Vanillas, keep in mind it's always the PUBLIC...
They do these sort of polls fairly frequently, which only makes sense. After all, the whole POINT of history is to allow time to pass and for people to look BACK on things in a more reflective manner and THEN decide how they feel about a person (or a thing) -- not to mention, the passage of time allows you to more accurately judge "how" certain things actually worked out.
Plus, these things always crack me up since the press always qualifies them as being among "Presidential historians" to give it some kind of validation. So, the FIRST question you always have to ask yourself...if you REALLY want to be fair about things...is "who" participated in any particular poll that you're citing and "what" are their actual backgrounds or professional history to make them qualified to even participate in the polling to begin with.
That said, back in January, there was a poll taken just like this of 52 prominent Presidential authors/historians. This was done in response to a recent public poll that had been taken, where the results were determined by the average "Joe Public" citizens of America. In THAT poll, it was fascinating to see that the results were skewed towards two things: people either voted for a President that they could remember something about from High School history class OR they voted based on their current political leanings.
As a result, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington came out as Numbers 1 and 2 to the average person (ie. people still feel that historically they were America's greatest presidents)... Ronald Reagan actually came in at Number 3, followed by FDR at 4...there were a few more after that...
...And then to illustrate what I said before about people voting based on their personal politics and not looking too far back in time (in other words, they vote what they can remember of recent history) -- yes, Bill Clinton AND George Bush BOTH made the top 10.
Why? Because even now the country is still SO amazingly split and SO amazingly polarized.
Which accounted for half the country saying (and voting) "I liked Clinton!" and the other half saying "I liked Bush!"
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