The real reason Honest Abe is the GOAT Read all about it here: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter but the woke K-12 school teachers still refuse to teach from this biography.
No, no new rankings yet to justify the bump. Apparently, C-Span decided not to do a 2025 survey because Trump's return to office would have colored the results. But I was thinking that I would probably score Trump 45 and Trump 47 differently. Trump 45 was evil and incompetent. Trump 47 is evil and more competent. That's gotta be worth a couple rungs on the ladder. Looking at C-Span's methodology, they score presidents on the following attributes: 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. On most of those, he would still score abysmally, maybe even worse than last time. (I also can't help but notice how anti-fascist these criteria are, which makes it so that Trump wouldn't even want to score well on this rubric; maybe a MAGA academic could make a new survey that grades presidents on how much they amassed personal power, how many liberal tears were shed, and how much non-Americans were made to suffer, but I digress.) But, on Administrative Skills (because Heritage Foundation has been telling him how to get things done), Relations with Congress (because Congress is cowed), and Setting an Agenda (even if no one else wants it). he should probably see his scores go up. The most recent survey I found was UH's own Brandon Rottinghaus' Presidential Greatness Project published in 2024. That one, obviously can't grade Trump's second term, but it lists Trump-45 dead last and Biden a dubious 14th. That survey is more open-ended than C-Span's, just asking their experts to grade the presidents on their "greatness." What I found interesting about it is that it also decomposes the rankings by the political leaning of survey respondents. and even the subpopulations that identify as Republican and as Conservative rank Trump sub-40. Now, of course, these are all still academics and intellectuals, who are the last people Trump wants to hear approval from. Will their next iteration grade actual fascist Trump better than they did evil and incompetent Trump? I think not. Not unless Trump withholds $400 million in grant money from their employers until they agree that he is indeed the greatest.
