Vital Statistics on the Presidency

The definitive source for data and analysis on the American Presidency

Lyn Ragsdale

• Publisher: CQ Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781452299938
• eBook ISBN: 9781483386300
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Looking beyond the individual office holders to the office itself, this Fourth Edition of Vital Statistics on the Presidency covers George Washington's tenure through the 2012 election. The book's expansive view of the presidency allows readers to recognize major themes across administrations and to reach overall conclusions about the nature of the institution and its future. The illuminating data is put into context by thoughtful essays explaining key statistical patterns, making this edition an intriguing and comprehensive reference to important patterns throughout the history of the presidency.

1

Presidents of the United States

• Personal Backgrounds

• Careers

• Ratings of Presidents

Can anyone grow up to be president, as the old adage suggests? The tables of this chapter present data with which to examine this question. Table 1-1 lists the presidents and vice presidents of the United States; Table 1-2 examines the personal backgrounds of the presidents; and Tables 1-3, 1-4, and 1-5 offer accounts of the presidents’ political lives. The data reveal that the forty-four presidents of the United States have come from every conceivable set of circumstances. Apparently, it does not matter whether one is 5 feet, 4 inches (James Madison) or 6 feet, 2 inches tall (George Bush, Bill Clinton). It does not matter whether one goes to Ivy League schools such as Harvard (John Adams) or Yale (George Bush and George W. Bush) or to no school at all (George Washington). One can be young (John Tyler, John F. Kennedy, Clinton) or old (William H. Harrison, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan). There have been presidents with no political experience (Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant) and presidents with lengthy political careers behind them (Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford). These differences would seem to lend credence to the political-actor perspective discussed in the introduction—namely, that no two presidents are alike, and they all arrive and leave the presidency via distinctive paths. The political-actor perspective contends that this uniqueness is worthy of study.

Yet most of these characteristics do not have much to offer in our search to understand how presidents will act in office. Tables 1-6 and 1-7 look at the various ratings of presidents. The polls reveal considerable agreement among historians, political scientists, and other experts on the presidency as to who are the best presidents: Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. But beyond that, there is more divergence on how to evaluate presidential greatness, as seen by the standard deviations presented in the two tables. There is very little agreement among students of the presidency on how to rate Reagan, Herbert Hoover, and Andrew Johnson. Among recent presidents, George W. Bush ranks quite low, but the standard deviation for his ranking indicates limited agreement among historians about this evaluation. The ratings also suggest that neither personal nor political characteristics are good predictors of success (as defined in the several polls). Nothing in the presidents’ immediate personal or political backgrounds provides clues to their so-called greatness.

Table 1-8 considers American first ladies, who have acted as official hostesses for White House functions, served as the unofficial policy confidants of presidents, and conducted great humanitarian and community service work. Most first ladies have been the wives of the presidents. And, like their husbands, they come from all kinds of backgrounds, wealthy (Martha Washington) and not (Bess Truman), interested in politics (Eleanor Roosevelt) and not (Pat Nixon), although most have been well educated for the times in which they lived.

So are there any useful patterns to be observed? Three are most noteworthy. First, there is a clear bias in who has become (and can become) president. People who are not white men have run for the office over the years, beginning with suffragist Victoria Woodhall, who announced she was running for president before women even had the right to vote. But not until the 2008 race did a woman (former first lady and New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton) and an African American (Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois) have a credible shot at a party nomination. When Obama secured the Democratic nomination and went on to win the White House, he made history as the first African American to become president.

Second, Tables 1-6 and 1-7 reveal that several presidents who were judged “great” were in fact caught up in circumstances beyond their control—Lincoln faced the Civil War, Woodrow Wilson encountered World War I, and Franklin Roosevelt confronted the Great Depression and World War II. As noted in the introduction, it is important to consider the environment within which presidents act. Social, economic, and political events and conditions may force, as much as allow, presidents to behave boldly. A note of caution is also in order regarding interpretation. Greatness is surely in the eye of the beholder. Although the polls show agreement on the top four or five presidents, there is little consensus thereafter. A person’s judgment of greatness varies depending on his or her own background, political interests, partisanship, and view of the office.

Finally, historical eras are important in studying individual presidents. As an example, drawn from Tables 1-3 and 1-4, the twentieth-century presidency attracts a particular type of office seeker who is far different from that of the nineteenth century. Twentieth-century presidents are less likely to have served in Congress than those of the nineteenth century; indeed, they are less likely to have had any lengthy political experience at all prior to running for office. Researchers should bear in mind that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century presidents and their twentieth-century counterparts are unlike, largely because the office they have held has radically changed over time (Ragsdale 1993).

Before the twentieth century, the presidency operated under a doctrine of presidential restraint in which presidents did not take the lead in government but instead deferred to Congress. This view of presidential restraint closely followed the intent of the Framers—in the U.S. Constitution the chief executive is given a limited set of specified powers rather than any inherent executive authority. As such, it is no accident that twenty of the twenty-five presidents who entered office before 1900 were not activists. Only Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, and Lincoln are exceptions to this early rule of restraint. This is not because those twenty presidents were especially prosaic or unhappy men, unable to champion the offi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Tables and Figures
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Presidents of the United States
• 2 Presidential Selection
• 3 Presidential Elections
• 4 Public Appearances
• 5 Public Opinions
• 6 Presidential Organization and the Executive Branch
• 7 Presidents in War and Diplomacy
• 8 Presidential Policymaking
• 9 Congressional Relations
• 10 The Presidency and the Judiciary
• References
• Index
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