Rich-ard Ellis and Aaron Wildavsky, in Presidential Studies ~uarterl~ (Winter 1991), Center for the Study of the Presidency, 208 E. 75th St., New York, N.Y. 10021.

Historians have been playing the game of grading the presidents ever since 1948, when Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., asked a panel of colleagues to award them all A's (great), B's (near-great), and so on, down to the ignominious E's (failure). No stand- ards of evaluation were specified, how- ever, and the criteria of later surveys often f...