History Is Already Judging trump (w/ Update)

(Update: Many thanks to Jon Perr at Crooks&Liars for offering up this article to Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please check out the other articles here, and keep an eye out for Sunday because I like to do a FOUR FOR THE 4TH blogging run on Independence Day!)

This took up a bit of Twitter conversation today (up until the bombshell news of Cosby walking out of jail for his sex crimes). C-SPAN, the all-politics cable network, hosted a 2021 polling of Presidential Historians (damn, I did not get a phone call from them after my 2013 character reviews, I need to file for credentials to get on the next poll) that covered everyone from Washington to trump to see who ranked best and worst. Biden doesn't get graded yet because his term hasn't finished: It is also nice to see two of the ones who served the shortest terms - William Henry Harrison and James Garfield - get considered.

If you looked at the polling parameters, C-SPAN did a pretty good job of breaking down the factors ranging from economic policy to foreign policy to intangibles of leadership (persuasion, morality to name two). Working all of that together, and you get a list that puts donald trump down in the Bottom Five of Utter Failure.

I do think JFK's a little too high on this list...

No sign of the Shitgibbon yet...

THERE he IS! Tied with Pierce...

I know I am a bit biased when it comes to seeing trump dead last in any polling, but alas Historians take their business of judging history serious, so they had to give The Loser Of the Popular Vote (Twice) a fair shake. trump STILL ended up nowhere near the pinnacle of greatness he kept shilling himself to be.

If there are any surprises for me, it's that James Monroe isn't ranked higher, Coolidge and JFK both seem ranked a little too high IMHO, and my boy Chester A. Arthur needs a better agent. But I am not at all surprised at how low trump is held in esteem by those who study history and politics and who have a pretty good idea by now who merits acclaim and who gets the scorn.

If you've read just this blog alone, you'll have tracked a number of moments where trump failed this nation in terms of handling crises, in terms of persuasion, in terms of competency, in terms of coherent foreign policy, all of that. And this is all coming from a guy who's technically an amateur, I'm writing all of this as a hobby of sorts, personal venting, that sort of thing. You should notice this polling is with the professionals weighing in, with a better understanding of the Presidency and its effects on our present character and future direction. And man, they know trump sucked. 

When the only ones graded Worst than you (trump at 41st) are Andrew Johnson (43) and James Buchanan (44) and you tied with Franklin Pierce (42), you really need to re-evaluate your place in the universe. Dude, the guy who died in thirty days ranked higher (40) than you! (Addendum: The three worst all happen to be the Presidents who did the most damage either leading into the Civil War or during Reconstruction: Pierce aggressively pushing the hated Fugitive Slave Act; Buchanan enforcing the hate Dred Scott and contributing to Bloody Kansas instead of calming it, as well as dereliction of duty during the winter of 1860 when the secessionists seized federal forts and armaments; and then Johnson who threw away the early gains of Civil War victory, sabotaging Reconstruction and sowing the future for Jim Crow segregation for another 100 years.)

I work in a library. Ever since 2016, there have been a number of books about trump, about his campaign and his character and his administration and the utter chaos and madness he brought to both our nation and the world. Right now, we're getting a slew of preorders of titles written by Beltway journalists and esteemed historians critiquing the trumpian era (it takes about six to eight months from January for the postmortems to get edited and sent to galleys). For every one Far Right book I see on the distributors' lists, there's about five to seven books detailing the sins and follies of trump's White House.

History is already judging trump.

Yet the damn Republican Party thinks he's still a winner, that they can campaign again for him in 2024.

Gods help us if that ever happens (again).