The Age View of the Presidents

George Washington

Andrew Jackson

Abraham Lincoln

Over the years there have been many presidential rating systems. The other day a new idea for one occurred to me. Just for fun I'll start with the ratings and let you see what you think of them and then reveal the methodology.

0 Andrew Johnson
0 Calvin Coolidge
0 Chester Arthur
0 George Bush
0 Gerald Ford
0 Harry Truman
0 Herbert Hoover
0 James Buchanan
0 James Garfield
0 James Madison
0 James Monroe
0 John Adams
0 John Quincy Adams
0 John Tyler
0 Lyndon Johnson
0 Martin Van Buren
0 Millard Fillmore
0 Rutherford Hayes
0 Theodore Roosevelt
0 Ulysses Grant
0 William Howard Taft

1 Benjamin Harrison
1 Donald Trump
1 James Polk
1 Jimmy Carter
1 William Henry Harrison
1 Zachary Taylor

2 Barack Obama
2 Bill Clinton
2 Dwight Eisenhower
2 Franklin Pierce
2 George W. Bush
2 Grover Cleveland
2 Richard Nixon
2 Woodrow Wilson

3 Andrew Jackson
3 George Washington
3 John Kennedy
3 Ronald Reagan
3 Warren Harding

4 William McKinley

5 Franklin Roosevelt

6 Abraham Lincoln

7 Thomas Jefferson

Apologies if your favorite president got a low rating! Now, how does the system work? Have you guessed? Do you see the pattern?

No? Well, here 'tis. Only a president not preceded by a president of his party can have a non-zero rating. Derive the rating from the number of terms the President served plus the number of terms that successors of the same party served.

Thus the rating shows coattails, the amount of influence the president had on his age, and, probably, the degree to which the president brought original thinking to the national discourse and made it stick.

It's not a perfect system, but does indicate some things, especially if you look at who is a 3 or higher. Some of the same names appear in the greatest presidents polls.

Of course it's a little unfair to successors, maybe especially someone like Theodore Roosevelt, but does highlight some people like McKinley, who, getting, two terms, probably deserves more attention than he usually gets.

The long shadow of Jefferson is also interesting. You could say, well, that's because the Federalists failed, but on the other hand, maybe Jefferson is a big part of the reason they did fail.

If we gave credit for continuing coat tails, Madison would be a 5, Grant a 4, Monroe a 3.

Also, any president who is a 3 or better probably deserves have an Age named after him. We could thus describe the ages of America as follows:

3 Age of Washington, from 1789
7 Age of Jefferson, from 1800
3 Age of Jackson, from 1828
5 Interregnum, from 1840 to 1860
6 Age of Lincoln, from 1860
3 Interregnum, from 1888 to 1896
4 Age of McKinley, from 1896
3 Age of Harding, from 1920
5 Age of Roosevelt, from 1932
3 Age of Kennedy, from 1960
3 Age of Reagan, from 1980
8 Interregnum, from 1988 to present

Hmm, it seems we're now in the longest interregnum (period of division) since the antebellum period....

Finally, relating all this to the game. If you record the names of the presidents if your matches, you can study the resulting chronology and see just which president was influential enough to achieve an Age? which had the largest Age and was most influential of all? Etc. Maybe your group would even agree to grant extra victory points for these accomplishments, or at least bragging rights.

^{Founding Fathers}