Top 15 Best Presidents of All Time

[Orser67]

I'm just gonna rank 'em all. As with the other thread, I'm trying to rank them primarily based on how effective they were at achieving their own goals and handling major crises, with some adjustment for degree of difficulty.

Tier 1: GOATs
Washington
FDR
Lincoln

Tier 2: Very good
Theodore Roosevelt

Tier 3: Good
Truman
Eisenhower
Jefferson
Polk
Jackson
Reagan
Monroe
Obama
McKinley
LBJ

Tier 4: Ok
Wilson
George H. W. Bush
John Adams
Clinton
JFK
Benjamin Harrison
Arthur
Madison

Tier 5: Mediocre
Ford
Coolidge
Fillmore
John Quincy Adams
Taft
Hayes
Cleveland (his first term was ok-tier, his second term was bad-tier)
Grant
Tyler
Taylor

Tier 6: Bad
Van Buren
Carter
Hoover
George W. Bush
Harding
Nixon

Tier 7: WOATs
Trump
Pierce
Andrew Johnson
Buchanan

Not ranked:
William Henry Harrison, Garfield

[Orser67]

I like Madison and think he had a hugely important career, but I don't think he was a particularly good president. He was a fairly weak president in relation to Congress; e.g. he backed down to Senate opposition rather than trying to appoint Albert Gallatin as Secretary of State. Madison's weak Cabinet and overall leadership had a lot do with the poor U.S. performance in the War of 1812, which was probably unnecessary. I do, however, give him points for his role in passing major legislation in the aftermath of the War of 1812 and for generally respecting civil liberties during the war (moreso than e.g. Adams and Lincoln).

I also think Grant is a little overrated. He was a huge improvement over Johnson, but his domestic policies were largely unsuccessful (most importantly, Reconstruction essentially ended when he left office), he had one of the most corruption-ridden administrations in history, his administration presided over the onset of a fairly bad recession, and he didn't have a particularly successful foreign policy.

[Orser67]

Tose who are putting Obama in their list should really explain their rationale

Start with the fact that he was a two-term president who left office with a 60 percent approval rating; that alone puts him in the top half of presidents to start the analysis. He also passed the first major healthcare bill since the 1960s, passed another major legislative priority (Dodd-Frank), appointed two Supreme Court justices (who seem to have largely ruled in a way that he approves of), avoided major scandals, handled foreign policy crises reasonably well, and left office with a booming economy after inheriting the Great Recession from Bush. And Obama did all that despite holding office in a polarized environment in which the Republican Senate leader explicitly admitted that his chief goal was to make Obama a one-term president. Obama is clearly not in the top tier of presidents, but it's hard for me to see his presidency as anything other than a success, and most historians agree.