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Fail to the Chiefs?: Only One Recent President ? Ronald Reagan ? Will Be Remembered As Great, Say Several of the Historians Surveyed By an Alvernia College Professor.

Posted on: Saturday, 6 May 2006, 12:00 CDT

By Mike Trask, Reading Eagle, Pa.

May 6--Dr. Tim H. Blessing of Alvernia College has dedicated his life to American history.

He knows it's nearly impossible -- especially in the academic world -- to find agreement on anything involving the influence and effectiveness of American presidents.

"There is no consensus among historians on most anything," Blessing said. "The lack of agreement among historians is staggering."

The Alvernia professor recently completed a survey asking 261 historians -- all college professors -- to answer 22 questions about how they perceive the most recent U.S. presidents.

He sent the survey to full-time historians active in the American Historical Association.

The Alvernia Presidential Performance Survey focused mainly on President Bush and former Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton. It also covered issues from their presidencies.

Blessing said he wants to break the data down further before reaching broad conclusions. That will include classifying respondents by age, gender and location.

While historians appeared to disagree on much, Blessing said more than a few shared at least one impression: Ronald Reagan is the only recent president who will go down in history as being great.

That's because the former actor from California ended the Cold War and had a lasting effect on the economic stability of the nation, Blessing said.

Reagan scored well on the survey in decisiveness, determination, party leadership and a positive impact on the country's morale.

Jimmy Carter was lauded for honesty and character, while respondents viewed Bill Clinton as being strongest on domestic policy.

"I would argue (that) of the last nine presidents, only Reagan has been successful," Blessing said. "I'm hard-pressed to think of much Clinton did that will be in the textbooks 35 years from now."

Blessing said the most interesting response in his survey had nothing to do with Reagan.

It involved the so-called red and blue states.

Nearly 90 percent of the survey respondents said that the social and cultural gap between states that voted strongly for Bush (red) and those that voted for Al Gore (blue) was significant, quite significant or extremely significant.

"Only 11 percent of historians say the red and blue state gap is insignificant," Blessing said. "They are alarmed by it.

"I don't know how resolvable they think this is."

Blessing said it takes months, even years, to compile data for his surveys. About 15 percent of the historians who received the survey respond to it, and getting enough responses to provide satisfying results can be a challenge.

But the 261 who answered his latest survey are enough to draw solid conclusions to questions about how historians view events of recent decades, Blessing said.

He admitted that the presidential survey may reflect some partisan bias. For example, the two military actions viewed as most justified were the attempted hostage rescue during the Iranian crisis in 1979 and 1980 and the use of U.S. military personnel in Bosnia in 1998.

Those actions were taken by Democratic presidents -- Carter (Iran) and Clinton (Bosnia).

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Copyright (c) 2006, Reading Eagle, Pa.

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Source: Reading Eagle

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