Survey of 154 scholars places 45th president behind even ‘historically calamitous chief executives’ linked to civil war
Donald Trump finished 45th and rock bottom of a list ranking US presidents by greatness, trailing even “historically calamitous chief executives” who failed to stop the civil war or botched its aftermath.
Worse for the likely Republican nominee this year, his probable opponent, Joe Biden, debuted at No 14.
“Biden’s most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall,” Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus, the political scientists behind the survey, wrote in the Los Angeles Times.
Honestly, if you talk to most presidential historians they will tell you that you need about 20 years to pass before you can accurately assess a president. There’s too many unknowns that will come to light only years or decades after a term ends, Eisenhower is a great example of this. So these rankings are likely to change over the years.
Although, having seen Trump’s predilection for fraud, decit, and self-serving, I’d be shocked if he rebounds as more information comes out.
In 20 years, we could be up to 48 presidents or more, so you’re right, trump’s rating could get even lower. Hopefully no one beats him.
In 20 years, the number of presidents might not have increased.
Even if the US falls into a dictatorship it’s not very likely that Trump makes it to 97.
good point, surprised he made it through the stresses of being president once.
It’s not stressful when you don’t do anything and don’t care about anything and others around you.
Exactly he spent four years being applauded and complaining about the food.
In his eyes that’s called winning.
Also, Fuck Putin, that horrible man.
Can you elaborate on Eisenhower, please?
Eisenhower was always seen as aloof, sort of a figurehead, during his presidency. However, years after, once his papers were made public, a much different view of Eisenhower started to take shape. He was seen more as a hands-on leader. I believe he was in the 15-20th range in the 80s, but by 2000 was up to 9th, and recently up to 5th (8th in current poll).
Here’s a preview of a journal article that touches on it a bit.
He can’t drop any further
Not yet anyway. Let’s hope we don’t reach a time when there’s a debate whether someone deserves the spot instead of Trump.
I would have put Reagan way further down the list.
The problem is how many objectively bad presidents we’ve had. I agree, however, Reagan should be lower.
I’m a little mixed on this. I do think he should be lower on the rankings due to a lot of his shitty policies.
However, he has also done some significant differences that still affect us today. He did make GPS globally available to the public at no cost. Could you imagine having to pay to use your GPS every time, or not having GPS available to you at all unless you were in the military?
People who should be lower: Jackson, Wilson, and Reagan. Fuck those guys.
Reagan can be next to last. He’s done more damage to modern America than all others but Trump
He was tough on the USSR, at least. Obama and Biden not arming Ukraine enough before the conflicts caused Russia to be more successful than it has any right to be
Obama tried, they passed multiple aid packages. Trump withheld the aid, which was the cause of his first impeachment.
Obama could have directly slapped Russia down in 2014, but didn’t do shit. Russia was not punished enough and got more bold in 2022
Why is it Obama or Biden’s responsibility to arm a foreign country?
Because for once, America is helping against an imperialist aggressor rather than encouraging it. It also happens to be in our best interest to show to other dictators how bad an idea it is.
Fight your own battles instead of proxy wars?
OK. Now we get directly involved and Russia goes nuclear, or we don’t get involved at all and Russia takes over Ukraine.
so it’s ok if Ukrainians die in the process. as long as it’s not americans right?
Because the US disarmed Ukraine in exchange for security promises. Time to actually live up to your promises
Russia guaranteed Ukraine security for disarmament, the UK and US made assurances.
Well, it’s still shitty since everyone bullied Ukraine to disarm and then Russia invaded and the arm shipments are not enough to stop Russia from continuing to take land
Iran and North Korea are better allies than the US and that sucks for global diplomacy
oh so why don’t we ACTUALLY DEFEND instead of just sending fuck tons of money are arms? like i said, this shit could be over tomorrow if anyone really wanted it to be. to many people are making too much money off of it. war is good for business incase you haven’t noticed.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t, I’m saying it’s better to send arms than not to send them
Trump’s so much worse than any of those guys. He’s literally promising to end democracy in the USA and to imprison his political opponents if he wins the next election. None of those others went that far.
Not to mention him being convicted of massive fraud while in office and fomenting a riot against the capitol to try to prevent the democratic election process from occurring. I mean this stuff is absolutely nuts and unlike anything any other president has done.
Jackson committed genocide against native Americans, so I think that’s worse.
I could go on and on about all of Jackson’s atrocities from stealing babies to skinning Native people alive to make bridle reins. But I think it’s enough to say that Jackson was Hitlers wet dream. He quoted him often and even ripped off Jackson’s speech called the Final Solution to the Indian Problem. Yea, Jackson goes last even over Trump.
jackson not being dead last just completely ruins the entire integrity of the list. how can genocide against native americans be better than trump? seriously?
I suppose the argument might be that Trump attempted to ferment a war, and still to this day attempts to do so, that would kill his own countrymen.
Which while morally probably isn’t worse than crimes against natives, is probably worse for a president to do?
Also of course if Trump gets his way he’ll start world war 3, (because that’s a vote winter I’m sure) which would kill a lot more people.
then by all rights lincoln should probably be dead last, a war in which most if not all causalities were americans, regardless if at the time they “werent”
That is Trump’s favorite president unsurprisingly.
Yeah honestly I fucking hate Trump but Jackson should be the worst simply because of this. This kind of voids the entire reputation of these scholars in my view.
I think part of the problem is intent versus what he got done so far.
If you want some ammunition in your statement though, add in the bungling of COVID and his anti-vax leadership he probably killed at least a couple hundred thousand Americans.
can they just be tied for last?
FDR should be much much lower
Because of the internment camps?
Yes, and agricultural adjustment act. Bribing voters with social security. Attempted court packing. Support of Mussolini. Created UNICOR. Corporatism. To name just a few things.
“Being a traitor to his class, and empowering peasants.” Fixed that for you.
Fuck Ben Shapiro.
“Being a traitor to his class, and empowering peasants.” Fixed that for you.
Yeah no that’s not what I said. He actually empowered corporate technocrats more.
Fuck Ben Shapiro.
I’m confused.
A great president is one who expanded the institution of the president,
Yea, I don’t know if this definition of greatness is very good
Hahaha at Vaughn and Rottinghaus low-key throwing shade at Biden. Let’s look at their quote closely:
Biden’s most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump,
translation: his greatest achievement has been not being Trump
resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership,
than Trump (of course)
and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall,”
Predicted greatest legacy in the hopefully remaining four years: Be re-elected. Lol
Man i dunno if it was on purpose to basically reduce his legacy to “better than nothing” but they certainly stopped well short of praise, didn’t they?
It’s not just being not Trump. But he beat Trump. That’s like stopping a forest fire from taking out the west coast and calling it “not burning trees.”
In 2009, the nobel peace prize was given to someone for not being Bush. Same difference here.
And that guy did drone strikes on civilians…
(Yes, I voted for him twice)
I’d vote for him again too.
translation: his greatest achievement has been not being Trump
No, the achievement was actually winning the election. Unlike Hilary for example.
But, the thing is… she did. The Electoral College was designed specifically to stop the peasants from ending the rich’s preferred party rule.
Well, she didn’t win enough.
2.9 million more civilian votes should have been enough. But this is 'Murica, created by the rich, for the rich, and controlled by the rich. Clinton would have fucked up that steady stream of bribes from Russia.
And Biden got 7 million more votes. That’s his achievement. He not only ‘would have won if not for the rigged system’ but actually won. You see the difference?
You don’t understand The Electoral College, or why it’s there, do you?
No, you don’t understand that Biden is president and Hilary wasn’t. Everything else is just some meaningless BS.
basically that’s why he was elected. he wasn’t trump. That’s his whole platform, that’s it. It’s not necessarily a bad platform, but it’s not really gonna leave much, as far as his legacy is concerned.
he wasn’t trump. That’s his whole platform, that’s it.
Sorry, but this is one of those hyperbolic, uninformed, useless hot takes the Internet LOVES. You can literally look up his platform online, like so many places.
Here’s Politifact tracking 99 of his campaign promises.
27 kept 5 compromised 1 broken 31 stalled 34 in the worksI love these comments. Required the absolute minimum amount of work/“research” and yet utterly devastating and unrefutable response.
inseet honest work doing my part memes
The worst SO FAR
Trump II: electric boogaloo
So the bar is set to this level. Lol
How the hell is racist ass, first amendment hating, flu spreading, ww one involving, klan loving Wilson so fucking high?
He was neutral for the first 3 years of WWI but then asked congress for permission to intervene against Germany. In 1918 he went to the Paris Peace Conference and helped establish the League of Nations.
Compare that to a polar opposite example: President Grant. Grant was a great person and better for emancipation and reparations than even Lincoln was, but he filled his cabinet with traitors and thieves so was ultimately a very poor president.
Something that people lack awareness of to this very day is that Legislators impacts have nothing to do with their personality but instead how they vote, who they appoint, and which laws they pass.
Grant was a much better president than Wilson. Grant fucking crushed the first treasonous Klan which alone makes him better than the second Klan loving, resegregating, censorious asshole that was Wilson.
Edit: after John Brown and Lincoln, Grant was probably the best America has ever produced in terms of white men.
IMO Cassius Clay beats out Lincoln on that top 3. Lincoln put off making the easy decision of freeing the slaves until Clay made him do it. Lincoln was more just right place right time. Clay made the times right.
Dang, Clay was also an 84 year old man that married a girl as young as 12-16.
Damn TDIL
According to newspaper reports at the time, Dora was 15 to 16 years old. Her age varies in the few extant records; the 1900 US Census indicates that she was born in May 1882, suggesting that she may have been as young as 12 when she married Cassius M. Clay. Her age was a contentious issue, leading the minister who was initially to marry them to bow out. Clay’s children also objected, and Clay reportedly mounted a cannon in his doorway to deter anyone who intended to interfere with the wedding
Edna Krabappel was involved with making the list.
“Scholars? Pffft. What do they know???” Every Trumper in existence. And they mean it.
Meanwhile PragerU will do their own survey with a hand picked group of Magats and right this injustice. The only question is if Reagan or Trump will be at the number one spot.
Nixon when he finds out he’s not in the running for #1:
I always thought that Nixon must be doing cartwheels in his grave, seeing what Trump can get away with.
Considering Nixon’s sordid white house vomited up fox news and the premise that a new nixon should get away with it - well, here we are.
Considering Nixon’s sordid white house vomited up fox news and the premise that a new nixon should get away with it - well, here we are.
There’s a 22 year spread between those two.
From the article…
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974.
From the article…
The Fox News Channel (FNC) is an American basic cable and satellite news television channel that was founded by media mogul Rupert Murdoch in 1996.
If Fox News had a DNA test, it would trace its origins to the Nixon administration. In 1970, political consultant Roger Ailes and other Nixon aides came up with a plan to create a new TV network that would circumvent existing media and provide “pro-administration” coverage to millions. “People are lazy,” the aides explained in a memo. “With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you.” Nixon embraced the idea, saying he and his supporters needed “our own news” from a network that would lead “a brutal, vicious attack on the opposition.”
https://theweek.com/articles/880107/why-fox-news-created
Yes it took awhile to completely undermine objective journalism and create a fascist media empire. The point stands.
Yes it took awhile to completely undermine objective journalism and create a fascist media empire. The point stands.
Even the article talks about decades passing between the idea/memo from one person and the actual network coming into existence…
We live in a far different country today, thanks to the vision originally outlined in that 1970 memo, which Ailes realized decades later with Rupert Murdoch’s money.
All things considered, I now do understand what you’re trying to convey with your comment.
The real takeaway is that America has had like three presidents that were good across centuries. The rest are pretty dogshit.
Sorry, the rapist elector fraud is getting a bad score?
Yes the thrice married rapist draft dodger con artist was ranked poorly
Marry at your leisure; do not rape
No love for convicted fraud? Cmon it was in the news and eveythang
I roll it into con man, I could have really dug into children’s cancer charity defrauder but I was going for brevity.
Read this as Biden being 14th worst, not the best headline :p Kinda impossible to rank them especially when either one could have another term still…
How is this remotely plausible as news
By being something you didn’t know before. Kinda the definition. Yes we knew Trump was absolutely shit but that’s not exactly a rigorously tested hypothesis
Because it reinforces our existing beliefs. Thus, it gets clicks.
We can go dumber.
Hold our meth
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Obama seems too high? Other than being a relief after Bush2, what did he do? Just ACA?
His achievements were a lot more covert since republican opposition left him doing most of his work via EO.
One thing he did was a small program that allowed poor folks to get cell phone access.
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