Presidential Greatness

Loss Leader said:
The entire presidential race was different depending on where you lived. It was Lincoln v. Douglass in the north and Breckinridge v. Bell in the south. In ten southern states, Lincoln wasn't even on the ballot.

But, I agree that at least those who held office in the last 20 years should be excluded from such polls. For this poll, that would have been Clinton, W., Obama, and Rump.
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Lincoln won the presidency with only 40% of the electoral votes and just under 40% of the popular vote due to the votes being split 4 ways.
 
Loss Leader said:
Not surprised to see Buchanan so close to the bottom of the list - he was the only president who left office with fewer states than we had when he came in.
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I was wondering, before looking at the answers, whether Trump or Buchanan would be in last place.

I guess they were judging William Henry Harrison by his level of greatness before he took office. I don't think anyone could say that his time in office had anything at all of greatness.

I was also surprised at how high Obama and Clinton were placed. I thought both of them were good presidents, but, "great"? I don't see it.
 
Meadmaker said:
I was wondering, before looking at the answers, whether Trump or Buchanan would be in last place.
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Allow me to recommend Worst President Ever, a surprisingly light and entertaining read about the complete dumpster fire of the Buchanan presidency.

Kansas has erupted into civil war, setting up two opposing governments? What is a president to do? If you're James Buchanan, the answer is,"Absolutely nothing."
 
Giz said:
Yeah. And ghw bush too.


Silly poll is silly.
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How much farther up in the ranking would you say Trump lies? At the top, where Trumpy himself claims?

Probably not. Anyone hanging about here would not be so daft. Only an ignoramus would put Trump within a country mile of where that man thinks himself to be.
 
Lurch said:
How much farther up in the ranking would you say Trump lies? At the top, where Trumpy himself claims?

Probably not. Anyone hanging about here would not be so daft. Only an ignoramus would put Trump within a country mile of where that man thinks himself to be.
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Is TDS blinding ? I said nothing about trump deserving a higher spot. What I did say is that a number of other recent presidents seem to be too high.
 
Giz said:
Is TDS blinding ? I said nothing about trump deserving a higher spot. What I did say is that a number of other recent presidents seem to be too high.
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True. I am rather focused upon the current travesty.

By the way, as I pointed out somewhere here yesterday, the Trump supporters' refrain of "TDS" is getting TeDiouS. ;)

As also pointed out here, just above, this result under discussion is not a poll, at least in the usual sense. I gather some criteria were established by which to rank with some degree of objectivity. This is borne out by the fairly small divergence in any one President's ranking by political affiliation of the participants. Indeed, there are a few cases where the rank expectation was reversed from what might expect, with Dems more favoring a Rep POTUS and vice versa. These factors lend no small degree of credence to the resulting ranking.

We can argue about the potential for freshness of memory of recent POTI ;) to introduce bias. But the demonstration that, in the main, R and D participants follow the same general trend in ranking at least reduces the variable of bias resulting from political affiliation by a good margin. Among these accredited experts in the field of political science/history, anyway. From the man in the street we should expect to find a *far* higher correlation with political leanings.
 
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It's funny. But I look at JFK as one of the best orators. He made me proud to be an American. But his administration got little to nothing done. There was the Bay of Pigs disaster. But he did handle the Cuban Missile crisis well. But I view that almost luck. In a way and this sounds awful, but he accomplished more by being assassinated then he did as President. It led to LBJ's landslide and many real legislative accomplishments.

Eisenhower, like JFK was a mixed bag. The people warmed to him and you have to give him credit for the Interstate Highway system that Truman was unable to push through. But you have to give Ike an F when it came to advancing race relations when he should have.

Nixon was better than many give him credit for. But he was corrupt when he didn't really need to be.

What is interesting to me about this list is there are 3 Republican Presidents that Democrats rated higher than Republicans.
 
I find a high correlation for presidential ranking with unexpected events that turned out well or poorly. For example, Hoover was a pretty hard-working policy wonk (unlike his two idiot predecessors). However, he gets hit with the Great Depression and he gets the blame and loses. Wilson, on the other hand, had to be dragged kicking and screaming into WWI. But, since that turned out pretty good for us, he gets the credit. Wilson is 11 from the top, Hoover is 9 from the bottom.

The question remains as to how much each man, as president, has to do with the outcome of huge world events. Were they swept by the tides of history, or did they steer the nation over said tides? I don't know.

When it comes to Trump, I think historians will judge him on how well the Covid19 pandemic turned out for the nation. If we create new policies for social interaction and tracing, innovate new technologies for testing and monitoring other possible threats, and establish a new normal of more work from home, smaller office spaces, more green spaces (after we tear down the unused offices), and crazy, new medical procedures with robotic leaches and whatever - if we do all that, Trump, for all his obvious faults, may climb out of the basement given enough time.
 
acbytesla said:
It's funny. But I look at JFK as one of the best orators. He made me proud to be an American. But his administration got little to nothing done. There was the Bay of Pigs disaster. But he did handle the Cuban Missile crisis well. .
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On the other hand, the Cuban missile crisis only happened because JFK had come across as weak to Khrushchev when they’d had the Vienna summit, leading Khrushchev to think he could push jfk around. The Cuban missile crisis was the result.

From wiki:
“ In retrospect the summit may be seen as a failure. The two leaders became increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress of the negotiations. Kennedy later said of Khrushchev, "He beat the hell out of me" and told New York Times reporter James 'Scotty' Reston it was the "worst thing in my life. He savaged me."[18] On the other hand, Khrushchev viewed the Summit in a much more positive light. In his memoir, Khrushchev showed ambivalence. He proclaimed, "I was generally pleased with our meeting in Vienna. Even though we came to no concrete agreement, I could tell that [Kennedy] was interested in finding a peaceful solution to world problems and avoiding conflict with the Soviet Union."[19] However, historian William Taubman suggests that Khrushchev merely felt he could "[push Kennedy around]."[20]”
 
alfaniner said:
Which is virtually the same thing as saying "We'll see what happens."
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I would tend to agree. However, I would discount that agreement because we're too close to the Trump presidency to view it in a historical light. I wouldn't rate anybody past Clinton.
 
Loss Leader said:
I would tend to agree. However, I would discount that agreement because we're too close to the Trump presidency to view it in a historical light. I wouldn't rate anybody past Clinton.
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Ok. I’ll agree that it is too soon.

But even if DJT deserves to jump up by 20 positions, he’s still going to be in the bottom half. And even if BO drops 10, he’s still going to in the top half.

I could imagine some secret crime coming to light to drop BO 25 positions. But I cannot for the life of me imagine anything that would raise DJT even 12 positions.

I’d be amazed if DJT ended up above BO in the next 10, 40, or 120 years.
Then again, anything can happen in the long run.

ETA

I Think that President Trump would have received a fair amount of greatness if he had been able to achieve any three items from this list

Show compassion.
Know when to shut up.
Put America’s interest ahead of your own.
Learn to take a joke.
Act like an adult.
Get over your desire to blame everything on President Obama.
Admit your mistakes and move on.
Stop looking at the presidency as a reality show.
Learn economics (understand how trade wars don’t help).
Don’t fire people who disagree with you.
Stop calling people names (or at the very least, be more clever when choosing your taunts).

But untreated mental illness can control a person’s life.
 
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Loss Leader said:
I would tend to agree. However, I would discount that agreement because we're too close to the Trump presidency to view it in a historical light. I wouldn't rate anybody past Clinton.
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I know that on the day he left office, I would have called Reagan one of the worst presidents in American history. Today, I can understand how he could rank pretty high in "greatness".

I still think a lot of his economic policies were awful. However, he changed the direction of the country, and his cold war policies look a lot better to me today than they looked at the time. I definitely think it takes some historical perspective to judge "greatness".
 
What things that can be attributed to Trump might rise to "greatness" a hundred years hence?

- Putting kids in cages?
- Giving billionaires a hefty tax break, at the cost of a rise in the national debt, when such 'stimulus' was absolutely unnecessary?
- Unilaterally pulling out of a successful nuclear deal with Iran, against all allies' advice?
- Standing practically alone in the world against climate change initiatives?
- "Falling in love" with just about the worst despot?
- Debasing his country by cuddling up to Putin, against his own national security advisers?
- A record of outright lies that boggles the mind?
- Accepting (illegally) help from a foreign Power to get elected?
- Stating his desire for more such (illegal) help to get re-elected?
- Constant violations of the Constitution's Emoluments Clause?
- Corrupting and perverting the DoJ by getting his desired 'Roy Cohn' in the form of Bill Barr?
- Being credibly accused of sexual assault by nearly 2 dozen women?
- The most inept response to a viral pandemic, at least in the developed world?
- And let's not forget: Getting impeached.

How many of these aspects will our great great grandkids look favorably upon?
 
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Meadmaker said:
I know that on the day he left office, I would have called Reagan one of the worst presidents in American history. Today, I can understand how he could rank pretty high in "greatness".

I still think a lot of his economic policies were awful. However, he changed the direction of the country, and his cold war policies look a lot better to me today than they looked at the time. I definitely think it takes some historical perspective to judge "greatness".
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I think Reagan gets a lot of credit for things he really had nothing to do with. The end of the Cold War was coming because, unknown to us, the USSR didn't have the money to compete with America anymore. It was coming because western TV had penetrated into eastern bloc countries and their citizens saw the lifestyle westerners were living.

The economy was on the upswing and that had very little to do with Reagan. Deregulation certainly helped but it was just a time of prosperity, one that started before he took office and continued at least part of the way through GHWB's term.

The only way Reagan was great, in my opinion, is that he unified the Republican party for a long time. He bound the social conservatives with the fiscal conservatives with some wealthy Jews who wanted stronger protections for Israel under his "big tent." That unity lasts to this day - even as all those groups have been given plenty of reasons to despise the others. That was his greatest accomplishment.

I would personally rate him a little above average.
 
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