Best. President. Ever

While I'm on a warpath, I might as well go after this Siena college "study" purportedly determining America's best president. SPOILER ALERT: It's FDR. Teddy comes in second, followed by Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson. Surprisingly, Harry Truman, who has been making something of a comeback in these presidential polls, slips all the way to number nine. Obama is fifteenth; G.W. Bush is thirty-ninth. You find the full results--including rankings for qualities like "Relationship with Congress" and "Party Leadership"--here.

What do I think? I think this list is utter garbage, even by the low standards of "Best Presidents" lists. Yes, you can with some degree of certainty that Abraham Lincoln was a greater president than Warren Harding, or that Washington should rank above Andrew Johnson. You could even make some legitimate claim to organize presidents by category, sorting them into "Great," "Pretty Good," "Bad," and "Warren Harding" groups.

But this ranking is crap. To point out a few of its many flaws:

The categories make no sense at all. What on earth does "Background (Family, Education, Experience)" mean? Are they giving out points just for going to the right schools? Or are they rewarding presidents for rising above an adverse background? It's impossible to tell. For instance, J.Q. Adams ranks second in that category, presumably because he came from a political family and was the son of a former president. So why is G.W. Bush ranked thirty-six? It makes no damn sense!

Or take another category--"Luck." Again, what the heck does that mean? Should we reward a president for random circumstances? Should we penalize him because he was simply in the right place at the right time? I assume that's why they put Reagan third, because he was "lucky" enough to be around when the USSR collapsed. Which of course Reagan had absolutely nothing to do with. Hoover is dead last in this category. We all know how the Great Depression magically appeared out of the ether and destroyed his presidency. Nobody could have seen it coming!

The list has an obvious political agenda. Obvious is not a strong enough word. They might as well have put the Obama letterhead on top. For God's sake, it ranks Obama as a greater president than Reagan. People, Obama has been in the White House less than two years! He's probably still finding his way around the place! Yet he's already a greater president than the guy who ended the Cold War. Watch out, FDR. Your spot on top isn't safe as long as Obama's around.

A few other rankings make it clear: in the lists eyes, conservatives are evil and liberals are good. No exceptions. Even a liberal icon like LBJ is rated as the worst president ever when it comes to foreign relations. Yes, I realize Vietnam was bad. But the worst? Are you seriously arguing that Jimmy Carter had a better handle on global affairs than LBJ?

Perhaps my favorite--and by favorite I mean "least favorite"--thing is the category "Willingness to Take Risks." Presidents who took risks are higher than those who didn't. So living on the edge is always a good thing? I mean, it would have been awfully risky for JFK is he had decided to nuke Cuba during the missile crisis. Should he get credit for that? Risks are not inherently good. Sometimes the best decision is not to change things.

Gah! I can't go on. This list is so stupid, it makes me angry to realize I wasted half an hour getting angry about it. Take a look through and find your own favorite bits. Rest assured, you won't be disappointed.