Two political science professors have a good column in the LA Times about their poll of 154 presidential scholars. They think Biden has done a good job and still think Trump is the worst president of all time.
… But the third installment of our Presidential Greatness Project, a poll of presidential experts released this weekend, shows that scholars don’t share American voters’ roughly equal distaste for both candidates.
Biden, in fact, makes his debut in our rankings at No. 14, putting him in the top third of American presidents. Trump, meanwhile, maintains the position he held six years ago: dead last, trailing such historically calamitous chief executives as James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson. In that and other respects, Trump’s radical departure from political, institutional and legal norms has affected knowledgeable assessments not just of him but also of Biden and several other presidents. …
And, besides the first paragraph (which gratuitously brings up current voter opinion polls), Peter Baker at the New York Times [free access] actually has a pretty good article about the poll:
… A new poll of historians coming out on Presidents’ Day weekend ranks Mr. Biden as the 14th-best president in American history, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan and Ulysses S. Grant. While that may not get Mr. Biden a spot on Mount Rushmore, it certainly puts him well ahead of Mr. Trump, who places dead last as the worst president ever.
Indeed, Mr. Biden may owe his place in the top third in part to Mr. Trump. Although he has claims to a historical legacy by managing the end of the Covid pandemic; rebuilding the nation’s roads, bridges and other infrastructure; and leading an international coalition against Russian aggression, Mr. Biden’s signature accomplishment, according to the historians, was evicting Mr. Trump from the Oval Office. …
… Mr. Trump might not care much what a bunch of academics think, but for what it’s worth he fares badly even among the self-identified Republican historians. Finishing 45th overall, Mr. Trump trails even the mid-19th-century failures who blundered the country into a civil war or botched its aftermath like James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce and Andrew Johnson. ...
Here are the Top 25:
- Lincoln
- FD Roosevelt
- Washington
- T Roosevelt
- Jefferson
- Truman
- Obama
- Eisenhower
- LB Johnson
- Kennedy
- Madison
- Clinton
- J Adams
- Biden
- Wilson
- Reagan
- Grant
- Monroe
- GHW Bush
- JQ Adams
- Jackson
- Carter
- Taft
- McKinley
- Polk