Historians love to argue over which president was the best. Every few years CSPAN releases a survey of presidential leadership in which they ask academics to rank the presidents in such qualities as public persuasion, crisis leadership, moral authority, and administrative skills.
But an arguably much more important quality was left off that list: a president’s fighting ability. How well could a president beat up another president? If there were, say, a tournament in which all 44 of them fought