This post is either going to fascinate you, or bore you to tears. I don’t think there will be any in between. (Although that probably applies to 95% of what I blather on about…)
As a numbers kind of guy, I wondered what would happen if you put the success or failure associated with the administrations that we have had, from Washington through Obama, in numerical terms and then examined the trends. There’s a bunch of ways to do that and, by its nature, this exercise involves subjectivity. I chose two criteria: principles and effectiveness.
For the first criteria, I designated each administration as either “idealist” or “pragmatic” in nature. That is not to say that pragmatic administrations don’t hold to certain ideals or vice versa. Especially vice versa, since politics by definition encompasses pragmatism. But some administrations are more focused on an ideal or ideals than others, like Reagan (limited government, winning the Cold War), Lincoln (saving the Union) and Obama (expanding government, multi-nationalism). Pragmatists include some fine administrations, like Eisenhower and Grover Cleveland, along with some bad ones, like LBJ.
Second we have effectiveness, and there are three possible rankings: effective, ineffective or neutral. Effectiveness refers not to how effective they were in carrying out their programs, but how what they did affected the nation.
The combination of these two criteria determines the administration’s final score. In my mind, an effective idealistic administration is the best. In this category, we have Washington (both terms), Monroe (1st term), Polk, Lincoln (1st term), McKinley/T. Roosevelt, T. Roosevelt, Harding/Coolidge, Coolidge, FDR (3rd term), FDR/Truman and Reagan. Numerically, each of these administrations gets a score of 10, on a scale of 1 to 10. The worst administration is an ineffective idealist. An ineffective idealist either successfully pursues ruinous programs and policies, or is too weak to put good policies in place and Congress fills the vacuum with ruinous policies. Here we have Jefferson (1st term – sorry, but that’s how I feel), Lincoln/Johnson (because of Johnson, obviously), Wilson (1st term), FDR (1st term), Carter and Obama. Each of these administrations gets a 1 for a score.
In between, we have: effective pragmatists (score of 7), ineffective pragmatists (score of 3), and neutral idealists and pragmatists (score of 5 in both cases). You’ll find my complete list at the bottom of the post. No doubt some will argue about the particulars – and I’m weaker on some administrations than others, so suggestions/corrections are welcome – but I think I’ve gotten it right in the broad sense.
Now, let’s plot each administration’s score over time, starting with Washington and ending with Obama. An interesting, but not surprising, pattern emerges.
The red line represents administration score, using the first year of each administration as a data point. The pattern, as one might expect, is a pretty regular sine wave. (A sine wave, you will recall, oscillates back and forth). I didn’t plan it that way, that’s just where the data took me. It’s a reflection, I think, of the typical restlessness of the average American voter. We’re never happy with the status quo.
I also plotted (in blue) the twenty year rolling average. Here, I take the score of each administration, add to it the score of the previous four administrations (thus twenty years) and divide by 5. This helps smooth out the peaks and valleys and gives us a look at the long-term trends. From that perspective, we see that the long-term trend was generally toward better and more effective administrations, until we hit the end of the Eisenhower era and things went into a twenty year decline that lasted until Reagan took office.
So what does this tell us about the 2012 election? The twenty year rolling average is about as low as it goes. Even if Obama pulls a Clintonesque pivot after the 2010 election (which doesn’t seem likely) I can’t see him pulling this administration up anywhere higher than “pragmatic/ineffective,” and – from what we’ve seen – I think that’s highly unlikely. Either way, we will be down on the low end of the curve, both in terms of individual administration score and in terms of the 20 year rolling average. Which means that we’re probably in a change in 2012, but this time it’ll be a change for the better. You can trust me on this. I’m a scientist.
Scores by Administration
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My first thought is that it is very fascinating seeing the numerical scores and being able to easily see the trends involved. My second thought is that you must have a lot more free time than I do.
An interesting approach.
But personality counts for something too, and I think you should add (-2) to each one who is a self-righteous, self-absorbed twit.
That puts Carter and Obama in negative territory where they belong, and starts to get Clinton close.
Sorry, but I have nothing but contempt for that despicable trio of jerkoffs.
@ Tink: Not as much time as you might think dear. This is just an extension of what I do for a living. I can almost – but not quite – do this crap in my sleep.
@ Stosh: Dude, “self-absorbed” – to some extent – and self-righteous” – to pretty much every extent – fairly defines every Presidency outside of Calvin Coolidge and George Washington.
I’d beg to differ but it’s impolite to beg.
But if you can’t tell the difference between self-absorption ala Barack Obama or self-righteousness ala Jimmuh Carter and some approximation of those tendencies in a guy like GW Bush, you need to go back to getting your data from pitot tubes.
Yes, we’re all self-absorbed to some extent, and we’re all self-righteous to some extent as well (and granted, I beat the living snot out of you in that department), but having the sort of ego that pushes one to pursue the presidency is something else. Clinton, Carter and Obama push the previously-mentioned undesirable tendencies to the border of pathology – I think that’s a bit different than what was seen in the ambition of an Eisenhower or a Hoover or even either of the Roosevelts – or pretty much whatever other of the POTUS crowd you want to choose.
I agree with Stosh. I sincerely believe most recent Presidents (all?) are egoists to an extent few of us can comprehend; literally pathological. We all do thought exercises where we imagine ourselves in the job, and what we would do differently, as I do with managing the White Sox, but imagine waking up every day and truly believing you are the one, best man or woman alive in this nation to direct each of us in our daily lives. Every time you hear of a problem you imagine you are the last, best hope to fix that problem. I doubt few of us have ever interacted with anyone with that kind of ego.
I saw Pat Goddell on “Red Eye” a few months ago, and Greg Gutfeld asked about this. They had been joking a bit, and the mood had been light-hearted, and when asked this question Gooddell got very serious, and said the same. He said all of these people, even the ones you think are down to Earth, are narcissists on a level you can’t even comprehend. Gutfeld kind-of laughed, and pressed for juicy gossip, but Goodell refused to even make light of the topic.
As a fellow numbers guy, I love it. As an historical ignoramus, I appreciate it.
I’m the opposite of a numbers person, but my intuition backs your numbers, Trzupr. I do sympathize with Stosh’s idea, though, though I’d add Wilson to his trio of Clinton, Carter and Obama. Odious men, all.
I’m not sure I’m down with a system that scores FDR and Regan the same as one was a government expanding, taxing, welfare lover and the other was the exact opposite of that. But the numbers and the chart are interesting enough I suppose.
Dude,
The devil is in the details. My ranking system is by administration (4 year terms) not by the president who continually is in office for an extended period of time. FDR’s first term, during which he greatly expanded the role of the federal government, gets the lowest possible score. On the other hand, FDR’s last term is dominated by Truman, who helped save western Europe (the Marshall Plan), end the war in the Pacific with minimal casualties (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and who prevented the Soviet Union from dominating the Pacific (Korea). FDR’s four elections and Reagan’s two are not scored the same – anything but, in fact. Take another look.
Cheers,
Rich
Taking a second look, I guess I did misunderstand a bit what you were doing. Fair enough.
Rich, this post is very intriguing. I missed it Saturday evening. Thanks for doing this. I’m looking forward to reading and pondering.
Cool! There can be a lot of debate over the ranking, but I imagine the results would be relatively the same, no matter who did the ranking; 10′s would become 1′s, and vice-versa. Therefore, the trend holds out. When you get a penduluum swing in one direction, whether you think it’s a 10 or a 1, the electorate is bound to start a steady slide down or up towards the opposite.
I think much of human history goes this way; oscillations whose frequency remains relatively consistent, but amplitude diminishes as a function of time. We humans are continuous improvers; we tweak, and we tweak, and we tweak and then something big happens, and we become afraid and do a 180 degree turn, then we tweak and we tweak in that direction, then… But, we have recorded history, so with each 180 degree turn we’ve learned a little from the prior attempt, and so swing less wildly next time.
Another thing I thought of when reading this:
It parallels the whole “Judges vs. Kings” nature of the Old Testament. To me, most of the middle of the Old Testament is a record of the Jews becoming dissilusioned with priestly rule (the Levites) and going towards a monarchy. The monarch comes along, does some good things martially, there is a generation or two feeling of security, then it falls apart and the Israelites run back to the Levites and beg them for priestly rule again. Wash, rinse, repeat…
However, the swings for the Jewish nation took a lot longer to swing back and forth and it seems the swings stayed on the negative side a little longer than it stayed on the positive side.
“We are now vibrating between too much and too little government,
and the pendulum will rest finally in the middle.” –Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Smith, 1788.
My friend and I took our National History Day project all the way to DC with this topic back in 1987. Too bad I can’t remember anything more about it, including the title of the book we used for most of our research.
I like your graph and chart!