Trump Ranked the Presidents. A Historian Responds

**Lindsay Chervinsky** (0:00)
If someone says, like, the founders thought that, usually that is a red flag, that whatever comes next is going to be hogwash because the founders disagreed on almost everything, except for two things. One, George Washington was going to be the first president, and two, there were not supposed to be kings.
Whole revolution is about no kings, which means that the person in highest office must be held responsible.

**Bob Crawford** (0:25)
You've reached American History Hotline. You ask the questions, we get the answers.

**Lindsay Chervinsky** (0:30)
Leave a message.

**Bob Crawford** (0:32)
Hey there, American History Hotliners. I'm Bob Crawford, joining you again for another episode of American History Hotline. It's the show where you ask the questions and we will get you the answers. The best way to get a question is to record a voice memo on your phone and send it to us or a video. Either way is great. We would love to see you. We'd love to hear you regardless. americanhistoryhotline.com. That's americanhistoryhotline.com.
Okay. We got a great question for you today.
It's very topical and actually it comes up every year. So, and we've been wanting to do this for a long time, and we finally have the perfect reason to do it. You may have seen a couple of weeks ago that President Trump released his ranking of the best and worst presidents in American history. Now, I looked at it and I saw my man John Quincy Adams was ranked average.
I mean, you know, I think he should get an asterisk, maybe. We could talk about that later. And I've got some thoughts on it. And you know what's great? Our guest today, I know she has thoughts on that very topic as well. Joining us again is Lindsay Chervinsky, a Presidential Historian and the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library. Also, she was the first guest ever on American History Hotline. So, Lindsay, so great to have you back.

**Lindsay Chervinsky** (2:12)
Well, it's great to be back. Thank you for having me.

**Bob Crawford** (2:15)
We always love talking with you. And this one, when we saw this come out, we were like, we need to call Lindsay immediately.
So, oh, by the way, great seeing you on the Netflix documentary recently, The American Experiment. Have you gotten a lot of feedback about that?

**Lindsay Chervinsky** (2:35)
Thank you. Yes, I have. It has been really, really cool. You know, I filmed that last summer, and it's one of those things where you talk for several hours and you have no idea what's going to actually make it into the final product. And you don't, sometimes they'll tell you some of other people sort of in your realm. So I knew some of the other historians they had talked to, but I had no idea about some of the other public officials, things like that. So the final product is a big surprise.
And because of the platform and because of the producer, which was Tom Hanks, it did have really pretty incredible reach. And so I was hearing from people that I hadn't spoken to in a very long time. I heard some people from high school, which was pretty funny. So that was, that was really neat to see that that was out there.

**Bob Crawford** (3:23)
For all of the craziness of these times we're living in and all of the controversy over some of the 250th celebrations that went on, I think it was a net positive. Because there was just so much out there, you know, coming from other channels than the government, you know, like so much new interest or re-engagement with the founding documents and the founding fathers, you know, I think it, like to my sense is that it was a net positive for us who love history and who love to share history and teach history.

**Lindsay Chervinsky** (4:10)
Yeah, I think it probably was too. I think there was a lot of really excellent work that was done on the ground. A lot of local sites really kind of picked up the slack because there didn't really end up being one national umbrella. The America 250 organization got a little bit pushed aside by the Freedom 250, and that was much more partisan than a lot of people were willing to participate in. So I think that a lot of local organizations, a lot of state organizations really did a good job. Now, of course, that there are ranges of that. I do think it was probably less recognized on the West Coast and in some of the middle parts of the country for understandable reasons. Those weren't states in, or even declared states in 1776 So I do understand it.