My revised scores...

I was up kinda late last night (what with Star Trek and all the rest), but I had some time to do some revised numbers... submitted for your inspection:

Geo. Washington: 97.7 (A+)

John Adams: 81 (B-)

Thos. Jefferson: 91.6 (A-)

I'm pretty satisfied with Washington's grade... it reflects that no one is perfect, and that no one can be everything to the country, but reflects that his was the "standard" that all others needed to work towards.

I changed Jefferson's Domestic and Economic grades to reflect that, while not everything he did was popular (even within his own party), not all of it was bad or harmful to the nation. He still loses points for the Embargo Act, and his reliance on tariffs to maintain domestic prices abroad and his continuous fighting over the National Bank hurt his demostic agenda, but I can't see why I wouldn't have given him higher marks in his Cabinet appointments... he had an all-star crew, even if all of them didn't agree with his agenda.

NOTE: One thing we have to remember (because I forgot it... duh) was that the Vice President can't be considered part of the Cabinet appointments. The VP was the loser in the election process, not someone chosen by the main candidate as a running mate. Thus, I can't blame Jefferson for the retard that Burr was... big adjustment there, I can tell you.

With that said, let me give you my Madison score, too:

James Madison
1809 - 1817
*****************************

Topic.................... Grade
Foreign Policy........... 76 (C)
Domestic Policy........ 72 (C-)
Economic Policy........ 80 (C+)
Cabinet.................... 76 (C)
Legacy..................... 75 (C)

Final Grade: 75.8 (C)

Now, I was hard on Madison, admittedly... but with reason. He reversed his position on almost every aspect of the Presidency once he took office. He advocated fighting a very unpopular war, in which the US didn't win as much as the British simply quit fighting... with the only decisive action happening in New Orleans two weeks after the war was over. Jackson and Harrison were the only truly effective leaders in the war, and were relegated to marginal positions by Madison early on. Madison's most trusted generals were the ones that performed the worst. He fought tooth and nail to end the First National Bank, but quickly realized how difficult financing an unpopular war was without it, so he formed the Second National Bank as soon as he could. He utilized impressment and commandeered vessels in the New England and Great Lakes campaigns (which is one of the reasons we went to war with the British in the first place), too little measurable effect and with disastrous results on public support for the war.

I'm not saying that the War of 1812 shouldn't have been fought... American sovereignty needed to be asserted... but it wasn't very well thought out, at all in fact. Madison and the Cabinet seemed incapable of getting the State militias to accomplish anything useful, and the increase in the size of the US Army's regular corps to 35,000 was a tedious, slow and fight-filled process that set the efforts against the British back months. We gained almost nothing from the effort, outside of regaining control of territories lost during the fighting in the Louisiana territory (which became a State in 1812).

Thoughts? Was I again, too hard on this guy? I've read a lot about him, and he doesn't strike me as someone that looked to stay within the limits of government that he was so adamant in defining only 30 years previously. To me, he seems to define the very first "flip-flop" President in our history (not to take anything away from the Kerry/Bush campaign).