Traditional presidential rankings are biased; conservative-leaning surveys provide more accurate assessments
Source: https://www.facebook.com/americanspectator/. "The Best and Worst Presidents — the PragerU Survey | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics." February 16, 2026. spectator.org
The Gist
The author argues that old presidential rankings were rigged by liberal professors who gave high scores to Democratic presidents and low scores to Republican ones. New surveys like PragerU's are better because they ask more people with different political views.
Conclusion
The PragerU presidential survey provides a more accurate and less biased assessment of presidents than traditional academic rankings
Premises
- Traditional academic presidential rankings used small, unrepresentative samples of left-wing academics (80-90% of professoriate)
- These surveys consistently ranked liberal presidents like FDR, LBJ, and Wilson highly while ranking conservative presidents like Reagan and Coolidge poorly
- The rankings reflected the political biases of professors rather than objective presidential performance
- Newer surveys like C-SPAN's include larger, more balanced groups of historians and biographers
- The PragerU survey consulted 155 scholars using a 1-10 scale across various criteria, providing more diversity than traditional Schlesinger-style surveys
Assumptions
- Political bias significantly distorts academic judgment of presidential performance
- Larger and more ideologically diverse survey groups produce more accurate results
- Conservative-leaning bias is more acceptable or accurate than liberal-leaning bias
- The author's participation in both C-SPAN and PragerU surveys validates their quality