Modern U.S. presidents such as Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan rank near the top of the best leaders in American history, while Donald Trump is closer to the bottom, according to the latest survey of presidential historians. The five highest rated presidents, according to the C-SPAN survey, are Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The bottom five include William Henry Harrison, Donald Trump, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan. What the presidents at the very top of the list have in common is that most faced monumental challenges related to the nation’s survival. Lincoln presided over the Civil War and kept the country from breaking apart. Washington, America’s first president, helped nurture the budding democracy by not becoming king and stepping down after serving as president. Franklin Roosevelt presided over America during World War II and Eisenhower negotiated an end to the Korean War. “They were all president during critical periods in American history,” says Cassandra Newby-Alexander, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and a professor of history at Norfolk State University, who took part in the survey. “And all of them, from John F. Kennedy (8th), all the way up to Abraham Lincoln (1st) created some idealized vision of America.” The presidents were judged on the vision they had for America, public persuasion, crisis leadership, economics, moral authority, foreign affairs, administrative skills, relationship with Congress, pursuit of equal justice and their performance within the context of the time they led the country. Political scientist Robert Kaufman, a professor of public policy at Pepperdine University, who also took part in the survey, says it is important to make a distinction between greatness and an effective president. “Not all very effective presidents can be great, in my estimation, because greatness also depends upon the magnitude of the challenge,” he says. “Theodore Roosevelt, at the beginning of the 20th century, and Bill Clinton, at the end, were effective, but never faced the type of challenge that would lend itself to greatness.” The man at the bottom of the list, James Buchanan, is often ranked as one of the worst U.S. presidents. His refusal to take a side on slavery, while at times siding with slaveholders, is thought to have inflamed divisions within the country ahead of the Civil War. Both Kaufman, who calls himself a Republican, and Newby-Alexander feel Truman (6th) might be the most under-rated president. Both point to his fight for civil rights while Kaufman also praises the 33rd president for “laying the successful architecture for winning the Cold War.” Overall, Newby-Alexander says, the survey results reflect a conventional view. “If you consider the average age of historians, they tend to be older, they tend to be white and they tend to be male, so that actually leads to many of them having a somewhat traditionalist perspective,” she says, pointing out how high Theodore Roosevelt (4th) and Woodrow Wilson (13th) ranked despite their well-established racist views and actions. “Under their administrations, we had the largest number of concentrated lynchings that went unpunished than any other time in American history,” she says. “[Wilson’s] the one who strictly segregated the federal government. That did not exist before. He segregated the Navy. That did not exist before. He initiated a lot of very retrograde policy during a critical period in American history.” The passage of time and the gaining of perspective tends to change how presidents are viewed. While Newby-Alexander thinks Reagan (9th) is overrated, specifically mentioning his stance on apartheid — he vetoed the Comprehensive Apartheid Act, which levied economic sanctions against South Africa in 1986 — Kaufman lists the reasons he would push the 40th U.S. president higher up the list. “Winning the Cold War, restoring American economic prosperity rooted in Judeo-Christian values, and optimism about America's exceptionalism,” Kaufman says. “He understood a) what the Soviet threat was about, b) what we needed to do to defeat it, and he left Bill Clinton a very strong hand. In many ways, we've been living off borrowed military capital of the Reagan buildup of the 1980s, when he inherited a military in disarray.” And, although he says it might be an unpopular opinion, Kaufman thinks Trump (now ranked 41 out of 44 presidents) will also rise in future surveys. “I think that, as the years go by, the president will get credit, however sausage-like the process was, for putting certain issues on the table that had long been neglected — sovereignty, particularly China, and energy independence,” he says. “I think China, which is the dominant foreign policy threat of our time, by my estimate, is something where Trump will get more credit, substantively, not temperamentally, than one would rate him now in the wreckage of his presidency.” Newby-Alexander believes history will judge Obama (10th) more favorably. “I would have put Barack Obama under Abraham Lincoln because he managed to not only provide us with an incredibly important health care initiative — while it has a lot of flaws, it was something that presidents have been trying to do for almost 100 years, and he succeeded,” she says. “Also, he was someone who got us out of a crisis that was actually deeper than the Great Depression when the stock market crashed in 1929. What we experienced right before he took office was worse than what Franklin Roosevelt dealt with, and he was able to pull us out. And I think that that has been tremendously underrated.” The current president, Joe Biden, is not on the list, and historians say it is too early to judge him. Who was the better president: George Washington or Abraham Lincoln? George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are undoubtedly two of our greatest presidents. One was instrumental in founding America, the other held it together during the bloodiest war in our nation's history. Washington was a brilliant general who led the Revolutionary Army to victory over the British and served as America's first president. But Washington actually owned slaves, whereas Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation that ended slavery. Who was the greater Commander-in-Chief? 🇺🇸 Who was the better president: George Washington or Abraham Lincoln?
In 1982, forty-nine historians and political scientists were asked by the Chicago Tribune to rate all the Presidents through Jimmy Carter in five categories: leadership qualities, accomplishments/crisis management, political skills, appointments, and character/integrity. At the top of the list stood Abraham Lincoln. He was followed by Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Woodrow Wilson, and Harry Truman. None of these other Presidents exceeded Lincoln in any category according to the rate scale. Roosevelt fell into second place because he did not measure up to Lincoln in character. Washington, close behind, ranked third because of his lesser political skills. It is the general opinion of pollsters, moreover, that the average American would probably put Lincoln at the top as well. In other words, the judgment of historians and the public tells us that Abraham Lincoln was the nation's greatest President by every measure applied. Interestingly, had the average Union citizen been asked the same question in the spring of 1863, there can be no doubt but that Lincoln would have fared poorly. Not much more could have been said for him even a year later, when Lincoln thought that he would lose his bid for reelection. It would take Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse and his own death a week later to propel Lincoln into the pantheon of presidential greatness. And Lincoln's canonization began almost immediately. Within days of his death, his life was being compared to Jesus Christ. Lincoln was portrayed to a worshipping public as a self-made man, the liberator of the slaves, and the savior of the Union who had given his life so that others could be free. President Lincoln became Father Abraham, a near mythological hero, "lawgiver" to African Americans, and a "Masterpiece of God" sent to save the Union. His humor was presented as an example of his humanity; his numerous pardons demonstrated his "great soul"; and his sorrowful demeanor reflected the burdens of his lonely journey as the leader of a "blundering and sinful" people. Historians, mindful of Lincoln's mythic place in American popular culture, accord him similar praise for what he accomplished and for how he did it. Because he was committed to preserving the Union and thus vindicating democracy no matter what the consequences to himself, the Union was indeed saved. Because he understood that ending slavery required patience, careful timing, shrewd calculations, and an iron resolve, slavery was indeed killed. Lincoln managed in the process of saving the Union and killing slavery to define the creation of a more perfect Union in terms of liberty and economic equality that rallied the citizenry behind him. Because he understood that victory in both great causes depended upon purposeful and visionary presidential leadership as well as the exercise of politically acceptable means, he left as his legacy a United States that was both whole and free. As the most activist President in history, Lincoln transformed the President's role as commander in chief and as chief executive into a powerful new position, making the President supreme over both Congress and the courts. His activism began almost immediately with Fort Sumter when he called out state militias, expanded the army and navy, spent $2 million without congressional appropriation, blockaded Southern ports, closed post offices to treasonable correspondences, suspended the writ of habeas corpus in several locations, ordered the arrest and military detention of suspected traitors, and issued the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year's Day 1863. To do all of these things, Lincoln broke an assortment of laws and ignored one constitutional provision after another. He made war without a declaration of war, and indeed even before summoning Congress into special session. He countered Supreme Court opposition by affirming his own version of judicial review that placed the President as the final interpreter of the Constitution. For Lincoln, it made no sense "to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution." Following a strategy of "unilateral action," Lincoln justified his powers as an emergency authority granted to him by the people. He had been elected, he told his critics, to decide when an emergency existed and to take all measures required to deal with it. In doing so, Lincoln maintained that the President was one of three "coordinate" departments of government, not in any way subordinate to Congress or the courts. Moreover, he demonstrated that the President had a special duty that went beyond the duty of Congress and the courts, a duty that required constant executive action in times of crisis. While the other branches of government are required to support the Constitution, Lincoln's actions pointed to the notion that the President alone is sworn to preserve, protect, and defend it. In times of war, this power makes the President literally responsible for the well-being and survival of the nation. Lincoln's legacy of executive authority did not last beyond his death, and over the next forty years both Congress and the courts overshadowed the White House in power and influence. Still, the most lasting accomplishments attributed to Lincoln are the preservation of the Union, the vindication of democracy, and the death of slavery, all accomplished by the ways in which he handled the crisis that most certainly would have ended differently with a lesser man in office. His great achievement, historians tell us, was his ability to energize and mobilize the nation by appealing to its best ideals while acting "with malice towards none" in the pursuit of a more perfect, more just, and more enduring Union. No President in American history ever faced a greater crisis and no President ever accomplished as much. |