Presidents Day

A recent Gallup poll indicates that 20% of the respondents believe Ronald Reagan was the greatest president - the largest share of the vote for any president. Clinton came in second at 15%. Lincoln was third at 14, FDR and JFK were at 12 each. GW Bush and George Washington (father of the country) each came in at 5% each.

The only thing this poll tells me is how generally ignorant of history most Americans are. Now I don't have the entire poll results in front of me, but I do wonder if Gallup tried to screen this poll in any way by asking each respondent what they knew from history of each president. They screen the electoral preference polls by asking about a person's voting habits, so it would make sense to screen a poll like this for a person's knowledge of history. My gut tells me they don't though.

Obviously, the older the president the less likely people generally are to know about him. Still, the true giants like Washington, Jefferson (who's not on the Gallup list!), and Lincoln should be pretty well known given their mythologies. Given that, for them all to come in behind both Reagan and Clinton seems almost absurd to me.

Are we that ignorant of history as a society, or is it that we are generally familiar with our basic history but seem to think that this current era is by far the greatest of times and we the greatest of Americans?

Either way, I think it's really sad.