Fascination with itemizing the ten best of this, the five worst of that cannot be denied.
While list making is by no means an historical enterprise in and of itself, some list making can provide an educational opportunity for further research or productive counterfactual reasoning. The ever popular listing of the best and worst American Presidents, however, has a significant disadvantage: the favorite, popular and obvious choices have already been made. How can one argue with Washington, Lincoln, Franklin D. and Theodore Roosevelt?
On the other hand, an exercise that evaluates losing presidential candidates confronts the historical question of why did they lose and the counterfactual question of what would it have meant if they had won.
Let's Play "Rate the Losers"
What if the Presidential searches for a successor to Aubrey Lucas had not turned out the way that they did?
Would those who were candidates and "lost" have made "good" presidents?
How would a "losing" candidate have made a better, worse or different president?
Or would it have mattered at all?
Players are invited to list the "losers" in succeeding Aubrey Lucas as the President of the University of Southern Mississippi and to discuss what, had they won, would have been different about their term/s and how, if at all, would they have changed the course of Southern Miss history?
Advanced Players are invited to construct their own charts that list and rank the best five and the worst five “losers.” However, all players must abide by rules of historical accuracy and their defenses or explanations must be in the form of reasonable historical arguments.
What, had they won, would have been different about the term/s of the “losers” in Southern Miss Presidential searches and how, if at all, might the “losers" have changed the course of Southern Miss history?
For "extra credit," contestants may prepare and present essays defending or debunking the following well-known quote:
"Great men are not chosen president, firstly because great men are rare in politics; secondly, because the method of choice does not bring them to the top; thirdly, because they are not, in quiet times, absolutely necessary." -- James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (1888)