Recently, I was looking through my Kindle on any books on objectively judging presidencies. I came across a 2008 book by Alvin Felzenberg called "The Leaders We Deserved (And a Few We Didn't)."
The premise was intriguing and I was prepared to buy it when I found his presidential scorecard on the web through an interview with Freakonomics. It's different. Ronald Reagan is abnormally high at a tied for No. 3 with Theodore Roosevelt, while Bill Clinton is at No. 22, tied with William Howard Taft, and behind such presidents as Gerald Ford and Benjamin Harrison.
It's all opinion and I'm sure the book lays it out, but then I noticed Felzenberg rated Reagan's economic policy a 5 on a 5-point scale, while Clinton gets a 4.
OK. I can buy a 5 on Reagan's economic policy. I know economists who still worship St. Ronnie. But how can you give Clinton a 4 on economic policy?
Instead of arguing semantics I spent a couple of days trying to find actual numbers. Here's everything I found.
Gallup is the longest tenured polling company with the best historical data. If you trying to judge presidents, perhaps the best way is how satisfied was the country when they left office?
The above chart shows that of the last 11 presidents, not including Obama, six left office with above a 50 percent approval rate. That includes two, George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, who lost their election bids. Truman, of course, is the great hope of all presidents who struggle at the end. Truman's approval was just 32 percent, but his standing among historians has improved over time.
From this chart, Reagan deserves his high regard, but he ranks below Clinton.
OK. There are lots of caveats with this one.
* John Quincy Adams is one of four presidents to win the electoral college while losing the popular vote. In 1824, Adams was one of four candidates running and he finished second in the popular vote to Andrew Jackson by a wide margin. The election went to the House of Representatives where "the corrupt bargain" with Henry Clay gave Adams the victory. In 1828, in a two-way race with Jackson Adams gained some popular vote but still was slaughtered in the electoral college.
** In 1888, Grover Cleveland became the third person to win the popular vote but lose in the electoral college. In 1992, Cleveland faced Benjamin Harrison in a rematch and trounced him.
*** In 1912, William Howard Taft was part of a three-way election. His former mentor, Theodore Roosevelt, decided to run under a new party after being denied at the Republican convention. Taft refused to drop out of the race and the two split the vote, giving Woodrow Wilson an easy victory.
**** Wilson's popular vote increase is, at least in part because of the fact he was in a traditional two main candidate election in 1916 as compared with 2012.
***** In 1968, George Wallace ran a spirited third-party election, which siphoned voters both from Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. In 1972, Nixon faced George McGovern alone and won a historic landslide. Of course, it came out later that Nixon's campaign played a number of dirty tricks during the election and the Watergate scandal forced Nixon to resign. The great irony is that Nixon likely would have won without any of the dirty tricks.
****** After winning a traditional two-way election in 1988, George H.W. Bush faced Bill Clinton and a major third-party try from H. Ross Perot. Perot siphoned voters from Bush and Clinton, making Bush's loss of support appear larger than it likely was.
******* The famous election of 1860 was really a series of sectional candidates. Abraham Lincoln won an easy electoral college victory, but Stephen Douglas, John Breckenridge and John Bell each gathered more than 12.6 percent of popular vote support. In 1864, with the South not in the vote, Lincoln faced just George McClellan, making his increase in support abnormally large.
Another note is about Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt trounced Herbert Hoover in 1932 and then won by an even larger percentage in 1936. I listed his next two elections separately. In each one, Roosevelt lost support. His third election some were upset he was breaking the two term tradition of George Washington. His fourth election, he lost more support because of general fatigue over having one person in the White House for so long.
FDR, Andrew Jackson and Barack Obama were the three presidents on the chart to win re-election despite losing some of their popular vote majority from their first (or in Roosevelt's case, prior) elections.
Re-elections are a chance for voters to say they had buyer's remorse. There was no buyer's remorse, at least after four years, for Reagan, Clinton, FDR, George W. Bush and Dwight Eisenhower.
Five vice presidents who took over the presidency ran for election in their own right and they won a solid four times. Theodore Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson increased the popular vote percentage from their predecessors.
The only losing candidate was Gerald Ford and he faced a nearly impossible task, running after Nixon resigned the office.
Roosevelt's numbers are an outlier because he started during the Great Depression and then had World War II significantly goose the numbers. Truman's numbers are artificially low because he was president during the ramp down from WWII.
Hoover's numbers only cover part of his presidency. Obama's covers five years so far and he is trending upward. GDP growth during Obama's years:
2009: -0.27%
2010: 2.75%
2011: 1.67%
2012: 1.58%
2013: 3.18%
2014: 2.32%
GDP was surprisingly strong in the 1960s and not nearly as strong in the 1950s. The Eisenhower years are remembered as this idyllic time of economic prosperity. In this measurement, Reagan is a solid fifth overall, but Clinton ranks ahead of him at No. 4.
The data covers only part of Truman's presidency and five years of Obama's presidency. Both Reagan and Obama had significant recessions early in their presidencies. Clinton also came in during a recession, although it was a minor one. Obama's jobless rates are trending downward.
Jan. 1, 2010: 9.2%
Jan. 1: 2011: 8.3%
Jan. 1: 2012: 8.0%
Jan. 1: 2013: 6.6%
Jan. 1: 2014: 5.7%
Clinton again ranks above Reagan.
A different way to look at jobless rates is how much progress -- or lack thereof -- economies made on jobs from one presidency to the next.
Ronald Reagan inherited a struggling economy from Jimmy Carter, then went through a major recession, before leaving office with a pretty solid jobs picture.
Still, Reagan is tied for third here behind Clinton and Lyndon Johnson, who because of the Vietnam fiasco, rarely gets talked about when it comes to economic policy.
As you see, Reagan is tied in this chart with Obama and, considering that unemployment rates, have continued to fall, the Gipper might end up fourth in this measurement.
How often have you heard that Barack Obama has accumulated more debt than every other president combined? Several have peddled the theory. Politifact actually fact checked it:
Sarah Palin says Obama has accumulated more debt than previous 43 presidents combined
It's not true. As you see above, the U.S. Government has run at a $4.8 trillion deficit in Obama's five years. Of course, Reagan and the two Bushes ran up deficits of $6.0 trillion so obviously the fact is false.
Interestingly, it has been true twice. Both Reagan and George W. Bush wracked up more debts than all of their predecessors combined -- at least from the data I found.
Dick Cheney famously said Reagan proved "deficits don't matter." Reagan ran a deficit of $1.4 trillion during his eight years. The previous eight presidents had a combined deficit of $754.9 billion. The Roosevelt numbers are only from 1940 forward.
Not to be outdone, George W. Bush followed the only president since before the Great Depression to actually operate the government in the black, and ran up a deficit of $3.5 trillion over eight years. The previous 11 presidents ran the government at a combined deficit of $3.1 trillion.
In terms of Reagan versus Clinton, there really is no starker comparison than the deficit. If you believe that the mounting debt is a bad thing then you have to grade Clinton's management of the government higher than Reagan's.
Backers of Obama argue that he inherited the biggest fiscal mess since FDR. This chart supports the contention. The U.S. Government's deficit has fallen four of the five years he's been in charge of the government.
On the bottom end of the spectrum are both Bushes and Reagan. Clinton again fares much better than Reagan in this measurement.
Criticized as a tax and spend liberal, Obama actually has shrunk the government, at least through 2014. Here again Clinton ranks higher than Reagan, who goosed economic growth by vastly ramping up military budgets.
This one was a bit of a shocker. Per capital personal income exploded under both Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford and neither one of them was re-elected. The three at the bottom, Bush II, Ike and Obama all were re-elected even with sluggish income growth.
Here is one of the few measurements where Reagan actually finished higher than Clinton.
This leads to the final, very concerning chart.
This isn't perhaps the best chart to compare presidents because if you look at it, the trend is clear. When you factor in inflation, people in the U.S. essentially have been treading water since the late 1970s.
If you put these presidents in chronological order you get:
Roosevelt: 8.37%
Truman: 4.06%
Eisenhower: 2.76%
Kennedy: 3.57%
Johnson: 5.71%
Nixon: 5.75%
Ford: 4.84%
Carter: 2.32%
Reagan: 2.31%
Bush 1: -1.32%
Clinton: 0.15%
Bush 2: -1.47%
Obama: -1.96%
Essentially, since Bush 1 was elected, the average American consumer is a worse place economically because inflation is rising at a greater rate than income. This should be a focus in the next presidential election.
