No Days Off!

Down in the polls but historically more popular than his predecessors.

President's Day.

President Joe Biden is ranked 14th in the listing of popularity. That means out of 44 men, Biden is in the top 20 of greatest presidents.

Former president Donald J. Trump has became the 45th in popularity. That means he ranks dead last in popularity of presidents.

So is Kid Rock, Jason Aldean, Forgiato Blow, Meek Mill and Sean "Softball" Hannity going to blame the presidential historians for being biased?

Despite his age, his stance on Israel, his policies and his embracing of status quo politics, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. is better at leading the country than Donald John Trump, Sr.

Biden is trailing in some polls against Trump. However, historians give him high marks on how to handle crisis as president.

A new poll of historians coming out on Presidents Day weekend ranks Biden as the 14th-best president in American history, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan and Ulysses S. Grant. While that may not get Biden a spot on Mount Rushmore, it certainly puts him well ahead of Trump, who places dead last as the worst president in the nation’s history. Indeed, Biden may owe his place in the top third in part to Trump. Although he has claims to a historical legacy by managing the end of the COVID pandemic; rebuilding the nation’s roads, bridges and other infrastructure; and leading an international coalition against Russian aggression, Biden’s signature accomplishment, according to the historians, was evicting Trump from the Oval Office.

“Biden’s most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall,” wrote Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus, the college professors who conducted the survey and announced the results in the Los Angeles Times.

His supporters remain loyal but the rest of the public believes he is a failure. 

Trump might not care much what a bunch of academics think, but for what it’s worth he fares badly even among the self-identified Republican historians. Finishing 45th overall, Trump trails even the mid-19th-century failures who blundered the country into a civil war or botched its aftermath like James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce and Andrew Johnson.

The survey, conducted by Vaughn, an associate professor of political science at Coastal Carolina University, and Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, was based on 154 responses from scholars across the country.

George Washington - 3

John Adams - 13

Thomas Jefferson - 5

James Madison - 11

James Monroe - 18

John Quincy Adams - 20

Andrew Jackson - 21

Martin Van Buren - 28

William Henry Harrison - 41

John Tyler - 37

James Polk - 25

Zachary Taylor - 38

Millard Fillmore - 39

Franklin Pierce - 42

James Buchanan -44

Abraham Lincoln - 1

Andrew Jackson - 43

Ulysses S. Grant - 17 

Rutherford B. Hayes - 29

James Garfield - 30

Chester A. Arthur - 31

Grover Cleveland - 26

Theodore Roosevelt - 4

William Howard Taft - 23

Woodrow Wilson - 15

Warren G. Harding - 40

Calvin Coolidge - 34

Herbert Hoover - 35

Franklin D. Roosevelt - 2

Harry Turman - 6

Dwight Eisenhower - 8

John F. Kennedy - 10

Lyndon B. Johnson - 9

Richard Nixon - 35

Gerald Ford - 27

Jimmy Carter - 22

Ronald Reagan - 16 

George H.W. Bush - 19

Bill Clinton - 12

George W. Bush - 32

Barack Obama - 7

Donald J. Trump - 45

Joe Biden - 14

Of the surviving presidents: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald J, Trump and Joe Biden.

Of the surviving vice presidents: Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, Mike Pence and Kamala Harris.