Aggregate Ranking of all 43

gftChris

If you think this isn't going to get political very quickly, you're sorely mistaken!

The Cysko Kid

You've got to wonder who is doing these rankings because party affiliations aside it's difficult to believe the legacy of lyndon Johnson is greater than Reagan.

The Gipper

@the-cysko-kid said:
You've got to wonder who is doing these rankings because party affiliations aside it's difficult to believe the legacy of lyndon Johnson is greater than Reagan.

It was hundreds of historians of all sorts.....not just a few with personal political views.

I guess if you look at the records, Johnson did a lot on the positive side with domestic legislation...the Great Society and all that. But he had his negative foreign policy issue...Vietnam.

With Reagan, he made people feel good....but the country suffered from one of its worst economic recessions in his term.

He had his positives in foreign affairs....but also negatives, Iran-Contra.

I suspect that perhaps a hundred years ago you could have had people saying: "how in the hell can you rank Grover Cleveland over William McKinley".

Debate that one!

Browns149

I can't imagine George H.W. Bush was better then George W. Bush.

But, then again, the elder Bush only had 4 years.

DieHardBrownsFan

Obama would be bottom, with carter just above him.

Canton Mike

@diehardbrownsfan said:
Obama would be bottom, with carter just above him.

From a Vietnam Vet, Lyndon Johnson fits right between those other 2 losers! They set a standard for cellar dwellers that may NEVER be matched.

Obama....No explanation needed.

LBJ...Played politics at the expense of fine young American PATRIOTS Lives.

Carter...Pardoned those who went to Canada. What did THAT say to the survivors of the REAL Americans who died in their place?

Mike

Browns149

Shouldn't Nixon be last?

He had to quit.

The Gipper

As noted, this is an aggregate poll done by mostly professional historians....and not by random individuals who may have one point of view or another.

Some right winger might put Carter, Obama, Johnson in their bottom 5. Some left winger might put W. Bush, Reagan, and Nixon in their bottom 5.

I kind of like the fact that there was a professional approach made to this into which each POTUS was graded on about 20-25 different factors. It measures accomplishment, not prejudice.

The Cysko Kid

Barack Obama has accomplished enough to be the 17th best overall? I don't believe that.

The Gipper

@the-cysko-kid said:
Barack Obama has accomplished enough to be the 17th best overall? I don't believe that.

To satisfy your curiosity, here you go:

http://pleasecutthecrap.com/obama-accomplishments/

And guess who the most hated President in his day likely was?

http://knowledgenuts.com/2014/01/02/abraham-lincoln-was-actually-hated-when-president/

Yea, the guy who is ranked #1 best President, by historians. (this is why you cannot trust current public opinions)

BaconHound

Hard to empirically rank Presidencies. In my lifetime I'd say Reagan and Obama seem quite high.

The Gipper

@baconhound said:
Hard to empirically rank Presidencies. In my lifetime I'd say Reagan and Obama seem quite high.

Agree that it is very difficult to do this scientifically. It seems that Siena College has perhaps best attempted to achieve that. At least they have set forth multiple criteria on which to try to do their study:

The Siena College Research Institute (SRI) has been conducting the US Presidents Study since 1982. The study calls upon historians, political scientists and presidential scholars to rate the presidents in twenty areas:

Background
Imagination
Integrity
Intelligence
Luck
Willing to take risks
Avoid crucial mistakes
Court appointments
Domestic Accomplishments
Executive Appointments
Foreign Policy accomplishments
Handling of U.S. Economy
Party leadership
Relationship with Congress
Ability to compromise
Communication ability
Executive ability
Leadership ability
Overall ability

SRI conducted 5 separate studies since 1982 including one in 2010 that includes current president, Barack Obama.

- See more at: https://www.siena.edu/centers-institutes/siena-research-institute/social-cultural-polls/us-presidents-study/#sthash.4d0eoFNP.dpuf

Browns149

How many Presidents were forced to resign?

He gets my vote as worst.

Others have been impeached, but Nixon QUIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wargograw

Nixon did a lot to enforce civil rights. Things that RFK (who gets all the credit) didn't have the balls to do.

wargograw

@the-gipper said:
With Reagan, he made people feel good....but the country suffered from one of its worst economic recessions in his term. He had his positives in foreign affairs....but also negatives, Iran-Contra.

Not sure what's so successful about LBJ's Great Society. A trillion or two dollars put into it and the numbers haven't budged. But of course, that is how liberals are graded: by the nobility of their intentions, not by the results of the actions.

Re: Reagan. The recession was in his first year. It can be easily attributed to his predecessor. Reagan pulled the country out of it and set the foundation for steady growth all the way up to 2008 (his tax cuts were THAT drastic).

"Had his positives in foreign affairs."? That's gotta be up for understatement of the year. You can't cancel out ridding the world of the greatest threat it had ever known because of a scandal. Which president since Nixon has NOT had a scandal? Bush the elder maybe? Reagan was phenomenal.

DieHardBrownsFan

Reagan should be far and away on the top of the list. The only reason Kennedy is rated high is because he was assassinated.

The Cysko Kid

Only liberal presidents get to blame their economic woes on their predecessors

wargograw

Here is Ann Coulter on these presidential rankings by "historians." She is truly hilarious and did a good job in this piece of exposing people who make these lists. Here goes:

Being gracious winners, this week, liberals howled with delight at George Bush for coming in seventh-to-last in a historians' ranking of the presidents from best to worst.

Being ranked one of the worst presidents by "historians" is like being called "anti-American" by the Nation magazine. And by "historian," I mean a former member of the Weather Underground, who is subsidized by the taxpayer to engage in left-wing activism in a cushy university job.

So congratulations, George Bush! Whenever history professors rank you as one of the "worst" presidents, it's a good bet you were one of the best.

Six months after America's all-time greatest president left office in 1989, historians ranked him as only a middling president. (I would rank George Washington as America's greatest president, but he only had to defeat what was then the world's greatest military power, whereas Ronald Reagan had to defeat liberals.)

At the time, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. dismissed Reagan as "a nice, old uncle, who comes in and all the kids are glad to see him. He sits around telling stories, and they're all fond of him, but they don't take him too seriously." Then Schlesinger fell asleep in his soup.

Even liberal historian Richard Reeves blanched at Reagan's low ranking in 1989, saying, "I was no fan of Reagan, but I think I know a leader when I see one."

Reagan changed the country, Reeves said, and some would say "he changed the world, making communism irrelevant and the globe safe for the new imperialism of free-market capitalism." Reeves most inspirational remark to me was to say that said Reagan "was a man of conservative principle and he damned near destroyed American liberalism."

By 1996 things hadn't gotten much better for Reagan in the historians' view. A poll of historians placed Reagan 26th of 42 presidents -- below George H.W. Bush, his boob of a vice president who raised taxes and ended Republican hegemony begun by Reagan. Four of the 32 historians called Reagan a "failure."

I guess it depends on your definition of "failure." To me a failure is someone who aspired to be a legitimate scholar but ends up as an obscure lecturer at Colorado College.

Speaking of which, Colorado College political scientist Thomas Cronin explained Reagan's low ranking, saying Reagan "was insensitive to women's rights, civil rights, oblivious to what was going on in his own Administration -- the procurement scandal, HUD, Iran-Contra."

Soon after he took office, President Reagan famously hung a portrait of President Calvin Coolidge in the Cabinet Room -- another Republican considered a failure by historians. It's as if geology professors took a poll and announced their opinion that gold was heavier than lead.

Coolidge cut taxes, didn't get the country in any wars, cut the national debt almost in half, and presided over a calm, scandal-free administration, a period of peace, 17.5 percent growth in the gross national product, low inflation (.4 percent) and low unemployment (3.6 percent).

Unlike some recent presidents with Islamic middle names, he didn't run around constantly comparing himself to Lincoln.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. ridiculed President Calvin Coolidge as a hayseed who slept too much and took decisive action only once in his life. Schlesinger never tired of pointing out that Coolidge slept 11 hours a day, as if hours of sleep is the true measure of presidential greatness.

Perhaps Schlesinger's venom toward Coolidge was meant as penance for his once accidentally admitting that Eisenhower was a good president despite being another president hated by historians.

Under President Dwight Eisenhower the gross national product grew by over 25 percent and inflation averaged 1.4 percent. George Meany, then AFL-CIO president, said that the American worker had "never had it so good." Like Coolidge and Reagan, Eisenhower was enormously popular with the American people.

In a poll of "leading scholars" taken soon after Eisenhower left office, he was named one of the 10 worst presidents. The distinguished scholars -- none of whose names anyone remembers today -- called him dumb, dismissing the five-star general who smashed the Nazi war machine as "Old Bubble Head."

As Patton said, these "bilious bastards ... don't know anything more about real battle than they do about fornicating."

Reagan and Eisenhower have recently started to move up in the presidential rankings -- for the same reason George Washington is always ranked one of the best. Historians ought to detest Washington, but his exclusion from the top ranks of these pompous historian polls would expose the absurdity of their rankings.

Putting preposterously overrated presidents like John F. Kennedy or FDR in the same category as Reagan or Washington is like a teenage girl ranking the Jonas Brothers with the Rolling Stones and the Beatles as the three greatest bands of all time.

Liberals may call him a "war criminal," but historians have inadvertently paid Bush a great tribute this week by ranking him as a "below average" president. I can only dream that, someday, no-name, left-wing historians will rank me as one of the all-time worst columnists.

wargograw

Diehard and Cysko, both true statements!

The Gipper

As noted, the historians job is to try to make objective evaluations.

Ann Coulter's job is to advocate for her personal prejudices...and as such she is naturally going to be critical of anyone that doesn't agree with her prejudices. To her every Democratic President would be bad and every Republican President would be good.

That is why it is better to listen to the historians in my view than the likes of her....or her liberal counterparts who might argue that every Democratic President is good and every Republican President has been bad.