The presidential survey was set up like a basketball tournament with participants casting their votes online at www.allpresidents.org. Besides FDR, the final four included George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.
"President George W. Bush's legacy is already being weighed, and the Tournament of the Presidents succeeded in starting a national conversation about which presidents had had the most impact on the world," said Gleaves Whitney, director of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies. "We are pleased that so many people from around the nation visited our Grand Valley Web site."
The Tournament of the Presidents kicked off on Presidents' Day, February 20. Over the next five weeks, thousands visited the Web site, www.allpresidents.org, to cast their votes and participate in online discussions about 24 of the 42 men who have served in the White House. Voters engaged in lively discussion of the presidents and history with more than 500 messages posted on the tournament forum.
The 24 presidents included in the survey were picked based on three criteria: Every wartime president (19), everyone with a named foreign policy doctrine (11), and one more (Andrew Jackson), who got a spot after ranking high in three of the largest presidential polls already conducted.
Whitney is in the process of contacting more than 200 noted historians and authors to get their answers to the survey question including Richard Norton Smith, H.W. Brands, Kiron Skinner and Robert Caro.
For more information, contact the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at (616) 331-2770, or News and Information Services at (616) 331-2221.
Grand Valley State University attracts more than 22,000 students with high quality programs and state-of-the-art facilities. Grand Valley is the comprehensive regional university for the state's second largest metropolitan area and offers 69 undergraduate and 25 graduate degree programs. It has campuses in Allendale, Grand Rapids, and Holland and centers in Muskegon and Traverse City. The university is dedicated to individual student achievement, going beyond the traditional classroom experience, with research opportunities and business partnerships.
