How Experts Rank Our Presidents -- and Maybe Why

Recent Donald Trump FACTS include him telling Vladimir Putin to “do as he liked” to NATO allies behind in their dues, Congressional supporter Mike Turner endangering U.S. intelligence sources by blabbing about an important secret the government knows about Russian weaponry, and two different courts socking Trump for nearly half a billion dollars total for assorted bad conduct such as fraud, touching a woman without permission, and saying false things about her. We also hear that Joe Biden is old.

Most recently, Alexander Smirnov, the dubious figure Trump and his allies relied on to claim that Joe Biden took bribes in connection with his son’s dubious business dealings has admitted that Russian intelligence was involved with his disseminating anti-Biden allegations Smirnov apparently made up. That undermines the retaliatory impeachment Trump’s House supporters are struggling to trigger.

In this context, let’s read the results of the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey.

It’s not political. Voters are current and recent members of the Presidents and Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, the foremost organization of social science experts in presidential politics.

Respondents ranked prexies on overall greatness or failure. Professors averaged the scores.

Abe Lincoln, FDR, George Washingon, TR, and Harry Truman are the top 5, although Republicans and Conservatives would rank Washington first and James Buchanan last. Not surprisingly, Warren Harding, William Henry Harrison, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, and Buchanan occupy the 40th-44th slots. Harding has move up two places since 2015, and Harrison down two.

The results aren’t extremely partisan. Dwight Eisenower stands 8^th, though he mostly played golf. To gauge how politics might have skewed the results, I compared how experts of different parties and ideologies ranked some recent presidents. The new poll listed six “political/ideological” groupings: Republican, Democrat, Independent/Other, Conservative, Liberal, and Moderate. Each grouping ranked Bill Clinton 10th, 11th, or 12^th,, Each ranked FDR 2^nd or 3^rd.

Who did the experts rank last? Hi, Mr. Trump!

By contrast, Joe Biden is 14^th, right behind Bill Clinton and John Adams and ahead of Woodrow Wilson and and Reagan.

Interestingly, Barack Obama is 7^th. He was 16^th in 2015 and 8^th in 2018, so respect for his presidential greatness soared from 2015 and 2018.

Certainly there was some partisanship. Democrats placed Obama and Biden 6^th and 13^th, respectively, and Republicans 15^th and 30^th. Similarly, George Bush (pere) was ranked 11^th by Republicans, 15^th by Independents, and 19^th by Democrats, while Bush (fils) ranked 19^th, 31^st, and 33^rd.

But nothing helped Trump’s ranking much. Democrats, and “Liberals” ranked him 45^th, as we might expect. Independents and “Moderates” also placed Mr. Trump 45^th. Among Republicans and “Conservatives,” his rating leapt up to 43^rd.

That is, experts from his own party ranked him 43^rd of 45.

I’m not Mr. “Rely on Experts for Everything.” But when experts in the U.S. Presidency are ranking the 45 presidents, and the Republicans and Conservatives rank a recent Republican President 43^rd, that seems worth noticing. Does it offend Maybe experts on the U.S. Presidency when someone takes an oath to support our Constitution then struggles to stay in office when that Constitution says, “Please leave, sir!”

I mean, I’m no slave to restaurant ratings, either; but if gourmets and healthy food experts ranked Ken’s Steakhouse 67^th among 67 restaurants in town, and his sisters and the guys on his bowling team all ranked the place 65^th, I might find somewhere else to dine.

                                                           – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 25 February, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper’s website (or, at least, I think it will be – couldn’t find it just now), as well as on KRWG’s website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/).]

[Not a lot to add. But here’s what I was reading, the Official Results of the Presidential Greatness Survey - White Paper. ]

[Apologies to two long-gone presidents, neither of whom is likely to care : first, to Benjamin Harrison, for erroneously tossing his name into that list of bottom-feeders.  Benjamin's grandfather, William Henry Harrison, belonged there.  Not because he did so badly, but because it's hard to evaluate a gentleman whose Presidency lasts 31 days.  Folks at the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site in Indianapolis, Indiana caught my error and stood up for Benjamin.  Thanks!   Michael Hays stood up for Dwight David Eisenhower, recalling from our childhood watching federal troops require southern states to integrate schools, as required by Brown v Board of Education.   Eisenhower didn't just play golf. My bad.  Probably lingering bad feelings from when my father, an Adlai Stevenson partisan, had me wearing a sandwich sign opposing Ike when I was about 5 years old.  Ike won, of course.  Anyway, my bad.  What I did particularly like about Ike, when I learned it, was that he was among a bunch of soldiers tasked with driving a horseless carriage across our vast country very early in the 20th Century.  He recalled how hard it was, around the time he approved spending a bundle to create the Interstatete Highway System.  ]

 

On Sun, Feb 25, 2024 at 8:03 PM Michael L Hays wrote:

Peter,

I write to protest your snideness toward #8, Dwight David Eisenhower.  "Dwight Eisenower [sic] stands 8th, though he mostly played golf" is really a shameful and gratuitous slur on this president.  After all, he could not have been #8 for "mostly" playing golf.  He was also a decent and honorable man.

I shall mention only one of his accomplishments, one which I saw on TV and which stirred me: sending the 101st into LIttle Rock in 1957 to enforce the court-ordered integration of Central High School.  I remember seeing the troops marching down the street with--holy moly--fixed bayonets!  Eisenhower was furious at AK Governor Orval Faubus's resistance to a court order, Army Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor, whom DDE called to order the 101st troops to Little Rock instantly, knew he meant business, and the 101st Commander Major General Edwin Walker gave the order to fix bayonets.  Not only was DDE determined to uphold the law, but he did so despite what I am sure was his birthright racism.

I think that you need to make an apology, and not just to me.

Michael

P.S. You might ask yourself whether the Good Donald would do a similar thing in a similar situation.

 

 

 

 

Las Cruces -- Fifty Years Ago

Fifty years ago this week, I started my three-year stint as the El Paso Times Las Cruces Bureau Chief. February 19, 1974,

“Bureau Chief” was a glorified name for a stringer. The “Bureau” was the green schoolbus I lived in with my dog. To connect a telephone, the phone company required a telephone pole, so I used a length of 4x4 wood. One very perplexed accountant asked editor Fritz Wirt why the Times was buying a telephone poll.

I was no newspaperman. My “writing sample” was poems. As a pro-civil-rights and antiwar radical, I was rather an exile, or self-exile, within my own country. I called the new gig “my crash course in middle America.” With hair down to my belt, I was quite a strange figure to the city commissioners when I plunked my motorcycle helmet down on the reporters’ table just below the dais. Mayor Tommy Graham immediately dubbed me “Captain Zoom.”

My first stories were about the airport (for which, then as now, the city administration had big plans) and the March 5 city election.

City Hall was that building on the southeast corner of Main and Church. Our beautiful County Courthouse was where the three County Commissioners met, in a tiny room you could fit maybe two-dozen onlookers into. The Courthouse also housed district court judges (just two then, not nine), magistrate court, and all county offices. The little jail was attached. The modest public hospital was across Lohman.

Travelers on Interstate 10 had to use Valley Drive and Picacho, to rejoin the interstate up by the airport. Our population was about 40,000, maybe 30,000 without counting NMSU students. Everything from near Telshor Drive to the Organs was desert. The Cox Ranch was the next dwelling East of town. Highway 70 to Organ was pretty barren. Beyond Main stood Tegmeyer’s Steakhouse a mile up the hill, and later a turnoff to NASA’s Apollo Site. A friend named A.J. once offered me a lot on Highway 70 for $50. I should have bought.

Tommy Graham, who ran Graham’s Mortuary with his brother, was our Mayor. Bob Munson was a City Councilor who became Mayor within months. An early story I covered was local hero Jerry Apodaca upsetting several others to win the Democratic nomination for Governor.

Soon, the Watergate Hearings were in full swing, and at least once the city council brought in a TV so we could all watch for awhile before the meeting.

The biggest motel in town was the Palms, owned by City Councilor Tommy Tomson. The Greyhound station was the modest building still on the northeast corner of Lohman and Campo. We had two drive-in theaters and two movie theaters on Main Street, but the Allen Theaters were a ways off yet.

When I bought a house on Ethel Street in 1975, it cost $17,000.

NMSU played football in an ancient little field right on University Avenue. Journalism was so casual that when the County Commission’s Friday meeting yielded approval of a county bond issue to help finance a new NMSU football stadium, subject to a referendum that would be the year’s biggest local political issue, the commissioners asked the reporters present to hold the story ‘til the official announcement Monday. Two of us refused.

It was a far smaller town. More of a community. A higher proportion of the population speaking Spanish. A town deeper contact with made me love.

                            - 30 -

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 18 February, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper’s website ("When Las Cruces Was a Smaller Town"), as well as on KRWG’s website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/).]

[I went from holding a series of part-time jobs to working very full-time, covering every aspect of the town. Never having been a reporter, I made up how to do it as I went along. Talked to everyone, took copious notes. In stories, quoted all sides liberally, expressing no opinions. Being objective was part of the job. It was easier than it might have been because the issues I cared about – getting us out of Viet Nam, integration, minimizing poverty and racism, and such – were rarely implicated all that directly in the local issues I covered. I’d not followed local politics, so I had no favorites. Quoting everyone worked wonderfully: readers smiled over the wisdom they or their allies had spoken, and shook their heads at how clearly I’d summarized the other side’s bullshit.]

[As in every small town, there were wrong things going on that some folks wished they could speak of, while more powerful folks wanted no such thing. I was helped along by not being allied with anyone. Many folks thought the mayor controlled the Sun-News. But the El Paso Times was out-of-state; and my crazy appearance – motorcycle bum with long hair and casual dress – convinced people that I was unlikely to succumb to pressure. So people told me things; and as people who told me things never got named or retaliated against, other people told me things. I had a lot of controversial and interesting moments.]

Some will wonder how it all happened, in a more technical sense. For the first year, I had no office. The schoolbus was it. The “bureau” was Nick the Dog and me. The telephone pole facilitated not only a telephone (which I hadn’t bothered with ‘til then) and a telecopier. That, far short of our modern gadgets but miraculous back then, meant that unless I was late with an urgent story, I could type it up, inserted in the machine, and the machine would produce a facsimile in El Paso. This was a precursor to the fax machine that soon became standard. That, dictation, and sending film down to El Paso by bus sufficed. I probably visited the El Paso office about once each month, for one reason or another.

And it was fun. Many stories were obviously required; but a lot of features were what I happened to came up. If I was curious, I asked. If I wrote about it, it was news. ]

Memorial Medical Center's Culture of Safety Seems Shaky

Sometimes within minutes I receive two emails so different I get dizzy.

Maybe you read my two recent columns opining that Memorial Medical Center seems to have become totally “Profits uber alles!” since Apollo Global acquired it.

I sought MMC’s views. They dallied. Tuesday, MMC’s email refused any interview but proffered a public statement that didn’t answer specific questions I’d asked. It started, “Memorial Medical Center has been part of the Las Cruces community, caring for residents of Doña Ana County and the surrounding region, since 1950.  The dedication to quality care and community on which our hospital was founded has unwaveringly guided our team for nearly 75 years – and has only been strengthened . . .”

It stressed community. And excellence of staff and care.

Moments later came an email from friends, who’d described a recent visit to MMC’s ER regarding the wife’s sudden extremely high blood pressure. The ER doctor treated and released her. Hospitals make you leave by wheelchair, even if you’re there about a hangnail. Not that day. Standing by the main door, she weakened and fell, striking her head. Two weeks later, it still hurt. I didn’t write of that. Could happen anywhere.

Tuesday’s email discussed their longtime doctor, Dr. Louis Benevento, who’s doctored here since 1996. Board-certified, Fellow of the American College of Physicians. Practicing with, and loyal to, Memorial, since long before Lifepoint. He thought MMC, even under Lifepoint, was a good hospital. “You could propose an idea and they’d listen, and discuss the pros and cons.”

Recently, he was handed a letter telling him, “You are retiring April 16^th.” MMC kindly added that it would give him a retirement party later in April. He declined.

He doesn’t know why. He gets paid based on RVUs: the loot he brings in. And he got a bonus for 2023.

When I pressed, his best guess was maybe they wanted to save expenses by using nurse practitioners. I asked what that meant for patients. He said some NPs are great, others less so. The two he works with are good, know what they know and, importantly, know what they don’t know, and thus sometimes consult him. Now he’ll be gone, no longer filtering cases, so the ones they can’t handle they’ll kick upstairs to some sub-specialist who may bill at a higher rate.

MMC’s treatment of Dr. B hardly displayed its deep commitment to community and appreciation of its illustrious staff. Canning him follows the new industry trend that really listening to patients is wasting time. The handling of it was inappropriate.

He sounded like a good doc. My friends like him. Sources praise his care for patients. Even now, he offered no unpleasant tales about MMC’s problems. “I thought the one thing I didn’t have to worry about was MMC.”

Except, . . .

MMC's statement accused me of ignoring MMC’s many good points “to support “a false narrative” – but didn’t identify a single statement MMC considers false. I’m not ignoring “the hard work of [y]our staff, physicians and medical professionals, and the realities of the market,” but expressing concern that those folks must function in an environment that appears not to encourage a culture of safety.

Sadly, MMC’s treatment of Dr. B may describe MMC’s priorities more accurately and eloquently than its statement does.

Can (or will) Apollo find a fairer balance between investors’ profit and the safety of patients, doctors, and nurses?

                                                       – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 11 February, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper’s website ("MMC's Treatment of Patients/Staff Should Raise Questions"), as well as on KRWG’s website under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at http://www.lccommunityradio.org/).]

[This is the third and last in a series of columns.

I regret that MMC never found the spirit to talk with me. For years, when Dael and I were helping our older friend, Bud Wanzer, that’s where we took him, and worked with doctors and staff there. It was the hospital Bud and I had known for fifty or sixty years. I mean, that’s what “the hospital” meant to us, for long after there was another here. I do not mean to say that everything about MMC is bad. I know good people who work there. I do see, as do others, the problems posed by private equity ownership of our health care entities. While one might wish we still had public hospitals, of which Memorial General Hospital was one, even Catholic hospitals or corporate hospitals have some checks and balances, with requirements of public reporting and with possible push from shareholders and journalists to do the right thing. What concerns me most deeply is the loss of a culture of safety, in which medical folks can opine openly, without fear of reprisals, and where oversight boards include some folks whom the hospital doesn’t fully control. “I had to take my complaint to the person who’d caused it,” is a sad sentence to hear.

So I hope the Medicare people take a good look at whether or not there’s any fraud going on; I hope Lifepoint (and, ultimately, Apollo) consider more collegial and patient-centered management in the future, and I hope the state legislature and the governor look into what can be done with laws and/or regulatory oversight. I also hope the City and County, each still with a board-member at MMC, raise their level of effort to see beyond the rosy picture management presents. ]

[I don’t know everything. I wouldn’t want to have to run a hospital. We’re kind of all in this together. I’m sure hearing MMC management’s views on some of these issues would have rounded out the picture. So, as I say, I’m sorry we couldn’t have a conversation. And remain willing, if MMC disagrees with anything I’ve written.]