Michael Knowles TOP 10 Presidents Compared To "Expert's" TOP 10
Michael Knowles flips the script on C-SPAN’s presidential rankings, dismissing liberal favorites like LBJ (honorable mention), Obama (#10—"arguably worst"), and JFK (#8) for moral failures, weak leadership, or radicalism, while elevating Washington (#1) for setting unmatched precedents and handling crises like the Whiskey Rebellion with restraint. Trump (#3) tops his list for overturning Roe v. Wade, economic revival, and blunt moral authority, contrasting C-SPAN’s liberal bias that inflates Lincoln (#2) for suspending habeas corpus or praises JFK’s mythologized Camelot over actual governance. The episode reveals how modern conservative priorities—like Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback (1M deportations) or Reagan’s Cold War triumph—clash with C-SPAN’s outdated, partisan criteria, exposing a fundamental divide in historical judgment. [Automatically generated summary]
I was more sympathetic to their list before I read everything that happened after 10.
These presidential historians are jokes.
We're in for it.
To celebrate America's 250th anniversary, America's actually older than 250.
America goes all the way back over 400 years to the Mayflower, which is an excellent cigar brand, by the way.
But to celebrate the official 250th anniversary, the producers have asked me to list my top 10 presidents.
And this is not some idle exercise.
This is based on the C-SPAN list, which C-SPAN does every single year, consulting all the genius presidential historians to come up with the definitive list of the top 10 presidents.
What are the qualities that they consider?
Because I want to make sure I'm using the same criteria as C-SPAN.
Public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision slash setting an agenda, pursued equal justice for all, and performance within the context of the times.
I will begin with the honorable mention, a guy who doesn't make the list, but it's the honorable mention.
And that, of course, you could probably guess it.
If you're a frequent viewer or listener to the show, Mr. Mutton Chops himself, Chester Allen Arthur, one of the great men.
He doesn't make the list.
There were some problems.
He became president accidentally.
He was a crooked New York politician.
He ran the customs house.
He just doled out patronage to his buddies.
And when his president was killed, Garfield, he actually sobbed because he didn't want to be president.
He just wanted to be VP and dole out more patronage.
He sobbed, but he took the job.
His wife had died.
He kept fresh flowers constantly at the White House for her.
And he was reformed.
He was a crooked politician, but he became reformed in part because he received correspondence from this odd invalid woman in New York.
And this was probably the classic example of the office making the man.
And he actually didn't dole out patronage to all of his cronies and he reformed the civil service and he became a much better man and he was a really clean politician and he did very well.
But he doesn't make the list because he kind of flunked on some other qualities.
So coming in after the honorable mention at number 10, Calvin Coolidge.
Coolidge was great.
The conservative movement types, especially the more libertarian among them, they always rank Coolidge as number one, or at least within the top three.
They love Coolidge because he was small government.
He says the business of America is business and he was good for business.
You know, we had the roaring 20s under his leadership.
That was great, but he's got some marks against him.
One mark against him is that he supported the direct election of senators.
17th Amendment is one of the worst amendments ever in the history of the United States.
He also supported the 19th Amendment.
We don't have to get into that too much.
But anyway, there were some issues with Coolidge and he was great, but he also didn't really have long enough.
He became a president after his predecessor, when he was vice president, died.
And he didn't, this is actually very noble.
He didn't want to serve longer than George Washington.
He didn't want to serve longer than any president before him had ever served.
And that was two terms, precedent set by Washington.
So because he got that little bit extra at the end of the Harding administration, he decided he wasn't going to run for another term.
He didn't have a ton of time.
And then FDR promptly smashed through that precedent.
Democrat would-be king of America ran for and was elected to four terms.
So he was good.
And if I were a libertarian, he'd be in the top three, but he gets 10.
Number nine, William Howard Taft.
William Harrow Taft, a very large man who I have a personal affinity for because he's the only man who served as a quasi-ambassador to the Vatican, who then went on to become president.
He's a Yale man.
I think they actually had to combine two seats for him in one of the halls at Yale because he was corpulent.
He also served technically, you could stretch the definition, you could say he served in all three branches of government.
Really, he served as president and chief justice of the United States.
So he was a larger-than-life figure in many senses.
And he was quite conservative.
He was seriously conservative.
He was economically very effective.
He was just, I don't know, a standard Republican, conservative president.
He helped grow the strength of the United States, a bit of a protectionist, which used to fall out of favor with the conservative movement.
Now it's kind of back in fashion because of President Trump.
So I'll give it to him.
Number nine.
Number eight, Teddy Roosevelt, TR.
And TR was a progressive Republican in many ways.
You know, he wasn't like a blue hair with a September singer or anything, but he was progressive in some ways.
But he, like Taft, was a conservationist, really a more ardent federal conservationist, even than Taft was.
And he was a real man's man.
So he's important, not even so much for his policies, though his policies were very important.
He grew the military stature of the United States, helped to really fuel America's global ambitions in the 20th century.
But he was an important figure for the thumbs of America, for the spiritedness of America.
Trump, especially, has taken clearly a lot of lessons from TR.
Speak softly, carry a big stick.
This is a guy who gets shot giving a speech, but his thick speech stopped the bullet, and he just kept on giving his speech before he even sought medical treatment.
He was a real, real scrappy kind of guy.
So for those reasons and many others, he makes the list.
Above him, this might be a little controversial.
McKinley.
Now, McKinley was assassinated, but McKinley, I think he deserves a place here because, again, this really ties in.
McKinley was fueling America's global ambitions.
He got us Hawaii.
He got us some other territories.
He wrapped up the Spanish-American War.
He was a protectionist, but as we see today, people said that his economic policies would damage the economy.
They didn't.
He was a very, very strong economic president.
Probably doesn't have as much stature in the historical memory as some others do, but he was great.
We love him.
We like Mount McKinley too.
The Libs are trying to rename his Mountain.
No surprise there.
You know, we stand for him.
Above him, John Adams, who's probably the most conservative founding father.
He becomes president after George Washington, keeps Washington's cabinet basically entirely in place, even though Washington's cabinet was more loyal to Hamilton.
He was far preferred to the alternative Thomas Jefferson, who ended up beating him.
But even there, Adams sets this precedent of peacefully transferring power.
So that's good.
Even the historians like that.
He passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which a lot of people count as a mark against him.
I think was very based and awesome and are still on the books today.
And they're very important because they set guardrails and they give us a much more conservative understanding of freedom than the liberty and left-wing version.
So for all those reasons, he makes the list.
Above Adams, Dwight Eisenhower.
I like Ike, baby.
I like him.
Eisenhower, very underrated because he was moderate.
And so the Republicans and the Democrats both liked Eisenhower.
It was unclear if he would run for president as a Republican or a Democrat.
He helped win World War II and he set the stage for America to win the Cold War.
He was much better than his successors, JFK and certainly LBJ.
The ways in which he was moderate, by the way, don't really matter all that much because today when we talk about moderate, you know, squishy Republicans, liberal Republicans even, we tend to think of these culture war issues, abortion, marriage, transgenderism, immigration.
Those were not an issue in the 50s.
They were just not an issue.
There was no such thing as a debate over abortion.
Everyone knew it was wrong to kill babies.
There was certainly no such thing as a debate over marriage.
That wouldn't come about until the 21st century.
Transgenderism, give me a break.
Everyone agreed, those people, you got to lock them up.
It's a made-up thing.
And then even on immigration, I think it was Eisenhower who presided over Operation Wetback when we deported a million illegals from America.
It was pretty good.
A million?
I could use those numbers.
It was great.
So he makes it.
Above him, Ronald Reagan.
Saint Gipper himself makes the list, coming in at number four.
Gipper makes the list because he won the Cold War and he revitalized America.
He made America feel good about herself again after the malaise of the Kennedy assassination and then the hideous presidency of LBJ and then the Nixon presidency, which could have been great except the Libs took him out in a bunch of nonsense.
And then the malaise of Carter.
Ford really never stood a chance because he did the patriotic thing and pardoned Nixon.
And Carter, obviously, stagflation and foreign collapse and it was just a disaster.
Reagan comes in, revitalizes the country, juices the economy again, wins us the Cold War.
He's great.
He really deserves a lot of the plaudits he receives.
Above Reagan, Trump.
Trump.
Trump is kind of the apotheosis of the Reagan revolution.
And he's more historic because he won the non-consecutive second term.
It's the greatest political comeback in American history, better even than Richard Nixon's.
They counted Nixon out.
I kind of want to put Nixon on the list, but given these qualities that they're making us judge it by, it's a little tricky.
Look, maybe could Nixon take it above Taft?
Yes.
Maybe I should have rethought that too late now.
Could he take it over even McKinley?
Maybe not because he was cut down in his prime.
But certainly without Watergate, without not even the scandal of Watergate, just without him having to resign the presidency, you'd put him in one of those spots.
But because of that, Reagan takes it.
Reagan takes the cake there.
And then Trump above him.
Trump restores America's moral authority after the hideousness of Barack Obama.
You know, stands against pretty basic things like he's against infanticide.
He's the first president to ever show up to the March for Life.
He appoints the justice that overrules Roe v. Wade.
He's probably the best foreign policy international relations president of any of our lifetimes.
His administrative skills are quite good, actually, especially in the second term.
Relations with Congress are a little bit weaker, but okay, he loses some points there because Congress is like herding cats.
His vision, of course, he has the Make America Great Again vision, which he takes, he borrows from Ronald Reagan.
Dating Serious Catholics00:02:52
Equal justice for all crisis leadership, of course.
Economic management keeps beating every expectation.
And his public persuasion, he's blunter.
He's crasser than Ronald Reagan, but he's effective.
He's communicating to people who had been disillusioned with politics, who hadn't been really engaged.
So he gets it.
Now, that's still number three, who comes in at number two and number one.
I think you do have to give number two to Lincoln.
Lincoln, no matter what you think, even if you're a Southerner and you don't like the War of Northern Aggression, on these marks, public relations, he's the greatest writer and orator probably in American political history.
Crisis leadership, we've never had a greater crisis than the Civil War.
Economic management, pretty good, all things considered.
Moral authority, of course, he's considered one of the great moral visionaries of American history.
International relations, depends if we count the Confederacy as international, but he did manage that crisis.
Administrative skills, relation with Congress, vision, sort of equal justice for all.
I think he gets it.
And then number one, no doubt about it, the indispensable man, father of our country, George Washington, who set the president, who has never been surpassed.
And it was an American painter who related the story that when he relinquished his military commission, no less an adversary than King George III said that if he really relinquishes his commission, George Washington will be the greatest man in the world.
That's the list.
Washington, Lincoln, Reagan, Eisenhower, Adams, McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, and Coolidge.
What did C-SPAN say?
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Dealt With Crises Gracefully00:08:49
C-SPAN's honorable mention, LBJ.
Oh, my goodness.
We're in for it.
Well, look, I'm glad to say that LBJ, one of the worst presidents we have ever had, a man who did almost as much as he could to destroy this country.
The mess that we are in is largely thanks to him, that he would not make the full list.
He just gets the honorable mention.
In fairness to LBJ, LBJ does have great administrative skills.
There's no doubt about that.
Good relationship with Congress.
The guy really knew how to work around the Congress.
He tried to pursue equal justice for all.
It's not what happened.
The opposite happened as a result.
He wasn't exactly a moral authority.
You read some of the stories about him whipping out LBJ Jr., you know, in cabinet meetings.
That's pretty gross.
Economic management, crisis leadership, public persuasion.
He wasn't the most, he wasn't the greatest public persuader, but he was good in smoke-filled rooms.
Number 10, Barack Obama.
Arguably the worst president we've ever had.
Arguably worse than like Buchanan.
Arguably worse than Millard Fillmore.
Wow.
Obama just so awful.
Okay.
Nine, Ronald Reagan.
Okay, this is good.
I'm glad they placed Reagan above Obama.
It's kind of ridiculous that these two men would be anywhere near each other on the list.
Ronald Reagan, one of the greatest presidents we've ever had, Barack Obama, one of the worst.
But I'm glad at least the libs at C-SPAN, even they, could not stretch reality so far as to pretend that Obama was ahead of Ronald Reagan.
Number eight, JFK.
Totally ridiculous.
I know in recent years, some conservatives have taken a shine to JFK because they like to make this point, which is that, you know, by today's standards, John F. Kennedy would be a conservative Republican.
And it's true because the Libs won because they totally won the culture and shifted the Overton window immensely to the left.
But the reality is if JFK had lived to be 150 or whatever he'd be now, had he lived, he would just be a liberal Democrat.
That's just what happened to basically all the Kennedys, with the slight exception of Bobby Kennedy Jr.
So, no, JFK is one of the most overrated presidents, probably the single most overrated president we have.
Basically, everything he touched turned to pot.
He stole the election from Richard Nixon, who should have won in 1960.
He bungled, he almost sent us into nuclear war because of his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Luckily, they managed to get out of it when he pulled his weapons out of Turkey, but he was just a disaster.
The only reason people care about him at all is because of the mythology built up around him before he won, because he looked relatively youthful and handsome compared to some of his predecessors, and because he was assassinated.
So there's this mythology, but he didn't really do anything of consequence that was positive.
Next up, Thomas Jefferson.
Yeah, well, of course, because Jefferson is the most liberal of the prominent founding fathers.
So of course, C-SPAN and the presidential historians like him.
You know, he's the man who said that the tree of liberty must be quenched from time to time in the blood of patriots and tyrants.
He was pretty radically liberal.
So I'm not a Jefferson hater.
I mean, I admire the man in as much as he's reasonable, but he doesn't make my list.
Number six, Harry Truman.
Truman did the best he could with a tough situation, and he concluded World War II.
But that said, he spilled the beans to Stalin about our military capabilities and in some ways made the Cold War worse.
There is the moral question of dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I like that he was a haberdasher who left the White House just driving his own car.
He went back home, didn't really have a lot of money or anything.
But he's not all he's a man who met the crisis of his age reasonably well, but he's not a great president by any stretch.
White Eisenhower.
Oh, that's funny.
Wow, that's kind of cool.
C-SPAN and I put Ike in exactly the same spot.
So there is a little bit of bipartisan agreement here.
Ike gets the spot, probably for different reasons.
That's great.
Okay, so we're not totally speaking different languages.
Number four, Teddy Roosevelt.
I like Roosevelt.
He's on my list, but I wouldn't put him up that high.
They probably like Roosevelt because he was a progressive Republican, whereas I like him because he was an unrepentant materialist who slayed, you know, 500 animals in Africa or something like that and carried a very big stick.
Number three, Franklin Roosevelt.
Give me a break.
A truly awful president who is great in his tyranny.
You know, he's great in his ability to transform the U.S. government.
He really took the blueprint written by Woodrow Wilson, also one of the worst presidents in American history.
He took that blueprint and actually put it into action.
So to be fair to him, kind of like LBJ, but much more so, FDR, who was a mentor of LBJ, did have great administrative skills.
Obviously, his international relations were pretty impressive because he did preside almost over the winning of World War II.
His moral authority was weak because he was a huge lib who completely rewrote our system of government, but he claimed moral authority like liberals do today.
His economic management was horrible and he prolonged the Great Depression.
And, you know, the fact that he got us into World War II or acceded to getting into World War II after the Japanese actually got us into World War II, that's really all that took us out of the Depression.
His economic leadership was horrible, though.
Crisis leadership was reasonably good.
Public persuasion was impressive, of course, but he had a complicit press that would work with him, as the press works with Democrat presidents today.
Relations with Congress were fine.
And then he bullied the Supreme Court and also upended our system of government by threatening to destroy the court and blow up the constitutional order if they didn't give him his unconstitutional New Deal.
He obviously set an agenda.
He had a vision.
It was a bad one, but he set the agenda.
Okay, number two.
Number two is Washington, of course, because number one is going to be Lincoln, right?
Just spill it.
Yeah, number one's Lincoln for them, of course.
Because Lincoln, and look, I put Lincoln as number two, but I put Lincoln as number two because of the times in which he found himself, because the Civil War had finally come and he managed as best as he could.
You know, the Civil War was to be avoided, but Lincoln, my defense of Lincoln is he met the moment and played the best he could with a bad hand.
I suspect the reason that C-SPAN would flip Washington and Lincoln is they would want the Civil War to come.
They kind of wish Lincoln had hastened the Civil War and upended or refounded the country, upended our constitutional order, probably don't have much of a problem with suspending habeas corpus and the radicalism that followed that Lincoln himself probably would not have encouraged.
I'm not surprised at all.
It's a very liberal reading of Lincoln and of American history, but Washington's the indispensable man who dealt with greater crises in some ways in the pre-kind of founding of our constitutional order and even a little bit afterward.
He dealt with those crises.
I'm talking about the Newberg conspiracy, obviously the Whiskey Rebellion, Shays Rebellion.
He dealt with them in a much more graceful way than his successors dealt with crises.
So he doesn't maybe get enough credit for that.
It could have been worse from C-SPAN.
It's just what's amazing is even when we came to the same or similar conclusions, you can tell it was for totally, totally different reasons.
It's like the Anakin meme.
You're going to put LBJ on your list, right?
Right?
You just have Anakin like.
They're going to put Trump beneath William Henry Harrison, who was president for like 15 minutes because he got a cold.
Are you kidding me?
I probably wish that Trump had spoken outside of that really cold inauguration last time.
If he had lived to bed as long as Harrison, maybe they'd put him higher on the list.
Below Harding, Fillmore.
Such a joke.
They couldn't put him below Buchanan because Buchanan basically caused the Civil War.
But, oh, boy.
Okay.
I was more sympathetic to their list before I read everything that happened after 10.
It's a joke.
It's a joke.
These presidential historians are jokes.
No surprise there.
You see what they do to the news.
Imagine what they do to history.
Okay.
Happy birthday, America.
Yeah, well, Buchanan's kind of undisputed the worst.