The Contemporary Presidency Explaining Presidential Greatness: The Roles of Peace and Prosperity?

Research on presidential greatness has a long history in the study of the American presidency. A prominent aspect of this literature is the study of presidential ratings generated from surveys of both experts and average Americans. A considerable body of research suggests that a relatively small number of factors-such as time in office, intellectual brilliance, and whether a president was assassinated-explain a great deal of the variation in the ratings. However, this list of variables includes no indicators of policy performance. We propose two such measures-one focusing on economic outcomes and one focusing on the outcomes of military conflict-and provide rationales for the hypothesized relationships between these measures of policy performance and presidential ratings. We find evidence of a substantial relationship between economic policy success and presidential ratings. However, there is no evidence of a relationship between foreign policy success and presidential ratings.