Scholars Across The Spectrum Agree: Trump Is The Worst By Far
Virtually all polls of historians show Trump as the worst president in the history of our country— and he’s getting worse by the day… and by a lot. As it stands now, his overall score is 10.92 (out of 100) in the most recent Presidential Greatness paper, #45 out of 45, significantly worse than James Buchanan (16.71), Andrew Johnson (21.56), Franklin Pierce (24.60) Warren Harding (24.76), Herbert Hoover (34.08), Richard Nixon (36.41), Calvin Coolidge (39.38), George W Bush (40.43)… and a lot worse than contemporaries like Ronald Reagan (61.62), Joe Biden (62.66), Bill Clinton (66.42), Barack Hussein Obama (73.80). Top of the pile is Abe Lincoln (93.87), FDR (90.83) and George Washington (90.32).
But that wasn’t what Philip Bump was writing about in his column, Partisans see opposing presidents as historically toxic figures, yesterday. He examined— with the help of YouGov— “the extent to which Americans viewed political leaders in stark, extreme terms… [O]n leaders associated with one party or the other— such as Trump or former president Joe Biden— there was a wide divergence in views between members of each party… We can reinforce the difference in party perceptions by looking at the most- and least-positively viewed individuals within each partisan group. Here are the five most positively viewed figures for each party, for example.
And here are the five least positively viewed figures.
Bump found it useful “to consider net favorability— the percentage of those who view a historic figure positively minus those who view that person negatively. This gives us a better sense of how people are viewed.” Although this graphic doesn’t show it, aside from Trump and Biden being underwater, so are historical figures like Nixon, Franco, Napoleon, Joe McCarthy, Karl Marx, Mao, Attila the Hun, Lenin, Mussolini, Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il, Stalin, Putin, Kim Jong Un, Hitler and, worst of all, Osama bin Laden.
Yes, Republicans offer Biden a lower net favorability than they do Hitler. Though, to be fair, Democrats don’t have Trump that for off from Hitler either.
All of this is colored by recency bias, of course, by people having stronger opinions of people involved in what’s occurring now than of people whose actions are now part of history. In the future, perceptions of Obama or Biden or Trump may look quite a bit different than they do now.
As some Trump critics would probably hasten to note: That doesn’t mean that they will necessary look better.
Unlike the worst of his his predecessors, whose failures were largely driven by incompetence, corruption or ideology, Trump’s presidency is uniquely defined by deliberate, systematic destruction— as well as by incompetence and corruption and the ideology (at least of his allies and enablers). His second term has only accelerated the authoritarian ambitions he signaled in his first, proving that his goal was never governance but the dismantling of American democracy itself.
We have now watched Trump fully unleash the anti-democratic forces he attempted to mobilize in his first term. His successful return to power— engineered, at best, through voter suppression, election subversion and an increasingly radicalized right-wing judiciary— has led to a crackdown on dissent, an expansion of state violence, and an emboldened far-right movement openly attacking civil liberties. He has purged the Justice Department of anyone who might hold him accountable, weaponized federal agencies against political opponents and made good on his promises of mass deportations and military force at the border. His rhetoric, once dismissed as bluster, is now policy, with political enemies targeted, press freedoms eroded and democratic norms discarded entirely.
Meanwhile, his catastrophic mismanagement continues to cost American lives. Whether it’s his refusal to address the climate crisis, his abandonment of global alliances like NATO, or his economic policies that serve only the ultra-wealthy, Trump has pushed the country into a state of permanent instability. The institutions meant to check his power have failed or been co-opted, and with no re-election constraints, he is operating as an unaccountable autocrat. His corruption, already unprecedented in his first term, has escalated into full-scale kleptocracy, with the presidency functioning as little more than a machine for his personal enrichment.
At this point, comparisons to past presidential failures— Buchanan’s weakness before the Civil War, Johnson’s sabotage of Reconstruction, Nixon’s abuse of power— are inadequate. Trump is not merely the worst president in history; he is something categorically different. He is the first president to fully abandon the idea of democracy, turning the U.S. government into an instrument of personal and ideological rule. His presidency is not just a failure— it is the culmination of America’s descent into authoritarianism.
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