Talk:Historical rankings of presidents of the United States

RfC on including Racism study in Scholar Survey Summary table

The table contains quanitative rankings of the presidents, based on scholar surveys. The racism survey (current rightmost column) is qualitative data and does not belong in the table. Previous discussion here. Kstern (talk) 00:47, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose addition Repeating arguments stated before:

1. The table was aggregates the results of multiple scholarly surveys that assess a presidency in all its parts, not just in a specific area. We can find other surveys that rank them partially, like in foreign policy.
2. The racism survey classifies presidents with adjectives (in two categories), but does not rank them.
3. Therefore, the racism survey's results should not be reported in the same table as the other scholar surveys. We may add that racism, a controversial and incendiary accusation, will be more noticeable to readers than the quantitative surveys' individual rankings, presenting problems with WEIGHT. wikinights _talk 04:10, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment I have yet to see these surveys on foreign policy that you keep mentioning. If they exist, we should add them to the article. If they don't exist, you should stop making strawman arguments.

Your argument per WEIGHT is also bogus. By that argument, we should censor all of WP to downplay anything controversial. We don't weight coverage by how much we fear to offend people, but by evaluating how notable the information is. — kwami (talk) 07:53, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

You would like to see a survey typifying foreign policy, but I would rather see a survey ranking racism: No survey ranking racism was provided here, and therefore we have no evidence by which to tabulate a ranking of presidents' racism. A survey typifying foreign policy would be just as irrelevant for this table as the racism survey presently in dispute—it would just be another item we ought not to include in a rankings table. --Scuoise (talk) 10:21, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

This is really a WEIGHT problem. The incendiary accusations of racism are more noticeable to readers than any of the other quantitative surveys, when many of us would agree that it is not as worthy of inclusion in the table than the other surveys. With the way it is presented now, it seems like we are ascribing white supremacism to a president as fact. We ignore more thorough studies of a specific president's racial views just because they are not surveys. The header ("Rating of presidential racism") does not even mention that it is a survey. wikinights _talk 19:50, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support addition The addition helps resolve inherent bias in the article's contents, where we oversimplify how a president's policies were regarded in available sources. I see no reason to exclude qualitative data. Dimadick (talk) 08:26, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

I am interested in hearing your response to the following:

1. It's not that the data should be excluded because it is qualitative, but that the data should be excluded because it is unranked. I would agree that 'qualitative' is the wrong label here. However, the table presents rankings of presidents' success according to scholars, and the cited material in dispute is not a ranking at all. Including such a column in the table requires providing relevant evidence, which here means a scholarly survey ranking the racism of presidents. That evidence was never provided.
2. Discussion of racism surveys would not be wholly removed from the article, addressing your concern about inherent bias. I think many editors above were OK with the earlier subsection discussing racism surveys, but not with the mismatched inclusion of typologies in the rankings table. --Scuoise (talk) 10:21, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment I'm not participating in the RfC. -- Sleyece (talk) 11:46, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose addition Seems like a pretty standard case of WP:PRESENTISM. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 01:29, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

• Strongly Oppose addition very obvious case of WP:PRESENTISM in my opinion. Alexandre8 (talk) 11:33, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose addition Clearly a case of WP:PRESENTISM in action. Vivaporius (talk) 21:50, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose addition The current version of the table does not include the "racism survey", so for those wondering, this is the "rightmost column" being discussed in this RfC. Oppose adding that column since it's clearly WP:UNDUE. Additionally, the column classifies/labels the presidents; it does not "rank" them. Some1 (talk) 14:45, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose addition As per PRESENTISM.Rja13ww33 (talk) 00:46, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

• Strongly Oppose addition Textbook WP:PRESENTISMNameomcnameface (talk) 04:54, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Dead(-Last) Presidents

It should be easier to see, at a glance, which president ranked in last place within a given survey. For obvious reasons, it's always easy to ascertain who ranked first (hint: look for no. 1). But because the number of presidents included per survey varies widely—from 29 to 44—it's not easy to see who ranked last. Harding was ranked dead-last at no. 29 in the earliest survey, Shlesinger 1948, but by Siena 1982 onward the no. 29 rank is no longer even in the bottom quartile. Currently, the only way for a reader to determine who ranked last would be to manually sort each column against the "total surveyed" figure in the bottom row; that's a tedious task, and especially so on mobile, where table sorting is not typically an option.

It doesn't look like this has been proposed or discussed before, so I've gone ahead and edited the table so that last-place rankings are underlined. Here's my edit. I'll readily admit there may be better ways to format or notate this, but I definitely think "last place" should be notated in some way.

For what it's worth, only four presidents have ever ranked last in one of these surveys: Buchanan, A. Johnson, Harding, and Trump. There's only one more member of that club than the triumvirate of first-place rankers: Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. —BLZ · talk 02:00, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

You can just hit the sort arrow twice to get the person in last place. RacismIsntRelevantHere (talk) 03:14, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Not on mobil -- Sleyece (talk) 01:13, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Observations/Comments

I have tried to look over the impressive table, and have found that it is rather unmanageable. Namely it relies on the slider bar at the bottom of the table, but if you scroll up to see the top part of the table, that slider bar is not accessible. One solution is to zoom out so that the font is small and more of the table can be seen at a time, but then I can't read the font. Would there be a way to do away with the slider bar at the bottom of the table and rely instead on the browser slider bar (the one that doesn't go away)?

I noted that the party affiliation is given for each president, and indicated by colors. This is just misleading over the ages in terms of assessing a president's political philosophy. In Lincoln's day the R's and D's were reversed in political tendencies. A Lincoln republican was in no way related to an Eisenhower republican; political party indicated this way on the table has very little meaning (unless one is well-versed in American history). I am wondering if there isn't some measure of the president's political philosophy (e.g., progressive-liberal-conservative) that could be indicated on the table. For example, the party could be stated by text, as it is now, but then the background color changed to indicate political tendencies. One would have to find a reliable source that has done this sort of analysis. At the very least, perhaps the table caption could succinctly state this issue, perhaps giving links to the histories of the political parties. Bdushaw (talk) 22:10, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

We'd need a whole 'nother table for the conflicting assessments of political tendencies, and ppl can be liberal on some issues and conservative on others, so that would probably be unworkable. Party affiliation, however, is party affiliation, apart from a few oddities. By today's standards (or at least rhetoric), Reagan is a socialist, but that doesn't mean he should be categorized as having the same political philosophy as Sanders, who actually belonged to the Socialist Party. — kwami (talk) 03:17, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

There is some continuity in party politics. One has always appealed to the more privileged, while the other has attempted to build coalitions of the less privileged. Their changes in policies can be explained by this overriding difference. So Lincoln for example was supported by New York business elites and Northern Protestants, while his Democratic opponents (at least in the North) appealed to minorities and the poor. His supporters would benefit from the end of slavery, while Democratic supporters would have to fight in the war and then compete with freed blacks in the labor market. Socialists meanwhile supported Lincoln. So it would be hard to assign modern political concepts such as liberal and conservative to politics in the 1860s. TFD (talk) 11:49, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 12 November 2021

Donald Trump got him beat though 🤷‍♂️NCSWIC 47.219.204.30 (talk) 03:39, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Cannolis (talk) 06:31, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Who the heck is "him"? Dimadick (talk) 10:56, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Andrew Johnson and National Union Party

I just noticed that the colour assigned to "National Union Party" (which Andrew Johnson is listed under) is really inconsistent in this article. In most cases it's Democrat blue, but on the first chart ("Scholar survey summary") it's Republican red, and in the sixth chart ("2021 C-SPAN") it has a lighter shade of red.

Ideally, this should be consistent across all every chart. Blue makes sense, seeing as Andrew Johnson was a Democrat both before and after his presidency. Grey could also work, but personally I don't really see much of a case for any sort of red. Thoughts?

69.172.150.195 (talk) 08:48, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Makes sense. He was the opposite of Lincoln. — kwami (talk) 20:47, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Scholar surveys of diversity and racism

I do not see how a diversity and racism ranking would have any effect on how a president is ranked politically. I am aware that this article was created by a person generally leaning left, indicated by the lack of right-leaning presidential surveys and rankings, but the relevance of "racist policies" should be highlighted under policies, otherwise we should make a table for every "minority", including gay and religious minorities in the United States and see how each president treated every group.

They're surveys of scholars. Scholars tend to lean left. If you have right-leaning surveys that aren't crackpot, they're welcome here too. And no, racism isn't like the others. It's our founding evil, and how presidents handled it affects the modern US in a way that treatment of Catholics or women does not. The only other comparable would be Indian policy. — kwami (talk) 20:46, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but I do not see how the policies or views of presidents regarding race are different from ones, say, regarding foreign policy. Also, it is impossible to objectively carry out a study of presidents across 4 different centuries because ideas are constantly shifting. Specifically in the section "Northwestern Presidential Leadership on Diversity and Inclusion Survey (2019)", I don't see how racial equality is a fair way to judge a president. As it says in the text above, it is a highly partisan poll, and very clearly unobjective. For me, therefore, to obtain a fair rating of presidents, this poll should be excluded.

They're not fundamentally different. If you have surveys that focus on foreign policy, those would be welcome too. It's impossible to objectively evaluate presidents for foreign policy either. Several of the surveys note that any poll of scholars is going to be subjective. That's inherent to all opinions. — kwami (talk) 05:59, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

It is very interesting how revisions to the table that change the placement of presidents while citing actual actions those presidents took get reverted with no comment. There is clear bias. Scatoogle (talk) 08:51, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Removal of Racism study in Scholar Survey Summary table

It is clear this is a highly politically charged and biased table. As the majority of previous commentators have stated this violates the intent and non-biased nature of Wikipedia articles. This table additionally violates WP:PRESENTISM and WP:UNDUE. It also makes factually unfounded and untrue claims based on views and policies. Scatoogle (talk) 08:50, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Support removal It is not critical to the article and could easily be perceived as biased. Viktory02 (talk) 20:25, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Is there a request here? Scatoogle's statement is incoherent: the racism study does not appear in the table, so it cannot be removed, and then it appears Scatoogle wants the entire table removed, which isn't going to happen based on IDONTLIKEIT. — kwami (talk) 01:39, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

"Best presidents" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Best presidents and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 December 28#Best presidents until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 17:38, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Donald Trump

There is no evidence to assert that Trump is a white supremacist. To say this and have the page blocked from edits is shameful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DevoutBeast007 (talk • contribs) 16:48, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

It was according to that one specific scholarly survey and it is well cited. The page is not blocked from edits, either. Bkatcher (talk) 17:49, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

The article is semi-protected. DevoutBeast007 has too few contributions to edit semi-protected pages. If it wasn't protected then it would probably often say much worse things about Trump than including him in a list of 24 presidents who are rated as white supremacists in a source. I have checked his rating in the source. We definitely shouldn't lie and claim he doesn't have that rating. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:58, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

We were talking about whether or not to include that scholarly article in a specific table. We aren't going to censor academic articles just because you don't like them. -- Sleyece (talk) 00:21, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Lyndon B. Johnson being listed as anti racist has to be some kind of bad joke

The man is literally legendary for how racist he was. He used the N word in casual conversation, is responsible for the quote "Keep those n_____s voting Democrat for 200 years", and actually went to the trouble of learning how to pronounce the N word in the local accent of every southern state he visited. Jtrainor (talk) 00:28, 25 January 2022 (UTC)