... is likely to go down in history as a great president. Unfortunately, we are in the midst of a 40 year run of presidential mediocrity (reminiscent of the 20 years or so preceding the Civil War).

In part, this is because there has not been a major world crisis (i.e., widespread war or depression) during that time. It is conceivable that some of the presidents of the last 40 years or so would have risen to greatness, given an appropriate crisis (how would history rate Lincoln but for the Civil War??).

BTW, the failings which will keep Clinton from being considered a top rank president have nothing to do with his zipper. In a recent survey (by James Lindgren) of presidential scholars, he was ranked 24th out of 39 presidents rated (Garfield and WH Harrison were not rated because of the brevity of their terms). He was, however, rated the most controversial!!

And Reagan will neither get nor deserve much of the credit for the demise of communism ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!" notwithstanding), a bankrupt ideology which largely died of its own shortcomings. He did, however, get into the "near great" category of this particular survey (8th of 39). He was also 3rd on the "most controversial list". An earlier survey by Arthur Schesinger Jr. ranked Reagan in the mid-range or "average" group.

You can see the entire Lindgren survey at:

http://ragz-international.com/pres.pdf

----- jim o\-S