You are the Historian

The year is 2010 and you have been asked by the President of the United States – Barak Obama -  to join a panel of other historians to rank those five men who were President between 1976-2008: Jimmy Carter (1976-1980), Ronald Reagan (1980-1988), George H.W. Bush (1988-1992), Bill Clinton (1992-2000), and George W. Bush (2000-2008).

President Obama has provided five qualities of presidential leadership that will help you determine the appropriate ranking of these five presidents:

• Crisis leadership
• Economic management
• International relations
• Relations with Congress
• Pursued equal justice for all

Step #1:  Your job as an historian is work together with the other historians in your grou (for a total of five historians in each group) and to complete the following in Assignment #1:

• Consensually define each of the five qualities of presidential leadership. 
• Each historian will select the presidential quality they will be investigating for all five presidents.

Step #2: Your job as an historian is to work on your own to research one of the five presidential qualities tfor all five presidents. For instance, one of you might pick economic management as a quality of presidential leadership.  You would then find out how all five presidents did in terms of their economic management. To do so, you will complete the following in Assignment #2:

• Identify the quality you will be investigating.
• Conduct research on each of the five presidents to determine how well they met that presidential quality.
• Rank each of the presidents on the selected presidential leadership quality, using a one (“not effective”) to five (“very effective”) scale.
• Provide a bibliography of resources you used in your research.

Step #3:  Your job as an historian is to again work together with your five colleagues to compare and contrast your answers and collectively complete the following in Assignment #3:

1. Each historian must explain his/her ranking.
2. Each group must discuss the rankings and make any revisions necessary to keep all the historians in your group happy.
3. Each group of historical scholars must create a ranking of the five presidents based upon the scores of all five members of the group. 
4. Each group must select a spokesperson to present and defend their ranking to the class.

“You are the Historian” Teacher Instructions:

• Day One: 
• Create between 4-6 groups of historians.  Each group must have five historians and the number of groups is dependent on class size.
• Distribute You are the Historian to each student. 
• Explain Step #1 and give them time to complete Assignment #1 in their groups of five historians for the remainder of the period.
• Day Two:  Explain Step #2 and then take the students to the computer lab or library to complete individual work on Assignment #2.  They can finish it up as homework.
• Day Three: 
  • Explain Step #3. 
  • Have students complete Assignment #3 in their presidential groups.
  • Have each spokesperson present and defend their ranking to the class.
  • Take home the rankings for each group, average them out, and prepare a chart that shows the final rankings and scores for each of the four presidents.
• Day Four:
  • Display the chart and have a discussion about the final ranking.
  • Take them to C-SPAN’s “2009 Historians Presidential Leadership Survey” at http://legacy.c-span.org/PresidentialSurvey/default.aspx
  • Explain that 65 historians ranked all 42 presidents using the five presidential leadership qualities they examined as well as a few others. Show them the top ten presidents and the bottom ten presidents on the chart on the URL above.  Have them review the chart to see if any of the five presidents are included in either the top 10 or bottom ten (there is only one – Ronald Reagan in 10th place.)
  • Explain that these scholars used five other criteria: administrative skills, public persuasion, moral authority, vision/setting an agenda; and performance within context of the times.  Lead a discussion about what these might mean and why you decided to leave these qualities out of their rankings.
  • Take them to the final rankings where they can see how their five presidents faired in 2009.  URL at http://legacy.c-span.org/PresidentialSurvey/Overall-Ranking.aspx. Ask: Why might contemporary historians rank these presidents accordingly?  Why might Carter, Reagan, and Bush’s ranking remain somewhat consistent from the 2000 and 2009 rankings? 
  • If time permits and if students are interested, show the slide show that summarizes all findings at http://legacy.c-span.org/PresidentialSurvey/PresidentialSurvey_SlideShow/index.html
  • Lead a discussion about how and why the top 10 presidents and the bottom 10 presidents may have been ranked as they were.
  • Show them how these rankings have changed over time from 2000 to 2009.  Ask: Why do you think some presidential candidates were ranked differently over time – especially Bill Clinton who was ranked 21 in 2000 but moved to 15 by 2009; Ulysses S. Grant from 23 in 2000 to 23 in 2009?
  • Ask:  Do you think that George W. Bush’s low rating might change over time? Ask: How and why might such a change occur?

Assignment #1
Six Qualities of Presidential Leadership
(to be completed in your groups)

Directions: As a group of great 20th Century historians, your first job is to define each of the following five qualities of Presidential Leadership. To that end, complete Part I and Part II below.

Part I: In your own words and working as a team, define each quality.

• Crisis leadership

 

 

 

• Economic management

 

 

 

 

• International relations

 

 

 

• Relations with Congress

 

 

 

• Pursued equal justice for all

Part II: Each of you must pick one of the presidential qualities to research for each of the five presidents. Add your names to the list below.

• Crisis leadership _______________________________________________________________________________
• Economic management __________________________________________________________________________
• International relations ___________________________________________________________________________
• Relations with Congress _________________________________________________________________________
• Pursued equal justice for all ______________________________________________________________________

Historian’s Name: ________________________________________________

Directions: As one of the most important presidential scholars in the country, you have been asked to rate one of five presidential leadership qualities in our last five presidents: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. To complete this task, please complete the following three parts.

Part I – Describe and Defend the Presidential Leadership Quality.  As a historian, you must take two steps to explain your research.

• Step #1:  In 2-3 sentences, describe the presidential leadership quality that you have selected.

• Step #2:  Using your own academic language, describe the 2-3 examples of how each president met the presidential leadership quality that you examined.  If the president did not meet this quality, describe how and why in 2-3 sentences.  Provide a score for each president, on a scale of 1 (did not meet this quality) to 5 (met with quality with exceptional skill).

• President Carter

 

• President Reagan

• President George H.W. Bush

                                                     

• President Clinton

•   President George W. Bush    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                     

Part 2: Rank each of the presidents. Using a scale of 1 (did not meet this quality) to 5 (met with quality with exceptional skill), rank each of the five presidents on how well they met the presidential leadership quality that you examined.

_____  President Carter

_____  President Reagan

_____  President George H.W. Bush

_____  President Clinton

_____ President George W. Bush

Part 3:  Bibliography.  Provide a bibliography of all resources you consulted to complete your review of presidential leadership qualities.

Assignment #3
Final Group Ranking of the Presidents
(to be completed in your group)

Direction: Complete the following three parts below.

Part I: Each person in the grouip will explain your ranking.

Part II: Conduct a group discussion about the rankings and make any revisions necessary to keep all the historians in your group happy.

Part III: Create a final ranking of the five presidents based upon the scores of all five members of your group (See attachment)