In
political science,
historical rankings of United States Presidents are surveys conducted in order to construct rankings of the success of individuals who have served as
President of the United States. Ranking systems are usually based on surveys of academic
historians and
political scientists or popular opinion. The rankings focus on the presidential achievements, leadership qualities, failures and faults (such as corruption).
General findings
George Washington,
Abraham Lincoln, and
Franklin D. Roosevelt are consistently ranked at the top of the lists. Often ranked just below those three are Presidents
Thomas Jefferson and
Theodore Roosevelt. The remaining top 10 ranks are often rounded out by
James Madison,
Andrew Jackson,
James K. Polk,
Woodrow Wilson, and
Harry S. Truman. The bottom ranks often include
Millard Fillmore,
Franklin Pierce,
James Buchanan,
Andrew Johnson, and
Warren G. Harding.
William Henry Harrison and
James A. Garfield died shortly after entering office, and are sometimes not included in the rankings as a result.
Political scientist
Walter Dean Burnham noted the "dichotomous or schizoid profiles" of presidents, which can make some hard to classify. Historian
Alan Brinkley said, "There are presidents who could be considered both failures and great or near great (for example,
Nixon)". James MacGregor Burns observed of Nixon, "How can one evaluate such an idiosyncratic president, so brilliant and so morally lacking?" Indeed, Richard Nixon scores very poorly in opinion polls but usually ranks better among historians. By contrast,
Ronald Reagan and
John F. Kennedy tend to score highly in popular opinion polls, but rank highly less often in polls of historians because their negative qualities have been largely forgotten, for Reagan because he was seen as helping end the
Cold War and for Kennedy because of sympathy after his
assassination. But most often the reason presidents are hard to classify is either because their foreign policy success or failure stands in contradiction to their domestic policy achievements, such as
Lyndon B. Johnson's failure in the
Vietnam War compared to the success of his
Great Society programs, or their personal behavior contrasts with their professional success, such as Nixon's
Watergate and
Bill Clinton's
Lewinsky scandal.
Notable scholar surveys
Andrew Johnson routinely receives poor marks because of his handling of
Reconstruction.
The 1948 poll was conducted by historian
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. of
Harvard University. The 1962 survey was also conducted by Schlesinger, who surveyed 75 historians; the results of this survey are given in the book
The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents by William A. Degregorio. Schlesinger's son
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. conducted another poll in 1996, not currently on the chart below.
The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents also gives the results of the 1982 survey, a poll of 49 historians conducted by the
Chicago Tribune. A notable difference from the 1962 Schlesinger poll was the ranking of President
Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was ranked #22 in 1962, but was ranked #9 in the 1982 survey.
The Siena Research Institute of
Siena College conducted surveys in 1982, 1990, 1994, and 2002. The 1994 survey placed only two Presidents,
Franklin Roosevelt and
Abraham Lincoln, above 80 points, and placed two Presidents,
Andrew Johnson and
Warren G. Harding, below 50 points.
The 1996 column shows the results from a poll conducted from 1989 to 1996 by William J. Ridings, Jr. and Stuart B. McIver, and published in the book
Rating the Presidents: A Ranking of U.S. leaders, from the Great and Honorable to the Dishonest and Incompetent. More than 719 people took part in the poll, primarily academic historians and political scientists, although some politicians and celebrities also took part. Participants from every state were included, and emphasis was placed upon getting input from female historians and "specialists in
African-American studies", as well as a few non-American historians. Poll respondents rated the Presidents in five categories (leadership qualities, accomplishments & crisis management, political skill, appointments, character & integrity), and the results were tabulated to create the overall ranking.
A 2000 survey by
The Wall Street Journal consisted of an "ideologically balanced group of 132 prominent professors of history, law, and political science". This poll sought to include an equal number of
liberals and
conservatives in the survey, as the editors argued that previous polls were dominated by either one group or the other, but never balanced. According to the editors, this poll included responses from more women, minorities, and young professors than the 1996 Schlesinger poll. The editors noted that the results of their poll were "remarkably similar" to the 1996 Schlesinger poll, with the main difference in the 2000 poll being the lower rankings for the 1960s presidents
Lyndon B. Johnson and
John F. Kennedy, and higher ranking of President
Ronald Reagan at #8. Franklin Roosevelt still ranked in the top three.
Another presidential poll was conducted by
The Wall Street Journal in 2005, with
James Lindgren of
Northwestern University Law School for the
Federalist Society. As in the 2000 survey, the editors sought to balance the opinions of liberals and conservatives, adjusting the results "to give Democratic- and Republican-leaning scholars equal weight."
Franklin D. Roosevelt still ranked in the top-three, but editor
James Taranto noted that Democratic-leaning scholars rated
George W. Bush the sixth-worst president of all time, while Republican scholars rated him the sixth-best, giving him a split-decision rating of "average".
A 2006
Siena College poll of 744 professors reported the following results:
[, Siena Research Institute, May 1, 2006]- "George W. Bush has just finished five years as President. If today were the last day of his presidency, how would you rank him? The responses were: Great: 2%; Near Great: 5%; Average: 11%; Below Average: 24%; Failure: 58%."
- "In your judgment, do you think he has a realistic chance of improving his rating?” Two-thirds (67%) responded no; less than a quarter (23%) responded yes; and 10% chose no opinion or not applicable."
Thomas Kelly, professor emeritus of American studies at Siena College, said: "President Bush would seem to have small hope for high marks from the current generation of practicing historians and political scientists. In this case, current public opinion polls actually seem to cut the President more slack than the experts do." Dr. Douglas Lonnstrom, Siena College
professor of statistics and director of the Siena Research Institute, stated: "In our 2002 presidential rating, with a group of experts comparable to this current poll, President Bush ranked 23rd of 42 presidents. That was shortly after
9/11. Clearly, the professors do not think things have gone well for him in the past few years. These are the experts that teach college students today and will write the history of this era tomorrow."
The
C-SPAN Survey of Presidential Leadership consists of rankings from a group of presidential historians and "professional observers of the presidency" who ranked presidents in a number of categories initially in 2000 and more recently in 2009. With some minor variation, both surveys found that historians consider
Abraham Lincoln,
George Washington, and
Franklin D. Roosevelt the three best presidents by a wide margin and
William Henry Harrison (to a lesser extent),
Andrew Johnson,
Franklin Pierce, and
James Buchanan the worst.
Scholar survey results
Green backgrounds indicate top quartile.
Red backgrounds indicate bottom quartile.
Because
Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms as both the 22nd and 24th President, the total number of Presidents in each poll is at least one less than the number of the most recently serving President in the poll. Because of their short time in office, Presidents
William Henry Harrison and
James Garfield are sometimes omitted from these polls.
More than 1,000 people have participated in the surveys. The issue of the validity of the rankings has been of special interest to historians and political scientists, who have tried to specify the relative importance of personality, leadership, issues and partisanship. Quantitative ranking by groups of scholars has been in favor in recent decades, displacing the traditional methods of evaluation by individual writers as typified by Bailey (1966) and most biographers.
Liberal and conservative raters
The Murray-Blessing 1982 survey asked historians whether they were liberal or conservative on domestic, social and economic issues. The table below shows that the two groups had only small differences in ranking the best and worst presidents. Both groups agreed on the composition of nine of the top ten Presidents (and were split over the inclusion of either
Lyndon B. Johnson or
Dwight D. Eisenhower), and six of the worst seven (split over
Jimmy Carter or
Calvin Coolidge). Conservatives placed
Democrat Harry S. Truman at a higher ranking.
Popular opinion
ABC poll
An
ABC News poll about presidential greatness, taken 16–20 February 2000, asked 1012 adults nationwide, "Who do you think was the greatest American president?"
Rasmussen Reports poll
A
Rasmussen Reports poll taken June 13–24 of 2007 asked 1,000 randomly selected adults to rate America's presidents. Six presidents —
George Washington,
Abraham Lincoln,
Thomas Jefferson,
Theodore Roosevelt,
Franklin D. Roosevelt and
John F. Kennedy — were rated favorably by at least 80% of respondents.
Washington College poll
A
Washington College poll about presidential greatness, taken February 11, 2005, asked 800 adults nationwide, "Thinking about all the presidents of the United States throughout history to the present, who would you say was America's greatest president?"
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (12%)
Gallup poll
A
Gallup poll about presidential greatness, taken February 9–11, 2007, asked 1006 adults nationwide, "Who do you regard as the greatest United States president?"
- Other/None/No opinion (8%)
Recent president polls
These polls evaluate Presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower and later succession.
Quinnipiac University poll
A
Quinnipiac University poll, taken May 23–30, 2006, asked 1,534 registered American voters to pick the worst U.S. President of the last 61 years.
"Which of these eleven presidents we have had since
World War II would you consider the
worst president —
Harry Truman,
Dwight Eisenhower,
John Kennedy,
Lyndon Johnson,
Richard Nixon,
Gerald Ford,
Jimmy Carter,
Ronald Reagan,
George Bush Senior,
Bill Clinton, and
George W. Bush?"
- Don't Know/No Answer (5%)
USA Today/Gallup poll
A
USA Today/
Gallup Poll, taken December 8–10, 2006, asked 1009 adults nationwide, "How do you think each of the following presidents will go down in history—as an outstanding president, above average, average, below average, or poor?"
See also
