Ranking the presidents, best to worst

   But historians constantly mull this issue, and periodically colleges and think tanks ask them to rank presidents from best to worst. In the following ranking, done in 2010 by the Siena Research Institute, 238 presidential scholars were asked to rank the presidents on different aspects of leadership, specifically:

• Background, imagination, integrity, intelligence, luck and willingness to take risks.
• Ability to compromise, executive ability, leadership ability, communication and overall ability.
• Accomplishments, specifically, handling of the economy, other domestic affairs, working with Congress and their party, appointing Supreme Court justices and members of the executive branch, avoiding crucial mistakes and foreign policy.

    In various areas, a president could have excelled or fallen short. For example, when historians considered intelligence, they ranked John Adams seventh from the top. But Adams is ranked 17th overall. (We’ll tackle the issue of intellect in a different story.) Here is how historians ranked the presidents, best to worst, overall:

1. Franklin D. Roosevelt
2. Theodore Roosevelt
3. Abraham Lincoln
4. George Washington
5. Thomas Jefferson
6. James Madison
7. James Monroe
8. Woodrow Wilson
9. Harry S. Truman
10. Dwight D. Eisenhower
11. John F. Kennedy
12. James K. Polk
13. Bill Clinton
14. Andrew Jackson
15. Barack Obama
16. Lyndon B. Johnson
17. John Adams
18. Ronald Reagan
19. John Quincy Adams
20. Grover Cleveland
21. William McKinley
22. George H.W. Bush
23. Martin Van Buren
24. William Taft
25. Chester A. Arthur
26. Ulysses S. Grant
27. James A. Garfield
28. Gerald R. Ford
29. Calvin Coolidge
30. Richard Nixon
31. Rutherford B. Hayes
32. Jimmy Carter
    
33. Zachary Taylor
34. Benjamin Harrison
35. William Henry Harrison
36. Herbert Hoover
37. John Tyler
38. Millard Fillmore
39. George W. Bush
40. Franklin Pierce
41. Warren G. Harding
42. James Buchanan
43. Andrew Johnson

    Related:

    History and the first ladies: How do they rate?

    Senator, governor: Who makes the best president?

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