The Magnificent Lion
Richard Norton Smith
A Brief History of Presidential Rankings
Douglas Brinkley
1 Abraham Lincoln
Harold Holzer
2 George Washington
Ron Chernow
3 Franklin D. Roosevelt
Doris Kearns Goodwin
4 Theodore Roosevelt
Douglas Brinkley
5 Dwight D. Eisenhower
William I. Hitchcock
6 Harry S. Truman
Aida D. Donald
7 Thomas Jefferson
Willard Sterne Randall
8 John F. Kennedy
Robert Dallek
10 Lyndon B. Johnson
Robert A. Caro
11 Woodrow Wilson
A. Scott Berg
12 Barack Obama
David J. Garrow
14 James K. Polk
John Seigenthaler
15 William J. Clinton
David Maraniss
16 William McKinley
Robert W. Merry
18 Andrew Jackson
Mark R. Cheathem
20 George H. W. Bush
Jeffrey A. Engel
21 John Quincy Adams
James Traub
22 Ulysses S. Grant
Ronald C. White
23 Grover Cleveland
H. Paul Jeffers
24 William Howard Taft
Jeffrey Rosen
26 Jimmy Carter
Michael J. Gerhardt
27 Calvin Coolidge
Amity Shlaes
28 Richard M. Nixon
Evan Thomas
29 James A. Garfield
Kenneth D. Ackerman
30 Benjamin Harrison
Charles W. Calhoun
31 Zachary Taylor
Elbert B. Smith
32 Rutherford B. Hayes
Ari Hoogenboom
34 Martin Van Buren
Michael Douglas Henderson
35 Chester A. Arthur
Scott S. Greenberger
36 Herbert Hoover
Richard Norton Smith
37 Millard Fillmore
Edna Greene Medford
38 William Henry Harrison
Ronald G. Shafer
40 Warren G. Harding
John W. Dean
41 Franklin Pierce
Peter A. Wallner
42 Andrew Johnson
David O. Stewart
43 James Buchanan
Robert Strauss
HISTORIANS’ PERSPECTIVES ON PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
Douglas Brinkley, Edna Greene Medford, and Richard Norton Smith
Postscript: The Presidency, National Identity, and the Pursuit of Equal Justice
Edna Greene Medford
Appendix I: Historians’ Survey on Presidential Leadership, Total Scores and Overall Rankings
Appendix II: US Presidents in Chronological Order