Here is the list of presidents based on final month in office approval rating. Since non of us where there at the time, its hard to fully judge who is best. Since we remember all of the good and the bad about presidents like Obama and Bush, but non of the bad of some presidents and non of the good of others.
Roosevelt: 61%
Truman: 32%
Eisenhower: 59%
Kennedy: 59%
Johnson: 46%
Nixon: 23%
Ford: 53% (this is the most shocking of them, given that Ford lost an election with a>then 50% AR)
Carter: 32%
Reagan: 57%
HWBush: 49% (He bounced 15% the month after he lost the election, lol)
Clinton: 62%
WBush: 30%
Source Gallup polls, since of all the major polling companies they had the most data on earlier presidents (Gallup goes back to 1935, none of the others do)
So rating residents based on how the people they governed viewed them:
1. Clinton
2. Roosevelt
3. Eisenhower
3. Kennedy
5. Reagan
6. Ford
7. HWBush
8. Johnson
9. Truman
9. Carter
11. WBush
12. Nixon
So we have 4 presidents who we don't know the approval rating of. Wilson, Coolridge, Harding and Hoover.
I'm going to put Harding below Nixon, because hes ranked as the worst president of all time by the aggegates according to wikipedia. I'm going to put Coolridge above Reagan because they were both strongly elected, retired and their VPs were both strongly elected, following it. I'm ranking Coolridge first because his VP won by a higher vote margin. I'm ranking Wilson tied with Truman because both of the where extremely popular war time presidents who when their wars ended saw their popularity drop, whether it was justified or not. Both of their parties lost in the following election after they stepped down. Lastly we have Hoover, I'm going to put him below Carter and Bush because they all left office with massive unemployments and in Carter and Hoovers case they both lost their reelection bid.
So here is, based on the oppinion of the people they governed, the rakings of the presidents in the last 100 years. Feel free to move around the placement of the earlier presidents since I'm just using an educated guess as to where they would have fallen, as long as you can justify the movements. Like a lot of people here hated Coolridge, but that doesn't negate the fact that he was a well liked president by his people.
1. Clinton
2. Roosevelt
3. Eisenhower
3. Kennedy
5. Coolridge
6. Reagan
7. Ford
8. HWBush
9. Johnson
10. Wilson
10. Truman
10. Carter
13. WBush
14. Hoover
15. Nixon
16. Harding
)
The 150 THings the World's Smartest People are Afraid Of
)
)
)