Professors Brandon Rottinghaus, of the University of Houston and Justin S. Vaughn, of Coastal Carolina University curated a 2024 presidential ranking poll among academic historians. Their survey was used as evidence by President Biden in the recent debate that he is among the best U.S. Presidents and President Trump is definitely the worst president ever -- according to academic experts. 154 professors responded to their query among over 500 solicited. The survey is indicative of the long ideological project such endeavors represent since their inception with Arthur Schlesinger and his son as a John F. Kennedy speechwriter. These projects have a consistent goal of reifying Democratic Presidents and deconstructing Republican Presidents. They play an important role in overinflating Democratic Presidents as if they are political demigods. This century-long academic misrepresentation contributes to the rhetorical implosion of the Biden Presidency today.

The important novel contribution of the most recent presidential ranking survey is that Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elevated to the second greatest President of all time behind Abraham Lincoln. Donald Trump is awarded a score of 10.92 on a 100-point scale. By comparison, Joe Biden receives a 62.66 score and FDR at 90.83. Biden is according to 154 professors the 14th best president among more than 45 U.S. Presidents. Obama has a score of 73.8 and has moved up nine slots since he was first rated during his presidency in 2015 -- he is ranked the number seven president of all time. Only six modern presidents (in the past 100 years) make the top ten and all but Eisenhower are Democrats. The survey reports that Calvin Coolidge has fallen seven positions since 2014 from 27 to 34. Coolidge was Ronald Reagan’s favorite President. Ronald Reagan is ranked number sixteen -- two spots behind the incredible Joe Biden. Democrat Woodrow Wilson is nestled between the two Presidents at #15. The study curators explain: “partisanship and ideology don’t tend to make a major difference overall.” Among the professors, this ideological breakdown is provided:

• Democrats – 95
• Republicans – 15
• Independents/Others – 44
• Liberals – 98
• Conservatives – 20
• Moderates – 36

So conservatives and Republicans comprise 35 of the respondents. This makes them 11% of the sample. The Democrat/Liberal cohort is almost seven times as large. Their ideological rankings are listed separately and the conservative cohort make few major distinctions compared to the larger cohort. Their relatively similar rankings of Presidents speaks to the disciplinary power of academia. To be a credible academic is to favor Democratic Presidential candidates and elected figures. Democratic Presidents are heroic and bending the arc of history toward justice. Republican Presidents are repudiating that progress and taking the American nation backwards. Modern Republican Presidential candidates are a synthesis of Naziism and the KKK. This is the normative expectation expected among doctorate holders. It is why in recent elections 98% of political donations by professors go to the Democratic Party. FDR’s incredible placement as the second-best President of all time is illuminating as to the larger ideology at work in presidential history studies. Roosevelt was elected four times to the Presidency and died as President. There is no reason to believe that Roosevelt would have ever willingly stepped down from election. It is undoubtedly an important reason that the 22nd Amendment was added to our Constitution. One of the most important virtues of George Washington was his decision to not seek re-election or to continue as essentially a lifelong King of America. Historians repudiate that good character by reifying FDR. FDR nominated infamous KKK member Hugo Black to the Supreme Court and refused to meet with Olympic hero Jesse Owens at the White House. His anti-black racism is well understood by historians and it is genealogically connected to another reified Democratic President -- Woodrow Wilson -- who as a professor and President of Princeton University did not believe black people were fit to attend major universities. Wilson’s atrocious academic accolades for the KKK were included in the 1915 movie blockbuster Birth of a Nation. In 1920, FDR was part of the Democratic ticket that demonized Warren Harding for ‘not being white.’ A major academic professor and presidential historian, William Estabrook Chancellor, fabricated a genealogy placing a black grandmother in the family tree of Harding and even wrote a book explaining how that disqualified him to be President in 1920. Chancellor believed that blacks should be without equality and that “ambitious blacks should be lynched.” Chancellor stated that he believed the election of Harding would lead to a Negro uprising and overthrow of America. The American public rejected that anti-black racism and elected Harding and Coolidge in an overwhelming landslide. Academics who conspired against Harding and Coolidge continue to demonize both Presidents. As recently as 1964, the university paper where Chancellor worked lauded the efforts of the professor. The New York Times felt compelled to report in 2015 that they had proven conclusively that Harding was not black -- something Harding did not deny as a possibility. Moreover, Harding and Coolidge campaigned for black candidates and strenuously supported the equal rights of blacks throughout the nation -- including a very confrontational speech at Birmingham, Alabama in 1921.

These problems may seem mere partisan bickering. It is much more and fundamental to most of the nation’s political angst. President Biden has been protected as a ‘great’ President since he was elected -- even though his deficiencies were obvious to the public. President Obama was given a Nobel Peace Prize as soon as he became President. Beyond the partisan favoritism, historians reify the powerful presidents who abuse the inherent humility of the office. Presidents are ideally near-despots in the models of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. Wilson jailed a political opponent in 1918 utilizing the freshly minted powers of the Espionage Act. Eugene V. Debs campaigned from prison in 1920 and got nearly one million votes. A president who believes other citizens should take up the task -- as Coolidge argued in 1927 -- are dismissed as poor Presidential specimens. Wilson’s expanded view of the Presidency, expounded in his political science scholarship as a professor, was vastly increased in the endless Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. The American public believes that everything is at stake in Presidential elections and no sacrifice is too great in order to bring to power the one critical figure of American governance -- the Bully Pulpit President. The public and the experts need to reign in this false view of the Presidency if we are to reduce the partisan wars that increase with every election cycle.

Dr. Ben Voth is professor of rhetoric and director of debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is the author of several academic books regarding political communication, presidential rhetoric, and genocide.

Image: David via Flickr