Ranking the Presidents, Part Four

I'm going to take a small break from ranking of chief executives, but only for long enough to explain about the ones I'm not going to rank. There are four, and possibly five, but I wonder if the list should be longer.

I've mentioned I think twice that we only become truly objective about our leaders when time has given us enough opportunity to see them in the right light. So it follows that we may be too close to the eras of our more recent Presidents to give them their full due or greater ire. Recent events, though part of history in the sense that they are in the past, are often too new to us for us to fully understand their ramifications. Time creates perspective.

As a result, I will not rank George W. Bush, nor Bill Clinton. Perhaps I won't even consider George H. W. Bush, and I've thought that maybe I should not go back as far as Carter of Ford. I worry that we're just too close to any of them to judge fairly their actions.

On another note, although the Times does rank them, I will not rank William Henry Harrison or James Garfield. They weren't in office long enough to properly evaluate, though I will mention their rankings as they show up on the list.

We resume the order, outside of a significant issue arising later today, on the morrow.