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Turns out Donald Trump wasn't the worst president in US history, historians say

2021-07-01 00:00:00.0 美国有线电视-国会原网页

Thomas Balcerski teaches history at Eastern Connecticut State University. He is the author of "Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King" (Oxford University Press). He tweets @tbalcerski. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

(CNN)On Wednesday, C-SPAN released its 2021 Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership, including for the first time former President Donald Trump. The survey organizers have assembled a broad ideological and demographic spectrum of 142 presidential historians and professional observers of the presidency invited to participate. I was one of them.

The results are from my fellow historians are now in: Donald Trump is not our worst president. Instead, James Buchanan continues to hold the bottom spot. Trump ranks in 41st place, with three presidents beneath him.

As a historian who has studied James Buchanan, I can't say I am surprised. The case for Buchanan as the worst president in American history is, after all, a very strong one. From unwise meddling into the affairs of the Supreme Court during the Dred Scott case -- he allegedly influenced the court's ruling that Black people are "not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution" -- to his role in the struggles that split his own Democratic Party in two, Buchanan blundered badly when the nation needed a steady hand to guide the ship of state.

Worse still, he presided over the secession of seven Southern states from the Union and declared himself unable to stop it. "It is beyond the power of any president, no matter what may be his own political proclivities, to restore peace and harmony among the states," he said in his annual message to Congress in 1860. "Wisely limited and restrained as is his power under our Constitution and laws, he alone can accomplish but little for good or for evil on such a momentous question."

A goodbye letter for the anti-President

Whether right or wrong, Buchanan has as a result often been pinned with the full blame for the resulting Civil War.

Nevertheless, the idea that Donald Trump would surpass James Buchanan for last place had seemingly become standard thinking by 2021. A veritable torrent of opinion pieces arguing for the historical magnitude of Trump's failures -- such as those in the The Washington Post and in the Atlantic -- make the point. Several of my fellow historians also said as much in the days immediately leading up to and following Trump's departure from the White House.

Public opinion equally mirrored the new conventional wisdom. In December 2020, a Fox News poll found that 42% of voters said history would remember Trump as one of the worst presidents. Of course, this initial polling about Trump's place in history took place before the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the ramifications of which are ongoing. A recent Gallup poll on the question, conducted over January 4 to 15, 2021, revealed that fully six in 10 Americans thought Trump would be rated either "below average" or "poor."

So why did Trump not rank last in this latest survey? For starters, it's helpful to look at how Trump fared i n the 10 areas established by C-SPAN: Public Persuasion, Crisis Leadership, Economic Management, Moral Authority, International Relations, Administrative Skills, Relations with Congress, Vision/Setting an Agenda, Pursued Equal Justice for All, and Performance with Context of Times.

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