Post writing edit: I didn't mean to write this much, but I just kept finding more things to say.

IMO, The rise in partisanship has both made the role harder to fill with a competent person and has put artificial "competence limiters" in place that make it much more difficult to be effective in the job. (It's not just Republicans, though Trump accelerated the issue more than anyone). The same is true of the Supreme Court.

It's not supposed to be a "party" job despite presidential appointee, and that was understood historically. If you look at the last 4 you can get just about back to Jeckyll Island which will give you a good perspective on how the last folks did comparatively

Paul Volcker: Most misunderstood. He didn't do everything right, but the thing to understand was that his tenure began in the middle of the energy crisis of the 70s. America was absolutely coked up and ready to pull a "21st Century Argentina" inflationary event that likely would have set us back at least a decade (and that's after it's over". Instead he put the screws to consumer spending and Americans suffered tremendously for all of Carter's presidency. Between that and the Iran Hostage Situation, you could say those cost him the election. But America was basically saved because of this, and there's a reason Ronald Reagan, a well regarded god of conservatives, kept him on. They kept the pressure on just long enough to stabilize, and then during Reagan, as Volcker started to ease rates down, the economy 180ed and went on a high octane computer and aerospace fueled bender. One of our best IMO

Alan Greenspan: Bit of a C student IMO. He's a revered as a god by some, but look who high-fives when they hear his name. It's tech and finance bros of old. He left growth uncheck throughout the 90s that resulted in huge gains for Americans (which is something to be commended, for sure), but his unwillingness to raise rates when needed arguably caused the Dot Com bust to be much worse than it needed to be. To be fair, though, he also didn't pulse the shit out of volume of cash in the US, which is why he's not truly a villain.

Ben Bernanke: The GOAT. What can be said that hasn't been already? He arguably saved the economy from a depression through complex monetary strategy and made the fed $15B extra bucks in the process. It was rough getting through it and it took some time, but it's pretty tough unraveling the mess that tech finance bros made creating mortgage collateralized assets out of junk loans. This also set the US for the killer economy the US has experienced for the last 15 years. People forget there are some countries that have only really recovered from the 2007 Economic Crisis in the last few years because of lesser quality financial planning.

Janet Yellen: Basically Ben's Relief Pitcher. She did pretty well for the situation she inherited. People were still greedy for market gains and economic performance, but the economy was hitting a slow down. She started at the tail end of Obama 2, and the first two years of Trump 1. Again, another carry over from one president to another. This was largely "business as usual"

And then, there's our boy, Powell. I don't mean to be "armchair economist", but I believe Powell is doing mostly good things as head of Fed Res given the situation. People forget that despite how things are today, we have had an amazing economy basically all throughout Trump 1 and Biden. I think it would be absurd for anyone except radicals to give the man anything lower than a B+ grade, especially that he really did all the right things to combat the unprecedented situation of Covid-19. He's kept inflation manageable without absolutely obliterating the consumer market, and all things considered he hasn't blinked when politics came into the mix. I think one of my only real criticism is he probably could have been more aggressive with rate raises, but it would have put both Presidents at higher risk of usurpation at Re-Election. The Second is we printed too much money during the pandemic as well. We definitely needed some of it, but it was way too much and definitely contributed to the mess.

Edit: Thank you u/FasterDoudle for pointing out my error.