While he loves to claim that millions of Americans wanted him to win a second term in office, it appears that history will not be kind to failed, one-term former President Donald Trump, who has debuted on C-SPAN’s 2021 Survey of Presidential Leadership in 41st place, which places him among the five worst presidents in U.S. history.
Politico reports that the survey is conducted annually among a collection of historians, and those historians do not think much of Trump:
“This survey marks Trump’s first appearance on the list, on which the one-term president placed higher than only three other presidents: Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson and the perpetually last-ranked James Buchanan.”
The ratings are based on 10 qualities of presidential leadership;
- Public Persuasion
- Crisis Leadership
- Economic Management
- Moral Authority
- International Relations
- Administrative Skill
- Relations with Congress
- Vision/Setting an Agenda
- Pursued Equal Justice for All
- Performance Within the Context of the Times
When it comes to administrative skills, Trump ranked dead last among his predecessors in American history. He also ranks last when it comes to moral authority.
The reasons for Trump’s low rating are almost too numerous to mention, but presidential historian Douglas Brinkley suggested it had a lot to do with the 2021 impeachment, which made Trump the only president in history to be impeached twice:
“This year, people compared which is worse: Watergate or the Trump impeachment? The word ‘impeachment’ probably cost Nixon a few spots downward this year, and maybe Clinton too.”
In what will no doubt be especially galling to Trump, Barack Obama moved into the top 10.
The top 5 presidents, according to historians, are Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Lincoln has been ranked first since the survey began in 2000.
In time, as it becomes clearer just how incompetent and fundamentally evil Trump was during his term in office, it’s safe to predict he will be seen s the worst president in the long history of the United States. If he’s indicted, that spot is virtually guaranteed.