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Survey of 154 scholars places 45th president behind even historically
calamitous chief executives linked to civil war
Martin Pengelly in Washington
Tue 20 Feb 2024 14.37 GMT
Last modified on Wed 21 Feb 2024 08.06 GMT
Donald Trump finished 45th and rock bottom of a list ranking US
presidents by greatness, trailing even historically calamitous chief
executives who failed to stop the civil war or botched its aftermath.
Trumps trial calendar becomes clearer as do his delay tactics
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Worse for the likely Republican nominee this year, his probable opponent,
Joe Biden, debuted at No 14.
Bidens most important achievements may be that he rescued the
presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential
leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessors
hands this fall, Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus, the political
scientists behind the survey, wrote in the Los Angeles Times.
Rottinghaus, of the University of Houston, and Vaughn, from Coastal
Carolina University, considered responses from 154 scholars, most
connected to the American Political Science Association.
The aim, the authors said, was to create a ranking of presidential
greatness that covered all presidents from George Washington to Joe
Biden, in succession to such lists compiled in 2015 and 2018.
To do this, we asked respondents to rate each president on a scale of 0-
100 for their overall greatness, with 0=failure, 50=average, and 100
=great. We then averaged the ratings for each president and ranked them
from highest average to lowest.
At the top of the chart, there was little change from previous surveys
the latter of which also saw Trump, then in office, placed last.
Abraham Lincoln, who won the civil war and ended slavery, was ranked
first, ahead of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who saw the US through the
Great Depression and the second world war. Next came George Washington,
the first president, who won independence from Britain, then Teddy
Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Harry Truman.
Barack Obama, the first Black president, to whom Biden was vice-president
between 2009 and 2017, was seventh, up nine places.
Considering drops for Andrew Jackson (ninth in 2015 to 21st now) and
Woodrow Wilson (10th to 15th), Rottinghaus and Vaughn noted the impact of
campaigns for racial justice.
Their reputations have consistently suffered in recent years as modern
politics lead scholars to assess their early 19th and 20th century
presidencies ever more harshly, especially their unacceptable treatment
of marginalised people, the authors wrote.
Jackson owned enslaved people and presided over the genocidal
displacement of Native Americans. Wilson oversaw victory in the first
world war and helped set up the League of Nations, but was an avowed
racist who segregated the federal workforce.
Other major movers included Ulysses S Grant (17th, up from 26th in 2015),
whose administration generated significant corruption but whose attempts
to enforce post-civil war Reconstruction in southern states, including
fighting the Ku Klux Klan, have helped fuel reconsideration.
Grant succeeded Andrew Johnson, Lincolns successor and the first
president to be impeached. Like Johnson, Lincolns predecessor, James
Buchanan, who failed to stop the slide to civil war, also sits higher
than Trump on Rottinghaus and Vaughns list.
Trump is a uniquely divisive figure, his legislative record slim, his
refusal to accept defeat by Biden leading to a deadly attack on Congress,
and his post-presidential career dogged by 91 criminal charges arising
from actions in office or on the campaign trail.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/20/presidents-ranking-trump-
biden-list