As a sequel to the post Great Presidents I made in March, I was thinking how I like the logic I made to determine the effectiveness of a president, but I realize I left out the factor of whether the president was succeeded by a president from their same party after they left office.
So if I readjust this, without rewriting the whole article, we need to adjust the top of the top of the ranking.
Half a point for winning a majority of the popular vote, and half a point for winning the election, as I did originally.
Presidents who gain a full point:
- Andrew Jackson
- Franklin Pierce
- Chester Alan Arthur
- Theodore Roosevelt
- Calvin Coolidge
- Ronald Reagan
Presidents who gain half a point:
- Ulysses S. Grant
- Bill Clinton
- Barack Obama
By this metric, we then can look at our rankings again:
| President | # | Term begin | Term end | Number of terms | Won popular election? (1) | Won popular election? (2) | Won popular election? (3) | Won popular election? (4) | Election score | Trifectas | Score | Rank | Trifecta percentage | Same party successor | Old Score |
| George Washington | 1 | 1789 | 1797 | 2 | Appointed | No popular | didn’t run | 1 | 3 | 26 | 0.25 | 3 | |||
| John Adams | 2 | 1797 | 1801 | 1 | No popular | No popular | 2 | 3 | 32 | 1 | 3 | ||||
| Thomas Jefferson | 3 | 1801 | 1809 | 2 | No popular | No popular | 4 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 6 | ||||
| James Madison | 4 | 1809 | 1817 | 2 | No popular | No popular | 4 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 7 | ||||
| James Monroe | 5 | 1817 | 1825 | 2 | No popular | No popular | 4 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 6 | ||||
| John Quincy Adams | 6 | 1825 | 1829 | 1 | No | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | 34 | 0 | 1 | |||
| Andrew Jackson | 7 | 1829 | 1837 | 2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | 3 | 3 | 8 | 3 | 0.75 | TRUE | 7 | |
| Martin Van Buren | 8 | 1837 | 1841 | 1 | Yes | No | 1 | 2 | 4 | 21 | 1 | 4 | |||
| William Henry Harrison | 9 | 1841 | 1841 | 1 | Yes | Dead | 1 | 1 | 3 | 27 | 0.5 | 3 | |||
| John Tyler | 10 | 1841 | 1845 | 1 | Vice President | No | 0.5 | 1 | 2.5 | 40 | 0.5 | 2.5 | |||
| James Knox Polk | 11 | 1845 | 1849 | 1 | Yes, minority | No | 0.5 | 1 | 2.5 | 33 | 0.5 | 5 | |||
| Zachary Taylor | 12 | 1849 | 1850 | 1 | Yes, minority | Dead | 0.5 | 0 | 1.5 | 37 | 0 | 1.5 | |||
| Millard Fillmore | 13 | 1850 | 1853 | 1 | Vice President, minority | No | 0.25 | 0 | 1.25 | 42 | 0 | 1.25 | |||
| Franklin Pierce | 14 | 1853 | 1857 | 1 | Yes | Yes, minority | 1.5 | 1 | 3.5 | 27 | 0.5 | TRUE | 2.5 | ||
| James Buchanan | 15 | 1857 | 1861 | 1 | Yes, minority | No | 0.5 | 0 | 1.5 | 37 | 0 | 1.5 | |||
| Abraham Lincoln | 16 | 1861 | 1865 | 2 | Yes, minority | Yes | Dead | 1.5 | 2 | 5.5 | 9 | 0.5 | 4.5 | ||
| Andrew Johnson | 17 | 1865 | 1869 | 1 | Vice President | No | 0.5 | 0 | 1.5 | 40 | 0 | 1.5 | |||
| Ulysses Simpson Grant | 18 | 1869 | 1877 | 2 | Yes | Yes | No | 2.5 | 3 | 7.5 | 4 | 0.75 | No popular | 7 | |
| Rutherford Birchard Hayes | 19 | 1877 | 1881 | 1 | No | didn’t run | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | 44 | 0 | 1 | ||
| James Abram Garfield | 20 | 1881 | 1881 | 1 | Yes, minority | Dead | 0.5 | 0 | 1.5 | 37 | 0 | 1.5 | |||
| Chester Alan Arthur | 21 | 1881 | 1885 | 1 | Vice President, minority | didn’t run, Yes, Minority | 0.25 | 0 | 1.25 | 42 | 0 | TRUE | 0.25 | ||
| Grover Cleveland | 22 | 1885 | 1889 | 2 | Yes, minority | Yes, minority | Yes | No | 1 | 1 | 4 | 20 | 0.25 | 4 | |
| Benjamin Harrison | 23 | 1889 | 1893 | 1 | No | No | No | 0 | 1 | 2 | 34 | 0.5 | 2 | ||
| William McKinley | 25 | 1897 | 1901 | 2 | Yes | Yes | Dead | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | ||
| Theodore Roosevelt | 26 | 1901 | 1909 | 2 | Vice President | Yes | Yes | 2.5 | 4 | 8.5 | 2 | 1 | TRUE | 7.5 | |
| William Howard Taft | 27 | 1909 | 1913 | 1 | Yes | No | 1 | 1 | 3 | 27 | 0.5 | 3 | |||
| Woodrow Wilson | 28 | 1913 | 1921 | 2 | Yes, minority | Yes, minority | No | 1 | 2 | 5 | 14 | 0.5 | 5 | ||
| Warren Gamaliel Harding | 29 | 1921 | 1923 | 1 | Yes | Dead | 1 | 2 | 4 | 21 | 1 | 4 | |||
| Calvin Coolidge | 30 | 1923 | 1929 | 1 | Vice President | Yes | Yes, didn’t run | 3 | 2 | 6 | 18 | 1 | TRUE | 5 | |
| Herbert Hoover | 31 | 1929 | 1933 | 1 | Yes | No | No | 1 | 1 | 3 | 27 | 0.5 | 3 | ||
| Franklin Delano Roosevelt | 32 | 1933 | 1945 | 4 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | 4 | 7 | 15 | 1 | 1 | 15 | |
| Harry S. Truman | 33 | 1945 | 1953 | 2 | Vice President | Yes | No | 1.5 | 2 | 5.5 | 10 | 0.75 | 5.5 | ||
| Dwight David Eisenhower | 34 | 1953 | 1961 | 2 | Yes | Yes | No | 2 | 1 | 5 | 12 | 0.25 | 5 | ||
| John Fitzgerald Kennedy | 35 | 1961 | 1963 | 1 | Yes, minority | Dead | 0.5 | 2 | 3.5 | 25 | 1 | 3.5 | |||
| Lyndon Baines Johnson | 36 | 1963 | 1969 | 2 | Vice President, minority | Yes | No | 1.25 | 2 | 5.25 | 11 | 1 | 5.25 | ||
| Richard Milhous Nixon | 37 | 1969 | 1974 | 2 | Yes, minority | Yes | 1.5 | 0 | 3.5 | 24 | 0 | 3.5 | |||
| Gerald Ford | 38 | 1974 | 1977 | 1 | Never on ballot | No | 0 | 0 | 1 | 44 | 0 | 1 | |||
| James Earl “Jimmy” Carter Junior | 39 | 1977 | 1981 | 1 | Yes | No | 1 | 2 | 4 | 21 | 1 | 4 | |||
| Ronald Wilson Reagan | 40 | 1981 | 1989 | 2 | Yes | Yes | Yes | 3 | 0 | 5 | 19 | 0 | TRUE | 4 | |
| George Herbert Walker Bush | 41 | 1989 | 1993 | 1 | Yes | No | No | 1 | 0 | 2 | 36 | 0 | 2 | ||
| William Jefferson Blythe “Bill” Clinton | 42 | 1993 | 2001 | 2 | Yes, minority | Yes | Popular vote | 2 | 1 | 5 | 17 | 0.25 | popular | #VALUE! | |
| George Walker Bush | 43 | 2001 | 2009 | 2 | No | Yes | No | 1 | 2 | 5 | 14 | 0.5 | 5 | ||
| Barack Hussein Obama | 44 | 2009 | 2017 | 2 | Yes | Yes | Popular vote | 2.5 | 1 | 5.5 | 12 | 0.25 | popular | #VALUE! | |
| Donald Trump | 45 | 2017 | 2021 | 2 | No | No | Yes, minority | 0.5 | 2 | 4.5 | 16 | 0.5 | 4.5 | ||
| Joseph Robinette Biden | 46 | 2021 | 2025 | 1 | Yes | No | 1 | 1 | 3 | 27 | 0.5 | 3 |
So from this data, we can use this to analyze presidents who really commanded power. We want a recency bias, and determine who is the most powerful recent president from each party.
With this ranking, Presidents Obama and Truman are tied with the highest number of points since President Roosevelt.
This is really the takeaway when determining what type of president we need to succeed Trump, not just to win in 2028 but also in 2032. Not just to keep the presidency in our control but also to have a trifecta in congress and see Democrats consistently win elections up and down the ballot from local school boards all the way to the presidency.
We cannot afford a politician who shies away from the Democratic party. We cannot afford a president who doesn’t proudly advocate in favor of democracy.
Obama was such an effective politician because he delivered results. He was able to bring people together, not by vacuous calls for unity, but by proposing a vision that people bought into. He made speeches and signed treaties with our allies to bring us closer. We had a deep breath from the constant sabre-rattling of Republicans against our allies. He defended Afghanistan while pulling us out of the pointless war in Iraq. He passed meaningful legislation, and had the very successful Secretary of State of Hillary Clinton in his first term.
We need to learn from and expand on his successes to see a very successful administration in 2029, as I have been making a theme about in my blog. The key points are UN membership for GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Moldova), a reduction in all barriers to trade and travel between us and the European Union, while strengthening our relations with our allies in Latin America.
In the domestic front we need to fix our immigration system which is broken while passing legislation to expand health care access.
In terms of executive actions, the president needs to aggressively undo all the damage Trump has done through executive orders early in her presidency.
If we can do all of this, the DNC stays functional, and the president maintains a steady hand, there is no reason we cannot win midterms, the 2032 election, and the 2036 election.
It all depends on how the President uses her power after we win in 2028.
We need to repeat Obama’s success with his campaigning strategy in 2008. We need the DNC to replicate this strategy and empower candidates up and down the ballot. The President takes the lead, we flip senate and house seats giving the president as strong of a trifecta as possible in order to deliver results for the American people.
Then we can loosen visa restrictions towards democracies, strengthen our passport, build strong trading relationships abroad, and make a fair immigration system.
Let’s make it happen.