The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey has published the results of its most recent survey conducted at the end of 2023. The survey began in 2015 and it asks historians and political scientists to rank presidents based on “Greatness.”
Lincoln has, since the survey began, been ranked the highest of all presidents. Here are the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Gilded Age presidents with their ranks against all 45 presidents:
Lincoln-1
Grant-17
McKinley-24
Cleveland-26
Hayes-29
Garfield-30
Harrison-31
Arthur-33
Johnson-43
Buchanan-44
Lincoln has been ranked #1 since the survey began. Grant, on the other hand, saw the most improvement. His ranking is up 9 positions. He was ranked #26 in the 2015 survey, but with greater attention to his presidential administration, Grant is now up with Monroe and Reagan. All the rest from the late 19th Century are in the second half of the rankings.
Two of the worst three presidents of all time are Andrew Johnson, the “Accidental President,” who undermined Reconstruction, and James Buchanan whose inaction during the Secession Crisis on 1860 and 1861 helped empower the Confederacy. The two started badly in 2015 and they have fallen even further.
Here are all the presidents ranked:
Wilson is still overrated but at least he’s trending in the right direction. Would you rank Buchanan below Johnson?
I would.