How have views of historically unpopular presidents changed over time?
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Executive summary
Historical opinion of unpopular presidents often improves over time as new evidence, shifting party lenses and scholarly reassessments emerge: examples include Lyndon Johnson’s rehabilitation in historians’ rankings and Ulysses S. Grant’s rising esteem [1]. Contemporary polling shows many modern presidents—Joe Biden and Donald Trump—are deeply polarized now, with large partisan gaps about their eventual historical reputations [2] [3].
1. Why “unpopular” doesn’t mean “permanently damned”
Public approval at the end of a presidency is a poor predictor of long‑term historical ranking. Gallup and other polls record many presidents leaving office with low approval—Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson are salient cases—but historians and later public opinion have reassessed them positively as new archives, policy outcomes and generational perspectives emerged [1] [4]. The pattern in the historical‑rankings literature is rehabilitation over time when policy legacies (civil rights, Reconstruction, foreign policy) are judged more important than momentary crises [1].
2. Rehabilitation by historians: Johnson and Grant as case studies
Scholarly polls and compilations show measurable shifts: Lyndon Johnson rose by eight places into the first quartile in recent historical rankings, and Ulysses S. Grant climbed several spots as historians reappraised his role in Reconstruction and his effectiveness as a wartime leader [1]. These shifts reflect historians’ willingness to separate short‑term unpopularity (Vietnam for Johnson; scandals in Grant’s administration) from long‑term substantive achievements, a dynamic repeatedly cited in professional rankings [1].
3. Partisan polarization now makes future reassessments more contested
Recent polling finds that Americans’ expectations of how presidents will be judged are heavily split along party lines: 57% of Democrats expect Donald Trump to be rated poorly while 69% of Republicans expect Joe Biden to be viewed unfavorably [2]. That polarization means that unlike mid‑20th‑century cases where consensus eventually formed around leaders like Eisenhower or Lincoln, modern presidents confront entrenched partisan narratives that slow or complicate any later “rehabilitation” [2].
4. Polls capture perception, historians capture legacy — they move differently
Contemporary polls measure immediate public sentiment: a March 2025 Gallup found 54% of U.S. adults expect Joe Biden to be rated below average or poor historically [3]. By contrast, C‑SPAN and other historian surveys produce different rankings because scholars evaluate context, policy consequences and archival material over decades; those professional rankings already show shifts (for instance, Reagan and Jackson moving down, Johnson moving up) distinct from snap public polls [1].
5. Media and partisan actors shape both short‑ and long‑term reputations
Media narratives and partisan campaigns accelerate judgment at the moment a president leaves office and can harden early reputations. News outlets and activist organizations publish rankings and commentary that feed public perceptions—examples in 2024–25 include surveys and op‑eds that place Trump low in historian lists and opinion pieces ranking presidents for Presidents’ Day [5] [6] [7]. These sources reflect contemporary framings that may be revised only slowly as new evidence or generational shifts occur [1].
6. Limits of current reporting and what we don’t know
Available sources do not mention long‑term outcomes for presidents serving after 2025 beyond initial polls and historian surveys, so we cannot assert how truly contemporary figures will be judged decades hence; current reporting documents polarization and early expectations but not final historical verdicts [2] [3] [1]. Moreover, while several outlets predict eventual rises or falls for figures like Trump, those are interpretations by commentators rather than settled scholarly consensus [7].
7. What to watch if you want early signals of reassessment
Look for three signals that often precede rehabilitation in the record cited by historians: new archival releases or documentary evidence that changes the factual record [1], measurable long‑term policy outcomes (for example, on civil rights or economic trends) that outlast partisan reaction [1], and emerging scholarly consensus in historian surveys such as C‑SPAN’s periodic polls [1]. If these appear and partisan intensity subsides in the public sphere, modern unpopular presidents have historically become more favorably viewed over time.
Sources referenced above show both the empirical polling snapshot of present unpopularity (Gallup, YouGov) and the distinct, sometimes divergent trends in historians’ rankings that produce later reassessments [3] [2] [1].