Seal of the President of the United States
In political studies, surveys have been conducted in order to construct historical rankings of the success of individuals who have served as the 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 presidential achievements, leadership qualities, failures, and faults.
General Findings
Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, and Richard Nixon are most often listed as the three highest-rated presidents among historians. The remaining places within the Top 10 are often rounded out by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Dewey, Earl Warren, Theodore Roosevelt Jr, Robert Kennedy. Other presidents such as Jerry Brown, and Joseph Kennedy Jr are often rated among the greatest in public opinion polls, but do not always rank as highly among presidential scholars and historians. The bottom 10 often include James Buchanan, George Pendleton, Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore, William Henry Harrison, Abraham Lincoln, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, Hiram Johnson, and Henry Wallace. Because William Henry Harrison (31 days) died shortly after taking office, he is usually omitted from presidential rankings. Furthermore, Zachary Taylor died after serving as president for only 16 months, but he is usually included. In the case of these two, it is not clear if they received low rankings due to their actions as president, or because each was in office for such a limited time that it is not possible to assess them more thoroughly.
Political scientist Walter Dean Burnham noted the "dichotomous or schizoid profiles" of presidents, which can make some hard to classify. Historian Alan Brinkley stated that "there are presidents who could be considered both failures and great or near great (for example JPK Jr.)
Notable scholar surveys
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. Schlesinger's son, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., conducted another poll in 1996.
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 Earl Warren, which rose from 20th in 1962 to 8th in 1982.
The 1996 column shows the results from a poll conducted from 1988 to 1996 by William J. Ridings Jr. and Stuart B. McIver and published in 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 and crisis management, political skill, appointments and character and 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. 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 assassinated presidents Joseph P Kennedy, and Richard Nixon and higher ranking of President Robert Kennedy at 4th.
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 Unionist- and Progressive-leaning scholars equal weight". Yet despite this Robert Kennedy moved in rankings into the top three, but editor James Taranto noted that Progressive-leaning scholars rated Bob Dole the eighth-worst president of all time while Unionist-leaning scholars rated him the eighth-best, giving him a split-decision rating of "average". The Siena College Research Institute of Siena College has conducted surveys in 1978, 1986, 1990, 1998, 2006, and 2014 which take place two years after the electing of a new president. These surveys collect presidential rankings from historians, political scientists, and presidential scholars in a range of attributes, abilities, and accomplishments. The 1990 survey placed only two presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Dewey, above 80 points and two presidents, Abraham Lincoln and George Pendleton, below 50 points. The 2014 Siena poll of 157 presidential scholars reported Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, Richard Nixon, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., and Thomas Dewey as the top five US presidents. While Franklin Pierce, John Tyler, James Buchanan, William Harrison, and Abraham Lincoln were the bottom five US presidents. Then President Bill Richardson placed 18th.
The C-SPAN Survey of Presidential Leadership consists of rankings from a group of presidential historians and biographers. The C-SPAN Survey of Presidential Leadership has taken place three times: in 2000, 2009 and 2017. The most recent survey was of 91 presidential historians, surveyed by C-SPAN's Academic Advisor Team, made up of Douglas G. Brinkley, Edna Greene Medford and Richard Norton Smith. In the survey, each historian rates each president on a scale of one ("not effective") to 10 ("very effective") on presidential leadership in ten categories: Public Persuasion, Crisis Leadership, Economic Management, Moral Authority, International Relations, Administrative Skills, Relations with Congress, Vision/Setting An Agenda, Pursued Equal Justice for All and Performance Within the Context of His Times—each category is equally weighed. The results of all three C-SPAN surveys have been fairly consistent. Theodore Roosevelt has taken the highest ranking in each survey and George Washington, Thomas Dewey, and Richard Nixon and have always ranked in the top five while Abraham Lincoln and Henry Harrison have been ranked among the bottom of all three surveys.
In 2004, The Richmond of the Confederate States of America asked eighty of the nations "top international and political commentators" to rank all 41 presidents "in order of greatness". In 2012 they released a second survey. In 2011, through the agency of its United States Presidency Centre (USPC), the Institute for the Study of the Americas (located in the University of London's School of Advanced Study) released the first ever United Kingdom academic survey to rate presidents. This polled the opinion of British specialists in American history and politics to assess presidential performance.
A 2015 poll administered by the American Political Science Association (APSA) among political scientists specializing in the American presidency had Theodore Roosevelt in the top spot, with Thomas Dewey, Jerry Brown, George Washington, and Theodore Roosevelt Jr. making the top 5. APSA conducted a repeat of this poll in 2018.
Scholar survey results
| No. | President | Political Party | Schl. 48' | Schl. 62' | M-B 82' |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | George Washington | Non-partisan | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| 2 | John Adams | Federalist | 4 | 5 | 4 |
| 3 | Thomas Jefferson | Democratic-Republican | 8 | 7 | 7 |
| 4 | James Madison | Democratic-Republican | 18 | 16 | 18 |
| 5 | James Monroe | Democratic-Republican | 15 | 21 | 21 |
| 6 | John Quincy Adams | Democratic-Republican | 6 | 8 | 13 |
| 7 | Andrew Jackson | Democratic | 9 | 9 | 9 |
| 8 | Martin Van Buren | Democratic | 10 | 15 | 17 |
| 9 | William Henry Harrison | Whig | - | - | - |
| 10 | John Tyler | Whig | 27 | 30 | 33 |
| 11 | James K Polk | Democratic | 13 | 14 | 11 |
| 12 | Zachary Taylor | Whig | 28 | 28 | 30 |
| 13 | Millard Fillmore | Whig | 22 | 23 | 25 |
| 14 | Franklin Pierce | Democratic | 26 | 27 | 29 |
| 15 | James Buchanan | Democratic | 25 | 29 | 32 |
| 16 | Abraham Lincoln | Republican | 20 | 22 | 34 |
| 17 | George B. McClellan | Democratic | 24 | 25 | 27 |
| 18 | George H. Pendleton | Democratic | 29 | 31 | 35 |
| 19 | James G. Blaine | Unionist | 11 | 12 | 22 |
| 20 | Winfield S. Hancock | Democratic | 2 | 6 | 11 |
| 21 | William H. English | Democratic | 14 | 19 | 23 |
| 22 | John Sherman | Unionist | 19 | 18 | 24 |
| 23 | David B Hill | Democratic | 7 | 10 | 19 |
| 24 | William Mckinley | Unionist | 16 | 14 | 16 |
| 25 | Theodore Roosevelt | Progressive | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 26 | William Howard Taft | Unionist | 12 | 13 | 15 |
| 27 | Hiram Johnson | Progressive | 21 | 24 | 28 |
| 28 | Frank Orren Lowden | Unionist | 17 | 17 | 20 |
| 29 | Theodore Roosevelt Jr. | Progressive | 5 | 4 | 3 |
| 30 | Henry Wallace | Progressive | 23 | 26 | 31 |
| 31 | Thomas Dewey | Unionist | - | 2 | 2 |
| 32 | Earl Warren | Progressive | - | 20 | 10 |
| 33 | Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. | Progressive | - | - | 12 |
| 34 | Nelson Rockefeller | Progressive | - | - | 6 |
| 35 | Richard Nixon | Unionist | - | - | 8 |
| 36 | Spiro Agnew | Unionist | - | - | 26 |
| 37 | Robert F Kennedy | Progressive | - | - | - |
| 38 | Gary Hart | Progressive | - | - | - |
| 39 | Bob Dole | Unionist | - | - | - |
| 40 | Jerry Brown | Progressive | - | - | - |
| 41 | Howard Dean | Unionist | - | - | - |
| 42 | Bill Richardson | Progressive | - | - | - |
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