Evaluating Presidential Performance

Report Outline
1976 Effects of Recent Reappraisals
Past Views of the Presidential Role
Evaluation of Presidential Candidates
Special Focus

1976 Effects of Recent Reappraisals

Significance of Evaluation in This Election Year

As the gears of another presidential campaign begin to grind in earnest, American voters start to formulate their ideas as to what makes a person fit for the most powerful elective post in the world. In their final decision, the candidate's political views and positions on various issues will be important. Just as important, however, will be the voters' views as to how the candidate's performance in office is likely to compare with that of his predecessors.

Evaluations of presidential performance are rarely constant, and the closer the performance is to our own day the more likely it is that current evaluations will change. “Whoever, in writing modern history, shall follow truth too near at the heels, it may haply strike out all his teeth,” Sir Walter Raleigh warned in 1614. In writing about Presidents this is a special danger, for the office is surrounded by an aura of quasi-religious sentimentality and respect. When a President appears successful, he becomes an idol; when his efforts fail, or if he proves incapable of living up to the presidential image, he is vilified.

Trying to judge a President's performance is also difficult because, in the words of historian Bert Cochran, “The modern presidency is not primarily a machine for self-expression.…[A President] is part of an intricate governmental and extra-governmental machinery so that what he is and is not able to do is more dependent on circumstances, contingencies, and interactions than on personal exercises of will and assertions.” At the same time, the fact remains that who the President is at any given time can make a profound difference in the nation's life