Not all who sit in the Oval Office are equal.

Like most professions, presidents vary in quality. There are the good, the bad and the forgettable. But who is the best? The worst? And just how does Pennsylvania’s James Buchanan stack up?

Professors at colleges around the midstate shared their opinions. While the majority of history professors named Lincoln as the best overall, when it came to judging for economic, homeland security or international issues, his name is absent from the “best” or “worst” slot.

Here are the verdicts of the professors interviewed.

The best

Abraham Lincoln

“Most scholars would say he faced the most awesome challenges and handled them in a way that was as good as it can possibly get. Lincoln’s ability to manage a war to a successful conclusion, a very complex and bloody war, and to redefine the meaning of America — that’s pretty good stuff.” — Michael J. Birkner, professor of history at Gettysburg College.

“Lincoln was both the greatest communicator and also the best decision-maker. He was responsible for saving the union more than any other individual. He created a series of speeches and letters that explain American civic life more than anyone else has ever done.” — Matthew Pinsker, professor of history at Dickinson College.

“Lincoln is the best. The Civil War — that’s the crisis in American history. And the more you study him, the more you realize he could have let the nation fall apart.” — Peter Levy, professor of history at York College.

“I would put him No. 1 in the sense that there are probably other people who could have gotten the country off on the right foot the way Washington did. But it’s hard to imagine anybody as capable as Lincoln in the Civil War.” — James Broussard, professor of history at Lebanon Valley College

Dwight D. Eisenhower

“What impresses me with Eisenhower is he manages to pull off a balance during the Cold War that many people missed. He recognizes that the Soviet Union constitutes a threat, but he’s the one, for instance, who came up with the whole warning against the military-industrial complex. Not that he’s a pacifist or anti-military, but he’s concerned about how the culmination of power might lead to a dangerous place in Cold War America. I find him a wise person, an extraordinary manager and leader.” — Jim LaGrand, professor of history at Messiah College

George Washington

“He had to navigate so many uncharted waters. Everything he did established the presidency. It was really extraordinarily bold and generous of him to step down after eight years and really sort of establish that the presidency should be a limited institution and not royalty in America” — Steven Burg, professor of history at Shippensburg University

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“Roosevelt faced a huge economic calamity, and the moment it was on the ground we hit a world war. We have these two huge crises that FDR faced. And he really transformed the office. He really did so much more with the office than anyone had done before. Lincoln was important, but if Lincoln hadn’t had the Civil War, he may have been like any other president. Really, we think of FDR as establishing the modern presidency.”— Stephen Medvic, chairman of the department of government at Franklin & Marshall College

The worst

Andrew Johnson

“He messed everything up. Johnson was given a certain circumstance, which was a defeated confederacy, and he was determined not to allow the North to not enjoy any fruits of labor. Once he punished a few traitors, as he put it, he let the South come in and let bygones be bygones.” — Birkner

“He’s the guy, I think, who always insisted he was carrying out Lincoln’s easy Reconstruction policy and so forth, but he was basically a racist Democrat that the Republicans stuck on Lincoln to get some Democratic votes. So the reaction to what he did was the Republicans in Congress imposed very tough Reconstruction measures. You have 100 years of racial animosity in the South.” — Broussard

Chester Arthur

“Chester Arthur just kind of sat around and did nothing. But it was thought that there wasn’t a lot for politicians to do at the time. The presidency wasn’t a place to do heroic things; that was done in other venues. That was done in business and the military.” — LeGrand

Warren Harding

“He’s the worst. He was corrupt, he was controlled by his cronies and indifferent to the actual exercise of the office.” — Pinsker

Foreign policy

Best: Theodore Roosevelt

“At the turn of the 20th century, you had the emergence of the United States as a world power. He had to deal with a number of issues a lot of presidents never had to deal with. His ability to deal with the unknown was unique. He projected American power, but he also understood the limits with American power.” — Ronald Frankum, professor of history and foreign policy expert at Millersville University

Worst: Lyndon Johnson.

“I think if you look at what Lyndon Johnson did with Latin America and Vietnam and even in his European policy, he was very active in foreign policy but probably did more harm for the nation than good on the whole.” — Frankum

Economics

Best: Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan

“Reagan is known for his tax cuts, but he also increased government spending quite sharply. Clinton on the other hand increased taxes, but he reduced government spending. So I think both are very significant in how they approach economic policy. When it comes to outcomes, they have very similar outcomes with low inflation, low unemployment and economic growth.” —Sanjay Paul, professor of economics at Elizabethtown College

Worst: Jimmy Carter

“In terms of economic performance, Jimmy Carter’s presidency was beset with problems. Unemployment went through the roof; inflation was very high. But you could claim it wasn’t all his fault because he had the oil crisis, which was out of his control. In a sense, Carter was unfortunate to be in the White House at the wrong time.” — Paul

Homeland security

Best: Theodore Roosevelt

“I think he understood securing the homeland required a strong defense. He was one of the first presidents to say the American military had to be built up in a way that would deal with more international conflict.” — Jeremy Plant, homeland security master’s program coordinator at Penn State Harrisburg.

Worst: Thomas Jefferson and others

“As far as going way back in history, you could say there were a number of presidents (Thomas Jefferson being one of them) that cut the size of the military. Although Jefferson is a hard one to classify because he’s very inconsistent.” — Plant

How does James Buchanan fare?

The only president from Pennsylvania graduated from Dickinson College in Carlisle and lived for many years in Lancaster. Despite his midstate roots, Buchanan’s presidency fails to impress modern-day historians and failed to impress the citizens of his time.

He’s mainly remembered for allowing the South to secede and for doing little to stop the bloody events in Kansas as slave owners and abolitionists battled to have the state be named slave or free.

Birkner: “I would rank Buchanan as the second- or third-worst president. [In my book ‘Disrupted Democracy: James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War’] we try to help people understand the challenges that Buchanan confronted, mostly without positive result.”

Broussard: “He would be the worst, except that Lincoln managed to save things in the end. The difference between him and [Andrew] Johnson, I think, is Buchanan’s heart was in the right place ... whereas Johnson went out of his way to encourage resistance to black rights in the South.”

Burg: “I think Buchanan’s inaction in the face of impending crisis probably had the gravest consequences for the nation.”

LaGrand: “He did not do much that’s memorable. It is an amazing thing that such an important state historically has not produced anyone other than Buchanan.”

Levy: “The Dred Scott decision leads up to the Civil War, he ended up intervening in the decision and made it worse. And the final month of his presidency, the South is seceding, and he provides no leadership whatsoever. The Democrats did not even renominate Buchanan. Not only did the nation turn against him, but not even his party went with him.”

Medvic: “Just being paralyzed in the face of an oncoming civil war, just not knowing what to do. And the worst thing to do as president is to be indecisive, and that seems to be that’s what Buchanan’s response was to a mounting crisis.”

Pinsker: “Buchanan’s decisions were catastrophic. He may have been well intentioned, but his choices nearly destroyed the union. It’s hard to imagine what he could have done that would have worked, but the contrast between him and Lincoln is the contrast between night and day.”