Photo: SCANPIX/REUTERS/Christian Hartmann; Truth
Trump included Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, John Adams, and James Polk in the “Almost Great” category. He classified another 12 presidents as “Average” and six as “Below Average.”
Barack Obama and Joe Biden received the lowest ratings. Both ended up in the “Failures” category along with Ulysses S. Grant, Warren Harding, and Jimmy Carter. At the same time, Trump’s list omits a number of former presidents, including John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan.
That said, Trump did not actually create a new system for evaluating presidents. He based his list on a historical classification published by Life magazine in 1948. In the original ranking, presidents were categorized from “great” to “failures.” Trump retained this structure, adding himself to a separate, top-tier category.
The ranking is as follows:
THE GREATEST: Trump
GREAT: Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jefferson, Jackson
NEAR GREAT: Theodore Roosevelt, Cleveland, John Adams, Polk
AVERAGE: Clinton, John Quincy Adams, Monroe, Hayes, Madison, Van Buren, Taft, Arthur, McKinley, Andrew Johnson, Hoover, Benjamin Harrison
BELOW AVERAGE: Tyler, Coolidge, Fillmore, Taylor, Buchanan, Pierce
FAILURES: Biden, Obama, Grant, Harding, Carter
The article was published amid reports on attitudes toward Trump within the Republican Party. According to a poll presented by CNN analyst Harry Enton, 53% of Republicans named Trump as the president they admire most. Ronald Reagan received 18%, and Abraham Lincoln received 8%.
However, among Americans as a whole, the picture is significantly less favorable. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted August 21–24, 33% of Americans approve of Trump’s performance, while 65% disapprove. Thus, Trump’s self-assessment as the “greatest” president diverges markedly from his national approval rating.
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