THE YEAR 1997 saw publication of a book, Rating the Presidents, a sophisticated calculation weighing five factors—leadership, accomplishments, political skill, appointments, and character—in judging the nation’s forty-one chief executives through 1996. Ranked first was Abraham Lincoln. Second was Franklin D. Roosevelt, rated ahead of George Washington. Another survey of fifty eminent historians polled by Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. of Harvard rated only Lincoln and Washington ahead of FDR.
