Historians Rate Trump As One Of The Worst Presidents

 The chart above is from C-SPAN. They asked historians to rank the past presidents on how well they did in office. Here is the methodology used to determine the rankings:

In 2000, C-SPAN's original team of academic advisers devised a survey in which participants used a 1 ("not effective") to 10 ("very effective") scale to rate each president on 10 qualities of presidential leadership: 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 Within the Context of the Times. In 2009, 2017 and 2021, following a change in administrations, subsequent surveys have been conducted using these same 10 characteristics.

Surveys are distributed to historians, professors and other professional observers of the presidency who are drawn from databases of C-SPAN programming, research in the field and suggestions from our academic advisers. Each cycle, we reach out to past participants and add new names to the list to maintain a well-rounded list of invited participants. This year, 142 completed the survey, up from 91 in 2017.

Participants are guaranteed that their individual survey responses will remain confidential. No definitions are provided for the categories: participants are able to interpret them as they see fit to determine their rankings. Each of the 10 categories is given equal weighting in arriving at a president's total score. Survey responses are tabulated by averaging all responses in a given category for each president.

Most People Can't Name Any Member Of Supreme Court

These charts were made using information in a recent C-SPAN / PSB Survey -- done between March 7th and 9th of a random national sample of 1,032 likely voters, with a margin of error of 3.05 points.

The good part is that the public seems to understand that the decisions made by the Supreme Court affects their lives. That's the opinion of nine out of ten Americans (90%) -- and no gender, age, or political group had less than 88% saying that.

The bad news is that a majority of Americans (57%) could not name a single member of the court that has such an important effect on their lives. Only 43% could name at least one Supreme Court justice. That's embarrassing, and displays the ignorance of the American public regarding their government.

And that embarrassment should extend to all political divisions -- Republicans, Independents, and Democrats. All three groups had a majority failing this simple test (although Independents did better than either Republicans or Democrats). If you're going to criticize (or praise) the Supreme Court, shouldn't you be able to name at least one of the justices on that court?

Among those who could name a justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was named most often (by 16% of respondents). Trailing her were Roberts at 12%, Thomas at 10%, and Sotomayor at 3%. None of the other four justices could be named by more than 1% of respondents.

Historians Rate The U.S. Presidents From Best To Worst

C-SPAN devised a survey of what historians thought of all the American presidents, and used those results to rate the presidents from best to worst. A perfect score would have been 1000. Here is the methodology they used:

C-SPAN's academic advisors devised a survey in which participants used a one ("not effective") to ten ("very effective") scale to rate each president on ten qualities of presidential leadership: "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 Within the Context of His Times."

Surveys were distributed to historians and other professional observers of the presidency, drawn from a database of C-SPAN's programming, augmented by suggestions from the academic advisors. Ninety-one agreed to participate. Participants were guaranteed that individual survey results remain confidential. Survey responses were tabulated by averaging all responses in a given category for each president. Each of the ten categories was given equal weighting in arriving at a president's total score.

NOTE -- Since his term has just started, Donald Trump was not included in the survey. Personally, I have little doubt that, once his term is over, Trump will easily supplant Buchanan as the worst president this country has ever had.

Thank Goodness For C-SPAN

Being the political nerd and junkie that I am, I naturally tuned in to watch the beginning of the Democratic National Convention at 4:00pm yesterday. In fact, I've taken the whole week off -- I'm not going to let something as mundane as work interfere with my politics. But, I made a mistake right off the bat.

I must have experienced a moment of insanity, because I actually tuned in to MSNBC and then CNN. For some reason, I thought they would be showing the convention. But they weren't showing the convention -- they were "covering" the convention, and those are two vastly different things.

It quickly became apparent they were far more interested in talking about the convention than they were in showing the convention to viewers. Even worse, they seemed to delight in bringing Republicans on to bad-mouth the Democrats. When they put on right-wing nutjob Glen Beck, I had to bail out. It became obvious that "fairness" was not going to be a part of their coverage.

Fortunately, I remembered I have cable, and that means I have C-SPAN. I switched over, and that's where my TV will stay until the convention is over. No talking heads -- just the convention from gavel to gavel. The money allocated to C-SPAN is some of the best spending our government has ever done.

For those of us denied a place at the convention, C-SPAN is definitely the next best thing.

UPDATE - I just finished listening to Michelle Obama's speech. It was wonderful. This is one very special lady. She would make a great First Lady.