1y ago

Donald Trump ranked as worst US president in history, with Joe Biden 14th

www.theguardian.com Donald Trump ranked as worst US president in history, with Joe Biden 14th

Survey of 154 scholars places 45th president behind even ‘historically calamitous chief executives’ linked to civil war

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.

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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.
  
  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.
  https://www.jstor.org/stable/1901942
- 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 dunno, perhaps they should change the ranking to throw in some additional items like foot fungus, head lice, 2nd-hand dog vomit and such... and then Trump would remain in last place!? :-P
- At least he didn't start a global war on drugs

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
  
  Except Republicans were polled as well, and then the rankings combined, whereas e.g. Trump is more universally hated by all sides (independents too).
  
  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
- 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 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?

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)
- 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.
- 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 works

The worst SO FAR

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.
- Uh... nobody's perfect, I guess was the prevailing thought? Fwiw, they did address that topic:
  Considering drops for Andrew Jackson (ninth in 2015 to 21st now) and Woodrow Wilson (10th to 15th), Rottinghaus and Vaughn noted the impact of campaigns for racial justice.
  “Their reputations have consistently suffered in recent years as modern politics lead scholars to assess their early 19th and 20th century presidencies ever more harshly, especially their unacceptable treatment of marginalised people,” the authors wrote.
  Jackson owned enslaved people and presided over the genocidal displacement of Native Americans. Wilson oversaw victory in the first world war and helped set up the League of Nations, but was an avowed racist who segregated the federal workforce.
  (emphasis added)
  So he did drop from 10 to 15 for this reason, but I guess winning WWI still kept him high.
  
  Winning a war that got thousands of Americans killed that we didn’t need to enter is not a good thing in my book. The League of Nations, while admirable, was a failure. Neither of these things out-way the absolute bullshit the man did to civil liberties (imprisoning people for handing out flyers) and segregation. He set the US back decades.
  And I haven’t even mentioned his incredible fuck ups with the flu which he was advised against doing. He ignored his medical advisors so that he could wage his bullshit war. This killed many thousands by spreading the worst flu the world has ever seen.
- Edna Krabappel was involved with making the list.

From now on whenever I hear him or someone else reference him as 45, I’m going to remember that what they really mean is that he’s at the bottom of all time presidents in the rankings, solidly at 45th place.
- Every 4-8 years we can shift his number down by 1

"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.
- C'mon, we all know what would happen... Trump would call them up on the phone and throw a hissy fit, threatening to drop out of the race or something ridiculous and then they would award it to him.

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

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...
- They each already had one term, so they would be ranked based on that partial data, even if those rankings would get changed later after a second.

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.

- considered responses from 154 scholars, most connected to the American Political Science Association
  They did not poll the general public, only people who read books - and even write them - literally for a living.

We can go dumber.
- Hold our meth

Trump definitely isn't as bad as some of the other presidents like Pierce or Wilson. Not to say he wasn't bad just there's some recency bias at play here.
- I'm not sure... the way politics have changed after he's been elected is nothing short of insanity. The supreme court effects alone are going to reshape America and set us back decades or more, if we're even able to hold the country together that long.
  
  Pro slavery Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 which TLDR said Kansas would hold a vote of if they'll allow slavery or not. Then people started killing each other so their side would have more votes.
  Woodrow Wilson famously said “It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." about the movie Birth of a Nation which was KKK propaganda. Leading to more lynching and the revitalization of the KKK. Also he did a whole bunch of other terrible things like violating the 1st Amendment.
- Trump said that he would not abide by the election results, meaning that he literally attempted to throw away our entire democratic system of (checks notes) "voting". While it is true that it was the most inept coup attempt that I have ever so much as even heard of, it still falls within that category. Dude straight-up wanted to get rid of the Constitution of the United States. That's... pretty bad.
  Also, an argument can be made that many of those "excess deaths" could be laid at his feet as well, especially after the Bob Woodsworth interview revealed that he knowingly lied about SARS-COV2 being airborne. And ofc that wasn't even the most infamous of Trump's various recorded phone calls!:-P Two of which led him to be impeached... twice.
  Fwiw the Guardian article about the rankings did specifically mention Wilson:
  Wilson oversaw victory in the first world war and helped set up the League of Nations, but was an avowed racist who segregated the federal workforce.
  So it seems like they are considering the impact of their decisions made whilst being in charge, while separating that from their personal morality. The impact of Global Climate Change likely influenced the rankings as well.
  They also were pretty upfront with their liberal bias as well.
  So yeah, e.g. slavery is bad, but these people seem to consider overthrowing the government even worse. Regardless of whether you agree with their biases or not, I don't think a "recency bias" is the main point at hand there.
- 100% disagree. His distain for the rule of law alone will put our system of government at risk for generations. Did Pierce of Wilson try to overthrow a free and fair election?
  
  Wilson literally was jailing anyone who said bad things about his policies with the Sedition Act of 1918.

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.

- I assume you mean Biden in which case no, it means 14th best. (Edit: and apparently you aren't the only one to think this, sorry if people were making fun of you - I would hope Lemmy would be more welcoming than this)
  The aim, the authors said, “was to create a ranking of presidential greatness"
  Ironically Ulysses S Grant "whose administration generated significant corruption but whose attempts to enforce post-civil war Reconstruction in southern states, including fighting the Ku Klux Klan, have helped fuel reconsideration" moved up from 26 to 17. i.e. the authors seem to be taking into consideration not just what happened but how the President responded to it?
  Likewise James Buchanan was higher than Trump, probably bc failing to stop a civil war isn't as bad as actually leading a coup attempt where police officers were literally murdered in violence.
  Though Biden is only 2 steps ahead of Reagan and there's also notably "George HW Bush (No 19), who led the nation’s last decisive military victory, the Gulf war of 1991." It seems incongruous bc even the liberal media is not reporting much on anything that Biden actually does manage to accomplish - they sell stories that generate profits, and boring blah blah successes don't generate engagement, like Trump does.
- FYI, the person who made fun of you got their comment removed by a mod. I hope this helps restore a tiny bit of faith in how Lemmy makes social media work.:-)
  
  Tbh I didn't think my joke was funny anyway lol

This is why democracy is bullshit. He didn't invade Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc. Not a literal war criminal (yet, anyways). Etc
- Yeah, I agree.
  Biden should have at least cracked the top ten.
  
  Anyways, polls like this just prove people can't be trusted to vote. Worst US president is not equivalent to least popular. Andrew Jackson was probably one of the worst, George HW a strong candidate.

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