The first thing to note about this totally unscientific "survey," conducted by Thomas Meaney of the Columbia University History Department, is that it employs no systematic methodology to generate even the semblance of an unbiased "sample."
Indeed, looking over the report, I see no statement or disclaimer on the methodology. Shoot, these aren't even "historians" at all. It's a hodgepodge of non-fiction writers, historians, journalists, and political scientists. Included is the notorious
anti-Semitic Stephen Walt, of Harvard's JFK School of Government, and author of "The Israel Lobby" infamy.
All efforts to rank presidents using "experts" will be
horribly prone to bias, but New York Magazine's attempt is even more silly than usual.
In any case, here's the write-up at Newsmax, "
Historians on Obama Legacy: 'Polarizing,' Not 'Transformative'."
Then, at New York Magazine, "
53 Historians Weigh In on Barack Obama’s Legacy." (At
Memeorandum.)
And also the partisan reactions, from Jonathan Chait, "
History Will Be Very Kind," and Christopher Caldwell, "
History Will Eviscerate Him."
Obama may not be history's worst president. It's too soon to tell, in any case. Perhaps he hasn't hit bottom yet. But it's highly doubtful he'll manage ultimately to escape the ignominy of "average" to "below average" categories. If Obama somehow manages to get credit for putting a floor in the collapsing economy in 2008, despite six years of less-than-middling economic growth, then it's likely he'll be saved from the final indignity of the "failed" category. But we'll see. We'll see.
Here's the "sample" of "historians," FWIW:
Jeffrey Alexander, Yale University, co-author of Obama Power (2014)
Joyce Appleby, UCLA, author of The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (2011)
Andrew Bacevich, Boston University, author of The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (2005)
Edward Baptist, Cornell University, author of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (2014)
Kai Bird, author of The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (2014)
Robin Blackburn, author of The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation, and Human Rights (2011)
Gordon Chang, Stanford University, author of Chinese American Voices (2006)
Jonathan Darman, author of Landslide: LBJ and Reagan at the Dawn of a New America (2014)
Mike Davis, UC Riverside, author of City of Quartz (1990) and Planet of Slums (2006)
Mary Dudziak, Emory University School of Law, author of Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (2011)
Joseph Ellis, author of Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence (2013)
Crystal Feimster, Yale University, author of Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Southern Rape and Lynching (2009)
Beverly Gage, Yale University, author of The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror (2009)
Samuel Goldman, the George Washington University, writer for The American Conservative
Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard Law School, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (2008)
Aram Goudsouzian, University of Memphis, author of Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear (2014)
Alexander Gourevitch, Brown University, author of From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth (2014)
David Greenberg, Rutgers University, author of NixonÕs Shadow: The History of an Image (2003)
David Hollinger, UC Berkeley, author of After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in Modern American History (2013)
Thomas Holt, University of Chicago, author of Children of Fire: A History of African Americans (2010)
Paul Kahn, Yale Law School, author of Putting Liberalism in Its Place (2004)
David Kennedy, Stanford University, author of Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999)
Charles Kesler, Claremont McKenna College, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Future of Liberalism (2012)
Stephen Kinzer, author of The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War (2013)
James Kloppenberg, Harvard University, author of Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition (2011)
Kevin Kruse, Princeton University, author of White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (2005)
Matthew Lassiter, University of Michigan, author of The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (2006)
Jackson Lears, Rutgers University, editor of Raritan, author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America 1877-1920 (2009)
Jill Lepore, Harvard University, author of The Story of America: Essays on Origins (2012)
Mark Lilla, Columbia University, author of The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (2007)
James Livingston, Rutgers University, author of Against Thrift: Why Consumer Culture Is Good for the Economy, the Environment, and Your Soul (2011)
James Mann, author of The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power (2012)
Alfred McCoy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation (2012)
Lisa McGirr, Harvard University, author of Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (2002)
John McWhorter, Columbia University, author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (2000)
Samuel Moyn, Harvard Law School, author of The Lost Utopia: Human Rights in History (2010)
Khalil Gilbran Muhummad, director of the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern America (2011)
Nell Painter, Princeton University, author of The History of White People (2010)
Miriam Pawel, author of The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography (2014)
Kimberly Phillips-Fein, NYU, author of Invisible Hands: The BusinessmenÕs Crusade Against the New Deal (2009)
Thomas Powers, author of The Killing of Crazy Horse (2011)
Daniel Rodgers, Princeton University, author of The Age of Fracture (2011)
Jeffrey Rosen, The George Washington University Law School, author of The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America (2000)
Stephen Sestanovich, Council on Foreign Relations, author of Maximalist: America in the World From Truman to Obama (2014)
Theda Skocpol, Harvard University, co-author of The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (2012)
Nikhil Singh, NYU, author of Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (2005)
Harry Stout, Yale University, author of Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (2007)
Thomas Sugrue, University of Pennsylvania, author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (reissued 2014)
Jeffrey Tulis, University of Texas, author of The Rhetorical Presidency (1987)
Stephen Walt, Harvard University, co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007)
Mason Williams, Williams College, author of City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York (2013)
Robert Williams, University of Arizona College of Law, author of The American Indian in Western Legal Thought (1990)
Gavin Wright, Stanford University, author of Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South (2013)
