Great presidents are determined first and foremost by the circumstances and times of their presidency. But great presidents also demonstrate great personal leadership in being in the forefront of necessary changes in our country. President Donald Trump recognized that after 70 years of promoting economic and political policies that rebuilt other nations following the devastations of WW II, it was time to rebuild and refortify the United States. Within three plus years, he has been doing that with renegotiated trade agrees, deregulation of overzealous bureaucratic oversight, tax cuts, increased military funding and judicial appointments. He also has demonstrated personal leadership in our nation's response to the worldwide pandemic. His effectiveness, like most national and international leaders, is questionable but he has been courageous in demonstrating leadership. Among the greatest U.S. presidents, I rank Donald J. Trump number eight of the forty-five presidents. Seven before President Trump, I list as: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson, Harry S Truman and Ronald Reagan. I justify my ranking by thoroughly examining the ratings of U.S. presidents by three acknowledged presidential rating historians: Clinton Rossiter, James David Barber and Alvin Stephen Felzenberg. I predicted in a newspaper column that Barack Obama would defeat Mitt Romney in 2012. I predicted that Donald Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. I am predicting Donald Trump is odds-on favorite to beat any Democratic candidate for president in 2020. Having been a journalist for 40 years covering presidents and other international leaders, Congress and national and international business, I have found that to overcome a plethora of conflicting information and disinformation the simplest answer in understanding leaders is often the best. I have studied all 45 U.S. presidents and have found that the simplest way to determine why they got elected and why they were successful, less successful or not very successful at all, is to determine if they were a Daddy's Boy or a Mama's Boy from their birth on. I also identify in the book whether our presidents were balanced, atyplical, conflicted or unbalanced. Our greatest presidents were balanced. In other words, if they were at birth Mama's Boys, they learned to acquire the attributes of the other parent to balance them. Abraham Lincoln was a Mama's Boy who married at Daddy's Girl, Mary Todd, who taught him to man up. I identify President Trump as an atyplical Daddy's Boy. Though his father loved him and he loved his father, Donald has an inordinate need to be independent of a dominant father. To be his own man. Too simplistic? Of course, many other factors are involved.But I am talking about a simplistic rule of thumb, a poker tell, a major determining factor in predicting: who can get elected, in terms of their ability to campaign and attract a following; their personality and character; how they might make decisions; their policy inclinations; their management style, in terms of being able to delegate or not; if they have administrative capability; and, what is their worldview.

A solid primer and reference about the many men who have held the highest office in the US, from George Washington to Bill Clinton. Based on a poll of 719 historians & political scientists,this book ranks all the presidents in order of their influence & importance. From the best rated president (Lincoln) to the worst rated (Harding), the authors analyse the high & low points of each Chief Executive's term. Of course, external factors influence a presidency as well & the authors supply a detailed overview of each administration to provide an in depth perspective.

The complete rankings of our best -- and worst -- presidents, based on C-SPAN's much-cited Historians Surveys of Presidential Leadership. Over a period of decades, C-SPAN has surveyed leading historians on the best and worst of America's presidents across a variety of categories -- their ability to persuade the public, their leadership skills, their moral authority, and more. The crucible of the presidency has forged some of the very best and very worst leaders in our national history, along with everyone in between. Based on interviews conducted over the years with a variety of presidential biographers, this book provides not just a complete ranking of our presidents, but stories and analyses that capture the character of the men who held the office. From Abraham Lincoln's political savvy and rhetorical gifts to James Buchanan's indecisiveness, this book teaches much about what makes a great leader -- and what does not. As America looks ahead to our next election, this book offers perspective and criteria to help us choose our next leader wisely.

Worst. President. Ever. flips the great presidential biography on its head, offering an enlightening—and highly entertaining!—account of poor James Buchanan’s presidency to prove once and for all that, well, few leaders could have done worse. But author Robert Strauss does much more, leading readers out of Buchanan’s terrible term in office—meddling in the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, exacerbating the Panic of 1857, helping foment the John Brown uprisings and “Bloody Kansas,” virtually inviting a half-dozen states to secede from the Union as a lame duck, and on and on—to explore with insight and humor his own obsession with presidents, and ultimately the entire notion of ranking our presidents. He guides us through the POTUS rating game of historians and others who have made their own Mount Rushmores—or Marianas Trenches!—of presidential achievement, showing why Buchanan easily loses to any of the others, but also offering insights into presidential history buffs like himself, the forgotten "lesser" presidential sites, sex and the presidency, the presidency itself, and how and why it can often take the best measures out of even the most dedicated men.

New York Times bestselling authors and close advisors to the president Corey R. Lewandowski and David N. Bossie write from the front lines of Trump's battle to keep America great. Trump: America First gives the reader a firsthand and inside account of the Trump administration's battle for the soul of America. As we face the most critical presidential election of our lifetimes, we find ourselves buried in an avalanche of political spin, candidate talking points, and slick campaign ads. Then, just as you're ready to give up, along comes a book that makes sense of a political time like none that have come before.Written with the urgency of a countdown and by President Trump's two top outside political advisors and friends, Corey R. Lewandowski and David N. Bossie, Trump: America First blasts through the nonsense to deliver a first-hand account of the Trump presidency and reelection campaign during its most tumultuous time. From the COVID-19 shutdown in March to the campaign leadership shakeup and reset in July, Lewandowski and Bossie are present for every big moment, and now the reader is too. With unprecedented access to President Trump, the authors take us inside the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One, and backstage at Trump rallies. As they did in their first two blockbuster New York Times bestsellers, Lewandowski and Bossie show a side of the president few get to see. Along the way, Lewandowski and Bossie also tell of their own battles with the forces aligned against the president, and bring us inside the White House to the rough-and-tumble world of Trump's West Wing.Trump: America First also makes a case for electing Donald Trump to a second term. From revamping our trade with China to replacing NAFTA, from NATO to Kim Jong Un, Donald Trump leaves Joe Biden in the dust. Written with the authors' usual wit and political insight, America First is truly a book a political book for our time.

An engrossing look at the Trump cabinet: the scandals, the incompetence, the assault on the federal government, the bungled attempts to impose order on an administration lost in a chaos of its own making. Donald Trump promised a return to national greatness, but each day of his presidency seems to bring a new crisis, a deepening sense of national unease. Why, and how, has he failed his supporters? And how has he, on occasion, bested his detractors? The Best People takes complete measure of the Trump administration, to grasp with clarity the president and his intentions, and how those intentions are being carried out-or subverted-by the people he has hired. Alexander Nazaryan argues that the "assault on the administrative state" promised by Steve Bannon in early 2017 never came. What the American people got instead was Wilbur Ross hauling his tennis pro to confirmation hearing preparations; Scott Pruitt running away from rattlesnakes; Reince Priebus enduring insults from junior White House staffers. And yet, bungling as Trump's cabinet members have been, they have managed to either damage or arrest many of the gears that make government run. They have given away public lands to oil companies and allowed corporate lobbyists to make decisions about what is best for the American people, and have done it all while flying on private jets and dining at the finest restaurants, at taxpayers' expense. Meticulously reported and enthrallingly told, The Best People takes readers inside the federal government under Trump's control, a government assailed by the very people charged to lead it, a government awash in confusion and corruption.

Most historians of the American presidency—walking in lockstep with today’s hard-Left academic establishment—favor presidents who were big-government statists and globalists. They dislike presidents who lowered taxes, protected American workers, and avoided getting the United States entangled in foreign conflicts that had nothing to do with protecting the American people. It is through that prism that they see all of American history. It’s time for a change. Nowadays, with socialism massively discredited and internationalism facing more opposition than it has since before World War II, it’s time to reevaluate what the Leftist historians have told us. Donald Trump was elected president pledging to put America First, as any nation’s leader should put his or her own people first. There needs to be an America-First reevaluation of him and his predecessors. This book, therefore, rates the presidents not on the basis of criteria developed by socialist internationalist historians, but on their fidelity to the United States Constitution and to the powers, and limits to those powers, of the president as delineated by the Founding Fathers. America’s presidents are rated on the extent to which they put America First—not in the sense of a narrow isolationism, but whether they really advanced the interests of the American people. This upends the conventional wisdom about a great deal of American history and present-day reality, and is intended to do so. This book offers what should be the only criteria for rating the occupants of the White House: were they good for America?