2nd hat tip in ten minutes to Tom Watson (if I do another one it will be a hat-tip-trick).
I have occasionally tried to find comparisons of the popularity ratings of current and past US presidents. Unfortunately, the information is often in several different places, making comparison difficult. Hats off, therefore, to the Wall Street Journal, who display an excellent graphic on the subject. It is remarkably clear and has a bar on the left to click for detail on each President.
The two Presidents which stand out the most are Eisenhower, who seems to have been the most consistently popular of the post-war Presidents, and Clinton, who is the only one who was more popular when he left office than when he entered it.
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Thought that would be all the presidents...
ReplyDeleteMy favourites are Jefferson and Van Buren - I'm at heart a Jeffersonian, individual freedom, limited power of the state. Van Buren tried to continue that tradition and did a wonderfully small amount of exercise of executive power.
My least favourite is Lincoln - he was a centraliser who used slavery to justify his war against the Confederacy which seceded over trade and state's rights (many of the leaders of the Confederacy were anti-slavery and the slave owners tended to be pro-Union).
He was not bothered by slavery (most anti-slavery activists wanted the north to secede whereas for Lincoln the Federal State was all and he would enshrine slavery in the constitution to keep the union together).
The US has never recovered from the Civil War. State's rights have been reduced to pure theory, the Federal government is almost all powerful and where it cannot legislate it uses threats and bribery.
Oops, a bit of a rant there :-p
Thank you for those interesting and informed observations, Tristan
ReplyDeleteI can tell your geographical location Mr.:-P. Abraham Lincoln has been voted countless times as the most popular president of all time.
ReplyDeleteRev. John P. McFadden