President Donald Trump

President Donald Trump delivering an address from the Rose Garden at the White House on November 13.
[image_credit]REUTERS/Carlos Barria[/image_credit][image_caption]Former President Donald Trump[/image_caption]
C-Span conducts an occasional survey of presidential historians that includes a ranking of all former presidents according to 10 qualities that reflect on presidential leadership. The survey is conducted whenever there is a new president. The new president is, of course, not rated, but the latest survey, the first to include Donald Trump, is hot off the presses.

To cut to the chase, Trump was ranked the 41st greatest president, out of 44.

The three that came in lower than Trump were Franklin Pierce, 42; Andrew Johnson, 43; and James Buchanan, 44. (I’m proud to say that, as recently as last October in the middle of the Trump awfulness and without knowledge of these rankings, I made the case for Buchanan as the worst. Buchanan, Lincoln’s immediate predecessor, had four years starting in 1857 to do something to head off the Civil War.)

I think it will take a while for Trump to settle into his final resting place on the list, but I do not expect to live long enough to see a big upward revision in his ranking.

The top five in the latest presidential leadership rankings, if you’re curious, were, in order: Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower in fifth place. The other four have been near the top since the rankings started in 2000, but Ike has moved up nicely since he placed 9th in that first ranking 21 years ago.

If you are a fellow history nerd and want more, this link will give you access an overview and entry point.

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66 Comments

  1. Only 3 from the bottom? There’s still time to sink lower–unfortunately for our nation and the world.

  2. Well, if Eric doesn’t think he’ll live long enough, then I probably won’t, either, since I’m several years older than he is.

    I don’t expect to see Trump’s ranking improve significantly while I’m alive, either. I’ll go further and suggest that his ranking should be lower. My personal preference would be 45th. Pierce was essentially a do-nothing. Johnson, a racist and slave-owner himself, before the Civil War, worked to aid white supremacists and former Confederates after the Civil War, but he did not, at least, publicly join the Confederacy. Indeed, Buchanan *should* have done something to avert civil war during his time in office, and likely *could* have done something, but did not. In the end, I view him as a do-nothing, somewhat bewildered, perhaps politically paralyzed by the events unfolding around him. Trump, however, worked actively to subvert the United States and its government, violated numerous laws in order to enrich himself and his equally-corrupt family, helped to kill tens of thousands of Americans by downplaying (in public) the severity of COVID-19 while privately making sure that he and his inner circle treated it as the deadly disease it is, and actively sought (and accepted) help from a foreign enemy, Russia, in order to “win” his election. I’m not aware of any other President who knowingly engaged in treason, which makes Trump, at least in my book, the worst of the worst.

    2. Pierce has a law school named after him. Well, he did, then he didn’t, and now he does. He was a pretty bad president for a number of reasons, and a horrible person for a number of reasons (many of which overlap with the bad president reasons), but boy, oh, boy, there are a lot of white men (and a few white women) who defend re-naming it back to Franklin Pierce. It’s pretty amazing what revisionism will do to a former president’s reputation. I hope they wait till post-mortem before they manage to get to Pierce-level revisionism. But the GOP is going full-on Pope John Paul II on 45, so you might live to see his beatification in your lifetime.

  3. It’s interesting that Ike is rated so highly. He was an excellent administrator, but I would never call him a great visionary like FDR or Lincoln. Near great, I would have called him.

    Or maybe he represents a nostalgia for a certain type of Republicanism?

      1. I’d call it more of an upgrade than a visionary thing, but yes, it was a spectacular idea. The largest public works project in history.

        Interestingly (or not), Ike became interested in the highway system back in the 20s. He was part of a military exercise to see how well the Army could be sent across the country. Captain Eisenhower was appalled at the state of the highways.

      2. I agree with you Mr. Tester.

        The Interstate highway program, which showed Ike’s acquired wisdom stemming from his role as Allied Commander (in the desperate struggle moving troops and equipment) and witnessing the Autobahn’s advantage enabling rapid mobility for the Nazis.

        But most historians know Ike brought a mature and measured attitude toward war itself, as he famously spoke to journalists during the post-WWII, post-Korean Conflicts and the potential for military confrontation with the Soviet Union:

        [Wikipedia]
        “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
        This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.[1][5]”
        April 16, 1953

        America got a war horse to tell them war is for fools.
        That’s why so many people “like Ike” today. (IMO).

    3. Perhaps Ike is overrated. If so, which presidents that rank below him are underrated?

      1. Madison, for his handling of the Panic of 1817 and territorial acquisitions. Grant, whose rating seems to be increasing. He bears a resemblance to Reagan, in that he was not personally corrupt, but his administration was a gang of thieves.

        Polk and Wilson are rated below Eisenhower, but not far enough, in my opinion.

  4. Yeah, T**** gets a bad president vote, but lets not forget things like Iran Contra, or the false narrative that led us into Iraq, or Vietnam Is there a body county index, or perhaps a corrupt government index, just saying it would be curious how those numbers (votes) come out.

  5. Any ranking that lists one-termer Jimmy Carter as 26th is not credible. Also, it’s ironic that the openly racist LBJ is only one spot below the only black president.

    1. But unlike Trump, Carter at least understood how things worked. Trump was a so-called businessman who knew absolutely nothing about running a business.

        2. Yet he inherited millions and managed to file bankruptcy six times.

          A casino is a business built around the model of people giving you money with no firm expectation that they will receive anything in return. You have to be a pretty smart businessman to lose money doing that!

        3. Debt doesn’t count.
          Trump works very hard at concealing his actual financial worth.

        4. Actually, neither of us is worth billions.

          If Trump was actually worth billions, he could actually get loans in this country. I literally have better credit than Donald Trump. I suspect the real reason Trump keeps his tax returns secret is because he doesn’t want people to know how little money he really has.

          I started out with modest means, and have increased my net worth over the course of my adult life. Trump had a trust fund and an inheritance and squandered it. I know how to run a successful business. Donald Trump does not.

    2. The openly racist LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act. If it’s a choice between achievements like that and some nice words on Martin Luther King Day, I don’t think that’s much of a choice.

  6. If Trump had been more capable he would have been ranked lower. He would have done even more damage if he and his stooges had been competent.
    And like Trump, all were one term presidents.

    1. Excellent take. He was just fumbling. Imagine if he could make a plan the damage he would inflict.

  7. No one’s saying it, but who knows who Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, and James Buchanan are? No offense, but it looks like even our esteemed commentators have to Wiki them. What chance does someone off the street have? And what’s the criteria for this popularity contest? Like almost every poll on everything, this one’s ridiculous, made more so by the owlish and serious treatment it’s receiving.

    1. If this article bothers you so much, why did you take the time to read it, or, for that matter, to comment on it?

      There are many of us who are interested in American history, and enjoy a good discussion about whether Chester Arthur really deserves to be at #30. Feel free not to participate.

    2. Those of us who DIDN’T sleep through history class. Quit assuming others share your incapacity.

    3. Which opens the question: a century from now who will remember who Trump was?

      1. As Lazlo Toth, noted political commentator from the 70s pointed out to President Ford, when they make those plates with pictures of all the Presidents on them, he’ll be there.

      2. We are still in the Trump Era. Maybe more than when he was president. We are still dealing with major controversies which emerged with Trump, like the role of the press, election laws, the ability of the two major parties to control the electorate, the structure of our senate and judiciary, even how we define the history and purpose of the republic.

        This is why I have no problem with Mr. Black’s continuing focus on Trump. It ain’t over. As for your question, Trump may prove to be the most historically significant president ever.

        1. And Benedict Arnold.
          Those issues have been with us since before the founding of the Republic.
          Since they involve tradeoffs, they always will.

        2. Trump was and is an extremely weak man, and he weakened this country as president. But some people like that. They like failure. Who knows why.

        3. Yes, in the same way that Adolph Hitler was kind of important in Germany. Significance has nothing to do with quality, competence, or decency. I don’t doubt that our 45th president will be significant. After all, more than 600,000 Americans are dead in the wake of his presidency, our reputation and effectiveness around the world are shot, more Americans have been surgically disenfranchised since before the Civil Rights Act, and we’re arguably as close to a Civil War as we were when Pierce was president (yes, I know a little about Pierce and his underhanded dealings designed to expand slavery by overturning the Missouri Compromise, which directly led what were probably the first major skirmishes of what would eventually break out into the Civil War). And no, I’m not being hyperbolic. Yes. Significant.

    5. Obviously, history isn’t a strength and reading comprehension might also be a problem with you. The article refers to a poll of presidential historians who are capable of seeing things beyond a “popularity contest.” Um … I know who Pierce, Johnson, and Buchanan are without using Wiki. Not that hard to do if one doesn’t daydream his or her way through school.

    6. Yeah, I don’t know how you can compare presidents from centuries ago. I mean, we can certainly all agree that Trump was the dumbest president in recent times, that he barely understood policy, that he was bigoted and dishonest, and that his presidency was an utter failure. But hard to compare him with the bad presidents that served before modern media. Who knows if James Buchanan cheated on his wife with prostitutes.

      I guess they didn’t have game shows back then, so a game show host becoming president is a function of modern times.

  8. If Democrats lose Congress in 2022 and Biden becomes the lamest of lame ducks, it will be in no small part because so many Democrats are still so focused on their self-congratulatory hatred of Trump, to care about actual policy. I mean, who here even knows that Biden recently bombed Syria and Iraq? Does anyone here know that the vaunted Infrastructure plan is rumored to be financed mostly by regular taxpayers in the form of user fees and a gas tax hike, while also being a back-door privatization scheme?

    But then, if the whole point of Government now is to do the bidding of private equity and big corporate, then I suppose if Biden loses Congress, Biden will continue to work in bipartisan fashion with Republicans (who are otherwise apparently the end of Democracy as we know it.)

    1. “I mean, who here even knows that Biden recently bombed Syria and Iraq?”

      I suspect most Americans don’t care, or, if they do care, either support the bombing or don’t think it’s enough to make them stop supporting President Biden.

      “Does anyone here know that the vaunted Infrastructure plan is rumored to be financed mostly by regular taxpayers in the form of user fees and a gas tax hike, while also being a back-door privatization scheme?”

      Rumored? Or is that the truth? If it’s not the truth, isn’t it irresponsible to be spreading it around?

      1. Here is the New Republic on it:

        https://newrepublic.com/article/162815/bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-gift-wall-street-planets-expense

        “A two-page memo that’s emerged from bipartisan infrastructure talks gaining steam in the Senate pledges to pay for $579 billion of new spending with both user fees and a gas tax (options the Biden administration has come out against), as well as an array of private-public financing schemes (that it hasn’t). As David Dayen noted at The American Prospect, these financing options include tax-exempt private activity bonds—which allow governments essentially to borrow on behalf of a private company or nonprofit—and more inventive methods like “asset recycling,” which involves selling off existing public infrastructure to private companies to pay for new infrastructure. These schemes appear to save money in the short term but effectively move public assets into private hands, where they become cash cows for the companies that own them through higher rates.

        “Economist Daniela Gabor has written extensively on the dangers of what she calls the “Wall Street Consensus” of enlisting the state to de-risk private assets rather than having it invest directly in needed infrastructure. “The logic is a logic of austerity: that there are not enough resources to do public investment, therefore we should escort the private sector to give us the infrastructure we need,” she says. “What kind of low-carbon transition can you have when the state becomes a midwife to the private sector instead of an economic agent that allocates and organizes the distribution of resources?”

        1. Interesting, but at this stage, is it anything more than a proposal?

          I note that the article refers only to climate financing schemes and not infrastructure as a whole. I agree with you that plans like this are bad, but again, I suspect the public at large either doesn’t understand or care, or they have bought into the ridiculous notion that public-private partnerships are a good idea.

      2. “I mean, who here even knows that Biden recently bombed Syria and Iraq?”

        “I suspect most Americans don’t care, or, if they do care, either support the bombing or don’t think it’s enough to make them stop supporting President Biden.”

        That is why the President has become more like a Chief Executive/Emperor/King, insofar as Congress has ceded it’s Constitutional mandate to declare war and simply let the Executive, CIA and Military bomb etc as they please, and most Americans apparently have sold their soul to the empire?

        1. Call it what you like. A lot of Americans take pride in their disdain for politics, or with what is happening in Washington. That sentiment has predated both of us, and will likely continue long after we’re gone.

          1. A lot more are engaged, many for the first time. We’ve entered the Age of Politics.

            1. Which is why the cable news outlets that carry the most political news (CNN, Fox, MSNBC) have all seen dramatic drops in their viewership.

        2. Most Americans will not only “not care” about the recent bombing, they will be in favor of Biden bombing militia groups (not “Syria” and “Iraq”) that are seen by the military as targeting American soldiers.

          Those that do not see it this way are in a tiny, tiny pacifist minority in a militaristic country. (Hint…)

    2. Mr. Black’s on the right trail. Trump brought to the forefront social and political issues which might be bigger now than when he was president.

      1. If this is a sanitized way of stating that Trump brought white nationalism and white anxiety over non-whites voting in elections to the “forefront”, then I agree with you.

        I also agree with you that Trump will not be a forgotten faceless name from the past, ala Chester Arthur or Rutherford B Hayes, another Repub popular vote loser. Trumpolini and his anti-democratic movement (which has fully merged with “conservatism”) will prove to be a long-term disaster for our country. That will not favorably increase his ranking with historians…

        1. This is the Official Democrat Version. But what evidence is there this is true?

          There’s plenty of evidence against. Trump did well with blue collar voters. These are people who live and work in integrated environments. Are you saying they don’t like this? Are you saying they would prefer to live in segregated neighborhoods? (Which, incidentally, is the overwhelming case with white collar Democrats.) In addition, Trump made substantial, even historic gains with minority voters in 2020. They had a good look at him for four years, so you can’t say they didn’t know what they were doing. It would also be pretty insulting.

          Pointing at a handful of Confederate-flag-waving freaks and impugning the entire Trump electorate is getting old.

          1. Let’s reason about it a different way. Trump is lustful, gluttonous, greedy, slothful, wrathful, envious and prideful (yes, the seven deadly sins). You’d be hard pressed to identify anyone who embodies any one of these vices to the extent Trump does, let alone all seven. His defects of personhood are biblical.

            Trump had no public policies, advanced no public act for the benefit of the nation. There was no morning in his presidency when he rose and thought, “How can I advance the interest of the people today?” He never thought of a single one of his voters with anything other than contempt. His term was nothing more than the drama of Trump and his id, a Solipsism in One Act. Compensating for his scant capacities through bluster and obsequiousness, he embarrassed the U.S. across the globe and he was played by every authoritarian leader with whom he sat down, leaving the U.S. weaker and more vulnerable at each turn. He didn’t appoint a single person to a cabinet or other high position who was not corrupt, incompetent, or both. He simply doled out appointments as patronage without concern for the institutions and the social commons they represent, and left his appointees free to use their posts to mismanage, undermine mission and enrich themselves and their patrons, while he sat on his bed and watched Fox, or went golfing. In his acts and by his appointments, the norms and forms of social capital on which our nominally democratic society rests were battered every day, to the benefit of the elite and the coalescence of power in their hands, free from the mutual and collective claims of the people. In his every word and deed, he mocked every yeoman virtue that forms the mythology of our great nation.

            This all is objectively true. And so I pose to you: Name any rationale a Trump voter could offer for his or her vote. There is none, other than the cry of the inner nihilist, seeking catharsis in Trump’s every encouragement to violence, his every act of laying low all on which cooperation rests and society is built.

            1. None of this is “objectively true”. It’s all the Official Democrat Version. To be fair, there is also an Official Republican Version.

              This is my fault for bringing it up, and the reason I don’t engage on Trump with partisans of any stripe. One gets nowhere.

              1. Ah, yes, I forgot – there are no facts in the world.

                You certainly take liberties with your characterizations. I’m not a Democrat, and I’m not a partisan, except for the cause of trying to make and keep a decent society and a habitable planet.

          2. “Pointing at a handful of Confederate-flag-waving freaks and impugning the entire Trump electorate is getting old.”

            So sorry you’re not being sufficiently amused.

            Perhaps people would stop “impugning the entire Trump electorate” if any of them would stand up and disavow the confederate-flag-waving freaks. They could announce that they accept the results of the 2020 election. They could stop giving credence to the looniest conspiracy theories. Most importantly, they could support an investigation into January 6 or, failing that, not try to punish Republicans who do support a legitimate inquiry.

            Maybe it’s time to rid themselves of the freaks and show they have a legitimate commitment to democracy even when it doesn’t produce the results they like. It’s up to them.

            1. “… if any of them would stand up and disavow the confederate-flag-waving freaks.” They all do. It is clear you have never talked to any Trump voter.

              1. Do they? All of them?

                If they “all” disavow them, why do they still turn up? Are the confederate-flag waving freaks with MAGA hats and Trump sign not really Trump supporters?

                1. Open your eyes. Almost half of voting Minnesotans went for Trump. Not a Confederate flag in sight.

          3. What nonsense. If only this WERE the “Official Democrat[ic] Version”! Unfortunately the reality of the situation is far too explosive for many elected Dems to say such a thing.

            Yes, Trump “did well” with Blue collar voters–white ones, anyway. As I said, they (unfortunately) approve of his only real “policy”: expressing white grievance and fanning racial discord. And yes, Trump “made gains” with some (largely male) non-white voters; there are non-whites who are xenophobic and anti-immigrant as well. Attempts to paint all this anti-democratic anger as “America First” and “economic anxiety” have proven futile and are merely a rhetorical cover. God knows what you think your “integrated environments” argument is doing. I guess it’s there show that the “elites” are the real racists; that’s straight from Tucker, the Noise Machine’s replacement for Grand Bloviator Limbaugh.

            It would be interesting to see your attempt to give “the real” version of Trump and his voters, the one you think to be correct, instead of characterizing the efforts of others to explain the phenomenon and quibbling around the edges. Then we could all see how far your considered view diverges from the “Official Repub Version”….

  10. This is of course a very early take on Trumpolini by the historians. And they don’t appear to be revealing any criteria for their views.

    I’m confident that in the fullness of time, and particularly since he has brought about the final strategy of “conservatism”, which is brazen and unapologetic rule by (white) minority faction, as well as permanently crippling American democracy and its elections, Trump will sink below Pierce and A. Johnson in the minds of historians. And this does not even take into account his two(!) impeachments or his creation of a democratically-illegitimate “conservative” super-majority on the Supreme Court; a wholly partisan “court” which is itself poised to wreck majority rule democracy if the anti-democratic mechanisms of the sclerotic 18th Century constitution somehow fail the “conservative” minority faction. He has brought the constitution into disrepute.

    Give it time. Although it appears clear that Buchanan simply cannot be dislodged from the bottom spot. If Trump can’t do it, no one can!

  11. The fact that the two presidents book-ending Lincoln are rated at the very bottom shows that the Civil War is perhaps exercising too great an influence on our presidential historians. And Pierce is a Road-to-Civil-War dupe as well!

    It appears no one has the slightest doubt that Trump is (by far) the worst president of the Modern Era. Worse than Harding, worse than Coolidge, worse than Hoover, that great trio of pre-Depression Repub failures. That’s already the professional consensus, by trained experts who will be blithely dismissed as “elites” or somesuch…

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