STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — For the first time in his eligibility, President Donald Trump ranked number 41 in C-SPAN’s Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership, which was released on Wednesday.
The survey marks Trump’s first appearance on the list, where he placed higher than three other presidents. Those presidents include Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan.
Presidents are ranked based upon 10 qualities of presidential leadership: Public Persuasion, Crisis Leadership, Economic Management, Moral Authority, International Relations, Administrative Skills, Relations with Congress, Vision/Setting an Agenda, Pursued Equal Justice for All, and Performance Within Context of Times.
Trump placed last on the list for Administrative Skills and Moral Authority but ranked 32 on the list for Public Persuasion and 34 for Economic Management.
Rice University professor Dr. Douglas Brinkley, stated in a press release that Trump’s 2021 impeachment affected some of the other presidents’ results.
“This year, people compared which is worse: Watergate or the Trump impeachment?,’' said Brinkley. “The word ‘impeachment’ probably cost Nixon a few spots downward this year, and maybe Clinton, too.”
Trump was put on an impeachment trial in both January of 2020 and 2021.
Some presidents have moved since they first entered the survey.
President Barak Obama has made it to the top 10 in the 2021 survey, where he was ranked at number 12 in 2017.
George W. Bush has continued to move up since entering the survey, where he started at number 36 and is now ranked at 29.
Bill Clinton first ranked at number 21 in 2000, then held a steady rank at 15 in 2009 and 2017, before dropping to number 19 in this year’s survey.
Ulysses S. Grant has the survey’s largest overall gain, ranking 33 from number 20.
Dr. Edna Greene Medford, of Howard University, said America is becoming more aware of its “historical implications of racial justice in this country and we’re continuing to grapple with those issues.”
Other presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower, have remained in the top five status.
Presidential historian Richard Norton Smith said stability is what stands out the most to him in the survey.
“It’s interesting, particularly at the top and bottom of the list, how little significant movement there has been,’' said Smith. “By contrast, the living president seems much more likely to fluctuate. It’s almost as if there was a boomerang effect where historians go overboard a bit when presidents leave office and they are at the nadir of their partisan reputation, and then they graduate to less political status.”
President Joe Biden was not ranked on the survey since he is the current president of the United States.
C-SPAN conducts the survey since 2000, each time there has been a change in administrations. The survey is created from a poll from 142 participants made up of historians, professors, and other professional observers of the presidency.