Which presidents are most commonly ranked below Donald Trump by scholars, and why?
Executive summary
Scholars most often place James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Warren G. Harding and Franklin Pierce (and in many recent surveys William Henry Harrison and Herbert Hoover) below Donald Trump, though the exact ordering varies by poll; some expert surveys put Trump last while others rank him a few slots above those long-established “worst” presidents [1] [2] [3] [4]. The reasons are a mix of concrete administrative failures—blunders in war, secession, corruption, economic collapse—and scholarly judgments about constitutional norms and presidential character that make comparisons across eras necessarily interpretive and contested [1] [5] [6].
1. Who scholars reliably rank below Trump — the usual names and their placement
Long-standing consensus positions James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson among the very worst presidents, with Warren G. Harding and Franklin Pierce regularly joining them in the bottom tier; several recent expert polls list Trump alongside or slightly above that group rather than beneath them, and some project-specific surveys put Trump at dead last [1] [2] [3]. Siena’s 2022 survey placed Trump in the bottom five with Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren Harding and Franklin Pierce [1], while Rottinghaus and Vaughn’s Presidential Greatness Project found Trump at the bottom of their 154-scholar sample [5] [7]. The quadrennial C‑SPAN survey placed Trump near the bottom but not uniformly last across its measures, reflecting small differences in methodology and timing [4].
2. Why Buchanan and Johnson are persistently judged worse than Trump
Historians emphasize catastrophic policy consequences when condemning Buchanan and Johnson: James Buchanan is blamed for inaction and failures that accelerated the slide to civil war, and Andrew Johnson for his Reconstruction-era choices that impeded civil rights and fostered political instability—consequences that scholars treat as existential failures of leadership and judgment [5] [1]. These historians’ assessments rest on long-term institutional damage (failure to avert secession; repudiation of Reconstruction’s egalitarian aims) that many scholars view as uniquely ruinous in American political development [5].
3. Corruption, incompetence and economic collapse: Harding, Pierce, Harrison, Hoover
Warren Harding’s administration is judged harshly for corruption among appointees and a failure of oversight, Franklin Pierce and William Henry Harrison are criticized for weak leadership and consequential mistakes, and Herbert Hoover is blamed for policy missteps and perception failures during the onset of the Great Depression—each a classic historian’s case of poor stewardship that scholars consistently penalize in rankings [1] [8]. Those concrete administrative failings are easier for scholars to compare across eras than more subjective measures like charisma or rhetoric.
4. Why Trump is treated differently: norms, polarization and recentness
Scholars’ low rankings for Trump emphasize his partisan polarization and perceived corrosive effects on norms; Brookings and other analysts observe that Trump scores as the most polarizing president in expert surveys, which complicates assessments because partisanship colors both public and some scholarly evaluations [6]. Rottinghaus and Vaughn note that recent scholars penalize presidents for weakening institutional norms, a major factor pulling Trump’s rating down in their 2024 survey [5] [7]. Yet some experts also credit Trump on particular metrics—risk-taking, party leadership, or certain policy outcomes—so aggregate positions reflect trades among many attributes [1].
5. Methodology matters — why polls disagree and what that implies
Different projects weigh attributes differently (20 categories in Siena’s SCRI survey versus overall “greatness” scores in the Presidential Greatness Project and C‑SPAN’s multi-dimension quadrennial polls), and sample composition (political scientists, presidential historians, or broader academics) shifts outcomes; consequently Trump can appear last in one instrument and a few slots higher in another, while the truly persistent bottom-tier names (Buchanan, Johnson, Harding, Pierce) remain constant across methodologies [1] [2] [4]. Analysts at AEI and elsewhere also warn that public polls and scholarly rankings diverge, and that contemporary political polarization intensifies disagreement about recent presidents’ placements [9] [6].
6. Bottom line: consensus and limits of comparison
The scholarly consensus keeps Buchanan and Johnson—and often Harding and Pierce—below Trump because historians punish long-term institutional damage, corruption, and catastrophic policy failure more severely than many contemporaneous measures; Trump’s low scores largely reflect concerns about norms and polarization, but rankings vary by methodology and by how scholars balance character, accomplishments and consequences [1] [5] [6]. Different surveys will continue to shuffle the precise order, especially among recent presidents, and no single poll can settle what “worst” means across two centuries of very different presidencies [2] [4].