The Deception of the Thrush

I've read about stuff like this. Interesting psychology. The Reagan and Clinton responses seem obvious, particularly with Reagan's death and funeral weighing so heavily in recent news. And Clinton is still a major political figure who makes the news at least once a week. No surprise for those guys, being so fresh in our minds and all.

But Lincoln is a little trickier. Seems it could have been Washington or Jefferson or either Roosevelt. But Lincoln stands out, and I dare say it has little to do with actual history, since few of us know much about it. Is it the top hat? The beard? His probable homosexuality? Something. Most of those guys did good Presidential work, but few of us know any but the broadest strokes of their presidencies, if that. Even fewer of us know enough to rank the Presidents of the past in a meaningful way. I've heard that an anomalously high number of people give high ratings to certain mediocre/poor historical presidents, simply because of name recognition and reverence for antiquity, maybe.

Jim -- I'm in absolute agreement. So as my father mentioned in his comments, Lincoln apparently demonstrated a remarkable loyalty to his word, carrying out massive railroad projects and so on. Railroad? Who knew anything about a railroad? He didn't talk about trains in the Gettysburg Address, so I know nothing of it. Our ignorance of anything but the "broad strokes" of these men's presidency, as you phrased it, really prevents an ordinary American from providing a meaningful ranking at all. My father also mentioned that Polk had a similar tradition of keeping his promises...Polk? I can't even think of Polk's first name. I want to say it was Alexander but I'm not sure. But anyways, you go ask historians to name their Presidential hall of fame, and Polk appears more often than he does on the layperson's list.

What's scary about this trend is what it portends for how history will view George W. Bush. I found an older WSJ piece that covers an older Gallup Poll that had similar results: http://www.opinionjournal.com/pl/?id=110005196
Their conclusions: Presidents look favorable under history's glance if they faced gigantic challenges, and responded to them in some way that wasn't a complete failure. So, they predict, the coincidence of 9/11 with Dubya's presidency has already catapulted him to the high pantheon of great Presidents. Clinton, on the other hand, will look like he was twiddling his thumbs and doing nothing to prevent it. This is, of course, far from the truth -- the Clinton administration thoroughly briefed Bush et al. on the dangers of Al Qaeda, and there's good reason to believe that this message fell on deaf, Iraq-obsessed ears. But, such details gets washed out by the broad strokes. So, what can you do. This is one reason why I feel that street protests of the Iraq war -- while completely futile in actually preventing its manifestation -- were a useful source of education. Whenever I saw a car drive by with a kid in the backseat, face pressed against the glass, baffled by all those people with signs, I thought, maybe there is hope. Maybe they won't, in a thoughtless moment with the Gallup man, default to declaring George W. Bush as a Great American President. Maybe they'll realize that dramatic actions executed in a time of turmoil aren't enough to make you a good leader.

James, Karin, his name was James Polk.

And while I certainly agree with both your and Jim's insightful comments w/r/t the "laypersons" relationship to the nuances of history, it becomes problematic when those nuances still betray a totalizing and ultimately reductionist hermeneutic. Case in point: "I've heard that an anomalously high number of people give high ratings to certain mediocre/poor historical presidents, simply because of name recognition and reverence for antiquity, maybe." Doesn't the other shoe of that statement drop on the fact that if a high number of people give said high ratings, than the President in question should therefore no longer be considered "mediocre/poor"? It's a tangled web all of a sudden and sets up the condition in the comments of the earlier post where different regions have different senses of history and, undoubtedly, different "ratings" and "rankings". Who might be considered 'right' or 'wrong' is this equation? I'm no relativist (and let me reiterate, I AGREE with you and Jim), but parsing the rhetoric, I can only suppose the answer is "everybody"

"Doesn't the other shoe of that statement drop on the fact that if a high number of people give said high ratings, than the President in question should therefore no longer be considered "mediocre/poor"?"

So are you saying that popular opinion of a generally ignorant public is the measuring stick we should use? Well, I guess it's good enough for elections. Why not.

I think the central issue under discussion concerns the source of the popular opinion. When the "layperson" ranks a President, is this ranking being made because that individual passed some sort of criterion? Surely a regular factor must be involved, or else we would not see the reliable trends -- the Clinton/Reagan/Lincoln triumvirate -- in the data year after year. But what is the factor, and how meaningful is it? Does the criterion have anything to do with any real notion of greatness? Following along the same lines as my earlier comments, I tend to think that in many cases it does not. If a person makes a thoughtless vote -- perhaps by spitting out a name based on its easy availability (explaining the advantage for recent presidents as well as those who get heavy coverage in history class)-- then these rankings are not tapping into anyone's notion of Greatness, because the respondents aren't even assessing the Commander in Chief against some kind of Greatness standard. They're just answering a (seemingly) trivial survey question and getting on with their lives. In fact, as an interesting social experiment, I'd like to see a network TV series do an honest biography on some notoriously awful president, and see if rankings for that person actually *improve*, given the boost in name recognition (and in spite of the fact that his poor leadership would be well advertised).

I suppose what I am after is precisely why a "popular opinion of a generally ignorant public" *isn't* always used (especially not for elections, Jim, e.g., the Electoral College) but when the question itself attains the register of the perceived "trivial", then it becomes an 'approved' mythology, but a mythology nonetheless. Responses may be engendered based on repetition. Clinton, Reagan and Lincoln had incredible publicity machines at their disposal, made up of individuals who were not in the slightest bit "ignorant" but keen to impose a particular myth in and upon the public. Thus, the same telling of the same stories and the attendant nicknames and comparisons to other "greats" were made and repeated until the public caught on, reproduced and repeated them and so on. In this respect, we see how counter-discourse (or "backlash" or whatever), if given enough time and repeated public airings, may well work its magic, just as you suppose, Karin, but I would contend that such a device leads us no closer to any "real notion of greatness" since greatness necessarily must be fomented or constructed in the first place.

So, I can accept that all judgements of greatness -- even the most well-thought, educated ones -- are as subjectively constructed as any other opinion out there, trivial or profound. Sure, that's inevitable. I can give PoMo credit for getting that one right. And, just as those educated opinions are never too high-and-mighty to escape their origin in well-repeated discourse -- popular, academic or otherwise -- nor can popular opinions be ignored as the persistent myths that they are. Makes sense. What I am trying to identify is the interaction between the factors that shaped those Greatness judgements and what we, the readers of those judgements, can infer about the judges themselves. When my father makes a judgement about presidential greatness, he cites a slew of accomplishments as well as a pretty thorough analysis of moral character. When I make the same judgement, I can't depend on such knowledge -- I mean, I didn't know Polk's first name. So I'm more apt to just report a bit of received wisdom (i.e., what would my father say?). Was either response more or less socially constructed than the other? Perhaps not. But my father's response is much more useful than mine for the purpose of actually making inferences about how he thinks about American leadership. You can get a good sense of what kinds of qualities he values. With my response, I can't say it's impossible to get that sense, but it's a much more coarse picture. Same would apply to any other historically ignorant person like myself.