Life magazine understood the pulse of the nation, which brought it continuous criticism from intellectuals who thought that it reflected all too perfectly the middle thinking of middle America. In the early 20th century, the ranking of the best and worst presidents was the stuff of school assignments, as young people took on a problem that most historians of the time sidestepped. To many scholars, the application of empirical parameters to a study as nuanced and yet thunderous as presidential history was inappropriate. Using numbers to bring order out of chaos might fit college football rankings or lists of the best movies of all time, but dozens of complicated administrations couldn’t be nailed into a lineup so easily. In addition, hyperbole went against the grain of presidential historians, who felt that “best” and “worst” were strokes of a housepainter’s brush on a canvas better penned with the finest nib.
The modern way of thinking met the field of presidential history when Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. accepted an invitation from the editors of Life magazine in 1948 to conduct a ranking of the nation’s chief executives. Life was a popular magazine, respected for its clean writing and excellent photography, but it was a far cry from the type of publications with which Schlesinger was normally involved. A Harvard professor of history, he served as an adviser for The Journal of the Massachusetts Historical Society and was a founder of the highly literate New England Quarterly. Schlesinger’s own work tended to look for order within the tumble of events, as with his Tides of American Politics, published in the Yale Review, which traced alternating 16-year cycles of conservative and liberal leadership in America. When Life asked for a ranking, Schlesinger had the stature and the outlook to take a stab.
Life magazine understood the pulse of the nation, a fact that brought it continuous criticism from intellectuals who considered that it reflected all too perfectly the middle thinking of middle America. What Life perceived in the late 1940s, however, was that the common attitude about the federal government had changed. Possibly, the timing was significant. Franklin Roosevelt had changed the role of the president from a mere executive to a nearly daily presence in American homes, along with his active family. In both respects, FDR was not just the president. To many people, he was the federal government—omnipresent in ways that none of his predecessors had been. With Franklin Roosevelt, fascination with the presidency grew quickly. For better or for worse, Americans began to look at the history of their nation in terms of the presidents. Perhaps that was natural; the English, notably, had long looked at the life of their country in terms of the reign of one monarch or another, or even in terms of their prime ministers. The Chinese spoke in terms of dynasties rather than dates. Personification of more than 150 years of American history was apparently a fresh, yet time-tested, idea when Life scheduled its feature in 1948.