Who is the worse president?
This fact-check may be outdated. Consider refreshing it to get the most current information.
Executive summary
Historians’ long-running consensus names antebellum and Reconstruction-era chiefs—James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Franklin Pierce—among the weakest presidents in U.S. history based on failure to prevent civil war, protect freedpeople’s rights, or govern effectively [1] [2]. Recent expert polls add a contemporary candidate: several 21st‑century surveys place Donald Trump at or near the bottom of modern rankings, making him the most reviled recent president among many scholars [3] [4] [5].
1. The traditional “worst” trio: why Buchanan, Johnson and Pierce recur at the bottom
Longitudinal expert rankings repeatedly consign James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Franklin Pierce to the low end because historians judge them on catastrophic national outcomes—Buchanan for failing to avert succession, Johnson for his opposition to Reconstruction protections for formerly enslaved people, and Pierce for weak leadership amid sectional crisis—patterns visible across multiple surveys and reference works [1] [2].
2. Methodological backbone: how experts decide “worst”
Scholarly polls typically score presidents on multiple attributes—crisis leadership, pursuit of equal justice, economic management and performance within their times—and then average across categories, a method used in C‑SPAN, Siena and other expert projects that produces consistent bottom dwellers over decades [6] [7] [8]. Those multi‑metric formulas privilege outcomes and institutional stewardship, which pushes presidents who presided over national collapse or serious rights regressions to the bottom [1] [8].
3. The 21st‑century disruption: Trump’s low rankings in modern surveys
While the long historical record points to pre‑Civil War and Reconstruction failures as the worst, several recent surveys place Donald Trump at or near last among all presidents evaluated, citing norm‑breaking behavior, a slim legislative record, the January 6 attack and abundant legal entanglements as central factors in scholars’ judgments [4] [5] [3]. Rottinghaus and Vaughn’s Presidential Greatness Project and C‑SPAN respondents, for example, put Trump at the bottom in their samples, signaling a contemporary reevaluation driven by temperament, institutional damage and post‑presidential criminal charges [4] [9].
4. Competing frameworks produce competing “worsts”
Which president is “worse” depends on the yardstick: long‑term constitutional and moral failures place Buchanan, Johnson and Pierce at the nadir [1] [2], while contemporary surveys that heavily weight recent norms, institutional stability and scandal put Trump at or near last among modern presidents [4] [3]. Different polls also vary in expert composition and question framing, producing variation—for instance, Siena’s multi‑decadal expert poll repeatedly lists Andrew Johnson and Buchanan among the worst while also placing Trump low in more recent iterations [8] [7].
5. Who benefits from declaring a single “worst” president?
Assigning an absolute worst serves both scholarly synthesis and political storytelling: historians use rankings to teach institutional lessons, while political actors weaponize low rankings to delegitimize opponents or historical legacies; several sources caution that demographic and ideological composition of respondents—older, majority white, male historians—can skew results toward traditionalist judgments and explain surprising high marks for otherwise problematic figures [10] [1].
6. Verdict and limits of the record
There is no single empirically unassailable answer: the academic consensus across long‑running rankings names James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Franklin Pierce as historically the weakest presidents because of catastrophic political failures [1] [2], but contemporary expert surveys also identify Donald Trump as the lowest‑ranked recent president because of norm erosion and post‑tenure legal and political fallout [4] [3]. Reporting and surveys cited here reflect expert opinion and specific scoring methods; beyond those sources, this analysis does not claim to adjudicate unmeasured dimensions or popular perceptions not captured by the referenced polls [7] [8].