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“The 5 Best Ronald Reagan Tattoos Found On The Internet”

Fifth on their list, but somehow on top thanks to use of revered “countdown” format.

Super-performance!  

Matthew Yglesias tries to make sense out of Gallop’s opinion polling on presidents by age, and comes up puzzled, especially by Kennedy’s over-performance across the ideological spectrum.

“I can’t imagine a coherent ideological viewpoint that would justify the high ratings Americans over-35 give to Kennedy… if you could take the Kennedy-Johnson years as a whole, then divide them up into one presidency that was dominated by Vietnam and another one that’s responsible for Civil Rights and the Great Society, then you’d have one shitty president and one great president. A lot of people seem to have basically decided to divide things up this way and call the shitty president “Johnson” while the good president is called “Kennedy.” That, however, doesn’t have a great deal to do with reality.“

 Early & Often 

Nixonian History Legend Rick Perlstein declined C-SPAN’s recent Presidential Historian Challenge, reasoning that:

“Maybe there are people who can really responsibly rank John Tyler vis-a-vis Ulysses S. Grant as to their “Administrative Skills,” Grover Cleveland versus Calvin Coolidge as to their “Morality Authority”—but I am not that man.“

In the wake of the outcome he’s bitter he didn’t bullet vote against the poll’s beloved Ronald Reagan:

“I reproach myself for not voting strategically in return by putting RR at forty-third place across the board—strategy in the spirit of doubt. Even though I don’t actually think Reagan is rock-bottom in any of the categories this would have been the principled vote nonetheless. The writers who make a living at saying Ronald Reagan is the Greatest American Who Ever Lived do so not (or only partially) as an act of scholarship. They do so (at least partially) as part of a well-financed, decades-long propaganda campaign. I should have sent in the survey with Reagan the only one ranked, 43rd in every category, as a pragmatic gesture in the interests of the highest principles of historical inquiry. I don’t think Reagan is the 43rd best president; nor do I think he’s the tenth best president. But one historian ranking him 43 across the board as a matter of rote, to cancel out the one who most likely put him at Number One as a matter of rote, at least resets the scale back at zero.”

Survey Says 

C-SPAN’s presidential historian survey holds many thrills: the inexorable rise of Bill Clinton, how far from bottom     George W. Bush has settled, but the historians themselves hold their own excitement.

Who are these guys?

The mysteries of “presidential historian” credentialing are many, and among this crew are some rather odd characters.

In his writings Joseph Persico confused Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, confused Teddy’s daughter’s name with his sister’s, and got the year Roosevelt was elected in his own right wrong.

Stanley Renshon is perhaps best known for utterly missing the point of Stephen Colbert’s legendary appearance at the White House Correspondents Dinner.   Colbert’s jolly mockery of the media’s deference to President Bush was the evening’s theme, but in Renshon’s view it was all terrible les majesty aimed at Bush.

“It is a testament to Mr. Colbert’s lack of perspective that he could even consider making such remarks. It is also a testament to the view, that he apparently shares, that when it comes to Mr. Bush, no level of crass rudeness is inappropriate…He owes the President and Mrs. Bush an apology.“

The utterly weird Paul Kengor tosses off articles with titles like “What Bush And Moses Have In Common,” and loses himself in reveries over Ronald Reagan’s life-guarding and the 77 lives he claims he saved:

“I believe it’s not an exaggeration to draw a straight line from Reagan at the Rock River to Reagan at the White House.“

Carl Sferrazza Anthony’s claim to fame is as Historian for the highly dubious National First Ladies Library, absorbing most of their salaries not paid to the wife of their former Congressional patron.

UNTIL NEXT TIME…