On the Siena List Changes
In case you’re curious, here’s the changes that were made with the Siena poll between 2002 and 2010.
Abraham Lincoln. Was #3. Now is #2.
Theodore Roosevelt. Was #2. Now is #3.
Woodrow Wilson. Was #6. Now is #8.
Harry Truman. Was #7. Now is #9.
James Monroe. Was #8. Now is #7.
James Madison. Was #9. Now is #6.
James Polk. Was #11. Now is #12.
John Adams. Was #12. Now is #17.
Andrew Jackson. Was #13. Now is #14.
John Kennedy. Was #14. Now is #11.
It is here that we have a new divider. Barack Obama has been inserted to the list at #15. Does hit belong there? To hell if I know. I do enjoy the carping from Reagan fans that they’ve barely seen him ever on any of these lists crack the top 10.
Lyndon Johnson keeps his same assessment, at #15 in 2002, at #16 in 2010. And so…
Ronald Regan goes from #16 to #18.
John Quincy Adams goes from #17 to #19.
Bill Clinton jumps from #18 to #13.
William McKinley falls from #19 down to #21.
Grover Cleveland jumps from #20 by remaining at #20.
William Howard Taft falls from #21 down to #24.
George Herbert Walker Bush rises from #22 by remaining at #22.
And George W Bush? Falls from #23 (when, I suppose, he was thought of as another Bush, and in the shadow of a 9/11 Glow) down to #39.
This throws the poll into another great rippling.
Martin Van Buren rises from #24 to #23.
Jimmy Carter falls from #25 to #32 — the second greatest noticable drop.
Richard Nixon falls from #26 to #30 — notable as well.
Rutherford Hayes falls from #27 to #31, as though his fate is to entwined with Nixon’s.
Gerald Ford rises in esteem by hanging steady at #28. Something has changed to pull him ahead of Nixon.
Calvin Coolidge rises in esteem by hanging steady at #29.
Chester Arthur jumps to Carter’s old spot (or, I guess Martin Van Buren if we subtract Obama) , going up from #30 to #25.
Herbert Hoover falls from #31 down to #36. It is not hard to figure out why.
Benajamin Harrison falls from #32 to #34.
James Garfield jumps from #33 to #27 — another ripple here — why his rise in esteem, I haven’t got a clue.
Zachary Taylor goes from #34 to #33.
Ullyseus Grant goes from #35 to #26 — another one of those great ripples, and it’s been a long march upward for him.
William Henry Harrison goes from #36 to #35.
John Tyler remains at #37 — again, that counts as a jump forward.
As with Millard Fillmore at #38.
And the bottom four remain the same, joined in the bottom five by you know you.
What does it mean that Lincoln has usurped Teddy Roosevelt for the number two spot? A bit of “Team of Rivals” haliography. Similarly, John Adams’s fall comes as David McCollough’s book fades away from its 2001 publication. What’s up with James Madison rising? Probably the same with Kennedy.
The strange jumble in the third quarter of this list is curious, and I suppose I should just suspect a game of horse-shoes.