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Historical rankings of United States Presidents
Sculptor Gutzon Borglum and President Calvin Coolidge selected Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lincoln to appear on Mount Rushmore. In political science, historical rankings of United States Presidents are surveys conducted in order to construct rankings of the success of individuals who have served as 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 the presidential achievements, leadership qualities, failures and faults (such as corruption). Three Presidents?George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt ? are consistently ranked at the top of the lists. Usually ranked just below those three are Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt. The remaining top 10 ranks are often rounded out by Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, and John F. Kennedy. Ranking at the bottom of most polls are Warren G. Harding, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan. Two presidents, William Henry Harrison and James A. Garfield, died after less than six months in office, and are sometimes not ranked. Some presidents present special problems because their foreign policy success or failure stands in contradiction to their domestic policy failure or success. Political scientist Walter Dean Burnham noted the "dichotomous or schizoid profiles." Historian Alan Brinkley said, "There are presidents who could be considered both failures and great or near great (for example, Nixon)". James MacGregor Burns observed of Nixon, "How can one evaluate such an idiosyncratic president, so brilliant and so morally lacking?"[1] 
Abraham Lincoln is often considered the greatest president for his leadership during the American Civil War and his eloquence in speeches such as the Gettysburg Address.
Notable scholar surveysThe 1948 poll was conducted by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. of Harvard University.[2] The 1962 survey was also conducted by Schlesinger, who surveyed 75 historians; the results of this survey are given in the book The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents by William A. Degregorio. Schlesinger's son Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. conducted another poll in 1996, not currently on the chart below. 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 President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was ranked #22 in 1962, but was ranked #9 in the 1982 survey. 
Andrew Johnson (1865–69) routinely receives poor marks due to his handling of Reconstruction The 1996 column shows the results from a poll conducted from 1989 to 1996 by William J. Ridings, Jr. and Stuart B. McIver, and published in the book 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 & crisis management, political skill, appointments, character & integrity), and the results were tabulated to create the overall ranking. The C-SPAN Survey of Presidential Leadership was a 1999 survey of academic historians (with self-selected responders). It found that historians consider Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Franklin D. Roosevelt the three best presidents by a wide margin and William Henry Harrison, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan the worst.[5] 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, but never balanced. 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 1960s presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy, and higher ranking of President Ronald Reagan at #8. Franklin Roosevelt still ranked in the top three. Another presidential poll was conducted by The Wall Street Journal in 2005, with James Lindgren of Northwestern University Law School for the Federalist Society.[6] As in the 2000 survey, the editors sought to balance the opinions of liberals and conservatives, adjusting the results "to give Democratic- and Republican-leaning scholars equal weight." Franklin D. Roosevelt still ranked in the top-three, but editor James Taranto noted that Democratic-leaning scholars rated George W. Bush the sixth-worst president of all time, while Republican scholars rated him the sixth-best, giving him a split-decision rating of "average". A 2006 Siena College poll of 744 professors reported the following results:[7]
Thomas Kelly, professor emeritus of American studies at Siena College, said: "President Bush would seem to have small hope for high marks from the current generation of practicing historians and political scientists. In this case, current public opinion polls actually seem to cut the President more slack than the experts do." Dr. Douglas Lonnstrom, Siena College professor of statistics and director of the Siena Research Institute, stated: "In our 2002 presidential rating, with a group of experts comparable to this current poll, President Bush ranked 23rd of 42 presidents. That was shortly after 9/11. Clearly, the professors do not think things have gone well for him in the past few years. These are the experts that teach college students today and will write the history of this era tomorrow."[7] A 2008 History News Network poll among professional historians (with self-selected responders) found that 98 percent believed that the George W. Bush presidency was a failure, and that 61 percent believed it to be the worst in history.[8] Scholar survey results
More than 1,000 people have participated in the surveys. The issue of the validity of the rankings has been of special interest to historians and political scientists, who have tried to specify the relative importance of personality, leadership, issues and partisanship. Quantitative ranking by groups of scholars has been in favor in recent decades, displacing the traditional methods of evaluation by individual writers as typified by Bailey (1966) and most biographers. Because Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms as both the 22nd and 24th President, the total number of Presidents in each poll is at least one less than the number of the most recently serving President in the poll. Because of their short time in office, Presidents William Henry Harrison and James Garfield are sometimes omitted from these polls. Liberal and conservative ratersThe Murray-Blessing 1982 survey asked historians whether they were liberal or conservative on domestic, social and economic issues. The table below shows that the two groups had only small differences in ranking the best and worst presidents. Both groups agreed on the composition of nine of the top ten Presidents (and were split over the inclusion of either Lyndon B. Johnson or Dwight D. Eisenhower), and six of the worst seven (split over Jimmy Carter or Calvin Coolidge). Conservatives placed Democrat Harry S. Truman at a higher ranking.
Source: Murray and Blessing p 135 Popular opinion
An August 2008 survey found that 41% of Americans agreed that George W. Bush is the worst President in United States history, while 50% disagreed. C-SPAN viewer surveyC-SPAN asked viewers in 1999 to rank the presidents, and 1,145 people participated. The results of the viewer survey were similar to the results of the 1999 C-SPAN historian survey, with a few notable differences.[9]
ABC pollAn ABC News poll about presidential greatness, taken 16–20 February 2000, asked 1012 adults nationwide, "Who do you think was the greatest American president?"[10]
Rasmussen Reports pollA Rasmussen Reports poll taken June 13–24 of 2007 asked 1,000 randomly selected adults to rate America's presidents. Six presidents were rated favorably by at least 80% of respondents. They were George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. Twenty presidents were viewed favorably by at least 50% of respondents. Only two presidents were viewed unfavorably by at least 50% of respondents. They were Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, the current president. [11] Favorably-viewed Presidents
Unfavorably-viewed Presidents
Washington College pollA Washington College poll about presidential greatness, taken 11 February 2005, asked 800 adults nationwide, "Thinking about all the presidents of the United States throughout history to the present, who would you say was America's greatest president?"[12]
Recent president pollsThese polls evaluate Presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower and later succession. Quinnipiac University pollA Quinnipiac University poll, taken May 23–30, 2006, asked 1,534 registered American voters to pick the worst U.S. President of the last 61 years.[13] "Which of these eleven presidents we have had since World War II would you consider the worst president — Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush?"
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