A Consequential President for All the Wrong Reasons

When historians and political scientists rank presidents from best to worst, Donald Trump invariably comes out at the bottom.

This year, to give one example, the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project released the results of a survey of 154 current and former members of the Presidents and Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.

The highest ranked included no surprises: on a scale of 0 to 100, Abraham Lincoln (95.03), Franklin Delano Roosevelt (90.83), George Washington (90.32), Teddy Roosevelt (78.58) and Thomas Jefferson (77.53).

Dead last: Donald Trump (10.92), substantially below James Buchanan (16.71), Andrew Johnson (21.56), Franklin Pierce (24.6) and William Henry Harrison (26.01).

There are other ways to rank American presidents, however: How consequential were they?

By these standards, Trump no longer falls at the bottom of the pack. That’s not necessarily a good thing. My own view is that Trump is a consequential president for all the wrong reasons.

After the nation rejected the presidential bids of George Wallace, Pat Buchanan and David Duke, Trump demonstrated that the contemporary American electorate will put a candidate who appeals to voters’ worst instincts in the White House.