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.
