That’s the verdict of 154 presidential experts polled by the American Political Science Association’s 2024 Presidential Greatness Project.
The results, announced last month, rank President Biden as the 14th best president, among the top third to serve in the Oval Office, despite his 41 percent approval rating.
The survey, conducted online in late 2023, combined the responses of current and recent members of the APSA’s presidential politics division as well as scholars who recently published peer-reviewed presidential research in academic journals.
Respondents were asked to rate presidents on a scale of 0 to 100 — 0 for failure, 50 for average and 100 for great.
Trump outdid even James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson in the race to the bottom.
Buchanan, you may recall, was at the helm when the country drifted into Civil War, leading to Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860. After the Union won and Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson took over and was the first president to be impeached. From bad to good to bad again. Let history be a warning.
In first place — perhaps no surprise — we have Lincoln (93.87 percent average), followed by Franklin D. Roosevelt (90.83) and George Washington (90.32).
Trump, the only president to be impeached twice, ranked last (10.92), lower than Andrew Johnson (21.56) and James Buchanan (16.71).
Biden’s score was 62.66.
Imagine all 46 of our presidents in the Tulip Time parade. Lincoln is the drum major. Washington and FDR are the baton twirlers. The others follow on horseback in descending order of greatness.
At the front of the pack, you see Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson. Then come Harry Truman, Barack Obama and Dwight Eisenhower. The longer the parade, the less familiar the faces: Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, William Harrison. Here and there you might recognize a few others: Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Richard Nixon.
Finally, behind the horses, you see the cleanup crew including the man with orange hair and a poop shovel. You hear him mutter something about cleaning up the mess.
Ah, that’s show business. But it’s politics, too.
— Milton Nieuwsma is a Park Township resident. For complete rankings go online to 2024 Presidential Greatness Project.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: My Take: Trump ranked ‘worst’ U.S. president