Rating: 
Summary: Pull up a chair, sit down, and have at it....
Review: According to the 132 prominent authorities who rated "the best and worst in the White House" using a 5-point scale, the envelope please.
The winners are...
George Washington 4.92
Abraham Lincoln 4.87
Franklin Roosevelt 4.67
and the losers are
Andrew Johnson 3.36
Franklin Pierce 3.36
Warren Harding 3.33
James Buchanan 3.29
Now that we have that out of the way, I hasten to explain that co-editors James Taranto and Leonard Leo have done far more than merely conduct a survey and then publish the results. What we have here is a chronological sequence of analyses from Richard Brookhiser's of George Washington until Paul A. Gigot's of George Walker Bush. There is a separate chapter devoted to each of the 43 presidents, all of them written by an expert on the given president. I especially appreciate the reader-friendly checklist of key facts which precedes each of the commentaries. Contributors include Lynne Cheney (on James Madison) and John S. McCain (on Theodore Roosevelt) and both have much of substantial value to say about their subjects, as do all of the others.
Presidents are classified within six categories: Great, Near Great, Above Average, Average, Below Average, and Failure. Some rankings surprised me as being too high (e.g. Dwight Eisenhower as Near Great and John Kennedy as Above Average) or too low (e.g. Richard Nixon as Below Average) but such reactions are no doubt indicative of my lack of expertise. In any event, I was grateful to learn the reasons for various rankings.
Other sections of special interest include William J. Bennett's Foreword, Steven G. Calabresi's Introduction, and four brilliant essays on various "Issues in Presidential Leadership" (i.e. economic policy, during wartime, the judiciary, and after disputed elections). If you share my keen interest in issues such as these and would enjoy examining similarities and dissimilarities between and among the 43 U.S. presidents, this is a "must read."
Rating: 
Summary: Struck me as a wrong take on history writing
Review: After reading some of the rave reviews for this book I was confirmed in my sense that it was not educational in the strict sense. Yes, it has some illuminating material in it, but there are already much superior books on presidents and the presidency that are written by historians whose take on things is that of the scholar interested in weighing things carefully, not by people who turn out to be more partisan spokespersons and axe-grinders than teachers. Reading this book you can sense the unbalance without even knowing who they all are. This feeling that the authors are "getting back at someone" comes through too often. But then the treatment of Clinton in this book, celebrated by some of the reviewers mainly because Paul Johnson really clobbers him, is a dead giveaway: This is not remotely a measured work of history that school kids should use -- they cannot really learn what it is to be rounded American citizens from this. I'm glad I was sorry a friend had purchased it as a gift for me. I'll take the work of a David McCullough or Walter Isaacson over this any day -- authors with high standards whom the cheering five-star-givers probably don't appreciate.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting opinions, but not historically accurate
Review: Any ranking of the presidents is by nature a subjective endeavor. A popular president wasn't necessarily a good president. As far as what each president accomplished during his tenure, sometimes it takes a long time for the policies of a president to catch up with events. Perhaps a president that gets credit (or blame) for an outcome of a situation deserves neither. The outcome may have come about because of the policies of his predecessors.
While I found this book interesting, ranking of the presidents for me remains a matter of opinion. The men and women that did the ranking are scholars, journalists, historians and political leaders. Perhaps these people had ther historical facts to make their decisions, perhaps they did not.
The most interesting aspect of this book ws the choice of authors for the very short articles about each president. Whether historically accurate or not, it was rather interesting to read the thoughts of Robert Bork about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is the most glaring example in the book of authors chosen that were opposite in their political thinking to their presidential subjects.
I will admit that this makes for an interesting read, but not solid history. It merely leads to short vignettes that are also short on scholarship.
The good read was worth four stars. The mere opinions about the great and not so great was only worth two.
Rating: 
Summary: What do you expect from the Wall Street Journal?
Review: As a fan of "Best of the Web," I couldn't wait to read this book and I was not disappointed. Some very good essays about the Presidents, and also the end sections on Presidential Leadership with the economy, foreign affairs and other specialized issues. My knock on this book would be the aforementioned sections on JFK and FDR, which dwell on their foibles and not enough on their achievements. But as I said, it's the Wall Street Journal? Did you expect canonization? To be fair, the two get their due in the other sections dealing with the Presidency overall. I would say that because each president gets an individual bio, the results are sometimes disappointing. Particularly Madison, which dwells exclusively on his formulation of the Constitution and leaves one paragraph for his presidency, which included the War of 1812. The Nixon section has some good points about whether Nixon actually displayed leadership (albeit tardy) in resigning, though I learned more about Nixon's economic policy and its disastrous effects than I ever learned in many biographies of the man. The Clinton section practically glows with animus. But these examinations are occasionally too specialized where I was hoping for a broader overview. Still a great book.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, although biased beyond credibility
Review: As has been chronicled by previous reviewers, this book's essays have a conservative bias that damage their credibility and that of some of their writers.
In particular Robert Bork's essay on FDR is so negative that you wonder if he's still bitter over losing his chance to become a Supreme Court Justice. FDR is ranked third on the list of presidents, on the strength of a relatively balanced panel of judges. But in the essay, Bork paints FDR as a socialist dictator who got lucky to have been brought into a war. You can believe whatever you want to believe about him, but there's a fundamental disconnect when a president ranked third is presented in such a negative light.
Likewise, Warren G. Harding is ranked 37th in the survey, but the essay about him is almost entirely positive, save for the cursory mention of the Teapot Dome scandal, and exonerates him from all wrongdoing. So much for the notion of surrounding yourself with good people.
I would have prefered that the essays support the rankings better; else what is the point of doing the exercise? The body of work on the American presidents is sweeping and (despite what Bill Bennett says) largely honest. Contributing an additional biased work does nothing for the genre.
Nevertheless, I read this book in a weekend and was entertained. The writing is accessible and sheds new light on a number of presidents. Some high points are: a hilarious piece on Franklin Pierce, pointing out the struggles of a public relations executive to promote the 200th anniversary of his birth when Pierce was so universally criticized; John McCain's poignant essay on his hero TR; Jay Winik's thorough personality profile of Lincoln; and Robert Dallek's balanced and thoughtful summation of LBJ. If only more of the authors were true historians such as Dallek and could put their subjects into a more balanced context.
In the end, what is politics if not an exercise in back-and-forth debate? In that sense, this work just provides another excuse to crack open a beer and argue who was better than whom, who gets an unfair rap, who is overrated, etc.? I just wish the rankings and the essays didn't deliver such a mixed message.
DJ
Rating:
Summary: A disappointing offering
Review: Every few years, it seems, historians offer a new round of rating US presidents. It's fun to see how contemporary changes affect the ratings' outcome and with this new book, "Presidential Leadership" it's time to take note that James Buchanan has replaced Warren G. Harding as the worst president in the nation's history. Appendix 1, where the comparisons are listed and discussed, is a fresh approach and gives a different tilt as to how presidents are judged. The problem with "Presidential Leadership" is that this section is the only redeeming part of the book.Had the editors stayed with this as their main thrust the book would have been better. But it centers around thumbnail sketches of almost all of our presidents (William Henry Harrison and James A. Garfield are not rated because of the short tenures of their presidencies and George W. Bush because his White House years have not yet been completed) that are vastly incongruant and often irrelevant. On the face of things it might seem to have been a good thing to ask men and women of different political persuasions and backgrounds to write about certain presidents but because there are so many different authors the book lacks cohesiveness. The chapter on John Adams barely mentions his presidency at all and to have Peggy Noonan write about John F. Kennedy is like asking Maureen Dowd to write about George W. Bush. The most disturbing part comes in the sections about presidential leadership. (which follow the mini-biographies) Though of a generally conservative bent they nonetheless were written several months ago before the American public began to turn against our involvement in Iraq. The writing reflects the earlier public support and, in judging Bush at that time, seems no longer relevant. Victor Davis Hanson's view that "George W. Bush made it clear from the outset that the mission of the American military in Iraq during the 2003 war was the removal of Saddam Hussein" is a tenuous statement at best. The administration's reasons for invading kept changing so it was anything but clear. There are some technical mistakes as well (I counted five regarding dates...see John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, Calvin Coolidge and two regarding William McKinley) so it appears this book was hastily edited. What could have been a finer achievement had it been written by one author with a focus on that wonderful Appendix 1 regarding the rating of presidents, it would have been a very good book. Sadly, it is not.
Rating:
Summary: The yawn of conventional wisdom
Review: Given that the Federalist Society is seen by some as a dark cabal of hyper-right wing lawyers and judges, it's a little disappointing to see that the survey of presidential historians that forms the basis for this book is so decidedly un-revolutionary. By the book's own admission (p. 251), and despite the effort to balance the survey pool between conservatives and liberals, the results of this survey varied hardly at all from one done by the overtly liberal Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in 1996. In fact, if you compare the results of this survey to those of three others (not including Schlesinger's) analyzed by statisticians Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway in the far more interesting "Reassessing the Presidency" (Mises Institute, 2001), you'll see that nearly all surveys of "presidential greatness" turn out pretty darn similar to one another.
Vedder and Gallaway have a theory about this: the historians and other academics surveyed for things like this are dependent on government for their income, and thus have a clear bias in favor of presidents who increase the size, scope, and expense of state power. Presidents who don't flex the muscle of government and generally leave the American people alone, get ranked much lower. Despite (or these days because of?) the conservative leanings of the Federalist Society, the Wall Street Journal, and many of the contributors, the bias here seems to lean the same way.
It's too bad the folks who assembled this collection chose to focus on the presidential survey, because the forty-two essays on the individual presidents are the more interesting part of the book. Like the presidents themselves, some of these essays shine, some are disappointing, and quite a number are unremarkable. The decision to have Ken Starr write on Richard Nixon was a stroke of genius, while Peggy Noonan on JFK was up to the high lyrical standards of her Reagan biography. The two best essays, in my opinion, were a fascinating piece by Jeffrey K. Tulis arguing for Andrew Johnson as a far more significant transitional figure in the history of the presidency than he is usually given credit for being, and John O. McGinnis' portrait of Calvin Coolidge as perhaps (my words, not his) the most libertarian president we've ever had. Ari Hoogenboom's look at Rutherford B. Hayes reminded me that Hoogenboom's Hayes biography has been on my to-read list for an awful long time, and made me want to move it up that list somewhat.
On the down side, I don't think you need to be a fan of Thomas DiLorenzo (although I am) to be a little skeptical of the Christlike-colossus-bestriding-the-earth sort of language with which Jay Winik clothes the holy martyr, Abraham Lincoln, or the breezy ease with which he dismisses Lincoln's trampling of law and Constitution. Similarly disappointing was John McCain's discovery, in a recycled bit from his memoirs, that Theodore Roosevelt was a proto-John McCain (so much for my hope that he would report Mark Twain's conclusion, after meeting TR twice, that the man was "clearly insane").
Unsurprisingly -- it's typical for books about the presidency -- the descriptions of recent presidents are always more problematic than those of men shrouded in the mists of time. I thought Paul Johnson, for example, did a masterful job dissecting Bill Clinton (the third best essay in the book), but I can imagine it will give his still-active legion of supporters hives. Joshua Muravchik's essay on Jimmy Carter, the smallest and least of our ex-presidents, gives this sanctimonious failure the hiding he deserves.
The pages of the Wall Street Journal frequently feature some of the best opinion writing going today, and the quality of that writing is carried over into this book. It doesn't break much new ground, however. Disregard the "best and worst" survey numbers and just surf the essays.
Rating:
Summary: What Was Millard Fillmore Really Like?
Review: I enjoyed reading "Presidential Leadership."
There is a two to five page essay on each of our presidents. Each essay is written by a different author. All of this makes for meaty, well-written prose.
My favorite essay is Paul Johnson, the famous British historian on Bill Clinton. The incident Johnson relates in an Engish pub with Clinton going full steam is priceless.
I also learned much about our more obscure presidents such as Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, Benjamin Harrison, and John Tyler.
Although Franklin D. Roosevelt ranked third in the survey, he comes across as not having accomplished very much.
Peggy Noonan does a good job on JFK, describing his charm as well as the astounding amount of medication the man was ingesting.
Calvin Cooldige was more complicated than the image we have been given of him.
Altogether this book is an excellent read and history lesson all in one.
Rating:
Summary: A Fun read, but maybe a little too unbiased....
Review: I really enjoyed this book, it gave wonderfully brief yet consise essays on each President that didn't stress my attention span and offered enough intrigue that I imediately had to check out biographies on some of the lesser known President's.
There is a sense that the editors of the book, aside from the author's of each Presidential profile, want to make clear that their opinions are not necissarily those of the profilers or the Professors who were polled. Which is their right but, seems like kind of a weenie stance to take on a project like this. Why have anything to do with the book at all if you're afraid of opinion?
Anyhow, I would especially recommend this book to a Highschool student. It could, unfortunately, be the best lesson they recieve on this topic based on the lack of reliability of our current education system. And as I said before, this book won't tax anyone's attention span.
My biggest complaint, and this will make many of you out there angry, is my own opinion that FDR rated as the 3rd greatest President is a so completely WRONG! Even today when many of us are now aware of his willfull lack of awareness on communism and the soviet threat and his "New Deal" policies have created more problems than solved onwards to this very day, should have placed him closer to the average zone than the great zone. This is a man who mostly benefited by being President during a war and showing off his cheerleading skills. Sorry, but There is a very good reason why we have Teddy Roosevelt on Mount Rushmore and NOT FDR!
Rating:
Summary: Fair & Balanced
Review: I was delighted to see the results of the Wall Street Journal/Federalist Society survey on presidential leadership, originally announced in October 2000, published in book form. The survey is a fair and balanced (to borrow a phrase) appraisal of U.S. presidents, representing the opinions of 78 scholars, including 30 historians, 25 political scientists and 23 law professors. The survey sponsors were scrupulous about achieving ideological balance to avoid the "liberal" or "conservative" orientation that has marked previous surveys. It is interesting to see how viewpoints varied among the three groups of respondents. For example, while Washington ranked #1 overall, Lincoln edged him for top honors among both historians and political scientists. Meanwhile, Wilson (#11 overall) attained top 10 status among political scientists and historians, but managed to rank just 15th among law professors. Not surprising, modern presidents were the most controversial: Reagan (#8 overall) ranked as high as fifth among legal scholars but did not reach the top 10 among historians. Clinton (#24 overall) ranked as high as 20th among historians, but only 27th among political scientists and 28th among law professors. Besides the survey results, the book contains informative profiles of all 43 U.S. presidents. The write-ups are generally sympathetic, but not overly obsequious. I found the profiles of Grant and Hoover more positive than expected. Curiously, the Truman profile fails to mention the Korean War, even when making reference to several elements of Truman's Cold War containment strategy. All in all, "Presidential Leadership" is a worthy addition to any home library, certainly a valuable reference tool for anyone with school-age children and grandchildren.
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