Our American neighbors are fond of these rankings in which the performance of their presidents is evaluated. Already in July 2021, I relayed a classification carried out by historians. These placed him at 41e rank.
In December 2020, I shared with you the concerns of these historians about the archives of the Trump presidency.
This time, I report to you what 125 specialists in American politics think of the performance of the 45e president.
Worst of all
For their 2024 rankings, academics Brandon Rottinghaus (University of Houston) and Justin S. Vaughn (Coastal Carolina University) consulted numerous experts, mainly those from the American Political Science Association.
These experts submit their work to peer review. They are qualified and respected researchers.
In the table below, we see Trump in last place and a good gap separates him from James Buchanan, the inept president who led the country just before the Civil War. His inaction, even his indifference, before the civil war, justifies that he is usually found in the last row.
However, the American presidency has seen its share of opportunists, dishonest or poorly qualified men. That Trump appears at the bottom of the list, well after the sulphurous William Harding (who died in office in 1923), is revealing.
The only category in the report where the 45e president is at the top of the list, it is the category of presidents who have divided the population the most. You will notice that the gap separating it from the second row is anything but trivial.
Like all rankings of this type, they are good for starting discussions and reviewing methodology, but there is one constant between all these exercises: Donald Trump never figures well. However, many Republicans and voters want to give him the keys to the White House a second time.
If you ask what rank the current president is, Joe Biden is at 14e rank for overall performance, but his term is not yet over.
Which president to add to Mount Rushmore?
Curiosity of the classification, we also questioned the experts on the hypothetical question of an addition to the four presidents whose faces have been engraved in stone (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt).
It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who won by a wide margin, the only president to have been elected four times. The one who helped his fellow citizens get through the crisis and the Second World War left a major legacy, a legacy that is being attacked more and more frequently on a social level.
The experts’ second choice will undoubtedly make his Republican adversaries roar. Barack Obama, the first black president in the history of his country, was a model of respectability and he brilliantly acquitted himself of his role as “comforter-in-chief”. However, let us still give ourselves a little time and perspective to properly judge its performance.