In their op-ed at the New York Times poli sci profs Brandon Rottinghaus and Justin S. Vaughn list the best and worst presidents, based on a survey of other poli sci profs but helpfully broken down by the scholars’ party leanings. There is general agreement among them on who the four best presidents have been: Washington, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt although opinions on relative greatness among them vary by the party affiliation of those being surveyed.
In what will probably come as no surprise Trump is listed by all three groups (Democrats, Republican, and independents) as one of the five worst presidents. Others among the bottom five with all three groups are W. H. Harrison, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan.
It would be helpful if the professors listed the absolute numbers of Democrats, Republicans, and independents. That can be gleaned by going to the original report and looking at another question in the survey: roughly three-quarters of respondents are Democrats, less than 10% self-declare as Republicans and about 15% self-declare as independents. Compare this with American party affiliations: Democrats 32%, Republicans 22%, independents 44%.
It would be interesting to know where the respondents place within their parties and by age cohort. I suspect that most of the respondents skew left within their parties and skew old. That would explain why Truman is highly ranked among Democratic respondents and why Johnson is ranked low, for example (Truman because he integrated the military, Johnson because of the Viet Nam War).
In the end I’m not sure that this survey tells us as much about American presidents as it does about poli sci professors.
Personally, I don’t think real history happens until all of the observers are dead. I don’t know how one could even begin to rate a Presidency in progress in the form of an historical judgment.
I don’t think that’s what they’re doing. I think they’re giving evaluations of past and current presidents based on present-day political goals. And giving the expected answers.
I would describe that as recency bias, and political scientists (not necessarily historians) would presumably be making outcome judgments from current perspectives. Obama as second most favored to be added to Mount Rushmore shows a lot of recency bias. (Republicans overrate him as well, just less so)
Strangely, President Oprah is not on the list. I thought we progressed enough to be able to rate future Presidents ahead of time – just like the Nobel Committee.
Well the problem, Andy, is that Oprah has not yet parted the sea like our last Messiah. Surely you heard about that. It was all over CNN.