Overall, I think Biden will be remembered as being on par with Jimmy Carter. He’s had a good domestic policy, and if that were all we were ranking on, he would easily be in the top 10, but his foreign policy has been a continuation of Trump’s failed policies.
I generally agree with most of the Siena poll’s findings from this year regarding presidents’ rankings, but I think some presidents have been significantly underrated or overrated.
LBJ is underrated, though still rated well. His domestic policy was the best we have ever had and his economic policy was very successful. His foreign policy gets him dinged regularly, but we know now from Ukraine the consequences of not defending our allies, which should lead Americans to reevaluate the Vietnam War. War is always hell, but we must look at the bigger picture. He is underrated.
John Quincy Adams is an underrated president. He was the first president to push for public universities and other programs we take for granted today. He opposed slavery and was a good man. He was a great president but is usually rated as average.
Harding was not a bad president; he pushed for civil rights unsuccessfully and was definitely not on par with Millard Fillmore. I think his ranking is the most inaccurate.
Benjamin Harrison was an early president who pushed for civil rights, albeit unsuccessfully. Comparing him to George W. Bush is silly.
Theodore Roosevelt was a good president, but it’s hard for me to argue that he was better than LBJ or Obama. He was still a great president, but I rank him at number 14 instead of number 4. His foreign policy was atrocious. The competition is rough. He was not our fourth greatest president, though he was still one of the good ones.
Zachary Taylor was an average president. It’s unfair to put him next to Mallard Fillmore. Rankings in that tier are reserved for presidents pushing our country backward. Taylor was just average.
Chester Alan Arthur was not a bad president. He vetoed the Chinese Exclusion Act and signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. It’s inaccurate to put him on par with Bush and Nixon.
Clinton was not a good president. He was average. He deregulated Wall Street and set up the modern Ukraine conflict, but he also did some good things, such as the Violence Against Women Act. Not great, but not terrible.
Wilson was an average president, not in the top 20 for reasons which many people put him as. He would be ranked lower if we didn’t have so many truly awful presidents.
Andrew Jackson is severely overrated and should not be on our money. He was a genocidal, drunk, maniacal slaver obsessed with dueling who committed genocide and ruined our economy.
I do not know why Reagan is rated so highly. The economy performed terribly during his first term, with the highest unemployment in the last half of the 20th century, and his foreign policy was trash. On social policy, he allowed AIDS to spread because he was homophobic. Reagan was trash.
George Walker Bush was the worst president in history. His foreign policy was a disaster; instead of focusing on rooting out the Taliban and building Afghanistan to be a safe society, he invaded Iraq. A homophobic forced birther. He led our economy into a great recession. His Supreme Court picks abolished abortion. A Jesus freak with no respect for our Constitution. He implemented visas on our allies as he coddled state sponsors of terrorism. He did not push hard enough for Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO, directly causing two wars. He is white trash who belongs in the Hague for his war crimes and, in my opinion, was the worst President in our nation’s history.
It is unfair to rank Garfield and William Henry Harrison because they didn’t serve for a full year. So, I do not rank them.
Here is my ranking compared to APSA:
| President/winner of all Electoral in row | Order | My ranking | APSA 2024 | Difference |
| Lyndon Baines Johnson | 36 | 1 | 9 | 8 |
| George Washington | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| Abraham Lincoln | 16 | 3 | 1 | -2 |
| Franklin Delano Roosevelt | 32 | 4 | 2 | -2 |
| John Fitzgerald Kennedy | 35 | 5 | 10 | 5 |
| Barack Hussein Obama | 44 | 6 | 7 | 1 |
| Thomas Jefferson | 3 | 10 | 5 | -5 |
| John Quincy Adams | 6 | 7 | 20 | 13 |
| Dwight David Eisenhower | 34 | 8 | 8 | 0 |
| Harry S. Truman | 33 | 9 | 6 | -3 |
| Warren Gamaliel Harding | 29 | 11 | 40 | 29 |
| Benjamin Harrison | 23 | 12 | 31 | 19 |
| Ulysses Simpson Grant | 18 | 13 | 17 | 4 |
| Theodore Roosevelt | 26 | 14 | 4 | -10 |
| William McKinley | 25 | 15 | 24 | 9 |
| James Earl “Jimmy” Carter Junior | 39 | 16 | 22 | 6 |
| Joseph Robinette Biden | 46 | 17 | 14 | -3 |
| James Madison | 4 | 18 | 11 | -7 |
| Zachary Taylor | 12 | 19 | 38 | 19 |
| James Monroe | 5 | 20 | 18 | -2 |
| Chester Alan Arthur | 21 | 21 | 33 | 12 |
| John Adams | 2 | 22 | 13 | -9 |
| William Jefferson Blythe “Bill” Clinton | 42 | 23 | 12 | -11 |
| George Herbert Walker Bush | 41 | 24 | 19 | -5 |
| James Knox Polk | 11 | 25 | 25 | 0 |
| Woodrow Wilson | 28 | 26 | 15 | -11 |
| Gerald Ford | 38 | 27 | 27 | 0 |
| Martin Van Buren | 8 | 29 | 28 | -1 |
| Grover Cleveland | 22 | 28 | 26 | -2 |
| Herbert Hoover | 31 | 30 | 36 | 6 |
| Calvin Coolidge | 30 | 31 | 34 | 3 |
| William Howard Taft | 27 | 32 | 23 | -9 |
| Richard Milhous Nixon | 37 | 33 | 35 | 2 |
| John Tyler | 10 | 34 | 37 | 3 |
| Franklin Pierce | 14 | 35 | 42 | 7 |
| Rutherford Birchard Hayes | 19 | 36 | 29 | -7 |
| Andrew Johnson | 17 | 37 | 43 | 6 |
| Millard Fillmore | 13 | 38 | 39 | 1 |
| James Buchanan | 15 | 39 | 44 | 5 |
| Andrew Jackson | 7 | 41 | 21 | -20 |
| Ronald Wilson Reagan | 40 | 42 | 16 | -26 |
| Donald Trump | 45 | 43 | 45 | 2 |
| George Walker Bush | 43 | 44 | 32 | -12 |
| James Abram Garfield | 20 | 30 | 30 | |
| William Henry Harrison | 9 | 41 | 41 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States