Best and Worst US Presidents

This is not based on my personal opinion. If it were, I'd probably rank Truman, Wilson, Jackson and Kennedy all lower. I'd rank Obama, Polk, and Clinton higher. I'd probably put Hoover lower, Grant higher, I might try to find room for Reagan and Bush Jr. in the bottom quartile (Bush Jr. only narrowly avoids inclusion, presently ranked 32nd just above Nixon), and if possible I'd figure out a way to rank Trump lower than 44th. He so richly deserves his placement here but I feel simply being last is inadequate.

I honestly was not making that connection at all. I used the same color for top and bottom quartile as the source. Green was the 2nd quartile but Ralph Nader wasn't in there. Yellow was used for the 3rd quartile. I think in American culture it's just generally known that red signifies something bad when you're looking at a graph or chart or infographic. Like if you look at numbers on an Excel spreadsheet when you are doing a budget, if you are in the red that means you're losing money. Is that your best evidence for bias on this quiz?

... you're simply wrong. Trump has been horrible as president. He slowed down the Obama economy which he inherited with his pointless and costly trade wars. And, yes, the catastrophic coronavirus response was 100% his fault. Most people do not consider abortion to be murder, but you could actually build a strong legal case for charging Trump with negligent homicide for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died as a direct result of his mishandling of the pandemic.

The metrics that the Sienna College poll of 2018 used to evaluate presidents included the following: background, imagination, integrity, intelligence, luck, willingness to take risks, ability to compromise, executive ability, leadership ability, communication ability, overall ability, party leadership, relations with Congress, (quality of) court appointments, handling of economy, executive appointments, domestic accomplishments, foreign policy accomplishments, avoiding crucial mistakes, and experts' view

A presidents' stance on a single political issue like abortion was not considered as part of the evaluation... and... your position that it should, I hope you would understand, is extremely biased. The majority of people in the world and the country disagree with you on this point, but you're using a presidents' agreement or disagreement with your minority point of view as a basis for evaluating if they are a good president or not?

Anyway, out of all of those metrics, when evaluated by historians of every political persuasion, Trump was ranked 40th-44th in every single one of them except for three. Which three?

Well, in terms of handling the economy he was ranked 39th. Still firmly in the bottom quartile of all presidents, but at least he was higher than Herbert Hoover. Still, his misuse of tariffs which it is clear he doesn't even understand how they work has done tremendous damage to the economy and he's done very little to improve it.

As far as a willingness to take risks, Trump was ranked 25th. So around the middle of the pack. He definitely can be bold in the actions he takes, that's true. But while you might chalk that up to strength, determination, or a bold vision... I would attribute it more to stupidity, ignorance, stubbornness, vanity, and a complete disinterest in listening to the experts around him or even reading his security briefings. So yeah, some of the things he has done have been rather bold, as a British person would say.

And, the one category where he got ranked the highest? Luck. He was ranked the 10th luckiest president in history. And I can't really argue with that. He inherited arguably the strongest economy and the longest period of uninterrupted jobs growth in US history from his predecessor, and then he had no major domestic or international crises to deal with during his first 3 years in office, in spite of his mighty efforts to create one.

When such a crisis finally did come along - the COVID-19 global pandemic - his mishandling of it was of truly epic and legendary proportions. I mean it could not have possibly been any worse. He politicized the wearing of masks. He politicized belief in the virus. He sidelined the nation's top contagious disease experts in favor of unqualified yes-men who wanted us to try herd immunity. He diverted valuable resources away from places that needed them based on political grudges. He actively encouraged people to ignore his own White House's recommendations for how to deal with the virus. And he continued on a course to try and destroy the ACA while he had zero plans for anything to replace it. Any idiot could have just stepped aside, let Dr. Fauci give good advice, told the American people to listen to the experts and take appropriate precautions... and he would have saved 150,000 lives and coasted to reelection victory easily. But Trump is sub-idiot. He's on a whole other level.

In terms of executive appointments, intelligence, integrity, and overall ability, Trump was ranked 44th. Dead last. And this is an average of rankings by historians that INCLUDE those that self-identify as conservative or Republican. And I have to say, I agree 100% and think that this could not be any more evident.

In terms of executive appointments, they have been a disaster and a joke from day 1. The man appointed as Secretary of State, the chief diplomat of our nation, a former Exxon CEO. He replaced the sitting secretary of energy, a nuclear physicist, with Rick f'ing Perry who didn't even know what the department was for. He made Betsy DeVos, a woman with zero background in education and a massive conflict of interest as she runs a company that collects on student loans, the secretary of education, obviously because she was a big campaign donor. He made Scott Pruit head of the EPA - what was his qualification? Well he had sued the EPA a record number of times in Oklahoma.

I could go on. And on and on and on. Trump ran on "draining the swamp" but he ushered in the swampiest swamp in the history of swamps. His entire cabinet and administration was full of political hacks, lobbyists, cronies and campaign donors who were massively and openly corrupt. And I haven't even mentioned the ridiculous amount of nepotism in his administration, or the fact that hundreds of vital government positions remained vacant for years because he was so totally inept and underprepared and didn't even have a real transition team after he fired Chris Christie. Trumpists like to give Trump credit for a deal that was brokered between North and South Korea - we didn't even have an ambassador to South Korea until 2018! This level of complete ineptitude is unparalleled in all of US history.

I'm tired of talking about this so, in brief:

integrity: yep. Trump has zero integrity. He cares about literally nothing other than himself and is openly corrupt and criminal.

intelligence: hands down. Dumbest president in the history of the United States. He speaks with a 4th-grade vocabulary, as determined by an unbiased analysis of his speeches developed for the US military. People who are classified as mentally retarded often learn to communicate at up to a 6th-grade level.

overall ability: yes. Goes without saying. It would actually be better if we had a vacant presidency. He actively harms the country with everything he does even in the rare instances where he is trying to do something good (even though he only cares about himself, he does on occasion try to do something that will benefit others - if only to help himself politically - but he inevitably fails)

So yeah, anyway. He's objectively a horrible president, and very likely the worst the country has ever seen. His executive orders are crap, they have no legal weight behind them just red meat thrown to his supporters. And minority discrimination is not = to religious freedom.

Finally, I would say that even as a conservative or a Christian Trump has utterly failed. So... even from a pro-Republican, pro-Conservative, pro-Christian biased perspective, abandoning objectivity and viewing trump through this lens, he has been a horrible president.

What conservative values has he embraced? Conservatives used to be all about fiscal responsibility. But Trump has EXPLODED the national deficit and debt. Under Obama the deficit shrank every year. Trump blew it up. And he managed to do this when the economy was BOOMING. Something that no president has EVER done before. We've increased the deficit in debt during depressions, recessions, and global wars... but never during an economic boom in peacetime. Yet Trump did it.

Conservatives also used to be very much against tariffs and for free trade. And I agreed with them. Tariffs and protectionism are bad for the economy and bad for capitalism. Trump has been the most tariff-happy president in US history.

Conservatives used to be for preserving and protecting the environment (though, admittedly, they turned on this principle before Trump as their corporate donors influenced them more and more). Richard Nixon started the EPA, after all. But Trump appointed to head the EPA a guy who only wants to destroy it. And he took us out of the Paris climate accords for no reason other than because Obama did it. Out of spite. He doesn't even understand what climate change is. He's too stupid and ignorant. He thinks it's about clean air and water... that has nothing to do with it. The guy is on record saying that the sound from windmills causes cancer. Because he is still pissed off about a windmill farm being built off the coast of one of his failing golf courses years ago. Ugh.

Trump is pro-torture. Pro-destroying-families (as long as they're immigrant families). Pro-Russia. Pro-North Korea. Pro-dictator. He's an aspiring fascist. He is not a Conservative.

and from the Christian angle... the man has obviously never opened the Bible in his entire life. He thinks that Christians are idiots and mocks them in private all the time. He lies about his own faith to manipulate them into voting for him. He brags about serial sexual assault. He has multiple credible accusations of rape against him. He committed multiple felonies to try and silence the porn stars he banged when he was cheating on his pregnant wife. He's twice divorced. Good friends with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and sent well wishes to his accomplice Ghislane Maxwell. He gassed peaceful protestors for a cynical photo op of him holding a Bible upside down next to a church. He signed off on the remote murder of an Iranian politician on foreign soil. He is a narcissist. Spiteful. Vindictive. Gluttonous. Slothful. Foul-mouthed. Wrathful. Unforgiving... he said at the national prayer breakfast one year that Jesus was wrong about the whole forgiveness thing.

and, even though many Christians are pro-Choice so I'm not sure that this qualifies as anti-Christian, but Trump was also pro-Choice his entire life up until he decided it would be easier to run for office as a Republican than a Democrat. He does not care about abortion or unborn children. Give me a break. He doesn't even care about his own living children. He willfully implemented an unimaginably cruel policy of family separation at the border, tearing infant children away from their parents, causing irreparable harm to these children and their families. He signed off on this. Does that sound Christian to you? THIS is your guy? Really? Really???

My most devout and god fearing friends recognize Trump for the total fraud, hypocrite, and moral monster that he is. And I'm glad for that. I used to be devoutly Christian myself, and even though I'm not anymore, I'd like to think that if I still were I would not be so blinded by politics that I couldn't recognize Trump ...

... for the monster that he is, on Christian principles. Back in high school when I was still practicing and devout I did have a lot more Republican sympathies... and a lot of that had to do with the abortion issue... but I was always politically unaffiliated and tried to keep an open mind and if I saw any politician being a hypocrite, Democrat or Republican, like Newt Gingrich, or Bill Clinton, I would call them out for it. But Trump is the most a-moral un-Christian person to occupy the White House in US history. He can't understand devotion because the only thing he is devoted to is himself. In my opinion, any good Christian would never, ever, ever vote for or support this man. Nor would any true Conservative. Or any true Republican. Or any true American for that matter, as he has repeatedly sold out the country to foreign enemies for his own purposes and financial gain. The man is terrible in every way imaginable.

The "first of all" statement disqualifies you from the courtesy of being taken seriously so I didn't bother reading the rest of what you typed. Also I'm cutting back from commenting on the site, but since this was on one of my own quizzes I thought I'd at least reply. Good day.

He was more than willing to throw Ivanna and Marla under the bus when it suited him.

@Nanook: I was bored and finally got around to reading the rest of your completely unhinged comment. It was as insane, poorly written, and divorced from reality as any comment I would expect from someone who comes out of the gate with an announcement that the ex-president was good at his job.

To address the rest of what you said: Trump did not have ups and downs. He just didn't. This is false. He never had an up in his entire administration. His approval rating *never* went above 50% (rolling aggregate through 4 years). Not once. There is not a single US president in history since we started tacking approval who achieved this feat. And most presidents who faced some serious crisis like the COVID pandemic were able to get a huge bump from this, rallying the country around unified support for a coherent strategy to save American lives or beat back a common foe. George W Bush, for instance, not generally regarded as a good president, had 90% approval after 9/11.

George HW Bush topped out at 89% after winning the Gulf War. Kennedy rose to 83% after making gains toward nuclear disarmament during the the Cold War. Truman earned 87% approval after the dissolution of Nazi Germany. And each of these presidents had lows, too. Truman's approval rating bottomed out at 22%. Bush Sr.'s at 29. Bush Jr.'s at 25. Kennedy's at 56. These presidents had highs and lows. Trump never had a high. His entire administration was a disaster from start to finish and he will go down as the worst president in US history without question or controversy.

Re: Obama's "care"... I don't even know what you are trying to say. Are you saying that The Affordable Care Act is paid for by taxpayers? Uh... well yeah. sort of. Duh. Though the program also collects large amounts of insurance premiums that enrollees pay, so, it's not all taxpayer funded. Not like, say, the much more successful and popular programs Medicaid and Medicare.

Are you suggesting that the United States, the richest most powerful nation on Earth, can't afford to provide healthcare for its citizens? Something that countries like Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Ghana, Colombia, Bhutan, India, China, Thailand, Greece, Israel, Japan, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and the former Soviet Union, among many others, all manage to do? That's just sad and pathetic. But that aside, Obama didn't write the ACA. It was written by members of Congress and lobbyists for the phrama and healthcare industries, basically an updated version of Republican Bob Dole's healthcare plan from the 90s, and was more or less a big wet sloppy kiss to American insurance companies. It's far from a perfect piece of legislation, but it's better than what we had (basically nothing), and resulted in tens of millions of people getting healthcare coverage that they didn't have before. Once signed into law, Republicans sued over and over to repeal the act, but they failed.

ex-president Trump vowed to repeal and replace the ACA, and he promised that he had something big and great and wonderful that was going to come to replace it... but that legislation was famously always "two weeks away" and never actually materialized because it didn't exist. Trump failed to keep his promise to repeal the ACA, even though his party had full control over the presidency, the Supreme Court, and both chambers of Congress for years, because in truth they didn't really want to get rid of it they just used this as a way to rile up their base and to get the low-information simpletons who vote for them angry with lies about how expensive or socialist it was. But they were fibbing the whole time and they knew it. They had no plan to replace the ACA. They haven't had any good legislative ideas since the 1970s. And so Republicans did nothing to get rid of the ACA once they were in power. They lied to you. What did they do?

Well they continued to underfund it and undermine it, make it more expensive and cover less, all for the advantage of their friends in the insurance industry who liked the provision that Americans had to buy insurance, but disliked other parts of the bill like the fact that they had to cover people in spite of pre-existing conditions, and that they couldn't drop people for getting sick, and the parts that attempted to keep prices of insurance reasonable. So the GOP kept suing to get rid of these parts, and in some states even suing to get rid of the ACA completely even though they had literally no idea for how to replace it. Remember Trump bragging in 2016 about how it would be so easy? How he would make sure that everyone had insurance and healthcare coverage and how it would be cheaper and better and more extensive than Obamacare? All BS and hot air. Like everything he ever promises or says.

About Obama "littarly" (my spellcheck just took a handful of painkillers) snatching money out of people (where in these people do they keep their money? Are you a Russian troll? Your English is awful), and slipping it into people (like piggy banks?) who do not do a thing... where to begin... Obama isn't doing anything, he's retired. The ACA was passed by Congress. It is a legal and Constitutional collection of tax revenue that is largely self-funding through enrollee premiums, as determined by the GOP-controlled Supreme Court. Nobody is having money stolen from them. That's not how taxes and government expenditures work. Do you get this worked up about the government stealing money from people to pay for things like public schools, highways, national defense, or air traffic control? If so maybe you should move to southern Somalia. It's a libertarian paradise there. No taxes. No government. You'd be right at home. The rest of us would like a functioning government thanks.

by "people who are following the law's hands" (again, what the heck is your first language?? It so obviously is not English. How much are you getting paid for this rant?), I guess you mean the plutocrats and oligarchs and robber barons who often pay little or no tax, like Trump, who cheat and steal and evade and con their way into obscene levels of personal wealth, rarely giving anything back to the country that made possible their ludicrous lifestyle, whom most Democrats especially ones like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren would advocate taxing at higher more equitable rates in order to pay for things that would benefit everyone, such as universal healthcare, free college tuition, infrastructure and medical research and stuff like that? Those are the people that you want to stick up for? You know that they don't give two rat turds about you, right? They spend money, tons of it, to convince you to go to bat for them. But they don't care if you get sick and die.

By "people who do not do a thing and 'our' just collecting money"... are you talking about poor people? The unemployed? The disabled? Hard working immigrants who came to the country to make a better life for themselves, work 3 jobs, and pay more taxes than Trump ever has in his life?

Well... fret not. Most of those people wouldn't qualify for coverage under the ACA. Many of them would qualify for other programs such as Medicaid and Medicare Disability. But... Obama had nothing to do with those programs they existed long before he came into office and even though many Republicans privately would like to get rid of them or cut funding, most won't admit to this publicly as they are enormously popular and successful. The ACA is more aimed at people who work hard but don't have the sort of good privileged jobs that provide health insurance, but they make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, and so they end up in this awful limbo area inbetween where...

... they can't afford private insurance as it is so ridiculously expensive in this country or because they had a pre-existing condition or a chronic illness, and they were working too hard and thus too "wealthy" (read: not abjectly poor) to get Medicaid, and not yet old enough to get Medicare, and so they just end up slipping through the cracks ending up uninsured or underinsured, and are often one big injury or illness away from being bankrupt, destitute, homeless, and/or dead, and a drain on society (though not as big of a drain as the fat cat CEOs that you are advocating for). You want to take away these people's insurance? Why? Do you realize that they pay taxes just like anyone else (who isn't as privileged and/or corrupt as Trump)? And at the same time they are spending anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars out of pocket to pay for their own healthcare on top of this?

yeah... those are the people that Trump and his allies were attempting to take health insurance away from. People who in many cases had recently lost their jobs or been furloughed. During a once a century global pandemic that Trump did everything in his power to make worse. Really considerate of you and your dear leader. But I guess if the CEO of Aetna gets a 0.1% increase in his multi-million dollar bonus this year, it'll all be worth it.

My bordeom has dissipated. Going to make the rest of this quick. Trump didn't build crap. He stole billions of dollars from more worthwhile projects, illegally, and managed to get 300 km of "barrier" constructed, not a proper wall. and FYI that's about 10% of the length of the border. Not very impressive. Trump did ban people from coming into the country from several countries outright (including legal residents at least at first and in some cases). And this was stupid and heartless and made no sense.

Though the "Muslim ban" had nothing to do with immigration, Trump was proudly, openly, cruelly anti-immigrant. Which sucked. Immigrants make the country and its economy very much stronger, more robust, and more vibrant. Many studies have proven as much. Many GOP officials in border states would say the same. And large-scale deportations have destroyed many communities in those places, both for the immigrant families ripped apart and for the Americans left behind in the communities that suddenly find their economies and industries gutted. Creating a job isn't stealing a job. I don't see you out in any fields picking berries from sun up to sun down. And, guess what? My ancestors were very likely here before yours, if you are even American. Unless you are Inuit and that's why your name is Nanook and you barely speak English. In that case, well, I guess maybe you've got some room to complain about immigration. but Trump still sucks.

um... not to in any way come to Nanook's defense... but... the United States has never stolen oil from any country. It has generously built up the oil industries in many different countries with its own capital, labor, resources and expertise... and then those countries have often sold their oil to the USA at enormous profit... but... that's not stealing.

Even if it were stealing... and, again, it's not... there's not a whole lot of oil coming out of Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras... Guatemala has a little bit. The other two basically none.

they didn't seem to require a response.

Anne Coulter, Shep Smith, George W Bush, George HW Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Michael Steele, Bill Kristol, Joe Scarborough, Lindsey Graham (from 2016), Ted Cruz (from 2016), Chris Christie (from 2016), John Bolton, Anthony Scaramucci, Karl Rove, George Conway, David Frum, Justin Amash, Rick Wilson, Tom Ridge, Colin Powell, Joe Walsh, Chris Wallace, Chuck Hagel, James Comey, Christine Todd Whitman etc etc etc etc...

Are these people all liberals now? They include many lifelong Republicans. Many prominent Conservative voices. Several Republican party leaders including former presidents, former presidential nominees, former RNC chairs, and several who held office as Republicans. Look up what some of them have had to say about Donald Trump.

But you're going to dismiss them and believe Trump? A guy who has lied 20,000 times since taking office. A guy who was a Democrat 12 years ago? You think he represents good conservative values? And everyone else is just biased?

Examine your own biases, man. Every sane person who knows what they're talking about sees Trump for what he is. You don't have to be liberal. You just have to not be blind.

Another prominent conservative who has been outspokenly against Trump is George Will. His articles are worth looking up.

The thing about presidential scholars is that they are not political actors. They're not trying to convince you to vote one way or another. They're not going on to Fox News or MSNBC as pundits (very rarely one or two might, but that's not the norm). Their career does not depend on praising or bashing Trump or any other president. Their careers depend on, and they care about, being as objective as possible and arriving at the basic truth of the matter. Bias is the bane of historians and they do everything possible to try and avoid it. (good ones, anyway. There are exceptions. See: Howard Zinn) Also, as historians, they have the context of being able to understand Trump's actions as better, worse, or basically the same as other presidents throughout history. Most people don't have that.

Anyway if for whatever reason you don't trust the educated or academics or "the elites" as you might describe Republican party leaders or personalities on TV... maybe you'd find it worthwhile to search for "Republican Voters Against Trump" on YouTube. It's a good channel that contains hundreds if not thousands of testimonials from regular everyday voters who either identify as Republican or who voted Republican in past elections, describing why they were against Trump in 2020. Perhaps some of what they say will make sense to you.

I could have made a video like that myself back in 2004, as I had become very much against Bush after he had severely disappointed me, but back in 2000 I was one of the ones saying "give him a chance," and I was kind of happy that Gore didn't win even though I didn't vote in that election and had no strong preference either way. I just didn't like Gore.

Cheers.

who are you? I was responding to AReim with the comparison of ideas that he requested. Most of my ideas are not so small that they can fit neatly on a bumper sticker.

"Based on aggregate polling data of conservative, liberal, and centrist presidential historians, 1948-2018"

Arthur Meier Schlesinger, notable historian of Harvard, polled 75 historians for rankings from 1948 and 1962. His son conducted a similar poll in 1992.

The Chicago Tribune conducted a poll in 1982 of 49 historians.

The Siena Research Institute of Siena College has conducted surveys of historians in 1982, 1990, 1994, 2002 and 2010.

Other polls were conducted by the Wall Street Journal, C-SPAN, the American Political Science Association, etc. You can see the whole list here

The APSA did the most recent poll, and the only one to include Trump. They had scholars self-identify as Republican, Democrat, or Independent. Even amongst Republican scholars, Trump was ranked 40th out of 44 presidents. He was dead last amongst Democrats, and by Independents (who skew conservative and libertarian) he was ranked 43rd.

don't be so lazy.

If something as objective and non-partisan as the data presented here seems biased to you, which is taken from many different polls of hundreds of different presidential historians of all different political persuasions, then probably you are yourself biased.

well, gee... thanks. Sincerely. When I'm not posting just to show appreciation for the quiz author, or to entertain myself or make someone laugh... particularly the posts that get a bit "ranty"... my main aim is usually to encourage people to look things up and learn something. This is the reason that I post things that fly in the face of conventional wisdom; not to try and offend anybody but just to inspire those reading to ask questions and think for themselves. Happy to hear it worked at least once.

Not according to any honest person who knows what they're talking about. Even amongst self-identified Republican historians, Trump is ranked 40th of 44 presidents. This is not fake news. It's reality.

Not at all! Some are racists. Some are Nazis. Some are evil plutocrats or Russian despots who view Trump as a useful idiot. And then the rest are some combination of stupid, ignorant, or extremely confused. I think that covers everything.

Though the comment you are replying to doesn't say smart people understand that Trump is the worst president in history, it says that those who know what they're talking about understand that. There's a difference between ignorance and stupidity. As for those who know what they're talking about, I'm speaking to presidential historians in this case, including self-identified conservative and Republican historians who rank Trump in the bottom 4 of all time.

There are also farmers who voted for him because he promised to repeal the estate tax. Though many of these people don't "like" Trump, they just voted for him. And many of them aren't going to vote for him again in 2020 as he hasn't kept his promise and his misguided and ignorant trade war with China has been disastrous for the farm belt.

Someone who gives out billions to enemies of America? You mean like Trump doing everything in his power to remove sanctions against Russia, by far America's #1 enemy in the world, allowing them to keep their annexation of Crimea, allowing, nay inviting, them to meddle in US and other international elections with impunity, freeing up the money of Russian oligarchs which had been frozen in international banks, rolling over and allowing them to gain a foothold in the Middle East free of charge, doing everything he can to help dismantle or render obsolete NATO? The work Trump has done on behalf of Russia is probably worth trillions, not billions, and all of it has been at the expense of common Americans. And that's not to say anything of what he did for North Korea, the Islamists in Turkey, the hard liners in Iran, protectionists in China, or those against human rights in the Philippines.

Someone who causes wars? You mean like murdering top-ranking international officials at the airport on neutral soil? That sort of thing?

Countless American lives lost due to incompetence and disdain for the common American? Are you watching the news lately? This is actually pretty funny coming in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.

and yeah it's not my opinion but I do concur with virtually every scholar in the world when they rate Trump as the worst or among the worst of all American presidents, and Obama as significantly better. This is not even a controversial opinion amongst those who study this sort of thing. It's virtually impossible to believe that Trump is anything other than the single worst president in US history unless you live inside the Fox News bubble. Hundreds of nationally prominent Republicans (present or former), conservatives, and independents including multiple former GOP presidents and nominees for presidents would back me up on this.

I would describe Carson as an idiot in the colloquial sense. He is ignorant about a lot of stuff which leads to him putting his foot in his mouth often. He might be a talented doctor but he is clearly out of his depth when talking politics, geography, history, et cetera. He often says stupid or embarrassing things (even about medicine). He has a lot of very dumb ideas. But he's not literally an idiot. I'm sure he has an above average IQ.

Trump is an idiot in the literal sense. He is most likely mentally retarded.

Trump's vocabulary is at a 4th grade level. Mentally retarded people can often function at up to a 5th or 6th grade level. Also, he has threatened lawsuits against all of his past schools if they ever revealed his transcripts. Do you think he did that because his grades were good?

I think if they conducted a new poll after Helsinki even Republican historians would have to concede that Trump is the worst president in history.

and it just gets worse every day since then.

I feel like his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is already covered under lying and incompetence.

yeah I was experimenting with the feature. He seemed like a worthy guinea pig. But I didn't know it would delete all of his previous responses.

but every time I delete one of my responses, all of his comments appear again, so I'm not sure what's going on.

I'm deleting the majority of my replies to BusinessFreak here anyway, assuming that his won't be visible at least most of the time.

What do you think a better clue would be? The Apollo program was dedicated to Kennedy; though actually you're wrong, JFK was not the first to conceive of the idea. He just made it a publicly stated priority.

eh... in my subjective opinion Kennedy did more to inflame and destabilize that situation than to solve it. But maybe I could change the clue to "slept with Marilyn Monroe."

I changed it to include something about civil rights

From number 44? The most impressive turn around in history? Well if he can pull it off, great. I'd be rooting for him.

Hey in the last Siena poll he was voted 42nd! Moving on up!

And now, on the eve of Joe Biden's inauguration, I'm pretty sure that if another poll comes out this year Trump will be ranked 45th in history, by virtually every presidential historian alive today regardless of political affiliation. A few outliers here and there may put Trump above Johnson, Harding, or Buchanan... but in aggregate I'd bet a very large sum of money that he will again be dead last. And with even more unanimity than the first time he was ranked dead last in a poll 3 years ago.

He did tell Xi Jinping that the treatment of Uighurs in the Northwest provinces of China was the exact right thing to do. (many are in concentration and re-education camps and subject to forced labor) He's also notorious for not paying his employees and contractors. So, yeah, not so sure.

I didn't make this list. Are you a presidential historian?

Data on a new Siena poll has been added to the Wikipedia page. Obama has moved out of the top quartile from 11th to 13th place, and Polk has moved up to the 11th position. Everything else is exactly the same. I'm going to the leave the quiz as is until there are some more significant changes.

and now Wikipedia has removed the aggregate column from their page... that sucks... I guess I could still update this when new polls are added but I would have to average all the data together myself now. :P

correct

I feel like the farther we get from the Trump presidency the harder it will be to believe just how precedent-shatteringly awful he was.

I think it's pretty telling which presidents are ranked lower than Harrison. Harrison got sick, did almost nothing after assuming office, and died a month later. To be ranked lower than him you would have to be actively hurting the nation and its interests; basically you are doing a worse job than if the office were simply left completely vacant. Only six presidents in history have earned this distinction.

I can't tell, considering the crazy things people believe these days, but I suspect that you are trolling.

All the ones where he becomes president. Buchanan didn't start a civil war. He just did little to prevent it. Trump has shown similar or greater levels of incompetence and indifference. I mean just look at his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Everything he has done has only made things worse.

and now observe how he has handled the George Floyd protests. It would be easy, for any other president, to show a little empathy, to console those who were upset, and try and bring the nation together during this crisis. Instead this moron is rolling military hardware down the streets of Washington and doing everything he can to make the situation worse. It's almost like he wants to start his own civil war.

compare Trump's response to this situation to that of former presidents Obama and Bush. I'm not a big Bush fan at all, but his reaction was *so* much better than Trump's, it's just pathetic.

and now, another seven months later, and Donald Trump actually did try to start a civil war. Buchanan never did that. Buchanan is condemned for his failure to act on the eve of the American Civil War. But Trump actually endeavored to begin one. That's an absolute first. We can't judge Trump as better than Buchanan simply because we have better Republican governors and state legislatures these days than the Democrats had back in the 1860s. That has nothing to do with Trump. If Trump had his way, those governors who resisted Trump's attempts to destroy American democracy and usher in the Trumpist Dynasty would be swinging from makeshift gallows in public along with Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi. If Trump wasn't such an inept moron he may have had more success at destroying the country, but that's hardly a good reason to rank him highly compared to other presidents.

What polls? Do you mean for the Republican primaries? Trump still has tens of millions of brainwashed idiots in his personality cult. Though he lost quite a few, I think, after failing to fulfill the prophecies that he would somehow win the election that he lost and arrest all the Democrats. But the GOP is completely ruined now. There are no decent people left in the party anymore at the upper levels just spineless sycophants. Trump forced out or pushed to the margins all of the semi-decent ones. So of course Trump will continue exerting influence over the party.

As for the general election in '24... if Trump runs either as the GOP candidate or as a 3rd party candidate, if he's going up against Biden, he will be crushed. Just look at Biden's approval ratings for the last month vs. Trump's over 4 years. And then consider that Trump and the GOP did absolutely everything they could to try and steal the 2020 election, and failed, but they're not in power anymore.

He is closer to being in the bottom quartile than in the top quartile. Even amongst Republicans I think he was usually viewed as a corrupt failed president. Only recently have I seen some start to change their mind about this. I guess next to Trump, Nixon seems pretty innocent.

Trump is the most openly, nakedly, completely corrupt president in the entire history of the United States. and he was also closer friends with Epstein than Clinton. You'd have to be almost as stupid as Trump is to believe that the Clintons are the more likely suspect in Epstein's death than Trump or Epstein himself.

Let's do some math here. The probability that Trump engaged in criminal activity with Jeffrey Epstein is at least 95%. Both are known criminals, known to like "younger" women, accused of criminal sexual activity multiple times, have absolutely zero moral compass or conscience, are obvious sociopaths, partied together many times, and Trump is on record in an interview remarking about how Epstein is fun to hang out with and likes women as much as he does and "on the younger side."

The probability that Clinton engaged in criminal activity with Epstein is about 50%. Clinton is also an accused sex offender, though not as oft-accused as Trump.

Clinton has also been accused of some criminality, though again not nearly as much. Unlike Trump, though, Clinton has never been accused of or said anything to imply that he might like girls "on the younger side."

What's the probability that Trump or Clinton were stupid enough to put themselves in a situation where Epstein could obtain incriminating evidence against them for use in blackmail? I'd put that at 100% for Trump and 60% for Clinton. Trump is a world-class idiot who can't operate an umbrella. Clinton on the other hand is by all accounts a genius, but, he did get caught in the Lewinsky affair, and Epstein is known for being pretty clever and devious. So odds are he could have gotten dirt on both of them.

What are the odds that Trump or Clinton would have the will to have someone murdered? Well Trump is a total psychopath who has repeatedly expressed admiration for murderous thugs like Putin and Duterte. He is a malignant narcissist with 0 capacity for empathy.

So I'd say this is 100% for Trump. Clinton, on the other hand, as ruthless a politician as he is, is also clearly a man of conscience who cares about people. He has hurt people before in his attempts to gain or retain power, but he is not a psychopath. I'd say odds of him having the will to murder someone is around 20%.

And motive? Who is more likely to have the motive to have Epstein killed? Who has more to lose? Well... Trump is the sitting US president. In an election year. If he loses this next election, as an unindicted co-conspirator in multiple felonies protected from incarceration only by DOJ policy to not charge sitting presidents, this means he will likely go to jail. He is also a narcissist who can't imagine losing. He would do absolutely anything to not lose this election. His odds of having motive are 100%. Clinton? He's been out of politics for 20 years and now does charity work. His only reason to not want his..

...sexual exploits to go public would be to protect his family. Though he has gone to some lengths to do this before. His odds of having enough motive would be about 50%.

and finally there's the question of who is more likely to have the power to get Epstein killed. Trump is the sitting US president. Epstein was being held in a federal prison. Trump's buddy Bill Barr is the current head of the DOJ and is completely corrupt and unethical and will do anything Trump wants him to do. On the other hand, Trump is also an incompetent bumbling boob who seems to be too stupid to get away with anything. He might kill Epstein then call and brag on Fox and Friends. But he's got the power to do it and in the end the odds that Trump could have had Epstein offed in prison and gotten away with it are something like 90%.

As for Clinton? Again, he's been out of politics for 20 years. He no doubt is well-connected, and he's a smart, capable guy, but his connections in the DOJ...

...are pretty old and irrelevant at this point. Especially since Trump has cleared out the majority of the competent bureaucrats and public servants from previous administrations. Most of what's left at this point are Trumpists. It's *highly* unlikely that Clinton would be able to have a prisoner in a federal prison killed. I'd put these odds at 10%.

Finally, what are the odds that Epstein actually was murdered and didn't commit suicide? Eh.. probably like 35%. It's a possibility. But not terribly likely.

Odds that Trump had Epstein killed:

(0.95)(1.00)(1.00)(1.00)(0.90)(0.35) or around 30%

Odds that Clinton had Epstein killed:

(0.50)(0.60)(0.20)(0.50)(0.10)(0.35) or around 0.1%

And this is ignoring the possibility that Epstein was murdered by associates of Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew, any of his hundreds of other contacts, or some random vigilante in the prison.

So, again, you'd have to be colossally stupid to think Clinton did it.

I'm going to leave this series of replies up though just because I like the probabilities I came up with which I think are probably fairly accurate, except a bit high because there are several things I didn't bother factoring in as mentioned.

But this was originally in response to BusinessFreak who, among other unsupported conspiracy theories, believes that the Clintons likely had something to do with the death of Jeffrey Epstein.

The man is trying to silence the truth speakers.

your position is strongly opposed to reality, but ok.

How so?

unlike Trump

He hasn't. The hundreds of presidential scholars polled for the above list agree with me. Do you think that they hadn't dug as deep as you?

the rankings are not based on my personal opinion. It's an aggregate of presidential historians' opinions. and I imagine that Jackson's position will gradually migrate down in future decades because of this.

Re: Lincoln, you sound totally clueless and seem to be getting your information from some delusional leftist blog not real historians. He did not own slaves. And calling him racist is absurdly revisionist. Re: Jackson you obviously are getting your information about him from the same places, but, as explained above these rankings are an aggregate of polls taken over some 70+ years. Very recently fashionable attitudes that treat race relations as paramount above all else, and ignoring all other factors, have started to have an impact on historians' perceptions of Jackson, but there have not been enough polls conducted in the past 5 years to take him completely out of the top quartile yet. Give it another 10-20 years, if we have not recovered from our collective race-obsessed insanity by then I'm sure he will be in the 2nd quartile or lower by then.

Seems like a fine person to me but that's not what he was being evaluated on. Was he a good president? That's not the same question as whether or not he was a good person.

He already was. Those who have ever denied this are delusional, ignorant, or dishonest.

I'd like to make it clear that I'm not using hyperbole or exaggeration at all, so I'll stick to just saying that he is hands down the 45th best, or #1 worst, president in US history. And this has been clear since the beginning of his presidency with the fact that he was the least qualified person to ever hold office, and then starting with his horrible cabinet appointments, the "Muslim" ban, Trump going to the CIA to brag about his inauguration crowds even while attacking US intelligence agencies, worldwide protests against him taking office, executive orders meant to hamstring international women's health initiatives, lawsuits filed against the president for violating the emoluments clause, overturning of several efforts to protect the environment, an executive order to begin construction on a border wall at tax-payer expense, withholding of funds from certain American cities he didn't like, an embarrassing phone call with the Mexican president resulting in him canceling a trip here

an interview with Sean Hannity in which he praised torture and repeated lies about election fraud and inauguration crowd sizes, chaos at airports around the country after his unclear executive order blocking travel from 7 countries, publicly undermined NATO, putting Steven Bannon on the National Security Council and sidelining the director of national intelligence and chairman of the joint chiefs, another embarrassing phone call with the president of Australia and a sycophantic one to Vladimir Putin, a bungled military operation in Yemen, the firing of Sally Yates on the grounds that she was being ethical, the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the USC after over a year of denying a vote on legitimate nominee Merrick Garland, using the National Prayer Breakfast to brag about his Apprentice ratings, beginnings of backing out of the Iran nuclear deal, another exec order meant to undermine the Dodd-Frank act, and he took to Twitter to attack federal judges.

All of the above happened in the first two weeks of Trump's presidency, and alone clearly ranks him as the most inept president in the history of the country. Things have only gotten worse since then.

Opinions on many of these presidents have stayed pretty consistent over the past 70 years. The ones that have most noticeably changed include Jackson (trending sharply down in the last 5 years), Madison & Monroe (trending slightly up in the past 20), Grant (trending sharply up in the past couple decades), Hayes (slowly trending down ever since polling started), Arthur (slightly down over the past decade), Cleveland (consistently down since polling started), Wilson (sharp drop about 20 years ago but consistent since then), Coolidge (slight improvement over the decades), Hoover (consistent downward trend since polling started), Reagan (went sharply up about 20 years ago; consistent since then), Bush Sr. (slowly ticking up since leaving office), and Bush Jr. (has been polling better ever since Trump took office and showed us what a horrible president really looked like)