Nemo me impune lacessit

No one provokes me with impunity

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No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Article 1, Section 9, Constitution of the United States

If this is the law of the land...why in a republic (little r) and as republicans, do we allow mere POLITICIANS to the right to use a "title of office" for the rest of their lives as if it were de facto a patent of nobility. Because, as republicans, this should NOT be the case...just saying...

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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Ranking the Presidents

In February and March 2005, the Federalist Society and The Wall Street Journal asked an ideologically balanced group of 130 prominent professors of history, law, political science and economics to rate the presidents on a 5-point scale, with 5 meaning highly superior and 1 meaning well below average. Eighty-five scholars responded, and the presidents are ranked in order of mean score, adjusted to give equal weight to Democratic- and Republican-leaning respondents.



RANK NAME MEAN

GREAT
1 George Washington 4.94
2 Abraham Lincoln 4.67
3 Franklin Roosevelt 4.41

NEAR GREAT
4 Thomas Jefferson 4.23
5 Theodore Roosevelt 4.08
6 Ronald Reagan 4.03
7 Harry Truman 3.95
8 Dwight Eisenhower 3.67
9 James Polk 3.59
10 Andrew Jackson 3.58

ABOVE AVERAGE
11 Woodrow Wilson 3.41
12 Grover Cleveland 3.34
13 John Adams 3.33
14 William McKinley 3.32
15 John Kennedy 3.25
16 James Monroe 3.24

AVERAGE
17 James Madison 3.07
18 Lyndon Johnson 3.05
19 George W. Bush 3.01
20 William Taft 2.97
21 George H.W. Bush 2.95
22 Bill Clinton 2.93
23 Calvin Coolidge 2.77
24 Rutherford Hayes 2.73

BELOW AVERAGE
25 John Quincy Adams 2.66
26 Chester Arthur 2.65
27 Martin Van Buren 2.63
28 Gerald Ford 2.61
29 Ulysses Grant 2.57
30 Benjamin Harrison 2.54
31 Herbert Hoover 2.50
32 Richard Nixon 2.40
33 Zachary Taylor 2.30
34 Jimmy Carter 2.24
35 John Tyler 2.23

FAILURE
36 Millard Fillmore 1.85
37 Andrew Johnson 1.75
38 Franklin Pierce 1.73
39 Warren Harding 1.65
40 James Buchanan 1.31

I disagree on a couple of points here.  Jimmy Carter should rank below Harding because none of his policies had anything but a negative effect on the country.  In foriegn policy, we are reaping what he sewed.  Islamic Jihadism was given inpatus by his failure to react to the declaration of war by the Islamic Republic of Iran.  From that one act stems all of the present radical jihad in the middle east.

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