Intellectual feast. Every saturday, American History tv documents americans story. And every sunday book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. Funding from cspan two comes from these Television Companies and more, including wow. The world has changed. Today, a fast, reliable Internet Connection is something knowing can rely without. So wow is there for our customers, speed, reliability, value and choice. Now more than ever, it starts with great internet. Wow. Wow, along with these Television Companies, support cspan 2 as a public service. A nd professional since 2000, ee theres been a change in administration, weve asked historians and professional observers of the presidency to participate in cspans historian survey of president ial leadership. This, morning were joined our team of president ial advisers who oversaw our Fourth Survey for a deep dive into those results. Were joined from texas by professor Doug Brinkley of braise university. From michigan, by historian and author Richard Norton smith. Via zoom by historian and author amity shlaes. And from here in washington, d. C. , professor Edna Greene Medford of Howard University. Good morning to all of, you thanks for joining us this morning. Doug brinkley to start with you this morning, start by explaining the criteria that we use here. How do we kim may pair the man, theyre all men at this point, who have held the office of presidency over 230 years . How we decided to make that comparison . Well, cspan has but together a group, all of us that are on the air today are advisers to it, on how to actually rank these president s. We want to make sure people realize this is not a scientific ranking. That the purpose of, it in many ways, is to be fun and enlightening. To perhaps stoke a conversation around the nation about various president s, to story tell. But what we really did, do its not just one, ranking your breaking them up in the categories. So, a president will be judged on his Foreign Policy making or Race Relations or on the environment or on public persuasion, media relations. You get the idea. Its broken up into numerous categories, and then you go on a 1 to 10 scale on each of those categories. And at the, and we add them all up and there is the list. The key ingredient are the historians and scholars, theres only a few of us on air today but, really, the top biographers, academic historians, journalists who have written important biographies, they are all part of this survey. We really try to get around 150 to 140 people answering the surveys. And we are very proud, every four years, of the list. Because we can all quibble about somebody we think should be ranked higher or lower, but there is something sustainable going on here. Every time, every four years, lincoln holds that number one spot. Followed by George Washington, and franklin d. Roosevelt and then Theodore Roosevelt. Those are the big four. After that, you start getting president s influx with their reputations going up or down. The fact that dwight d. Eisenhower has been able to corral that fifth spot is really interesting. When one wonders why but, you know, there was all this talk about an eisenhower memorial on the mall. Eisenhower head to terms, could have won a third. He got as out of the korean war and avoided the other war. The only time he really use Government Troops was going into little rock on a civil rights endeavor. He created nasa, the st. Lawrence seaway, the interstate highway system. He was very moral, not a lot of corruption in the eisenhower years. I could go on. So, youre starting to see in the polling that rise of somebody like dwight d. Eisenhower. Who, not that many moons ago, was ranked fairly in the middle. People thought he didnt do much as president. Now, with the archives open, we could see that he was a hands on president , not a handsoff one. So, the rise of eisenhower, i found particularly interesting. This poll in the one before, hes now one of the american greats. You went through the top five for us, to round at the top ten. In sixth place its truman, seventh jefferson, eighth kennedy, ninth reagan, the ten spot this year, Barack Obama Joining the top ten this year. Should, note of interest, President Trump coming in at 41st overall in this years ranking. The first year that hes part of this historian survey of president ial leadership. But plenty of time to dive more into those results. Edna greene medford, why do this . Is it helpful, historically, to do this, to compare these president s over so many years . Absolutely. Its always important to talk about what is happening in terms of government leadership. Its important to look at them over a period of time. Because historians like to view history from afar. We dont like to look at Current Events so much. So, if you look at the rankings of these president s over a period of time, you get a better appreciation for how they are doing in terms of the countries memory of them or how the country views them overtime. And so, youre going to see these kinds of changes in ranking because of the passage of time. And because each generation sort of comes to its own conclusions about how successful these men, hopefully someday women, have been. In terms of their roles as the leadership in the country. Spending two hours, the last two hours of our program today, talking about the survey of president ial leadership. A deep dive into those results. And you can join the conversation this morning. Heres the phone lines to do so. Republicans, 202 7488001. Democrats, 202 7488000. Independents, or 202 7488002. Richard norton smith, as folks are starting to colin already this morning, as Doug Brinkley noted, this isnt cspans ranking. This is a ranking of 142 historians. How do we select those historians . Who gets to be a part of this survey . Its a good question, because there has been a concerted i would argue successful, effort since we began this, back in 2000, to enlarge and diversify that academic electorate, if you will. Now, there were 58 participants in the original survey. 141 this time around. Thats up about 50 . And that didnt just happen. There was, as i say, deliberate effort on the part of the organizers to, specifically, i say diversify. To find more, women or people of color. And more conservatives. Because it is no secret, certainly 20 years ago, historians, academic historians and particularly political scientists, tend to vote left. Even more than that, but if you look at doug talking about the stability. That stability is, in fact, the first thing that jumps out at you. Not only at the top of the list but at the bottom of the list. The same three pre and post civil war president s were deemed, almost universally, to have failed in the job. They are where they were 20 years ago. And i think where theyve been in every single one of these surveys. But in between, picking up on something edna said, its really fascinating. If you look at where the movement, is if not of the top of the bottom of the list, its in between. Im sure well talk about this later, if you look at someone like andrew jackson. Who in the 20th century, in the age of Arthur Schlesinger, was repeatedly considered one of the seven or eight most important and successful president s. If you look at where he isnt our ranking, i think hes all the way down at 22nd. The fact that ulysses grant, who is traditionally seen as the scandal changed and a reconstruction era failure, the fact that grant has surpassed jackson the overall ranking is really revealing about that different criteria that are being applied 20 years on. And of course, to some degree, of those who are doing the voting. And our last survey in 2017, inter jackson, as yours just saw on their screen, was ranked 13th back in 2017. 22 this year. Ulysses s grant, up from 33 to 20. That is that deep dive into the results that were going to be doing over these next two hours. But amity shlaes, want to bring you into this conversation. This is your first serve, a first year of the survey that youve been on this Advisory Team to help run the survey. What was your impression of the survey in years past . In the previous three surveys . And what surprised you about being on it this year . Thank, you im honored to be here and join cspans team. The survey always impressed me, because you, we included not only star academics, but also historians in the field who might not be ph. D. Professors. So, we are glad of that. I am one of those. There is no snobbery, no guild snobbery at cspan. Which has always been one of its strengths. That is, you look for, hopefully, serious people who do their work first. Thats why you get such a sound a whole. I was glad to see that new diversity in the poll, the poll looks more like, lets say, younger america. And we are thrilled about that. Look at your reaction to Donald Trumps ranking. The first time hes been included in the survey, we do the survey every time theres a change in administration, since the year 2000. President trump, coming in 41st. He had his highest rankings in the area of public persuasion and economic management. His lowest rankings in the areas of moral authority and administrative skills. Your reaction to that 41st debut . Well, the polar gets harder to do the closer we get to the president. You have to ask yourself, where the historians as objective as they try to be answering whether they would vote for trump next time . Or where they really ranking him . I say that in good conscience, its just very hard to rank recent people. Look at the recent jump up of president george w. Bush. That is one of the factors on the pole. When you look at, it you say 43 bush went up. You have to change lenses really fast from when someone goes from being a live figure to quote unquote history. Think that played a role with President Trump, think trump deserves an even higher rating on economics personally, and i think history will bear me out on that. But lets look at the other things to say. One thing, you see jackson going down. President trump is more like andrew jackson, more of a cowboy. Cowboys did not do good in American Opinion in this poll. Doug brinkley, on President Trumps 41st ranking, his debut at 41st. I want to get your reaction in these categories that we ask historians to rank the president s on. Public persuasion, crisis later, ship economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with congress, vision setting and agenda, pursuing equal justice for all and their performance within the context of the times. Do we give any further definition of what that should mean, as historians make their rankings . Well, one of the problems is, you know, its always best to have 25 years until you wait to judge a president. Because thats when our national archives, ostensibly, its releasing documents. To the freedom of information act, you can start getting papers trailed and start reconstructing the president. And you will tend to, see after 25 years, will have a view of the Trump Presidency that might be different than we have now. Might be better, might be worse. But alas, we dont do this in this poll. We decided to include William Henry harrison, who is only president for a month. And that creates a kind of line in the sand itself. Do you want to be below the president that was in the white house for one month and then died of ammonia . Thats where President Trump finds himself. That means that you are doing a negative job as president , that means he didnt help the Republic Forge forward. I personally thought that trump would be fighting for the worst spot with james buchanan. Who was inert and inactive in trying to avert the civil war. Buchanan is always clinging to that bottom rung. But trump has a chance to move upwards as we just heard. His chances would be a reelection of him as president. Suddenly, hes not the two time impeached one term or, but hes a two term president who led a populist revolt in the United States. And his future is still wide open, President Trump. Maybe down the line, he will rise for other reasons. When people really look at, say, the program to get our vaccines so quickly distributed during the covid crisis. George w. Bush, who was very, very low, people assume he would stay low because of the great recession, because of the iraq war, which is unpopular. And because of what some people saw as a feckless Foreign Policy. Suddenly, hes rising. Why . Time, people start reflecting differently. He scores very well, george w. Bush on things like moral authority or, you know, a decency factor. And so, you know, this past year bill clinton and Richard Nixon fell some spots. You have to say, why . I think because watergate was in the news so frequently, because of the lewinsky affair being talk about during the double impeachments of trump. And this little spill by saying nancy pelosi said during the impeachments of trump, Many Democrats said, we are going to taint trump in history. We may not remove him from office with the impeachment but there will be a dent in his arm or. This poll shows the dent, when you have a double impeachment of a president its pretty hard to see what people are going to be looking at that as being a successful, uniting of the nation, healing president. Plenty to talk about in these two hours of the washington journal. And plenty of colors already for our panel of historian advisers. By the way, if you want to follow along with these rankings and some of the various graphics were going to be showing you, breaking down the insights into the rankings, i encourage you to breakout your laptop and go to your smart device and go to cspan dot org slash president survey 2021. You can follow along with us, you can dig into these numbers, and then you can call in as well and ask about what you want to talk about. But doug is up first, out of wilmington, north carolina. Edna greene medford, ill give you dog, on the line for democrats. Go ahead. A, first thing, happy fourth of july. Its an honor to be talking with such a distinguished panel of gas that you have on there. Ill try to make this real quick. You talk about donald trump, i think hes the worst ever. I think it pretty much started when he was in helsinki, saying he believed putin over our own fbi. And how he was pretty much putins monkey, in my agenda. But then also this last, year i think the last year alone would make him last on the list. His response to the coronavirus, he was caught lying to bob woodward. Saying, this thing is a lot worse than i made it out to be, i dont want to panic everybody. Its like, are you serious . If obama did, that you would see fox news raising, saying impeach, impeach, impeach. Also the thing with the insurgents. People try to say that was a bunch of tourists and all that, get your head out of you know where. That was an attack against our democracy there. Sort of like surprises, all these people were getting arrested, then he he is at maralago. Ill run for 2024. Again so, doug, 41st out of 44 is the ranking on the survey. Do you think he should be lower . Yeah. Thats dug in north carolina. Edna greene medford, your response . I think what we need to remember is surveys are completed by human beings. We may be historians and people who are following president ial leadership, the changes at least, but we still have to remember that this is very subjective. And that people tend to respond based on their own beliefs and their views. And so, thats why its so important to have a diverse pool of participants. He may have been lower if we had had a Different Group of people. He may have been higher if we had had someone else. But we are pleased that this years pool is so diverse. And so, i think that we are close to where a lot of folks are at this point in terms of the ranking. But it can change. By the next study a, survey, trump could advance or decline. A lot depends as well, i think, in what happens in the next few months and years. So much is going on at the moment, we really do have to wait for a while and see what his legacy is going to be and how he does hold up. On this idea of president s moving in subsequent surveys, heres just a look at recent president s and our last four surveys. President obama, his debut ranking, 12 in 2021. His ranking up to ten. President bill clinton debuted in 2021 of the list, up in this latest survey to 19. George w. Peisch in 2009 debuted at 36, and this latest survey up to 29. President trump, debuting at 41 on the list. All of this, available on our website for you to dig into. Steve is in wake forest, north carolina, republican. Richard norton smith, you have steve, go ahead, steve. Hey, i have a question for you, all the people who hate trump so much in the media. How many people showed up in florida last night to see the real president of the United States of america . Im just asking, does any of yall know, the numbers . Because a whole lot of people showed up to see the president. So, steve, bringing it to this conversation, where would you put President Trump in a ranking of president s . Well, to me, hes the best president in my lifetime by far. I know hes got 75 million real votes in real life that actually happened. So, i just wish the media, you for media personalities, would stop hating me, my country at my president. Thank you our panel of historian advisers. Richard norton smith, havent gotten your thoughts yet. Well, [laughs] me, ive been called many things but not a media personality. But this call and, frankly, the previous call illustrates, its a fact that we could spend all morning and the rest of the day and probably until the next fourth of july really debating the controversies the last four years. Clea