Dem
47
GOP
53
You know what Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush and Donald Trump have in common, besides having served as president? They all left office with an approval rating of 34%, as measured by Gallup. It looks like Joe Biden is about to join the club, as the new Marquette poll has his approval rating at... 34%. At least that's better than Harry S. Truman (32%) or Richard Nixon (24%).
On one hand, it's pretty clear that presidential approval ratings, particularly at the end of a president's term, aren't all that related to the president's actual performance in office. There is simply no world where Trump, Bush, Carter and Biden were equals as presidents, with all of them barely edging out Truman. On the other hand, late-term approval ratings are clearly a pretty good proxy for "Is the country on the right track?" and "Should we throw the bums out?" Every single one of these five low-approval presidents, whether they ran for reelection or not, saw their party lose the White House at the next election. This is worth keeping in mind if we get to the end of Trump's term and he's mired in the 30s, yet again.
Meanwhile, what does Biden's future hold, approval-wise? We can only speculate, of course, but we can note that he's not being dragged down by gross corruption (like the three Republicans). Of course, he's also not likely to have time to rehabilitate himself as a beloved elder (like Carter and, to an extent, Nixon). Carter got started on his very successful post-presidency at the age of 56, while for Nixon it was age 61. Both of those are rather younger than Biden's current age of 82.
That leaves us with Truman. Because "rating" past presidents, whether by pollsters or by historians, was not much of a "thing" in the day of Harry S., we don't have a great picture of when and how his reputation bounced back from its presidential doldrums. All we know is that he left office very unpopular in 1953 and then, just under a decade later, historians rated him as the 8th best president in American history. He has consistently been between #5 and #9 ever since.
We don't know that Biden will quite reach Trumanesque heights, but he did get into the teens in the two scholars' polls that included him. Every president gets something of a bump once they leave office, and we suspect that some of the irritations that are hurting Biden now (waiting too long to drop out, Gaza, etc.) will fade, while his accomplishments will look pretty good in contrast to Trump v2.0. Again, this is all speculation, although speculation from someone who's been following presidential rankings pretty closely for nearly four decades. (Z)