Perceptions of Presidential Greatness and the Flow of Evaluative Political Information: From the Elite to the Informed to the Masses

James W. Endersby University of Missouri

Michael J. Towle Mount St. Mary’s College

Since World War 11, numerous polls and surveys have been conducted in an attempt to evaluate the performance ofpast presidents. Their major concern has been to distinguish, in an historical perspective, “great” presidents from those who are ‘yailures. I ’ Ratings from the general public, however. rarely attempt to investigate which characteristics of the individuals in the Oval Ofice weigh in the minds of the evaluators. Researchers seldom investigate how the general public acquires information to make these assessments. We suggest that information is transmitted from an elite through an informed public to the general public through a “two-step jlow. ” Using data from surveys of historians and the general public conducted by C-SPAN for its “American Presidents” series, we analyze the

j low of information regarding the qualities of presidential leadership among elites, the informed public, and the interested public and suggest that a mediatedflow of opinions on presidential greatness from the elite public to the interestedpublic exists. The public at large indirectly acquires elite opinions when making evaluative political judgments, yet it does not acquire the same basis for those judgments.

During the past half century, it has become increasingly common to see “rankings” ofthe quality of past presidents, either from public opinion polls or surveys of scholars. lfelite opinion-in this case scholarly opinion-affected public opinion, the rankings of the two groups would correspond. A close examination of these rankings, however, reveals that scholars and the public do not agree fully. Since scholars are the ultimate source for the public’s information on presidential greatness-that is, the historical performance of presidents generally-the movement of opinion through society must occur by different or less direct means.

In 1999, C-SPAN conducted three different types of presidential ranking surveys. Because they effectively targeted different audiences, these surveys provide insight into the favored qualities of presidents that are inherent in the

384 Politics 6 Policy Vol.31 No.3

different rankings. Our study examines one generation’s perspective of many generations of presidents. Moreover, we find that evaluations of presidential performance are consistent with a model of the two-step flow of information. Elite perceptions, that is the perceptions of historians and political practitioners, are transferred to citizens who are informed about presidential history and then to the public at large. However, only general knowledge, not detailed information such as rankings of presidents on specific criteria, is transferred to the general public.

This study is divided into six sections. The first section considers presidential greatness and the measures that have preoccupied pollsters and academicians for several decades. The second section proposes a model of an information hierarchy. Information on presidential performance, like other beliefs and opinions, flows through an intermediate public on its way to the general public. The third section discusses data obtained through C-SPAN’S Internet surveys that were conducted for its broadcast series on the “American Presidents.” The fourth section reports the results of an examination of factors that help explain overall ratings of presidential performance. The fifth section evaluates the information hierarchy model, which confirms that elite opinion is filtered by beliefs ofan informed public. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results.

Public Perceptions of Presidential Greatness

Judging from survey responses, the Gallup poll and other mass surveys on presidential performance appear to be exercises in memory skills regarding the presidency rather than reasoned evaluations of executive performance. During each round of these polls, one can almost hear the jingling of coins and the rustling of currency as survey respondents search for the right answer to the question of which American president is the greatest. Some respondents remember a favorite president fiom their lifetime-Republicans recall Reagan or George W. Bush and Democrats recollect Carter or Clinton. Presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt tumble down popularity rankings as generations pass.

Yet many find something irresistible about rating and ranking the presidents. Scholars do it, journalists do it, and even the American public does it. In February2001, in celebration of President’s Day, the Gallup Poll released the results of a poll asking the American people who they believed was the greatest president. The poll, which has become an annual tradition, revealed that 18 percent of the American people rated Ronald Reagan the greatest, followed by John Kennedy at 16 percent, Abraham Lincoln at 14 percent, and Bill

Presidential Greatness 385

Clinton at nine percent (Lester 2001). Scholars, it seems, have a different view. Arthur M. Schlesinger (1 948

and 1962) conducted the most famous of the scholarly presidential rankings. In 1948, Life magazine published his results from a survey of 55 eminent historians, and in 1962 he directed a new survey for the New York Times Magazine. In 1996, his son, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., repeated the survey for the New York Zmes Magazine and expanded upon it in 1997 for Political Science Quarterly. The Schlesinger polls had a fairly simple method; they asked respondents to rate presidents in one ofthe following categories: great, near great, average, below average, or failure. The Schlesinger ( 1 997) polls reveal that scholars rank Lincoln, Washington, and Franklin Roosevelt as the best, usually followed-in various order-by Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, and Truman.

Many have emulated the Schlesinger polls, attempting to correct flaws they see with the methods. Thomas Bailey ( 1 966) criticized the methodology of the Schlesinger polls and created his own, asking respondents to rank presidents in 43 separate categories. Robert K. Murray and Tim H. Blessing ( 1 994) have also rated the presidents. First published in 1983, and updated in 1994, Murray and Blessing created a ranking from an exhaustive 19-page survey with 846 responses from historians. William J Ridings, Jr. and Stuart B. McIver (2000) based their rating on a survey of over 700 scholars, using these categories: leadership qualities, accomplishments and crisis managemenf political skill, appointments, and character and integrity. Journalist Steven Neal (1 982) published a ranking of presidents in the Chicago Tribune based on a survey of scholars. Yet another survey of scholars is part of an ambitious project, begun in 1980 by the Siena Research Institute. This project not only ranks the presidents in 20 categories, but also updates the ranking one year after the inauguration of a new president in order to determine the effects of the passage of time on the rankings. Douglas A. Lonnstrom and Thomas 0. Kelley I1 ( 1 997), reporting the Siena results, observe a remarkable stability in the ranking of presidents who have been out of office between 25 and 40 years, yet observe more mobility for presidents who have been out of ofice for less time. With the exception of William Henry Harrison, no president who has been out of office for more than 50 years moved more than four places in the polls published between 1982 and 1994, adjusting for the addition the new presidents (Lonnstrom and Kelley 1997).

Other scholars have created alternative forms of analysis in response to those who have used survey techniques. Alvin S. Felzenberg ( 1 997), believing that Ronald Reagan’s mediocre showing in Schlesinger’s poll was evidence of a liberal bias, asked for responses from ten conservative analysts who-

~~

386 6Z.ics 6 Policy Vol. 31 No. 3

not surprisingly-reported that Reagan should be rated higher. Richard Ellis and Aaron Wildavsky (1991) take issue with the entire survey method and suggest instead that the correct criterion for evaluating presidents is their ability to deal with the cultural dilemmas oftheir time. Asserting that American culture is a conflict of hierarchical, individualistic, and egalitarian cultures, they evaluate the ability of presidents Washington through Lincoln and declare Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln to be great. Based on historical evidence, Whicker and Moore (1 988) categorize presidents from Hoover to Reagan as salespeople and managers. Nathan Miller ( 1998), using negative rather than positive criteria, has developed a list of “America’s Ten Worst Presidents.” Fred Greenstein (2000) does not rank all presidents, yet he does rate Presidents Franklin Roosevelt through Bill Clinton by communication, organization, political skill, vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence.

A few scholars have attempted to create models to predict rankings of presidential greatness. Dean Keith Simonton ( 1 98 I , 1986, 1987, and 199 1) has written extensively on the subject. Using multivariate analysis and several hundred variables, Sirnonton has derived equations for predicting various published rankings of presidential greatness, including, in his 199 I publication, a six variable equation that “accounts for 82% of the variance in the Murray- Blessing ratings” (303); his variables are years in ofice, years of war, assassination, war hero, intelligence, and scandal. Patrick J. Kenney and Tom W. Rice (1988) used a “contextual index” to predict Neal’s ranking of presidents. Using eight variables--popular vote victory in excess of 55 percent, elected to office, elected to two terms or more, assassinated, served during war, healthy economy, legislation passed, and scandal-they explained 4 1 percent of the variance in the rankings. Simonton ( I 99 1) takes Kenny and Rice ( 1988) to task for ignoring his work while producing a less robust analysis.

The Information Hierarchy

Where do citizens lean about presidents and how to rate presidential leadership in a comparative context? Certainly a small set of the public has much information and strong opinions about the relative performance of presidents past and future. Political scientists and historians studying the presidency have knowledge and skills necessary to make comparative evaluations, yet the numbers of these elite information specialists are few. A broader public knows something about presidential history from reading and discussing politics past and present. This public can develop informed opinions on presidential performance but without the depth of knowledge available to elites. The general public, reasonably divided into interested and disinterested

~~ - Presidential Greatness 387

individuals, has less information at hand, relying on civics and history classes from high school and college, reports in the news media, and so forth to form the basis oftheir opinions. It would be somewhat surprising if members ofthe general public could name more than a dozen presidents, let alone evaluate their administrations, elections, or the political, economic, or international context of the times.

There is a long scholarly tradition of examining the transmission of opinions through society. Much of the early work fiom the “Columbia school” suggested that there was a two-step process of communication flow through society. Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet ( 1 948), interpreting evidence from surveys, found that information from the mass media was filtered by opinion leaders who in turn influenced the opinions of other citizens (see also Katz and Lazarfeld 1955). Subsequent research found the two-step hypothesis “largely corroborated and considerably refined” (Katz 1957). Other scholarship examines the nature of the opinion leaders (Katz and Lazarsfeld 1955; Marcus and Bauer 1964). Does opinion leadership vary from topic to topic, or is it “generalized” to many topics? For example, would someone seek out the counsel of the same person for both medical and legal opinions? Within the last 20 years, new lines of research about the transmission of opinions have revisited the concept of opinion leadership and the two-step flow (see Noelle-Neumann 1983 and 1984; and Weimann 1991). Brosius and Weimann (1 996) examine the role of “early recognizers” of new public issues as “mediators between the public and the media, thus to some extent reviving the notion of the two-step flow of communication” (577).

Information hierarchies have been suggested throughout scholarly literature, much of which pertains to public affairs, including studies of public opinion (Page and Shapiro 1992; Zaller 1992) and mass communication (McQuail 2000); however, a hierarchy for each and every discipline and type of knowledge is likely to exist, such as that found in the work of Lieber ( 1 972) regarding knowledge and appreciation of mathematics and scientific information. Opinions are influenced by elites, yet are typically filtered through intermediaries. How does information flow down a disciplinary or policy hierarchy? How are members of the general public socialized to accept certain political values, such as which presidents are admirable or great? Surveys of presidential leadership and greatness permit a preliminary investigation into the transmission ofpolitical information and values from elites to the public.

The hierarchy of information on presidential attributes can be divided into several stages or publics. At the top is the elitepublic, comprised of political scientists, historians, and other observers of presidential behavior. The individuals within this level produce original contributions on executive

388 Politics 6 Policy Vol.31 No.3

leadership. Although the elite public certainly has no monopoly on related knowledge, their abilities to compare and evaluate presidencies are high. Members of the elite public should be identifiable by scholars and would be able to respond to questions regarding the presidents, or more generally, their relevant area of knowledge.

The second level in the information hierarchy is the informedpublic. The informed public, similar to an issue public, consumes a significant amount of information and can make reasonable assessments and contrasts of presidential administrations. The informed public benefits from the knowledge base of the elite public and may have some independent sources of information. The informed public should also be willing to respond to survey questions on subject matter with some level of confidence.' Most members of the informed public, however, are not political practitioners or researchers, so their evaluations are less of an original appraisal than the elite public's.

Below the informed public is the general public, and the citizens who comprise this level can be further subdivided into two groups: the interested public and the disinterested public. The interestedpublic includes individuals who, although they have limited information, would express some interest in the subject matter. Members of the interested public might volunteer to complete a simple survey. Americans who read a presidential biography or other nonfiction work on executive politics would fit well into this category. The disinterested public probably comprises the majority of the population on most issues, expresses little interest in the subject matter, and would be unlikely to complete even a simple survey without prompting. Members of the disinterested public, when responding to a poll on presidential leadership, would be most likely to rely on simple information cues and shortcuts.

With regards to assessments of presidential performance, the top stage of the hierarchy, the elite public, should consist of many political scientists, historians, and political observers. The second stage, the informed public, might well consist of C-SPAN viewers willing to contribute a substantial amount of their time to rate presidential leadership? The interested public-occasional C-SPAN viewing adults and schoolchildren-should donate time to complete a short survey, but not a lengthy one that demands significant amounts of knowledge. Finally, the disinterested public would neither volunteer to complete any such survey nor watch or listen to public affairs television. Thus, this hypothetical hierarchy seems conducive to empirical testing.

What is not made clear by dividing citizens into an information hierarchy is whether knowledge and opinions flow through each level or whether elites control information used by individuals at all levels. Figure 1 depicts

~~

Presidential Greatness 389

A

Figure 1. Information Flow from Elites to the Interested Public

Informed Public

(Viewers and B Full Survey)

(Viewers and Quick Pick

Survey)

C ____--__-___------------------- (Historians.

and Political Scientists)

possible directions of information flows or socialization from elites to the general public, here limited to the interested public.One possibility is that information, norms, and values trickle down through a two-step process. First, elites persuade members ofthe informed public to adopt certain perspectives on presidential leadership. This step is labeled A in Figure 1. Second, members of the informed public communicate these views to the less-informed yet interested public. This second step is labeled B in Figure 1 . An alternative is that the interested public adopts the views of the elite public directly without intervention on the part ofthe informed public. This alternative involves the direct path, labeled C in Figure 1 . Of course, other possibilities exist as well. Evaluations of the interested public could be determined by a flow of information that is both indirect, as shown in paths A and B, and direct, as shown in path C. It is also possible that different publics produce independent evaluations and are not influenced by the judgments of more informed groups- the null hypothesis for an empirical test of A, B, and C respectively. However, the notion that political views and values are not the outputs o f a socialization process, the consequence of rejecting both direct and indirect influences, seems counterintuitive. Evaluations of presidential greatness by the interested public seem neither random nor based on original research.

390 Politics @ Policy Vol. 31 No. 3

Survey Data on Presidential Greatness

C-SPAN is a non-profit organization established in 1979 to provide public affairs programming, and in particular coverage of Congressional activities, for cable and satellite subscribers. Frantzich and Sullivan (1 996) provide useful background on the creation of C-SPAN. Since its creation, the organization has expanded to three video channels, radio, and Internet services. In order to maintain viewer interesf programmers at C-SPAN develop continuing series on special topics. Prompted by frequent references to Democracy in America within speeches of politicians and others, chairman Brian Lamb, for instance, initiated a series of segments on Alexis de Tocqueville and his 183 1-32 journey through the United States. When searching for another topic for continuing programming, C-SPAN’S Susan Swain suggested biographical vignettes on U.S. presidents. These special shows on the presidents would be integrated within regular programming.

The weekly series on “American Presidents” reviewed the history of the chief executive. For 41 weeks in 1999, segments focused on the life and administration of a single president, presented in chronological order. Historians, political scientists, and other experts appeared on C-SPAN giving their appraisals of the presidency and responding to viewer questions. The programs frequently encouraged viewers to think about their own evaluations, complete a survey on C-SPAN’S web site, and register their own assessments.

One extensive survey allowed respondents to rate the 4 1 presidents on ten scales of perceived leadership qualities3 Each attribute scale ranged from “ I ” not effective, to “10” very effective. A printed version was mailed to a predetermined list of historians. Fiftyeight completed the survey for a response rate of 67 percent. Meanwhile, C-SPAN viewers could complete an online version ofthe survey from the organization’s web site during a ten-day period in December 1999. The estimated time for completion of the survey was 45 minutes, and only complete responses were accepted. A total of 1,145 responses were re~eived.~ Historians and viewers rated presidents according to ten leadership qua1 ities: public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, visiodsetting agenda, pursuit of equal justice for all, and performance within the context of the times. We created a comprehensive additive rating by weighting each scale equally. Table 1 shows the overall ranks and average ratings for the presidents on both of these scales.

Viewers were also encouraged to complete a short “Quick Pick” survey also accessible from the C-SPAN web site, the results of which are also

Presidential Greatness 391

reported in Table 1. Respondents were merely asked to identify the “top ten” and “bottom five” presidents from a list. This short survey yielded over 4,500 respondents. Unfortunately, C-SPAN would not release the number of times that each president was selected as within the top ten or bottom five presidents. C-SPAN’S reports of the accumulated responses were limited to the overall top ten and the overall bottom five presidents. Thus, ratings ofthe “interested public” are classified within three groups-the top ten, ranked as “1” in Table 1; the bottom five, ranked as “3”; and the other, middle range of presidents, ranked as “2.”

Certainly the respondents to the Quick Pick survey are biased toward positive evaluations of the first several presidents. This seems consistent with the literature and model discussed previously. First, Americans can reasonably be considered socialized to evaluate more favorably the founding presidents and those at the helm during key crises. In addition, more contemporary presidents are viewed through contemporary partisan and ideological filters, so that evaluations of the general public have less consens~s .~

The inability to obtain interval estimates from Quick Pick survey results produces several difficulties with reliable measurement. For instance, the categorical order places both Franklin Roosevelt and James Buchanan within the same middle category. We feel confident that to the extent that the measurement error this introduces is large, the results should then underestimate the influence ofthe elite and informed publics on mass opinion. However, no identifiable bias in any particular direction seems likely. Iftotal numbers of those selecting a particular president within the top or bottom were available, the model would be more able to estimate the effects on the interested public. Although multinomial logistic regression should be a more appropriate model, the results conform to those obtained by OLS, and so this more easily interpretable model is used.

None of the three samples were selected randomly, and all were self- selected. The intent of this research, however, is not to measure the ratings of a random sample of the general public. Instead, the aim is to investigate the influence of elite and informed opinions on an interested public. A random sample of elite opinion or of the informed public is at best difficult, since no sampling frame of “informed” or “interested” publics is possible to identify. Thus, we consider the three surveys to be generally representative of the three groups we previously defined operationally.

These three samples-historians or the elite public, viewers or the informed public, and “Quick Pick” respondents or the interested public-allow three key questions to be addressed. First, what attributes are related to overall

Tab

le 1

. Sum

mar

y R

anki

ngs

of P

resi

dent

s: C

-SPA

N I

nter

net S

urve

y of

Pre

side

ntia

l Lea

ders

hip

Elite

(His

toria

ns)

Ran

k 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Pres

iden

t Li

ncol

n R

oose

velt,

F

Was

hing

ton

Roo

seve

lt, T

Tr

uman

W

ilson

Je

ffer

son

Ken

nedy

Ei

senh

ower

Jo

hnso

n, L

R

eaga

n Po

lk

Jack

son

Mon

roe

McK

inle

y A

dam

s, J

Cle

vela

nd

Mad

ison

Ada

ms,

JQ

Bus

h, G

HW

Ave

rage

R

atin

g 89

9.5

875.

6 84

1.6

810.

1 75

3 .O

722.

9 7 1

0.9

704.

4 69

9.1

654.

9 63

3.6

632.

3 63

1.8

601.

6 60

1.3

598.

2 57

6.4

566.

5 56

3.5

547.

5

Ran

k 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

9'

Info

rmed

(V

iew

ers)

In

tere

sted

(Q

uick

Pic

k)

Pres

iden

t Li

ncol

n W

ashi

ngto

n R

oose

velt,

T

Roo

seve

lt, F

Je

ffer

son

Rea

gan

Trum

an

Eise

nhow

er

Mon

roe

Mad

ison

A

dam

s, J

Ken

nedy

W

ilson

Ja

ckso

n A

dam

s, JQ

B

ush,

GH

W

Polk

M

cKin

ley

John

son,

L

Nix

on

Ave

rage

R

atin

g 85

5.9

840.

1 82

5.9

797.

6 79

3.3

77 1.

4 76

0.2

719.

9 70

6.2

690.

7 67

6.6

674.

8 67

2.4

662.

8 64

8.8

648.

0 63

9.6

596.

8 58

8.6

570.

8

Ran

k 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Pres

iden

t A

dam

s, J

Ada

ms,

JQ

Cle

vela

nd

Jeff

erso

n Li

ncol

n M

adis

on

Mon

roe

Roo

seve

lt, T

Tr

uman

W

ashi

ngto

n B

ucha

nan

Bus

h, G

HW

C

arte

r Cl

into

n C

oolid

ge

Eise

nhow

er

Ford

G

arfie

ld

Gra

nt

Hay

es

Rat

ing

+ + + + + + + + + + 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

Clin

ton

Car

ter

Ford

Ta

ft N

ixon

H

ayes

Co

olid

ge

Tayl

or

Gar

field

V

an B

uren

H

arris

on, B

A

rthur

G

rant

H

oove

r Fi

I lmor

e Ty

ler

Har

rison

,WH

H

ardi

ng

Pier

ce

John

son,

A

Buc

hana

n

538.

9 51

8.1

494.

7 49

0.5

477.

6 47

6.6

45 1 .

O 44

6.7

444.

2 42

9.2

425.

6 42

3 .O

402.

6 39

9.7

394.

7 36

9.4

328.

4 32

5.6

286.

1 27

9.5

258.

8

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

Cle

vela

nd

567.

5 Co

olid

ge

562.

4 Fo

rd

555.

9 Ta

ft 54

2.0

Tayl

or

5 17.

9 H

ayes

51

7.1

Car

ter

511.

1 G

arfie

ld

503.

2 G

rant

50

3.1

Van

Bur

en

500.

2 H

arris

on, B

49

1.4

Tyle

r 48

1.2

Hoo

ver

475.

5 A

rthur

47

1.9

Har

rison

, WH

46

1.1

Clin

ton

455.

1 Fi

1 lmor

e 43

6.7

John

son,

A

428.

5 Pi

erce

41

0.1

Har

ding

38

5.1

Buc

hana

n 36

6.2

2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3

Hoo

ver

Jack

son

John

son,

A

John

son,

L

Ken

nedy

M

cK i n

ley

Nix

on

Pier

ce

Polk

R

eaga

n R

oose

velt,

F

Tayl

or

Taft

Tyle

r V

an B

uren

W

ilson

A

rthu

r Fi

llmor

e H

ardi

ng

Har

rison

, B

Har

rison

,WH

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 - -

Not

e: P

resi

dent

s ar

e as

sess

ed b

y an

add

itive

rat

ing

from

ten

scal

es a

nd ra

nked

in o

rder

. For

the

“qui

ck p

ick”

sur

vey,

resp

onde

nts

sele

cted

the

“to

p te

n” a

nd “

botto

m f

ive”

pre

side

nts.

~ ~ ~ ~~~

394 Politics & Policy Vol. 31 No.3

assessments of presidential greatness? Second, how does information produced by the elite public gravitate to the informed public? Finally, how does information flow to the interested public-directly from opinions of the elite public or filtered through the informed public?

Components of Presidential Greatness

For the historian and viewer surveys, respondents evaluated each president on ten scales. Each scale contained points from one to ten. The overall respondent’s rating of a president was calculated by the sum of the ten equally weighted rating scales; a respondent did not provide an overall rating. Thus, the data are unusual because they offer perceptions of presidents from many vantage points, yet they do not provide an overall or summary assessment of presidential performance. Moreover, the data provided by C-SPAN are average ratings only, as requests for access to individual respondents’ scores were denied. The sample size available for analysis, then, is 4 I-the number of presidents-and the data are mean scores. The summary or overall ratings for each president are reported in Table 1.

To identify attributes related to overall assessments of presidential greatness, we must first identify a dependent variable other than a summation of the other ten variables6 The single scale that is most reasonable as a proxy for overall judgment is the measure for performance within the context of the President’s times. In fact, the correlation between the mean for performance within the context of the times and summary assessment is quite high: .990 for the elite public and .994 for the informed public. The relationship between these two measures appears linear, supporting the notion that era-specific evaluations constitute a reasonable measure of overall assessments. This performance in context variable serves as the dependent variable for models identifying characteristics among the other nine attribute scales that predict evaluations of presidential performance.

The results in Table 2 were produced by regressing the mean evaluation of presidential performance within the context of the times on the mean attributes of presidential leadership. Two models are constructed for both elite and informed publics. In the full model for each sample, the nine leadership qualities are used as independent variables. Five qualities can be identified as particularly significant for presidential performance. The reduced model for each sample incorporates only these five leadership attributes: crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, relations with Congress, and vision/setting an agenda.

Tabl

e 2.

Att

ribu

tes

Rel

ated

to

Pres

iden

tial

Lea

ders

hip

Var

iable

Publ

ic P

ersu

asio

n

Cris

is L

eade

rshi

p

Econ

omic

Man

agem

ent

Mor

al A

utho

rity

Inte

rnat

iona

l Rel

atio

ns

Adm

inis

trativ

e Sk

ills

Rel

atio

ns w

ith C

ongr

ess

Vis

iodS

ettin

g an

Age

nda

Purs

uit o

f Eq

ual J

ustic

e fo

r All

Inte

rcep

t

R2 I

Adj

uste

d R2

St

anda

rd E

rror

F

Elite

Pub

lic (H

isto

rians

) In

form

ed P

ublic

(Vie

wer

s)

Full

Mod

el

Red

uced

Mod

el

Full

Mod

el

Red

uced

Mod

el

.05 1

(.05

4)

.324

** (.0

72)

. I52*

(.072

) ,1

71 **

(.040

)

-.O 1

0 (-0

58)

,062

(.068

) .1

54**

(.05

5)

. I9 1 *

* (.0

60)

.012

(.031

) -5

.18*

(2.1

8)

-

.335** (-058)

.183

** (.

056)

.1

72**

(.036

) -

-

.185

** (.045)

.223

** (.0

50) -

-4.5

2* (1

.7 I)

.036

(.051

)

.322

** (.

053)

.203

** (.

061)

.1

79**

(.029

) -.0

67 (.

042)

.I

3 1 * (

.073

) ,0

70 (.0

44)

.246

** (.058)

,009 (.0

32)

-6.9

0** (

1 34)

-

.304

** (.0

42)

.229

** (.

057)

.184

** (.

023)

- -

. 1 1 1

** (.0

38)

.294

** (.0

44) -

-6.2

6**

(1.5

2)

.998

(.984

) .9

87(.9

85)

.994

(.992

) .9

93(.9

92)

2.48

2.

39

1.41

I .42

278.

3**

537.

9**

575.

7**

10 I4

.6**

Not

e: T

he d

epen

dent

var

iabl

e is

“per

form

ance

with

in c

onte

xt o

f tim

es.”

N

umbe

rs in

par

enth

eses

bes

ide

para

met

er es

timat

es a

re st

anda

rd e

rror

s. *p

<.IO

**p

<.O

l

396 Politics 6 Policy Vol. 31 No. 3

We considered other independent variables as well. These variables included measures for the President’s political party, the number of terms in office, the existence of a declared war, whether the presidency occurred during the first six administrations of the Republic, and so forth. None of these variables reached significance. We also experimented with several constructions ofthe reduced models using different stepwise selection methods. Three qualities are consistently among the best explanatory factors for performance ratings: crisis leadership, moral authority, and visionhetting an agenda. The other two qualities-economic management and relations with Congress-maintained significance throughout these different methods. However, public persuasion also seemed an important factor relating to historians’ evaluations, as did administrative skills for informed C-SPAN viewers. For the reduced model, we selected qualities that were both theoretically strong and consistently related to presidential performance in both samples.

The full and reduced models contribute nearly the same amount of explanatory power in predicting presidential “greatness.” The reduced model, then, seems better as it is more parsimonious. Naturally, multicollinearity is a problem in both models, so the standard errors are probably overestimated. Both publics seem to control for leadership in international relations and equal justice within the context of the times. All of the leadership attributes have strong simple, bivariate correlation with presidential performance, yet the subset of five variables in the reduced models seems most closely linked to overall evaluations. If rankings are reconstructed fiom the regression results, the order of presidents remains largely the same. N o president moves up or down more than three ranks with two exceptions: Richard Nixon, who drops from 25 to 29 among historians and from 20 to 25 among viewers, and Bill Clinton, who drops from 21 to 25 among historians and 36 to 39 among viewers. This illustrates that the reduced model offive leadership attributes does indeed have a strong relationship to overall ratings.

Information Flow and Mass Opinions

The average rating of leadership attributes does seem related to overall evaluations within elite and informed publics. As noted previously, overall rankings are similar. Whether specific evaluations of leadership attributes from elite opinion filter down to the interested public, however, is an open question. To consider the depth of information flow from elites to the informed public, a model is developed which regresses the overall evaluations by the

Presidential Greatness 397 ~~

Table 3. Informed Public Rating as a Function of Elite Perceptions

Variable

Public Persuasion Crisis Leadership Economic Management Moral Authority International Relations Administrative Skills Relations with Congress VisiodSetting an Agenda Pursuit of Equal Justice for All

Intercept

RZ I Adjusted RZ Standard Error F

Full Model

.OO8(.113)

. I 00 (. 1 50)

.049 (. 145) .267** (.084)

.274* (. 122)

.150(.115) .220* (.125)

-.163 (.141)

-.073 (.066)

l2.4** (4.56)

.9 19 (.8%) 5.19

39.2**

Reduced Model

-

27 1 * (. 133)

.276** (.082) -.013 (. 129)

-

.050 (. 104) ,198*(.113)

-

16.3** (3.93)

.898 (.884) 5.49

61.9**

Note: The dependent variable is “performance within context of times.” Numbers in parentheses beside parameter estimates are standard errors. *p<.lO **p<.OI

informed public, those C-SPAN viewers who completed the lengthy survey, and the elite public, made up of historians and other experts who completed the mail survey. Table 3 reports the results from the full and reduced models and compares the performance measure from the informed public sample to the leadership qualities from the elite sample.

Although the explanatory power of the models remains high, for instance, R2 is approximately .9 for both, few significant, independent relationships are present between the nine qualities related to presidential performance. In the fashion detected for each sample separately, three qualities+risis leadership, moral authority, and visionfsetting an agenda-are strongest for evaluations of performance. Nevertheless, elite perceptions of leadership seem to be related to perceptions of the informed public in only the most general terms. It is as if the informed public concurs with the opinions of elites regarding relative rankings of presidential performance yet is less consistent with ratings on particular qualities of leadership.

398 Politics 6 Policy Vol.31 No.3

This conclusion is consistent with comparisons of overall ratings from the elite and informed publics. A strong correlation, r = .935, exists between elite and informed publics with regard to the summary measures of presidential performance that employ all ten leadership qualities.’ These comparisons are an empirical test of path A in the model (see Figure 1). Elite opinion produces a strong influence on informed opinion, primarily on summary measures.

How does elite opinion filter down to the interested public, or how does the interested public get its information? If elites-that is, historians, political scientists, and other experts-alone define how presidential performance is evaluated, then the influences marked A and C represented in Figure 1 should be significant. In this case, whether B is significant is irrelevant. However, it seems absurd that the interested public, even the C-SPAN viewing public, consumes much of the scholarship of academic elites. In an indirect filtering process, elite opinion influences the informed public, so the informed public has consistent ratings regarding presidential leadership with elites. This seems to be the case given the evidence. If there is an indirect or two-step process, then A and B should be significant but C should be spurious.

Given the data available-the aggregate top ten and bottom five from the Quick Pick survey-the dependent variable, the ranking of the interested public, is admittedly a poor measure. However, this is the only measure currently available. We experimented with multinomial logistic regression models, and the results were consistent with those from OLS. Thus, we reported the estimates from OLS regression. We coded the dependent variable as “+I ” for the ten presidents rated as among the top ten, “-1” for those rated in the bottom five, and “0” otherwise.

Results from three models are reported in Table 4, although the most important of these is the third model. In each case, the dependent variable is the presidential performance rating of the interested public derived from the Quick Pick survey. The first model compares evaluations of the interested public to elite opinion. This relationship reaches statistical significance yet seems surprisingly weak, R2 = .34. The second model compares evaluations of the interested and the informed public. Again the results show statistical significance, and in this case the amount of variance explained is larger, R2 = .45.

The third comparison explains the interested public’s presidential rankings by both elite and informed evaluations. In this instance, only overall ratings from the informed public are statistically significant. When controlling for opinions of the informed public, elite opinion no longer shares a strong relationship with evaluations of the interested public. The predictive capability

Presidential Greatness 399

Table 4. Predictors of Rankings of the Interested Public

Variable

Overall rating, Elite Public Overall rating, Informed Public

Constant

R2 I Adjusted RZ Standard Error F

Elite Influence (C)

-1.03 1 ** (.269)

.340 (.323) ,493

20.1 **

Informed Public Influence (B)

.00302** (.00053)

1.668** (.323)

.453 (.439) .449

32.3**

-

Complete Influence ( C B )

-.00135 (.00121)

.00458** (.00150)

-1.857**(.364)

.470 (.442) .448

16.9**

Note: The dependent variable is + I for top ten, - 1 for bottom five, 0 for others. Numbers in parentheses beside parameter estimates are standard errors. **p < .o 1

ofthe aggregate model improves little on the simple model correlating interested and informed opinion, R2 = .47.

Regressing Quick Pick rankings on the ten leadership qualities provides no additional clues as to the formation ofthe interested public’s opinion. These rankings are basically unrelated to indicators of leadership quality from elite opinion and share little relationship to specific attributes from the informed public8 Once informed opinion is introduced to the model, the relationship between evaluations of elites and the interested public appear to be spurious.

Thus, in the context of Figure 1, we find support for influences marked A and B, but less support for C. A strong association exists between elite opinion and the informed public. Detailed information, however, is lost, so members of the informed public accept the opinions of the elite, yet only in general terms. The summary evaluations of the informed and interested publics are also strongly correlated. Elite opinion and the views ofthe interested public, however, do not correspond directly but are mediated by the informed public, supporting the model of atwo-step information flow.

400 Politics 43 Policy Vol.31 No. 3

Discussion

Evaluations of presidential performance, of greatness, in themselves may tell us less about presidential administrations than about democratic governance. They tell us that expectations of performance, unhindered by the reins of partisanship and ideology, encompass moral authority, guidance through crises, and vision. They teach of a consensus of shared values among academic elites and the interested public, even when assumptions behind those evaluations are unidentified or unidentifiable. Moreover, even the exercise itself teaches us something of contemporary democratic society. Ratings of presidential greatness are ubiquitous in the postwar era, and that alone informs us. In the late 188Os, an era of congressional government, would it have made sense to have conducted such a poll on presidential greatness?

This analysis sheds light on the two-step process by which opinions, beliefs, and values regarding the performance of presidents are acquired. Historians, political scientists, and other experts on the presidency have more information available to make objective, credible assessments of presidential performance. Through writings, lectures, and appearances, these experts communicate their evaluations to a larger public of informed citizens. This informed citizenry conducts little or no original primary research, yet accumulates a reasonable amount of information through secondary sources-that is, the written or spoken evaluations of elites. The informed public-which might reasonably include teachers, journalists, and opinion leaders-relays information to others who will listen. Those who listen constitute the interested public-readers of newspapers and biographies, and regular consumers of news and public affairs programming. This public, however, probably receives or remembers only brief scraps of information-a fact here, an anecdote there-yet is less able to explain why Lincoln or Washington were powefil presidents, except in the most general of terms. For members of a disinterested public, a remarkable administration is merely one they remember.

While the transmission of evaluative political information from elites to the interested public follows a two-step flow, the research presented here suggests that the process is imperfect. Detail is lost as political values, beliefs, and knowledge cascade down the information hierarchy. The opinions of the interested public and the elite public correspond yet only share basic beliefs. Information transmission goes through several stages and through several publics. While opinions appear to be transmitted from elites to the public at large, the bases for these opinions do not. When making evaluative judgments, the public at large seems to take their cues indirectly from the elite, but the two groups do not share the standards for those judgments.

Presidential Greatness 401

Notes

’ It may be important to distinguish between the confidence and depth of perceptions on one hand and the correctness of knowledge on the other. A consensus surrounds the belief that Abraham Lincoln is a “great” President, yet this remains a belief rather than a fact. That George Washington is the first President is a fact, yet other simple statements such as that Bill Clinton is the forty-first President remain subject to interpretation as we must concur on counting Grover Cleveland’s two separate administrations as one.

Regarding the high levels of political activity and public affairs knowledge among regular C-SPAN viewers, see Frantzich and Sullivan (1996,235-53).

Unlike many earlier polls that exclude sitting Presidents or those with short terms, such as William Henry Harrison and James Garfield, the C-SPAN surveys include all 4 1 presidents-presumably because this was consistent with the series’ premise to cover all presidential administrations. Ratings for all 4 1 presidents are likewise used in the subsequent analysis.

Participants were limited to one response from a computer address. For more information on the surveys and the series, see the related C-SPAN web site at www.americanpresidents.org.

We hypothesize without evidence that political scientists and historians are more objective and less partisan in their assessments of presidential leadership. Ideological bias in elite information, however, is a subject for a different analysis.

6Naturally, the average ratings for each of the ten attributes have substantial multicollinearity. For instance, the first dimension fiom a principal components analysis produces heavy weights from all ten scales. The smallest factor loadings are .793, representing the moral authority scale for the informed sample, and .714, the equality ofjustice scale for the elite sample-rather large weights. That first dimension explains 8 1 .O percent of the variance among historians’ mean evaluations and 84.2 percent among viewers’ mean evaluations, suggesting that these aggregate measures are all highly correlated. The second dimension covers 5.8 percent of the variation for both samples. Since our primary interest is to compare mean ratings between one public and another, this multicollinearity is troublesome but not vexing. Simple

402 Politice 43 Policy Vol. 31 No. 3

correlations among most of the leadership qualities are significantly different from zero yet not particularly strong.

'The correlation between the elite and informed publics on the variable for performance in the context ofthe times is similar, r = .937.

* The dummy variable indicating whether the president held one of the first six administrations was significant and strong, yet the results seemed unrelated to other objective indicators of the historical era.

Presidential Greatness 403

References

Bailey, Thomas A. 1966. Presidential Greatness: The Image and the Man porn George Washington to the Present. New York: Appleton-Century.

Brosius, Hans-Bernd, and Gabriel Weimann. 1996. “Who Sets the Agenda?: Agenda-Setting as a Two-step Flow.” Communication Research 23(5):

C-SPAN. 2000. “C-SPAN Survey of Presidential Leadership.” American Presidents.org. Accessed February 28, 2001. Online at www.american presidents.org/survey.

Ellis, Richard, and Aaron Wildavsky. 199 1. “‘Greatness’ Revisited: Evaluating the Performance of Early American Presidents in Terms of Cultural Dilemmas.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 2 1 ( I ) : 15-34.

Felzenberg, Alvin S. 1997. ‘‘There You Go Again.” Policy Review 82 (MarcWApril): 5 1-53.

Frantzich, Stephen, and John Sullivan. 1996. The C-SPAN Revolution. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.

Greenstein, Fred 1. 2000. The Presidential Diflerence: Leadership Style jhom Roosevelt to Clinton. New York: Martin Kessler.

Katz, Elihu. 1957. “The Two-step Flow of Communication: An Up-To-Date Report on an Hypothesis.’’ Public Opinion Quarterly 21( I ) : 61-78.

Katz, Elihu, and Paul F. Lazarsfeld. 1955. Personal Influence. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Kenney, Patrick J., and Tom W. Rice. 1988. “The Contextual Determinants of Presidential Greatness.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 18( 1 ):

Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet. 1948. The People S Choice. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce.

Lester, Will. 2001. “Poll: Reagan, Kennedy, Lincoln Get Nod as ‘Greatest Presidents.”’ Associated Press. February 19.

Lieber, Lillian R. 1972. The Education of T.C. Mits. Revised edition. New York: Norton.

Lonnstrorn, Douglas A., and Thomas 0. Kelly, 11. 1997. “Rating the Presidents: A Tracking Study.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 27(3): 59 1-98.

Marcus, Alan S., and Raymond A. Bauer. 1964. “Yes: There are Generalized Opinion Leaders.” Public Opinion Quarterly 28(4): 628-32.

McQuail, Denis. 2000. Mass Communication Theory. 4th edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

561-81.

161-69.

~~

404 Politics 45 Policy Vol. 31 No. 3

Miller, Nathan. 1998. Star Spangled Men: America k Ten Worst Presidents. New York: Scribner.

Murray, Robert K., and Tim H. Blessing. 1994. Greatness in the White House: Rating the Presidents. 2d edition. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Neal, Steven. 1982. “Our Best and Worst Presidents.” Chicago Tribune Magazine. January 10, 9-1 8.

Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth. 1983. Spiegel Dokumentation: Personlichkeitsstaarke. Hamburg, Germany: Spiegel Verlag. . 1984. The Spiral of Silence. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Page, Benjamin I., and Robert Y. Shapiro. 1992. The Rational Public: Fiftr Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Ridings, William J., Jr., and Stuart B. McIver. 2000. Rating the Presidents: A Ranking of US. Leaders from the Great and Honorable to the Dishonest and Incompetent. New York: Citadel Press.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. 1948. “Historians Rate U.S. Presidents.” Life- November 1,65-74. . 1962. “Our Presidents: A Rating by 75 Historians.” New York limes

Magazine. July 29, 12-43. Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1997. “Rating the Presidents: Washington to

Clinton.” Political Science Quarterly 1 12(2): 179-90. Simonton, Dean Keith. 1981. “Presidential Greatness and Performance:

Can We Predict Leadership in the White HouseYJournal of Personality

. 1986. “Presidential Greatness: The Historical Consensus and Its Psychological Significance.” Political Psychology 7(2): 259-83. . 1987. Why Presidents Succeed: A Political Psychology of

Leadership. New Haven, C T Yale University Press. . 199 1. “Predicting Presidential Greatness: An Alternative to the Kenney

and Rice Contextual Index.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 2 l(2):

Weimann, Gabriel. 199 1. “The Influentials: Back to the Concept of Opinion

Whicker, Marcia Lynn, and Raymond A. Moore. 1988. Elen Presidents

Zaller, John R. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.

49(3): 306-23.

3 0 1 -05.

Leaders?” Public Opinion Quarterly 55(2): 267-79.

are Great. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.