Liberal and Conservative Raters
The Murray-Blessing 1982 survey asked historians whether they were liberal or conservative on domestic, social and economic issues. The table below shows that the two groups had only small differences in ranking the best and worst presidents. Both groups agreed on the composition of nine of the top ten Presidents (and were split over the inclusion of either Lyndon B. Johnson or Dwight D. Eisenhower), and six of the worst seven (split over Jimmy Carter or Calvin Coolidge). Conservatives placed Democrat Harry S. Truman at a higher ranking.
| Rank | Liberals (n=190) | Conservatives (n=50) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Abraham Lincoln | Abraham Lincoln |
| 2 | Franklin D. Roosevelt | George Washington |
| 3 | George Washington | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| 4 | Thomas Jefferson | Thomas Jefferson |
| 5 | Theodore Roosevelt | Theodore Roosevelt |
| 6 | Woodrow Wilson | Andrew Jackson |
| 7 | Andrew Jackson | Harry S. Truman |
| 8 | Harry S. Truman | Woodrow Wilson |
| 9 | Lyndon B. Johnson | Dwight D. Eisenhower |
| 10 | John Adams | John Adams |
| ... | ||
| 30 | Calvin Coolidge | James E. Carter |
| 31 | Franklin Pierce | Richard Nixon |
| 32 | James Buchanan | Franklin Pierce |
| 33 | Andrew Johnson | Andrew Johnson |
| 34 | Ulysses S. Grant | James Buchanan |
| 35 | Richard Nixon | Ulysses S. Grant |
| 36 | Warren G. Harding | Warren G. Harding |
Read more about this topic: Historical Rankings Of Presidents Of The United States
Famous quotes containing the words liberal and, liberal and/or conservative:
“We imagined that the sun shining on their bare heads had stamped a liberal and public character on their most private thoughts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Women ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored man’s wrong, for, like him, she has been accused of mental inferiority, and denied the privileges of a liberal education.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers’ glory—to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)