The following article by Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus was posted on the Washington Post website January 19, 2018:
From high-profile firings to contentious remarks, the ups and downs of President Trump’s first year on the job garnered him historically low approval ratings. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
Just one year in, President Trump already has had a remarkable effect on the presidency — on the U.S. government’s tone and policies. So what would experts put on his report card? We’ve surveyed presidential experts in the past. Here’s what they said for year one of the Trump presidency.
How we did the research
We surveyed current and past members of the American Political Science Association’s Presidents and Executive Politics section on a variety of topics, asking for their assessments of Trump’s first year in office, both overall and on a few key dimensions of contemporary presidential leadership. The survey was conducted via Qualtrics and was live from Dec. 22, 2017, to Jan. 16, 2018. Of the 320 experts in presidential politics we invited to participate, we received grades back from 155. We then averaged the responses for a systematic assessment of the 45th president’s freshman year. Continue reading “We asked experts to grade Trump’s first year as a president. Here’s what they said.”