In her iconic song “Big Yellow Taxi,” an obvious lament about American presidents who have been underappreciated while in office only to finally be given their due with time’s passage, famed presidential historian Joni Mitchell wondered, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?” Professor Mitchell clearly foresaw C-SPAN’s Presidential Historians Survey, a periodic survey of historians on presidential leadership asked to rank past presidents on the basis of 10 criteria. The survey illustrates how presidents who leave office with their popularity in tatters are given high marks once the hurly-burly of political combat has receded and facts can be properly assessed.
For instance, Harry Truman — whose popularity by 1952 was so low that he opted not to run for reelection — was ranked sixth highest among the presidents in the most recent survey. Lyndon Johnson, so unpopular in 1968 that he withdrew from the race for the Democratic nomination shortly after being humiliated in the New Hampshire primary, is ranked 11th based on his prodigious record of passing civil rights legislation.
In just four weeks, a bruised and depleted Joe Biden, aging before our eyes and a punching bag for pundits on both sides of the aisle, will go home to Delaware. Though he has remained president for constitutional purposes since Nov. 5, his presence has been largely unfelt for months. What media coverage he has received since President-elect Trump began naming a parade of embarrassments to Cabinet positions has been generally confined to the widespread panning of the pardon he issued to his son.
Biden’s notorious inability to effectively toot his own horn has been ironic given all that his administration has achieved. He has pulled the country back from the economic brink caused by the pandemic so badly mismanaged by his predecessor. He has put up economic numbers that will impress historians. And he has navigated into law investments in America’s future that will pay off for generations.