Just as a reminder this Presidents' Day in the United States that donald trump was one of the worst to ever sit in the Executive office (via Peter Baker at the New York Times (paywalled)):
A new poll of historians coming out on Presidents’ Day weekend ranks Mr. Biden as the 14th-best president in American history, just ahead of Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan and Ulysses S. Grant. While that may not get Mr. Biden a spot on Mount Rushmore, it certainly puts him well ahead of Mr. Trump, who places dead last as the worst president ever.
Indeed, Mr. Biden may owe his place in the top third in part to Mr. Trump. Although he has claims to a historical legacy by managing the end of the Covid pandemic; rebuilding the nation’s roads, bridges and other infrastructure; and leading an international coalition against Russian aggression, Mr. Biden’s signature accomplishment, according to the historians, was evicting Mr. Trump from the Oval Office.
trump was already having a bad month, so... this just piles it on.
“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,” wrote Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus, the college professors who conducted the survey and announced the results in The Los Angeles Times.
Mr. Trump might not care much what a bunch of academics think...
Trust me, Pete, trump is a raging self-absorbed narcissist. Of course he cares what other people think, it's what drives his fear and his anger.
...but for what it’s worth he fares badly even among the self-identified Republican historians. Finishing 45th overall, Mr. Trump trails even the mid-19th-century failures who blundered the country into a civil war or botched its aftermath like James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce and Andrew Johnson.
This poll is a follow-up of sorts to the one that came out in 2021, when trump fled from the Oval Office and the damage of his tenure more tangible. It's telling that in the brief period of reflection of the last three years, few if any historians are willing to give trump some credit or improvement over the terrible mediocrities - the 19th Century disasters that were Buchanan, Pierce, and Johnson (no, the first one) - that are long gone.
There are no signs in the United States of long-term effects remaining from trump's misrule (other than the madness of his rabid MAGA base escalating their Culture War on our schools). Of the things he did that left an impact - such as signing away Afghanistan to the Taliban at the very end of his presidency - none of it was for the better.
That trump is eagerly running again for the Presidency bodes ill for the nation. It's not because trump wants to undo his terrible legacy, he wants to add to it. And he's not running for the benefit of his followers or even the nation as a whole: trump is running this 2024 so he can use the legal immunity of the Executive office to keep his orange ass out of jail.
Gods help us. We dare not let him back into the Oval Office. trump will be worse than he was before. And that term of office was shockingly bad.
For the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY, America. Vote Biden. Vote Democratic Party in every spot on the ballot.
1 comment:
Steve Benen had this (among other things) to say about the ranking:
* I’ve argued that the rehabilitation of George W. Bush’s reputation is problematic, and this survey reinforces my concerns: He’s #32 in these rankings, which seems unreasonably high.
Fergus floated the idea of getting carved into Mt. Rushmore, which might not be that bad of an idea as it would guard against forgetting how utterly horrible he was as a president.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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