From the time Arthur Schlesinger Sr. first surveyed historians and political scientists in 1948, Woodrow Wilson has placed high on scholarly lists of the greatest U.S. presidents. In 1948, he was fourth—after Lincoln, Washington and FDR. In 1962, his son Arthur Schlesinger Jr. conducted another survey in which Wilson retained that spot.
In Schlesinger’s 1996 poll, Wilson dropped to seventh as Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson bumped him down three notches. (Jackson has since fallen to ninth.) Only in 2000 and 2005 polls by The Wall Street Journal did Wilson finish outside the top 10. In both, he finished 11th.
