several weeks ago, I wrote about blogger Alex Massie’s informal poll of the most over-rated and under-rated American Presidents… [...]