Tuesday, December 06, 2005
The plural of anecdotes and the wisdom of historians
See, for example, this article by Richard Reeves, which is one of the current "most widely emailed" on Yahoo! News. Reeves describes the results of an unscientific survey of historians, allegedly "just polled," that sought their opinions about George W. Bush's rank among American presidents of old. (Actually, the subject poll was conducted more than a year and a half ago, but perhaps that is "just polled" in a historian's frame of reference.) The headline of Reeves article describing this 19-month old poll reads "Is George Bush the worst President -- ever?"
Let's see. The pollsters contacted around 1200 historians. Only 415 responded (perhaps the others were offended by the idea that historians might reach a conclusion about a presidency before it had even ended). Of those, 50 thought George W. Bush was the worst president ever. So, around 12% of the historians who chose to respond to the unscientific poll thought that Bush might be the worst American president. At Yahoo! News, this frail Reed apparently justifies a headline asking "Is George Bush the worst President -- ever?" nineteen months after the fact.
The plural of anecdotes is not data, however much Richard Reeves and his editors -- if he has any -- might wish that it were.
6 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Dec 06, 09:07:00 AM:
David McCullough describes the great historian Edward Gibbon, in 1775 while a Member of Parliament, confidently predicting King George's swift and easy victory over the rebellious colonies in America. Plus la change.
By 
Cassandra, at
Tue Dec 06, 12:22:00 PM:
I always like the anecdote John Lewis Gaddis tells about watching the 2nd Bush inaugural on TV and being astonished that NONE of the history department were interested in watching Bush's speech (which he said contained echoes of Wilson, Lincoln, and many other great Presidents in it). He upbraided them, saying "history is being made here, and you all have no interest?"
They didn't. Because they don't like Bush. His POV was that he was been critical of Bush too, but history was unfolding before him - how could he *not* be riveted?
I thought it an excellent point.
By TimDido, at
Tue Dec 06, 12:58:00 PM:
I wonder what an unscientific poll of historians would have resulted in during the darkest days of the Lincoln presidency?
By Gateway Pundit, at
Tue Dec 06, 01:01:00 PM:
I saw that too. Those historians need to demand their money back for their education. Since, when does 'being well thought of in Europe' come before freeing 50 million oppressed and massive economic gains through crisis?
Nuts.
By Cardinalpark, at
Tue Dec 06, 01:56:00 PM:
I would add further that upon Bush's ascendancy to office, the US was visited with both a profound economic crisis and an attack on the continental homeland more proximate and damaging than Pearl Harbor. Sort of like the Crash of '29 and Pearl Harbor coming at the same time, instead of 12 years apart. The economic crisis was the rather obvious result of a stock market bubble created during the prior administration which began its destructive burst in March 2000 (i.e. before Bush's election). The resulting and related recession bottomed during late 2001 and early 2002, during and after the attack on the homeland.
The Bush administration's response, whether you like it or not as a political matter, has resulted in an economic recovery and growth which dramatically mitigated the impact of the stock market debacle and recession -- we didn't even reach 6% unemployment in this cycle, and have recovered to 5%. Our economy is growing rapidly and producing jobs. And, furthermore, we haven't had another important act of war on our homeland since 9/11, something which perilously few would have predicted on 9/12/01.
Results are what matter folks. Not some clueless historian mouthing off. Freedom of speech means never having to say your sorry for saying completely stupid things which have nothing to do with facts and results.
By Final Historian, at
Wed Dec 07, 04:04:00 AM:
Eisenhower did quite poorly in a poll taken not long after his Presidency ended. However, as time passed, he steadily climed his way up. He is now in the upper 80 Percentile I think. You can't judge a President for at least 20 years after his term of office, as that is about how long it takes for the full effects of their term to have matured.
