Is there an objective way to rank Presidents?
What about elections? Who were re-elected and succeeded by a candidate of their party? That’s my list of great presidents.
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, McKinley, T. Roosevelt, Coolidge, F. Roosevelt, Reagan
This list has almost no correlation with rankings by historians.
Digging into performance while President, the percent of the vote received by candidates of parties serving at the time as president, depends, positively, on economic performance and, negatively, on severity of bad wars(*); and hardly at all on scandals.
(*) judging from votes, all wars except three are bad; those three being Revolutionary, Civil and WWII.
But, according to historians, rankings are big-time negative on scandals, positive on (all) wars, and hardly at all on economic performance.
It looks as though the historians are a bunch of perverts. Bottom line is don’t trust the elites.
Now, about Trump, mostly the economy has been o.k, but there was the recession associated with COVID and the shutdown. Trump avoided war in his first term, but we’ve been at war most of his second. Scandal (not considered important by voters), I’ll leave for you to decide.
No, Trump doesn’t look great to me.
Jeff Davis