What would come for Trump after the second impeachment 2:45
(CNN) -
With only a few days left as president, Donald Trump has no doubt begun to consider how history will remember him.
The first returns are not promising. "On several occasions, Trump has suggested that he hopes to take his place on the list of former presidents next to Abraham Lincoln, presumably topping George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and everyone else topping the list." Presidential historian Joseph Ellis wrote in an op-ed for the
Los Angeles Times
this week.
"To put it politely, you need to adjust your expectations," he added.
LEE: Trump explodes at the comparisons with Nixon as he prepares to leave the presidency
And Ellis added: "It is very likely that Donald Trump will assume the title of worst president in the history of the United States."
Deciding how to rank presidents is undoubtedly a highly subjective matter.
And it is generally done by people like Ellis, academics and authors who have dedicated their professional lives to studying the Presidency.
This group may not have a natural inclination to like Trump's decidedly anti-intellectual approach to, well, everything.
But those are the people who tend to rank presidents.
Let's take a look at some of the latest rankings and where Trump stands.
The factors that analyze the rankings
In 2019, Siena College published its latest rankings.
These were the result of the combined opinions of 159 presidential scholars who rated each of the 44 men who have been presidents (Grover Cleveland was president twice!) On 20 different aspects of the job.
(The categories range from "integrity" to "willingness to take risks" and "luck").
In those rankings, Trump was placed in the third to last place.
Behind him were only James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson.
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"The incumbent president has entered the poll between the 15th, Obama, and the 23rd, GW Bush, as academics begin to look at their accomplishments, assess their abilities, and study their attributes," said Don Levy, who leads the Siena College voting operation.
"This year, Donald Trump enters the poll at 42nd place, only falling out of the bottom five in two of the 20 categories academics use to evaluate presidents, 'luck' and 'readiness to take risk'".
On "luck", Trump ranked 10th.
In "willingness to take risks", he ranked 25th.
(Remember, this was published in early 2019, long before the world had heard of "covid-19." The arrival of the pandemic is very likely to lower Trump's "luck" score in future polls.)
Other preliminary results
The other recent large study of the best (and worst) presidents came out in 2018. It's by Brandon Rottinghaus of the University of Houston and Justin S. Vaughn of Boise State University.
The study, known as the "Presidential Greatness Survey of Presidents and Executive Policies," consults 170 members of the American Political Science Association.
Trump ranked solid last on the list, below Buchanan, William Henry Harrison, Franklin Pierce and Johnson, respectively.
By being discriminating the list by relative ideology, Trump fared slightly better.
Among those who identify themselves as conservatives, Trump was ranked the 40th best president.
(Buchanan was the Conservatives' pick for worst president.)
Among the moderates and liberals in the poll, Trump ranked last by far.
Trump and Mount Rushmore
That same group was asked who would be the next president included on Mount Rushmore.
(This is a theoretical question as there is no more room to add a face to Mount Rushmore.)
Only two presidents got double-digit votes: Franklin Roosevelt (108) and Barack Obama (12).
Trump got a total of 0 votes.
Which will be a bitter pill for Trump, who, according to
The New York Times
, discussed adding his face to Mount Rushmore with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.
This, from Noem, is enlightening on that subject:
“He said, 'Kristi, come here. Give me your hand, '”Noem told the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader of a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office. “I shook his hand and said, 'Mr. President, you should come to South Dakota at some point. We have Mount Rushmore. ' And he said, 'You know it's my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?' I laughed. He wasn't laughing, so he was serious.
Governor of South Dakota: Trump wanted his face on Mount Rushmore and it wasn't a joke 1:04
(Side note: Noem gave Trump a three-foot replica of Mount Rushmore with his face on it. No kidding.)
Time seems unlikely to benefit Trump
Now, making landmark judgments about a president in the middle of his term, or even immediately after it ends, is a risky business.
Ulysses S. Grant was widely viewed as a failure in the immediate aftermath of his Presidency, but he has fared much better in light of history.
(Grant is ranked 24th in Siena and 21st in the "Presidential Greatness Survey").
The same is true of George HW Bush (21st in Siena, 17th in the "Presidential Greatness Survey").
But, at least at first glance, it seems unlikely that time will benefit Trump.
After all, what these presidential rankings missed is the second half of Trump's term, which was dominated by his administration's failed handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his muffled response to the Black Lives Matter protests in the Summer 2020 and its unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in 2020. None of this will get better with the passage of time.
Not to mention the fact that Trump made history this week as the only president to face impeachment twice.
"I suspect that the tour guides at the Buchanan National Historic Landmark, Wheatland, Pennsylvania, are already celebrating," Ellis concluded in his opinion column.
They must have the fond hope that their man will never be the last again, "he said.
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