He.Is. Simply.The. Pits

Loudonville, NY – For the sixth time since its inception in 1982, the Siena College Research Institute’s (SCRI) Survey of U.S. Presidents finds that experts rank Franklin D. Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, Abe Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington as the United States’ top five chief executives. The 157 participating presidential scholars for the first time name Washington as number one with FDR second, Lincoln third, Teddy Roosevelt fourth and Jefferson fifth. Donald Trump enters the survey as the 42nd rated president, and he joins Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren Harding and Franklin Pierce in the bottom five. Dwight Eisenhower moved up to sixth, the highest ranking he has ever achieved, while Ronald Reagan was up five spots to 13th, and George W. Bush was up six places but remains in 33rd place. Barack Obama slipped two spots to 17th, Bill Clinton dropped to 15th from 13th, and Andrew Jackson fell five places to 19th.

“The top five, Mount Rushmore plus FDR, is carved in granite with presidential historians who have ranked the presidents for Siena six times since 1982 always just after a new president has had one year in office. But five through ten has seen some jockeying for position over the last 37 years. Eisenhower wasn’t even in the top ten in ’82 or ’90, but after one eighth place and two times at tenth, Ike has jumped to the sixth spot just out of the vaunted top five. And JFK has rejoined the top ten after two misses while Woodrow Wilson has dropped from eighth to 11th ” according to Don Levy, SCRI’s director.

“While other ‘moderns’ are highly rated, including Truman at ninth this year and six straight times in the top ten and Kennedy, tenth this year and back in the top ten after narrowly missing in the last two surveys, no president that has served since Kennedy is considered one of our ten best,” according to Doug Lonnstrom, SCRI’s founding director and one of the survey’s originators.

“The serving president has entered the survey between 15th , Obama, and 23rd , G.W. Bush, as scholars begin to observe their accomplishments, assess their abilities and study their attributes. This year, Donald Trump enters the survey at 42nd, and he is only ranked outside of the bottom five in two of the twenty categories that scholars use to assess the presidents, ‘luck’ and ‘willingness to take risks,’” said Levy.