"Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan are demanding an audit of the election results"

[hal]

Here are the results of the Presidential Historians Survey of presidents ranked from best to worst. I managed to paste a table of numbers fairly successfully. The first number is the total score (you can click on each name for a breakdown on the original page). The next number is this year's ranking, the next is the ranking from 2017, then 2009, then 2000. The big news is that Trump is not the worst!

https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey20...ge=overall Subject line stolen from Karen Tumulty on twitter

President		Score	2021	2017	2009	2000

----------------	-----	-----	-----	-----	-----

Abraham Lincoln		897	1	1	1	1

George Washington	851	2	2	2	3

Franklin D. Roosevelt	841	3	3	3	2

Theodore Roosevelt	785	4	4	4	4

Dwight D. Eisenhower	734	5	5	8	9

Harry S. Truman		713	6	6	5	5

Thomas Jefferson	704	7	7	7	7

John F. Kennedy		699	8	8	6	8

Ronald Reagan		681	9	9	10	11

Barack Obama		664	10	12	NA	NA

Lyndon B. Johnson	654	11	10	11	10

James Monroe		643	12	13	15	14

Woodrow Wilson		617	13	11	9	6

William McKinley	612	14	16	16	15

John Adams		609	15	19	17	16

James Madison		604	16	17	20	18

John Quincy Adams	603	17	21	19	19

James K. Polk		599	18	14	12	12

William J. Clinton	594	19	15	14	21

Ulysses S. Grant	590	20	22	23	33

George H. W. Bush	585	21	20	18	20

Andrew Jackson		568	22	18	13	13

William Howard Taft	543	23	24	24	24

Calvin Coolidge		535	24	26	26	27

Grover Cleveland	523	25	23	21	17

Jimmy Carter		506	26	27	25	22

James A. Garfield	506	27	29	28	29

Gerald R. Ford		498	28	25	22	23

George W. Bush		495	29	33	36	NA

Chester A. Arthur	472	30	35	32	32

Richard M. Nixon	464	31	28	27	26

Benjamin Harrison	462	32	30	30	31

Rutherford B. Hayes	456	33	31	33	25

Martin Van Buren	455	34	34	31	30

Zachary Taylor		449	35	32	29	28

Herbert Hoover		396	36	36	34	34

Warren G. Harding	388	37	40	38	38

Millard Fillmore	378	38	37	37	35

John Tyler		354	39	39	35	36

William Henry Harrison	354	40	38	39	37

Donald J. Trump		312	41	NA	NA	NA

Franklin Pierce		312	42	41	40	39

Andrew Johnson		230	43	42	41	40

James Buchanan		227	44	43	42	41

[Speedy]

Raygun bests Obama who bests LBJ? Give me a break. No, Trump is the worst, just nudging out Andrew Johnson.

[Rolando]

I think you have to rate post 1900 Presidents on both Domestic and Foreign scores.

LBJ would get high scores domestically, low Foreign.
I'd Give Obama High Domestic, middling Foreign
Trump would get worst on both levels!

[TheCaber]

hal wrote:
Here are the results of the Presidential Historians Survey of presidents ranked from best to worst. I managed to paste a table of numbers fairly successfully. The first number is the total score (you can click on each name for a breakdown on the original page). The next number is this year's ranking, the next is the ranking from 2017, then 2009, then 2000. The big news is that Trump is not the worst!

https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey20...ge=overall Subject line stolen from Karen Tumulty on twitter

President		Score	2021	2017	2009	2000

----------------	-----	-----	-----	-----	-----

Abraham Lincoln		897	1	1	1	1

George Washington	851	2	2	2	3

Franklin D. Roosevelt	841	3	3	3	2

Theodore Roosevelt	785	4	4	4	4

Dwight D. Eisenhower	734	5	5	8	9

Harry S. Truman		713	6	6	5	5

Thomas Jefferson	704	7	7	7	7

John F. Kennedy		699	8	8	6	8

Ronald Reagan		681	9	9	10	11

Barack Obama		664	10	12	NA	NA

Lyndon B. Johnson	654	11	10	11	10

James Monroe		643	12	13	15	14

Woodrow Wilson		617	13	11	9	6

William McKinley	612	14	16	16	15

John Adams		609	15	19	17	16

James Madison		604	16	17	20	18

John Quincy Adams	603	17	21	19	19

James K. Polk		599	18	14	12	12

William J. Clinton	594	19	15	14	21

Ulysses S. Grant	590	20	22	23	33

George H. W. Bush	585	21	20	18	20

Andrew Jackson		568	22	18	13	13

William Howard Taft	543	23	24	24	24

Calvin Coolidge		535	24	26	26	27

Grover Cleveland	523	25	23	21	17

Jimmy Carter		506	26	27	25	22

James A. Garfield	506	27	29	28	29

Gerald R. Ford		498	28	25	22	23

George W. Bush		495	29	33	36	NA

Chester A. Arthur	472	30	35	32	32

Richard M. Nixon	464	31	28	27	26

Benjamin Harrison	462	32	30	30	31

Rutherford B. Hayes	456	33	31	33	25

Martin Van Buren	455	34	34	31	30

Zachary Taylor		449	35	32	29	28

Herbert Hoover		396	36	36	34	34

Warren G. Harding	388	37	40	38	38

Millard Fillmore	378	38	37	37	35

John Tyler		354	39	39	35	36

William Henry Harrison	354	40	38	39	37

Donald J. Trump		312	41	NA	NA	NA

Franklin Pierce		312	42	41	40	39

Andrew Johnson		230	43	42	41	40

James Buchanan		227	44	43	42	41

Used a code box for equitable Tab treatment, then edited to adjust spacing, add headers.
HTH, enjoy.

[hal]

nice! I didn't know the forum could do that

[SteveG]

What is Reagan doing there?

[PeterB]

Independent of the numbers, there's still this:

[Ted King]

n 2000, C-SPAN's original team of academic advisers devised a survey in which participants used a 1 ("not effective") to 10 ("very effective") scale to rate each president on 10 qualities of presidential leadership: Public Persuasion, Crisis Leadership, Economic Management, Moral Authority, International Relations, Administrative Skills, Relations with Congress, Vision/Setting an Agenda, Pursued Equal Justice for All and Performance Within the Context of the Times. In 2009, 2017 and 2021, following a change in administrations, subsequent surveys have been conducted using these same 10 characteristics.

Any kind of survey like this is limited by the nature of the particular categories that are presented to evaluate each president. There are probably a large number of other such ways of creating categories for evaluating the presidents and each different set of categories is going to shade the overall rankings because of the nature of the different categories putting more or less emphasis on important but different things. For example, none of the categories above explicitly mentions democracy and how the president functioned to support it. I think a good case could be made that supporting democracy is one of the most important things a president can do.

I think it is insufficient to evaluate Trump without taking major account of how hard he tried and close he came to having a successful coup against our democracy. The fact is that he tried really hard (and is still trying) to do so. The preface of our Constitution begins with these words, "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union..." I believe that in terms of equality of people and democracy we have been perfecting our union. I think that makes Trump's actions that much more relatively egregious. We have come so far from the beginning (though still a long way to go) in perfecting our union and this mentally ill man came way too damn close to undoing it all.

In a way it seems kinda unserious to try to ferret out the order of the worst presidents we have had. I mean, yeah there's a few that clearly belong at the bottom somewhere, but to try to put a number on where they fall is probably not all that meaningful. It depends too much on what you want to focus on and how much you value certain characteristics.

[RgrF]

Not to mention that those of recent or even distant personal memory will be disproportionately represented on both ends of any table.

[S. Pupp]

“All the winning!”
“All the whining” is more like it, for the angry orangutan.
Trump should be above Buchanan, but below the rest.

What a loser.