Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House

New York: Free Press, 2004. First Edition. First Printing. very good, very good. 291, illus., tables, appendices, index. With rankings based on a survey of 78 liberal and conservative scholars conducted by the Federalist Society and the Wall Street Journal, this book examines Presidential performance in this collection of essays written by a distinguished and diverse group of authors. The top five rankings were George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt; the bottom five rankings were Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren Harding, and James Buchanan in last place. Contributors include Richard Brookhiser on George Washington, John McCain on Theodore Roosevelt, Robert Bork on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Peggy Noonan on John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and Kenneth Starr on Richard Milhous Nixon. There are also essays on issues in Presidential leadership--in economic policy, during wartime, and the judiciary, and after disputed elections.