Historians rank Biden as the 14th-best president...Trump is ranked last

I'm with CPT Jack Durish about it being interesting. Accurate? More of an opinion piece considering the majority of respondents were left/far-left ideologically (but those far-left ideologs on RP will of course just slurp it up without applying any critical thinking).

I searched around and found the poll. The poll invited the members of the "Presidents & Executive Politics Section" of the American Political Science Association to rank the presidents. Of the 525 invitees, they received responses from 154.

Before I get to the results of the poll, the APSA is overwhelmingly a far-left organization with some pockets of moderates and conservatives. Like most of the left-wing groups, they claim to be "non-partisan" while being anything but. As one former member put it in an article on the National Association of Scholars, "Much has been written about the general problem of a lack of political diversity in political science and its drift to the far left." and the "Today, APSA has become barely distinguishable from the Democratic Party and its far-left wing."
https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/why_im_leaving_the_political_science_association

When I looked at the poll, I knew something was up. Not by the low ranking of Trump, but because the likes of Reagan, GHW Bush, and Jackson were beat out by Biden.

Interestingly, they surveyed the political ideology of those they had responses from and they were categorized as liberal, conservative or moderate and Republican, Democrat and Independent. So how did those rate Biden? The rankings were almost exact for Republican/conservative, Democrat/Liberal, and Independent/Moderate. R/C ranked Biden as 30th, I/M ranked him as 19th/20th respectively and D/L ranked him as 13th.

If there was an equal distribution (1/3, 1/3, 1/3) then Biden would have had an averaged rank of 21. Because the poll was so lopsided to the D/L side, the results ended up with him in 14th. The article I mentioned above from a former member of the APSA said that it's estimated that the ratio of "left" to "right" is estimated nationwide at 15:1. Using that as a ratio (15 on the left for every 1 moderate and 1 conservative), the average of those scores would be 14.4, which would reflect the results of the survey.

I'm actually surprised that Biden wasn't ranked higher - While the far-left is united in it's hate against Trump, it's obvious they aren't united in their love of Biden, even among far-left political science professors.

The only interesting part was looking at the various scores of the presidents and being able to tell which ones were partisan answers and which group was more partisan that the other groups in their answers.

You get my vote up for posting this because it is interesting, but it is also sad. Their poll first reflects the prejudices one might expect from the readers of the NY Times. It also reflects their lack of understanding of history. For example, Washington (I'll omit the honorific "President" inasmuch as all fit that mold) created the presidency. The Constitution was mute on the subject and he did such a good job of it, all who followed him into that office, followed his example. Of course, we (or most of "we" as having served) recognize his model. His Cabinet was fashioned after a commanding general's staff. FDR ranks second to progressive NYT readers, but is far down on my list inasmuch as he followed the progressive model foisted on us by Wilson (who ranks well nigh the bottom of my list for advocating that We the People weren't sovereign, nor did we have natural or God-given rights). I'd put Teddy and Harry closer to the top of my list because both had great personal courage and made the hard (unpopular) decisions. Biden has done more measurable damage to the nation than any other (even Buchanan who merely sat by and watched while doing nothing). Obama would rank somewhere in the middle of the bottom half for many obvious reasons. Coolidge belongs above the middle. He took immediate action, well within his executive powers, to avoid a national debt when it began building. Few others have had the courage to do that. And, finally, of course NYT readers would rank Trump badly. Need I explain?

Lots of bias on that list.

I think an interesting conversation for this forum would be about which President had the largest (positive) impact on the military. Omitting living presidents (no need to debate current politics), my top three are:
- Abraham Lincoln: His view on military strategy vs. command (during and post-Civil War) defined the distinct roles between civilian and military control of the armed forces.
- Thomas Jefferson: Drafted the "Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms", the first resolution in U.S. history that authorized forming a military (pre-presidential). During his presidency, he founded the US Military Academy (West Point), which professionalizing the military and created engineers for a growing nation.
- Ronald Reagan: Implemented the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which created sweeping change across the military Services.

Poll loses credibility when you look at Biden's popularity rating amongst Democrats. HISTORIANS? NYT?

Is this the same poll that only polled 154 people.

It would be an interesting poll if every American voter contributed, with no explanation.

SOOO funny ! You crack me up sir.

This certainly doesn’t track with the man on the street interviews.