Slightly late for President’s Day in America, apologies.
Saw this article about the presidents being rated. William Henry Harrison came in 41st.
The thing to know about him is he was president for a month and then he died. That was his impact. He died. He didn’t noticeably improve or worsen things (Based on his inaugural speech he might’ve been bad but he never got to act on it) because he had no time to because he died. Which consequently means he should be the null point we can base every other president on.
If the country was left even slightly better then you got it? Then you did a better job then Harrison. Was it left worse? Then you did worse. Did 40 presidents all make the country better and only 4 leave it worse? Tough to believe.
From the actual paper:
To do this, we asked respondents to rate each president on a scale of 0-100 for their overall greatness, with 0=failure, 50=average, and 100=great. We then averaged the ratings for each president and ranked them from highest average to lowest.
I would categorize “dead within a month” generally as a failure, which is where I think a lot of the scholars polled went with it.
Dead within a month isn’t a failure though. It isn’t anything. That’s my point. He didn’t do anything, so there’s nothing to judge him on.
That’s your subjective opinion on what constitutes failure. Maybe more people actually expect progress, and the status quo is not a good baseline?
Failure to me implies doing something and failing. If I call a plumber and he gets hit by a car on the way over I don’t give him a bad review because he didn’t change the status quo of my toilet. I don’t give him a review at all.
While I agree with your points in this particular comment, doesn’t that kind of negate the premise of your title? He shouldn’t really be judged at all because he didn’t really have time to be bad or good. If judgment can’t be passed on his merits, why would he be the metric we compare others to? It’s just a roundabout way of saying presidents should be judged whether they made things better or worse, which is kind of self evident.
The guy gave the longest inauguration speech ever and did it in poor weather while not wearing the proper clothing. That directly contributed to his dieing a month later. His ego essentially caused his downfall, it’s fair to rate him below the middle.
I think this is actually a common misconception about the presidency of WHH. He gave the longest speech, he (iirc) the oldest president at the time of his inauguration and that inaugural speech was ridiculously wrong, but there’s no actual evidence to say it’s what ultimately led to his death.
I could be wrong, but I believe that Harrison’s death, and the death of Taylor a few years later are to some extent linked; the water was bad.
It might not have been the sole cause, but being in a state of hypothermia for a prolonged period will absolutely weaken you and make you more susceptible to other issues.
That’s the thing according to the evidence we do have, he wasn’t showing any signs of illness in the run up to very noticeable falling ill about three weeks after entering the white house. Not saying that it wasn’t hyperthermia, just that it’s very unlikely to have been brought on by his actions during the inauguration.
Perhaps we simply had 40 presidents that did manage to do something positive for the country, and only a handful that actively harmed it? I’m no presidential scholar, at any rate.
Just to be clear: you’re talking about William Henry Harrison. We’ve had two presidents named Harrison; Benjamin Harrison, his grandson, was elected to the presidency half a century later and served a full term between Grover Cleveland’s two terms.
I would have thought between the article and me noting he died in a month that I was clear enough, but I’ll edit it to be more specific.
It’s an important distinction that a lot of people might not be aware of. Benjamin Harrison pushed legislation to ban corporate monopolies and collusion; as well as creating the concept of National Forests, which would eventually lead to the National Park service. He also tried (unfortunately unsuccessfully) to continue Lincoln’s legacy by passing some major civil rights legislation, including voting rights enforcement and federal education funding for Black Americans.
Maybe I’m biased by living only a couple miles from Benjamin Harrison’s house, but he was definitely a lot more consequential than his grandfather.
Maybe I’m biased by living only a couple miles from Benjamin Harrison’s house…
I’m in Oregon and when we were kids they absolutely drilled every single factoid about the Oregon trail into us, so I know the general feeling haha.
When I read that article, my assumption was that people rated all the presidents whose name they recognized and then they just filled in the rest. Your point is valid and I agree with the idea but it requires that people know the policies and impact of each president.The people surveyed were all presidential scholars. I’m willing to bet that they could name all of the presidents. Probably even in order.
I retract my uninformed comment. Thank you.
Approaching the discussion in good faith, as I feel you are trying to do far, it isn’t just that he was a Presidential void. A Presidential void would be one that has their term mainly dictated by outside political forces that led to neutral outcomes. There are a lot of Presidents that fit that description and have been judged based on that.
WHH is judged on three things. First, he probably wouldn’t have been a good President if he lived. Second, his death introduced a lot of instability in the government. Third, his Vice President doesn’t show up high in the rankings eit her. None of those issues lead to a better Presidential ranking.
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