C-SPAN has released its 2009 presidential rankings
here. The overall rankings are based upon rankings of a variety of skills and policy areas.
Some of the media reports on this poll speak of 65 historians. However, many of the respondents are not historians. The list of respondents is
here.
Years ago, a fellow graduate student attempted to conduct a survey of historians on a similar topic. At that time, most historians he contacted declined to participate. A few wrote that they felt such comparisons were impossible and ultimately meaningless. (And as some of these replies were sharply worded, the ambitious graduate student was more than a little annoyed.) I wonder if this sensibility played a role in C-SPAN's poll. There are scholars who are notably absent--the initial pool of designated respondents was 147. (Which begs the question, what would you do if you threw a presidential party and 55.8% of the guests didn't come?)
FWIW, I think President Hoover got a raw deal in the rankings for "
moral authority." And the category "pursued equal justice for all" is an intellectual sandpit. The category should have been broken into sub-categories.
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