The complete rankings of our best - and worst - presidents, based on C-SPAN's much-cited Historians Surveys of Presidential Leadership.
The crucible of the presidency has forged some of the very best and very worst leaders in our nation's history. Over a period of decades, C-SPAN has surveyed leading historians on America's presidents across 10 categories: public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, setting an agenda, pursuing equal justice for all, and performance within the context of the times. In THE PRESIDENTS, Brian Lamb, Susan Swain, and C-SPAN provide the complete picture of the 43 men who have completed their terms (Grover Cleveland was elected twice non-consecutively). At the end of the book, you will find a conversation between contributing historians Douglas Brinkley, Edna Greene Medford, and Richard Norton Smith about the legacy of Donald J. Trump.
Chapters on each of the 43 former presidents are organized by their 2017 score in C-SPAN's widely recognized Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership. The survey, devised by C-SPAN's academic advisors, was distributed to historians and other professional observers of the presidency.