Who were the best and worse U.S. Presidents?

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Monday February 18, 2019 · 12:37 PM PST

2019/02/18 · 12:37

The majority of liberal and conservative historians rank Abraham Lincoln as the best U.S. President.

On President’s Day, let’s ignore the current disagreements in Washington, D.C. and focus on U.S.’s past. Historians have the luxury of seeing the past more clearly. Generally, it takes at least a decade for historians to settle on who were the best and the worst.

Surveys of historian, consistently rank Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and George Washington as the three best U.S. Presidents. These historians looked for very effective leadership. For the C-SPAN, "Presidential Historians Survey 2017", this included moral categories of ”crisis leadership,” “moral authority,” “pursued equal justice for all,” and also “economic management,” “administrative skills,” “performance within context of times,” and “setting an agenda,” and included relations with the public, Congress, and other governments.

The worst Presidents may require more time to settle down but lets take a stab at it. One of the most recent surveys is from a year ago, by 170 members of the American Political Science Association’s Presidents and Executive Politics section. The bottom three were W.H. Harrison, Buchanan, and Trump. Harrison died of pneumonia in 1841 after 31 days in office.

Next worse was Buchanan who left office in 1861. Historians fault him, for his failure to resolve the issue of slavery and the secession of the southern states, bringing the nation to the brink of civil war. Most Americans are well aware of the failures of Trump so there is no need for me to repeat them here.

Democratic and Independent historians agree with this view. Of course, Republican historians views differ. They see the bottom three as Pierce, W.H. Harrison and Buchanan and Trump is only the fifth worse President, which should not be considered an endorsement.

For more information see,

Historical rankings of presidents of the United States

How Does Trump Stack Up Against
the Best — and Worst — Presidents?

Presidential Historians Survey 2017

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