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.

  • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    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?

    • Omega@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      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.”

    • PopcornTin@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      In 2009, the nobel peace prize was given to someone for not being Bush. Same difference here.

    • problematicPanther@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      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.

        • nonfuinoncuro@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          I 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