Reagan Biographer Craig Shirley Ridicules ‘Expert’ Ranking of Presidents

Presidential historian Craig Shirley on Friday ridiculed a survey of political scientists purporting to rank presidential greatness.

The survey of members of the American Political Science Association, conducted in December and January, showed Abraham Lincoln first and George Washington second. But Shirley, author of several biographies of Ronald Reagan, noted on “The Laura Ingraham Show” Friday morning that the Gipper got blasé treatment from the political scientists, while Barack Obama made the top 10 and President Donald Trump came in dead last.

“Seventy percent of the political scientists and historians surveyed were ultra-leftists, and only 30 percent were Republicans, and even their conservatism was quite dubious,” he told guest host John Hinderaker. “I mean, look at the silliness of the survey. They put Obama ahead of Ronald Reagan? I mean, c’mon, give me a break.”

Shirley’s numbers were off, but not by much. According to the authors of the survey, 57 percent of respondents were self-identified Democrats, and 58 percent consider themselves liberal or somewhat liberal. Republicans were even more underrepresented than Shirley recalled — just 13 percent.

Meanwhile, only 5 percent described themselves as conservative, while 12 percent are somewhat conservative.

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To Shirley, it all adds up to a load of nonsense. He said he evaluates presidential greatness by how many people a president freed or saved. By that score, he said, the top four are Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Reagan.

“Each of them freed or saved many, many people,” he said. “And there’s no doubt that Reagan, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, freed millions of people who were imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain.”

Shirley said Reagan — ranked ninth in the survey — left the country far better than he found it. Can the same be said of Obama, ranked eighth in the survey?

“What did he do? He broke a color barrier. OK. That’s important,” he said. “But is that about behavior, or is that about action and progress?”

Shirley said he often calls Obama America’s first Facebook president.

“He was skilled in the study of himself, but he knew nothing about the country,” he said.

Shirely said Reagan, by contrast, cut taxes, rebuilt the military, and transformed America’s posture during the Cold War debate from détente to confrontation. And he did it without the advantages Obama and other presidents enjoyed, he added.

“He never had a Republican House,” he said. “He had a Republican Senate, but even that was illusory because half of them were liberal Republicans like [then-Connecticut Sen.] Lowell Weicker, who hated Reagan, and so were who not inclined to support him in any way. So Reagan’s tasking in his first year was much more difficult, and he got a lot of things done.”

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Shirley questioned the usefulness in rating a president after only a year in office. But if a ranking after the first year is to be done, he said, Trump surely deserves to be ranked much higher than last.

“By honest standards is that he’s accomplished a lot,” he said.

Shirley questioned the usefulness in rating a president after only a year in office.

Shirley contrasted Trump’s first year to America’s shortest-lived president, who came out two spots ahead of the current commander-in-chief.

“William Henry Harrison died one month after his inaugural address, so probably he had the worst first year — worse than Donald Trump, because he died,” he said.

PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.