Reagan Best President?

[blahface]

Gallup recently did a poll asking, “Who do you regard as the greatest United States President?” These were the results for the top 10 :

Ronald Reagan: 19%
Abraham Lincoln: 14%
Bill Clinton: 13%
John Kennedy: 11%
George Washington: 10%
Franklin Roosevelt: 8%
Barack Obama: 5%
Theodore Roosevelt: 3%
Harry Truman: 3%
George W. Bush: 2%

I cannot figure out why people take first-past-the-post seriously? Today I heard Chris Matthews and Cenk Uygur talk as if these rankings truly represent the opinions of those who were polled. It as if they have no concept of vote splitting.

Reagan got 19% because people who love Reagan are extremely dogmatic. If there were a runoff between Lincoln and Reagan, Lincoln would crush Reagan.
Furthermore, If the people being polled were told to rank whom they think are the top 5 best Presidents and they used the Condorcet method to get the result, I'd wager that Washington or Lincoln would win in a landslide against anyone else. Also, there would be no way George W. Bush would crack the top Ten.

[Dalton]

Link?

[Soldier of Entropy]

Indeed. Here's how I look at that. Of the top 10, numbers 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 9 are roundly progressive; I know few people who would argue that point. Washington was pretty damn progressive, as was Teddy Roosevelt. That means that 54-67% of Americans rank a progressive President as the best, counting only those who chose one of the top ten. That's pretty good, in my opinion.

[SirNitram]

Reagan mythology still in full force. I wonder if that support would remain if he was unnamed, but one brings up tripling the deficit, amnesty, and trying to eliminate all nukes.

[blahface]

Link

[PainRack]

I don't get it. Now, I understand why criticism of Reagan as a former actor, an aggressive president with his Empire of Evil etc speech may be wrong. I also recognise his... well, leadership in events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, SDI, America military buildup.
Others may have been controversial. The ATC strike for one.


But the Greatest President????? Reagan major impact on domestic politics has to be the middle class tax revolt, with increased liberalisation of some regulations, although he failed in attacking Medicare. Foreign policy, yeah, he was significant, although one must factor in the times.

But how could any of this compare to Franklin Roosevelt? I could understand this if his competitor was Bill Clinton or George Bush the first but Franklin Roosevelt?!?!

[blahface]

But the Greatest President????? Reagan major impact on domestic politics has to be the middle class tax revolt, with increased liberalisation of some regulations, although he failed in attacking Medicare. Foreign policy, yeah, he was significant, although one must factor in the times.

I think you missed the point. It isn't surprising that Reagan won at all. The vote splitting nature of the poll makes the rankings unrepresentative of public opinion.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Gallup recently did a poll asking, “Who do you regard as the greatest United States President?” These were the results for the top 10 :

Ronald Reagan: 19%
Abraham Lincoln: 14%
Bill Clinton: 13%
John Kennedy: 11%
George Washington: 10%
Franklin Roosevelt: 8%
Barack Obama: 5%
Theodore Roosevelt: 3%
Harry Truman: 3%
George W. Bush: 2%

I cannot figure out why people take first-past-the-post seriously? Today I heard Chris Matthews and Cenk Uygur talk as if these rankings truly represent the opinions of those who were polled. It as if they have no concept of vote splitting.

Reagan got 19% because people who love Reagan are extremely dogmatic. If there were a runoff between Lincoln and Reagan, Lincoln would crush Reagan.
Furthermore, If the people being polled were told to rank whom they think are the top 5 best Presidents and they used the Condorcet method to get the result, I'd wager that Washington or Lincoln would win in a landslide against anyone else. Also, there would be no way George W. Bush would crack the top Ten.

I don't know . . . put Reagan against Lincoln, and I'd be willing to bet that Reagan would capture no less than 30% of the vote. Fortunately, what the average moron thinks has little bearing on what makes a president great in the eyes of history.

Besides, Reagan's only been out of office for about 22 years, and he's been dead for over six. In the next couple of decades, I would expect his ranking among presidents to gradually fall; and come fifty years from now, he will come in somewhere around the middle to back-of-the-middle of the pack.

[Kane Starkiller]

I'd say that Obama's 5% is far more laughable than Reagan's 19%. What the hell did he do?

What does Greatest President mean anyway? The nicest guy, most moral guy, or the guy whose actions shaped the long term future of US in a positive way? How about the guy under whose presidency the territory of US expanded by 2.7 million km2 and the country acquired its pacific coast turning it to more than just an Atlantic power?
You won't find James K. Polk in any presidential poll.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I'd say that Obama's 5% is far more laughable than Reagan's 19%. What the hell did he do?

What does Greatest President mean anyway? The nicest guy, most moral guy, or the guy whose actions shaped the long term future of US in a positive way? How about the guy under whose presidency the territory of US expanded by 2.7 million km2 and the country acquired its pacific coast turning it to more than just an Atlantic power?
You won't find James K. Polk in any presidential poll.

Not quite. He typically ranks somewhere around #10 among historians (though this year, he fell to #16.) His decisive leadership, and his negotiating of the Oregon territory away from the British are balanced by his views on slavery (he was a slaver his entire life, and when he became President, he used his increased income to buy more slaves,) the war of conquest he provoked with Mexico (widely decried in Polk's as an unjust war of conquest. Afterwards, there was the unsatisfactory disposition of slavery in the newly conquered territories, which would lead to the Compromise of 1850, which was another big step towards the War of Southern Aggression.)

[Galvatron]

Doesn't surprise me. The Reagan cultists that I personally know strike me as having roughly as much well-rounded knowledge about the US presidents as Al Bundy.