The Editors kicks off the week with an early recording session, and among the panelists’ discussion topics is a new ranking of U.S. presidents. There’s a fair amount of skepticism from our panelists about this ranking, and not just concerning how the presidents are listed.

“What bothers me about these rankings,” said Charlie, “. . . is that the people who put them together demand to be taken seriously. I mean that quite literally. One of the biggest changes in my worldview came when I recognized that not only were a huge number of prominent academics distinctly mediocre, but that they were also political hacks.

“This is not a list of the greatest presidents in the sense that the average man on the street would conceive of it. This is a propaganda exercise.”

Noah agreed, and pointed to the political aspect of the survey. “This survey reminds me of a Thomson Reuters Foundation study that was conducted at the height of the MeToo movement.” Women’s issues experts “were surveyed about the countries that were worst in the world for women, and the United States was right at the top of that list alongside places like Syria and Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Nobody believes that.”

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