Bringing Color to Presidents Past

4 minute read

Armchair historians — and actual ones — have always enjoyed ranking American presidents, recasting Mount Rushmore, debating who was greatest of them all. There are the perennial favorites —Washington, Lincoln, FDR — and the eternally scorned: James Buchanan, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce. Then there are those who voters abused but history redeemed: Herbert Hoover was hung in effigy, his motorcades pelted with rotten fruit, as he left office in the midst of the depression in 1933; yet twenty years later, after his epic humanitarian missions leading post-war disaster relief, he ranked among the most admired men in in America. Harry Truman had a 22% approval rating his last year in office, yet is now exalted for his common sense and steady hand during the dangerous birth of the atomic age.

Among those least inclined to judge and rank the presidents are the presidents themselves. They know the deep and often damaging toll the job takes on all those who hold it, successful or not: the toll on health, on family, on any kind of normalcy. A few weeks after his reelection in 2004, I asked George W. Bush whether he thought more or less highly of his predecessors, now that he’d been in the job a while.

“Of my predecessors? Very interesting,” he replied, and then, without hesitation, “More highly of them all.”

Why? Because “I’ve got a much better appreciation of what they’ve been through.”

Bill Clinton says much the same. “There’s just a general sympathy,” Clinton told Michael Duffy and me, when we interviewed him for our book The Presidents Club, and as if to prove it, he launched into an astonishingly detailed exploration of Franklin Pierce’s presidency, the impact of his son’s tragic death, the challenge of dealing with his party’s inherently untenable coalition: “I’ve thought he had a really admirable life and if he’d had a chance to serve at a different time, he might’ve been different. And you know, I’ve always been fascinated by all this,” Clinton told us, and pointed to the long wall of presidential biographies and memoirs and collections of letters in his office. “I read a really interesting biography of Rutherford Hayes when I was president.”

The President’s Club: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity

One president who was especially reluctant to judge his brethren was John F. Kennedy. Once, when asked by Arthur Schlesinger Sr. to participate in a poll of historians that would rank past presidents, Kennedy’s reaction was ferocious: he threw the poll across the room.

“No one,” Kennedy told historian David Herbert Donald early in 1962, “has a right to grade a President — not even poor James Buchanan — who has not sat in his chair, examined the mail and information that came across his desk, and learned why he made decisions.”

On Presidents Day—and as we re-imagine, through Sanna Dullaway’s eye-opening colorizations, some of the figures who have occupied that august, lonely office — it is worth remembering what a democracy asks of the men and women who lead it. That does not mean we suspend judgment: voting is the ultimate ranking of presidential performance. But on a day we celebrate the presidency, we are celebrating service and sacrifice as much as success.

Nancy Gibbs is TIME’s managing editor. The Presidents Club, Gibbs’ latest book (co-authored with Washington Bureau Chief Michael Duffy), is available through Amazon.

Sanna Dullaway is a photo editor based in Sweden. TIME previously featured Dullaway’s colorizations of Abraham Lincoln.

Col. Theodore Roosevelt with a dead elephant at Meru, Kenya. The Siena Research Institute (SRI) at Siena College often releases complex expert rankings of all U.S. Presidents. In 2010, the SRI Survey Ranked Roosevelt the #2 President of All Time. Roosevelt took top marks in the survey's categories for 'Imagination,' 'Willingness to Take Risks', 'Court Appointments' and 'Intelligence.'Library of Congress
Col. Theodore Roosevelt with a dead elephant at Meru, Kenya.Original Image by Kermit Roosevelt / Library of Congress
c. 1908. Grover Cleveland, half-length portrait, seated at desk. Ranked #20 in SRI Survey of U.S. Presidents.Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / Original Image (c) The New York Herald Company / Library of Congress
c. 1908. Grover Cleveland, half-length portrait, seated at desk.Original Image (c) The New York Herald Company / Library of Congress
March 5, 1917. Woodrow Wilson and his wife Edith Bolling Wilson riding in the backseat of a carriage on their way to his second inauguration. Ranked #8 in SRI survey of U.S. Presidents.Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / Original Image National Photo Company Collection / Library of Congress
March 5, 1917. Woodrow Wilson and his wife Edith Bolling Wilson riding in the backseat of a carriage on their way to his second inauguration. Original Image National Photo Company Collection / Library of Congress
June 5, 1944. General Dwight D. Eisenhower gives the order of the day, "Full victory--nothing else" to paratroopers somewhere in England, just before they board their airplanes to participate in the first assault in the invasion of the continent of Europe. Ranked #10 in SRI survey of U.S. Presidents.Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / Original Image by Library of Congress
June 5, 1944. General Dwight D. Eisenhower gives the order of the day, "Full victory--nothing else" to paratroopers somewhere in England, just before they board their airplanes to participate in the first assault in the invasion of the continent of Europe.Original Image by Library of Congress
c. April 19, 1945. Harry Truman, half-length portrait, seated at desk, facing front, holding pencil. Ranked #9 in SRI survey of U.S. Presidents.Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / Original Image (c) Chase-Statler, Washington / Library of Congress
c. April 19, 1945. Harry Truman, half-length portrait, seated at desk, facing front, holding pencil. Original Image (c) Chase-Statler, Washington / Library of Congress
c. June 7, 1898. William McKinley, full length portrait, seated at desk, facing right. Ranked #21 in SRI survey of U.S. Presidents.Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / Original Image (c) Frances Benjamin Johnston / Library of Congress
c. June 7, 1898. William McKinley, full length portrait, seated at desk, facing right.Original Image (c) Frances Benjamin Johnston / Library of Congress
June 12, 1971. President Richard Nixon standing in a crowd of people at daughter Tricia Nixon's wedding at the White House. Ranked #30 in SRI survey of U.S. Presidents.Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / Original Image by Warren K. Leffler / Library of Congress
June 12, 1971. President Richard Nixon standing in a crowd of people at daughter Tricia Nixon's wedding at the White House. Original Image by Warren K. Leffler / Library of Congress
Nov. 8, 1863. Formal portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Ranked #3 in SRI survey of U.S. Presidents, Lincoln received highest marks in the 'Ability to Compromise' and 'Domestic Accomplishments' categories.Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / Original image by Alexander Gardner / Library of Congress
Abraham Lincoln, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing front. Date Created/Published: [photograph taken 1863 Nov. 8; printed later and c1900]. Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
Nov. 8, 1863. Formal portrait of Abraham Lincoln.Original image by Alexander Gardner / Library of Congress
September, 1955. Lyndon B. Johnson, half length portrait, left profile, looking out a window. Ranked #16 in SRI Survey of U.S. Presidents, Johnson is rated #1 for his 'Relationship with Congress' but falls in last place for his 'Foreign Policy Accomplishments.'Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / Original Image by Thomas J. O'Halloran / Library of Congress
September, 1955. Lyndon B. Johnson, half length portrait, left profile, looking out a window.Original Image by Thomas J. O'Halloran / Library of Congress
September 12, 1953. John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier on their wedding day. Ranked #11 in SRI Survey of American Presidents, Kennedy is ranked 4th in 'Communication', 6th in 'Ability to Compromise', 6th in 'Executive Appointments' and 7th in 'Imagination'.Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / Original Image by Toni Frissell / Library of Congress
September 12, 1953. John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier on their wedding day. Original Image by Toni Frissell / Library of Congress
March 4, 1933. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover in a convertible automobile on their way to the U.S. Capitol for Roosevelt's inauguration. FDR was ranked #1 on SRI's Survey of U.S. Presidents, holding the top spot in categories like 'Handling of the U.S. Economy,' 'Foreign Policy Accomplishments' and 'Party Leadership.'Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / Original Image by Library of Congress
March 4, 1933. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover in a convertible automobile on their way to the U.S. Capitol for Roosevelt's inauguration. Library of Congress
June 11 or 12, 1864. General Ulysses S. Grant at City Point. Ranked #26 in SRI Survey of American Presidents, Grant remained in the bottom five Presidents of the survey through the 1980s and 1990s before being bumped up the list.Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / Original Image by Library of Congress
June 11 or 12, 1864. General Ulysses S. Grant at City Point. Library of Congress

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