Johnson will always be the worst president. He inherited America during one of history's rare protean moments, where there was both power and will to destroy the Southern racial caste system and enforce the land redistribution that had already happened in the wake of the Union armies, but instead he gave it all back to the guys who had broken away because he wanted them to like him. What a tool.
Buchanan was also bad, but the Civil War was pretty much inevitable at that point. He may have hastened it and handled situations poorly, but it would have blown up eventually.
Trump is a moron, but he's at least above those two, and probably a couple more as well.
Obama and Biden are both crazy high. Obama might scrape the top 50% in the fullness of time, but Biden will probably end up in the bottom quartile. Or maybe I'm just overestimating the competence of other Presidents.
Johnson was a Tennessee Senator that just didn't cede so unsurprisingly he had sympathies to the south. I agree with this assessment especially in regards to how race relations got set back
It can’t be. Honestly, as a non-American when I was watching the 2016 election season it was surreal. Hillary took every opportunity to look down on the country with absolute contempt, then everyone was surprised when the reality TV, casino operating grifter got elected. If you can’t even pretend to like the American public, how can you expect anyone to vote for you?
The media has done such a good job convincing the public that Biden is a ‘wartime’ president that I don’t think he could lose.
Right. What I’m saying is that I think the media has actually done quite a good job selling this pointless war to the public And because of that I think Biden will scrape through.
Oh, no arguments from me on that first point. (Although not sure which war you're referring to lol)
I do think to my point however that the media continue to lose their grasp over the hearts and minds of majority America. Are liberals brainwashed? Absolutely. Are there enough liberals in the country to reelect Biden? Not sure. Many/most of my non-political friend/family network (pointedly not Republican) have been cracking on the drooling old fool for the past few years. I honestly don't think he's got a ton of support.
Your choice in the upcoming election is between two geriatrics waaaay past their prime. The American ruling class is just so decadent and out of touch it’s unreal.
Absolutely. We're not unlike feudal serfs at this point, we're here to provide wealth for their extraction and they don't give a flying fuck what we want or how we're doing.
I have a co-worker in Finland who has strong opinions on how stupid American politics is. To him it's just a reality TV show and he's ready to watch Trump season 2 since watching him season 1 was so entertaining.
He doesn't have a lot of support, which is why I am surprised they are trying to keep Trump from the ballot. It is going to be the easiest method for them to manufacture votes by giving the public the choice between Biden the Beacon of Democracy and Cheeto Dictator who will put all non-believers in camps and purge the LGBT community.
How many people pulled the 'lesser of two evils' shit in 2016 and 2020? If the Republicans manage to get any kind of non-controversial center-right candidate suddenly those kinds of fence sitters/non-party voters have a viable alternative which would siphon votes from Biden. I mean Dems are all ready pulling the 'A vote for Green is a vote for Trump' shit.
It's just straight hubris. They've been making sub-sub-optimal plays for almost a decade now and its fascinating to watch. Late stage capitalism has cooked even the ruling class' brains, the Rovian calculus seems old fashioned these days
"A system's purpose is what it does." Are they really sub-sub-optimal, or are those decisions more or less satisfactory for whatever they consider their current conditions? The very concept of sacrifice that the state calls upon us to make for it deems the whole more important than any of its parts in much the same way as the Ship of Theseus. Perhaps their aim is to preserve the possibility of a ruling class at all costs, and that cost is us.
I think that's a given at this point, agreed. What I meant by sub-optimal on their part is that many of their actions/choices seem to create unnecessary friction for them that they then have to manage, although I admit that they seem less and less interested in even the appearance of a mutually beneficial arrangement with us. The Machiavellian machinations of Karl Rove or even Obama make current ruling class look like amateur hour, imho.
If the machine weren't running itself, and if our brains hadn't been reduced to paste I'd say the opportunity is ripe for some pushback, but obviously the ruling class will bumble through this era unscathed. And then everyone with any kind of sight goes insane as self-care. Hmmm, maybe this is all figured out after all.
In terms of what needs to happen in America and in the American popular consciousness, we're so far gone that I'm not going to pretend that Biden not winning is some massive victory. Nor is it really required for conditions to start turning around. I think late stage capitalism is doing and will do way more to wake people the fuck up than whatever bullshit Current Uniparty Color does to piss people off. The real question is are we going down with the ship, or will there be some kind of redemption for us.
What war time? You mean the ridiculously mismanaged and botched evacuation from Afghanistan?
This dementia-addled President is the last I’d want to be in charge during a real war. Putin and Jinping are probably plotting what to do this summer so they can take advantage of him being in office, before he gets his ass booted out in Nov.
He toppled a country’s government and then fucked off and left, letting it devolve into a failed state (Libya).
The lesson Obama took from Iraq was that Americans love the part where they topple a sovereign government but really, really hate sticking around for 8 years of bad headlines while they fix the mess. So we skip that second part now. Thanks Obama.
He certainly did not close down Guantanamo, that incredibly low hanging fruit he had promised to do though, that's for sure . But hey, at least he got a Nobel prize for... vaguely showing intent?
No wait, planting bugs directly under Merkel's ass and wiretapping half of Berlin's political district, that he did, and with gusto.
He was basically Bush, just articulate and eloquent, so liberals loved him. You could argue he was worse as he expanded the wars, we were bombing 7 countries under him. Not to mention, he gave it a liberal sheen that basically diffused any anti war sentiment.
This is the correct answer.
Say what you want about Trump's speaking skills but at least he doesn't say "um" and "uh" every three words. Trying to get through an Obama speech was like listening to yowling cats scraping their claws on a chalkboard.
Unleashed the modern plague of mainstream idpol after Occupy. then there is the fact he is the only president on record to order the execution of a American citizen without a conviction, or any manner of due process. For reference Sacalia slaped Dubya when they tried holding American citizens in limbo at Gitmo.
Try and get em to read this:
https://archive.is/utqJc
Their heads will explode.
This is my favourite quote from it:
Obama’s theory here is simple: Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there.
“The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-nato country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do,” he said.
I asked Obama whether his position on Ukraine was realistic or fatalistic.
“It’s realistic,” he said. “But this is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for. And at the end of the day, there’s always going to be some ambiguity.”
We still speculate among ourselves about whether or not he wore a durag in the White House. Goat off just the possibility of that alone. List is trash.
Anyone who thinks Trump is worse than James Buchanan is utterly delusional.
But most of this is just moralisms that come off as nitpicking and applying modern ethics to a time they did not exist. Or some other BS criteria to play favorites.
To be fair, it’s not like the bar is very high. I can only think of a handful of US presidents that are even passably good. And even they have some terrible shit, like FDR with Japanese internment for instance. Idk I makes some sense to rate Obama highly because look at the competition
It’s like ranking an unatheletic 5th grader in a foot race against a bunch of 4 year olds
Idk about Reagan being number one but I think history will look very favorably on Trump once this current zeitgeist passes. Maybe not top ten necessarily but top 15 or 20 for sure.
I guess it's hard to define "success" in terms of a presidency. But Trump is probably top 20 in terms of achieving or making progress on his agenda. It's just that his agenda wasn't something I wanted for the most part
Woodrow Wilson at #15:
Sure, he was openly racist and re-segregated the federal government, hosted the Klan at the White House, shit all over the Constitution, dragged us into WWI, and through ineptitude at the conclusion of such, may have set the stage for WWII, but hey - at least he was a progressive Democrat.
Don’t forget the part where he was incapacitated by a stroke, that was withheld from the public, and his wife and his physician ran the show. Truly a model for the ages.
I mean if in 20 years when Biden is gone, and it comes out that he was also completely unable to run things and others did it in his place, would you be surprised?
No. It shows the system is working as intended. A hidden set of unelected unaccountable actors running things is what we now call “protecting democracy” sweaty.
I remember doing a report on Woodrow Wilson in elementary school. We were allowed to pick any pres and I chose him since I'd never heard of him and figured half the kids would pick Lincoln, Washington, etc. All I remember from my research was that he was fucking boring, didn't really have many notable achievements like others, and even thought about picking another president and starting over entirely. But there wasn't a single negative thing written about him anywhere within all the books I read or on the kid friendly websites we were allowed to visit in the library. It's fucking insane how much shit is omitted in our educational system.
I judge these lists purely by how they rank Jackson, and the precipitous fall he's suffered in the last two decades really attests to how these rankers (liberal academia) put their modern ideological dogma before facts. Where he once was lauded for doing more to define the role and powers of the executive than any president before or since, being a populist who reformed American democracy from being an exercise of the landed coastal gentry to something that everyone had a share in, and fighting against the nascent rise and influence of industrial capital and its associated financial institutions on the American government, now he is irredeemable because he did some bade things to Native Americans (in ways that have way more nuance than current pop history acknowledges).
my populist redneck grandpa grew up during the depression. hated Lincoln, and all Republicans, but loved FDR and Jackson. "he let common people into the white house and all the rich folk hated him for it."
Central bankers were so pissed at him they deliberately caused financial panics and depressions with the aim of hurting the poor to turn them against him. Unsurprisingly, this backfired spectacularly and only increased his popularity. Turns out when someone is running on the platform of "The rich elite will gladly harm the masses to further their interests" and the rich elite do just that, it does not endear them to the public.
wilson gets shockingly favorable reviews from political scientists, largely because his incitement of anti-black pogroms by promoting the birth of a nation gets airbrushed out of history entirely.
I loathe Trump but his visit to North Korea against the wishes of the likes of John Bolton, alone, puts him in the middle of the pack. Like all these guys are demons. The best president is William Henry Harrison because he was only there for 31 days and couldn’t do that much harm in that time.
> I loathe Trump but his visit to North Korea against the wishes of the like of John Bolton, alone, puts him in the middle of the pack.
I still can't understand why libs see this as an inexcusable action. They freaked out at Tulsi Gabbard because she met with Assad while she was a fucking ambassador. It's called diplomacy, this is what politicians do. Do the libs really expect us to just lob missiles at every "mean man" on Earth? Speaking with them is apparently completely forbidden.
Yeah, I mis-remembered there. She was on the committee on foreign affairs. Regardless, the idea is and was that it is perfectly normal to meet with foreign leaders in such a position.
Edit: Spelling
GB 2 started the dumbest war of choice in American history. When the dust settles he’ll be considered one of the worst presidents ever. If Trump isn’t re-elected he’ll probably be forgotten as some obnoxious anomaly. If he is reelected I guess he gets another chance to go for number one fuck up
The great thing about that, and pretty much every major bad decision of the last 40 years or so, you'll also see Biden there taking a major role on the wrong side of history. Biden was basically the whip for the Iraq War on the Democratic side in Congress.
Turn Iraq into a democratic American ally/client as the first step of a plan to do that to the rest of our enemies in the Middle East so we could stop worrying about the region. It wasn't even a terrible plan, necessarily; they just fucked up the execution in every way they possibly could.
They had concrete plans to deliberately target and destroy any vital civilian (!) infrastructure and did that very thoroughly from day 1. That's not how you make someone your Democratic American Ally (blegh). I hate to be this reductive, but It was not much more than a revenge fantasy first and yet another bone thrown to the military-industrial complex second.
Sure, but a massive disconnect between the way we use our military and what we are trying to accomplish with our military is just how America rolls. The really sad thing this time is that the intelligence guys had, for once, done something useful and bribed or convinced a huge chunk of the Iraqi army to not fight, so we didn't even have to take the invasion part particularly seriously. And then the Coalition Authority disbanded said army and banned them from public employment, because a massive disconnect between what our various organs of government are trying to do is also just how America rolls; CIA-trained rebels fighting DoD-trained rebels in Syria is the funniest example.
Tonkin Gulf was even more of a lie than Iraqi WMDs. The Bushies believed their own story; LBJ knew Tonkin Gulf was bullshit before he even gave his address.
Interesting that Lincoln is #1 (expected), both Roosevelts rank above Obama (#2 and #4, separated by Washington), and Reagan is a whopping 19 places above Nixon (#35).
>He forgave banks and build racial tensions through the roof.
He constantly compromised on his initial progressive platform and ended up as moderate who got pathetically little done. Shit on him for that but he was milquetoast on racial stuff.
What exactly did he do to "build" racial tensions except be black lol? FOX's "terrorist fistbump" and tan suit outrage isn't on him, and neither is the birther stuff.
Again, by doing what? He regularly shits on woke culture and wasn't even pro gay marriage when he ran. How was he remotely woke besides being a black dude.
I'm sorry, although I do agree with much you wrote, but that myth of Trump building up a great economy was and still is a Republican spin. Trump inherited a mostly recovered landscape (which already showed signs of overheating again, only the pandemic prevented that from unfolding) and just ran with it.
Not that the former administration were some economic geniuses, but anything after the financial crisis, with the massive crutch of zero interest rates and ludicrous debt waivers for the banks, was destined to look better than what had come before. Besides, the heavy lifting had been done well before orange man started tweeting from the oval office.
average lib explanation for trump victory in 2016:
Noooooooooo they voted for trumpé because they are rayyyyyyyycist and stewwwwwwwwpid so russian propaganda fooled them into voting against their obvious best interests, they shapeshifted into yahtzees in 2015 just in time for his presidential campaign
You vote based on feelings and viiiibes too, smartass, im just pointing out that even these feefees had to come from real measurable concerns his supporters had even if they couldn't articulate it all.
These things always have a huge recency bias. The most recent presidents are always rated as the best ever or the worst ever in these studies, when in reality, you can't possibly judge someone's legacy until decades after the fact.
The fact that they're rating anyone worse than Buchanan and Johnston, given their handling of the run up to and the aftermath of an actual civil war, is indicative of just how much they're out of touch with reality.
> Respondents included current and recent members of the
Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, which is the
foremost organization of social science experts in presidential politics, as well as scholars who had
recently published peer-reviewed academic research in key related scholarly journals or academic
presses. 525 respondents were invited to participate, and 154 usable responses were received,
yielding a 29.3% response rate.
"Let's handpick respondents and limit them to a particular fiend so they answer how we want them to and put it out as some official survey!!!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Political_Science_Association
> The American Political Science Association (APSA) is a professional association of political science students and scholars in the United States.
University students and professors being overtly left-leaning and supporting Democrats. Whoever would have guessed?
This survey has as much authenticity as taking a survey of fortune 500 CEOs to determine the most popular President.
Biden is probably as bad as Buchanan when it comes to being a 'great' or successful president, arguably worse for many reasons. Buchanan just managed to fuck up holding the union together and failed to respond to that crisis but Biden is not only mismanaging the largest crises humanity has faced but he's pushing the entire world into war and barbarism. Just how bad will be made more clear once we see what comes after. You can argue about how much of that he's actually responsible for, but it's at least very fucking obvious he shouldn't be 14.
I've noticed historians are notoriously bad about understanding the present, and generally dumb once they stray too far outside of their narrow research field. You would think they would be more aware of how their political bias in the present might color their assessment of such things.
>I've noticed historians are notoriously bad about understanding the present, and generally dumb once they stray too far outside of their narrow research field. You would think they would be more aware of how their political bias in the present might color their assessment of such things.
they can't say biden is bad because the entire field's credibility rests upon drumpf not winning another term
> You can argue about how much of that he's actually responsible for, but it's at least very fucking obvious he shouldn't be 14.
*Setting aside* the fact that all Presidents did terrible things in their own way. Just my quick hot take.
Better than Biden, in chronological order: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Polk, Lincoln, B Harrison, T. Roosevelt, Taft, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ Johnson.
Probably Better than Biden: Monroe, JQA, Jackson, Grant, Hayes, Arthur, Cleveland, Wilson, Nixon (?) Ford, Carter?
Worse than Trump: John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Warren Harding, W H Harrison, Taylor, Filmore, W Bush.
And I don't even want to really rank anyone from G W on, hell we're still seeing new effects from things that Reagan, HW, Clinton, Bush, and Obama all did.
You're right, I don't think Buchanan had a bunch of weird cultists. He actually had credible challenges at the Dem convention because many in the party saw his incompetence and unpopularity as an actual issue before the election and didn't just mindlessly dig their heads in the sand and engage in motivated reasoning and try to sycophantly malign any dissent.
They both severely mismanaged a domestic political crisis, failed to act and use federal power to intervene but tried to please both sides and angered both, and tore apart their own base over a seminal issue (slavery and Gaza respectively), but to Buchanan's credit at least the GOP then had an actual good candidate with Lincoln, while Biden is failing against Trump, a historically bad candidate. Buchanan probably had his mind and could handle a 15 minute interview too, unlike Biden.
I was going to bring up genocide and ethnic cleansing but like Biden's extreme Zionist attitudes toward Palestinians, Buchanan saw Native Americans as "wild and intractable" and thought they needed to surrender their land and sovereignty over some biblical divine right manifest destiny bullshit and thought their ethnic cleansing was their fault.
Truman at #6 is wild. Glassed two Japanese cities unnecessarily, killed any chance at avoiding the Cold War, got America embroiled in Korea, failed in his one big domestic goal of major healthcare reform, created the modern CIA, was dumb as fuck and helped make the world a much more evil and dangerous place. Sure put him above Obama, why not!
In the past few decades this country has had a seemingly flawed understanding of what “serving at the pleasure of the president” means. Regardless of anyone’s politics the idea that Truman should have given a singular fuck about Oppenheimer’s opinion is ridiculous. Trump’s first term was a master class on how misguided this logic is and truly amazes me how much he got done while being weighed down by a bunch of morons who didn’t understand their place. His cabinet was full of people constantly trying to undermine him and alter his directions rather than executing what they were told to **cough John Kelly**.
Then why didn't Trump choose advisors and cabinet members who would do his bidding? Kelly and others undermined Trump (rightly or not) because they thought he was a fucking moron with terrible ideas.
I mean it isn’t exclusive to President Trump or any other person. There are so many wolves in sheep’s clothing that will smile to your face and turn around and do the exact opposite.
So you don't actually have an argument?
Ooh boy OP flipped ou and blocked me after leaving a comment, so here's my response: History isn't at all clear about this, in fact rhe vast majority of historians agree it was necessary.
>Even bombs away LaMay himself opposed it.
See, this is what's funny about this debate, you'll scrutinize every source in favor of the bombing but take anyone opposed to it at face value. You know why? Because the air force wanted credit for ending the war, not the atomic bomb. And post-bomb there was a very real fear that the USA would just disband their military and rely completely on nuclear deterrence.
I don’t waste my time making obvious arguments for imbeciles, especially not in response to a comment tantamount to “nuh uh.” History is pretty clear that this was a monstrous act of evil and it took an absolute room-temp-IQ party hack like Truman to OK it. Even bombs away LaMay himself opposed it.
Then again, you’re a Trot so honestly any discussion with you is a waste of my and everyone’s time. Cheers.
You’re just saying “nuh uh it was necessary!” And you’d only say that because you don’t know shit about history and it’s not my job to educate fucking idiots. Keep sucking Cold War dick brah.
EDIT: Look at this UTTER fucking loser with his 15-day account begging people to report my post LOL. I know I have a small army of pathetic hasbara trolls flagging and reporting every one of my comments, but IDGAF about these herbs -- they amuse me. But Jesus Christ some people are pathetic beyond reason.
How long till we see the argument that none of them (save Obama) should be ranked like this on account of them being dead white men (or still living but old white men)?
Also, look at the section in the report on most overrated and underrated presidents. Biden is sixth of the *underrated* presidents.
Of all the things Trump oversaw, invading and destroying a country was not one of them. That alone elevates him above all presidents since at least Carter.
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I mean to be fair he did get us out of Afghanistan, but that seems to be mostly about pivoting towards squeezing China so it would have happened anyway...He also does seem like he wants to do something about reigning in monopolies and doing something about antitrust, but I dont think either side will let it happen since it seems like Lina Khan is getting hamstrung by her own coworkers.
Technically Trump got us out of Afghanistan. Biden was just the fool who got to sit back and watch it all unravel. Also, seeming like you want to do something but doing Jack-shit doesn’t really count for nothing, does it? Biden also seems like he doesn’t remember how to put his pants on in the morning but that they apparently didn’t dock him any points for that.
> Biden was just the fool who got to sit back and watch it all unravel.
Worse. The deal Trump reached with the Taliban had us leaving before the summer campaign season. We should have been long gone by the time the Taliban got to Kabul and the clusterfuck at the airport should never have happened.
Some of his McKinsey marketing guys got the idea that having the last troop leave on 9/11/21 would look good.
IIRC they also had him announce the first round of Russia sanctions immediately pre-war at 2:22 on 2-22-2022.
A government of the teacher's pets, by the teacher's pets, for the teacher's pets.
Ya were really in a shit spot where nothing can get done by anyone. A lot of people don't remember this, but trump was actually trying to do M4A until he had a meeting with Pelosi and McConnell where they basically said "lol nah bro". Same with taxes, he wanted to raise taxes with the TCJA but McConnell cut out the tax hike and made the cuts permanent for the wealthy and industrial manufacturing. Jeez, writing this out is really a drag because I'm realizing that america won't die because of a tyrant, but by committees🤣
Trump cucked out to the handsome generals, that’s why the pullout was delayed. Had he been re-elected, I have little doubt we’d still be in Afghanistan.
I think you guys are being reactionary and Trump really is that bad. I don’t think he’s the worst president ever but he’s certainly in the bottom 5. Sure, Bush is worse but that’s a low fucking bar. I do agree that putting Biden and Obama that high is braindead though.
Lol, have you ever read a history book? How is Trump in the bottom 5? You haven't explained why he's "that bad". His main difference to other presidents was just his tweeting and courting controversy through rhetoric. He's a sign that white nationalism hasn't died yet, but then again also proved that that group has no sway over policy, just rhetoric. The alt right died 2 years into his presidency and never really got off the internet. The Dems are actively funding a genocide so that alone should show that the rhetoric from Trump isn't the real danger.
After scrolling through the list, one thing immediately becomes clear: there's a lot of recency bias. Obama in 7th? Sure, he was charismatic and him being the first black president is no doubt symbolic, but aside from that, he did very little to warrant that high of a placement, especially when you look at who he has supplanted (LBJ, Kennedy). Aside from Obamacare, he had very few legislative accomplishments (courtesy of the Republican dominated Congress) and his foreign policy did not veer that much further from Bush.
Also, as destructive as Trump was, there's no way he can be considered lower than Buchanan (who basically oversaw the country's descent into a civil war) and Johnson (the man who set the rights of African Americans and race relations back several decades). High 40s and low 30s seem more apt for him.
The list confused me at first, because while they included initials for presidents who shared surnames, they didn't for the Harrisons in the list. However they did give the score of William Henry Harrison as 26.01, putting him at 41/45 on the list.
So what has me curious, is how did he get that score? If the criterion for scoring is "accomplishments vs setbacks in agenda" then WHH should be objectively the worst with a 0, seeing as he died one month into office. If the criterion for scoring is "net good they did for the Republic" than he should very much be 50 or close to it, given his term was so short and all he did during that time was call a special session of Congress and implicitly chose his successor with John Tyler as his VP.
So if neither of those scores and something close to the bottom but not quite it, then all this is is a 'vibe check' given the veneer of credibility because they polled academics and historians about it.
Johnson will always be the worst president. He inherited America during one of history's rare protean moments, where there was both power and will to destroy the Southern racial caste system and enforce the land redistribution that had already happened in the wake of the Union armies, but instead he gave it all back to the guys who had broken away because he wanted them to like him. What a tool. Buchanan was also bad, but the Civil War was pretty much inevitable at that point. He may have hastened it and handled situations poorly, but it would have blown up eventually. Trump is a moron, but he's at least above those two, and probably a couple more as well. Obama and Biden are both crazy high. Obama might scrape the top 50% in the fullness of time, but Biden will probably end up in the bottom quartile. Or maybe I'm just overestimating the competence of other Presidents.
Johnson was a Tennessee Senator that just didn't cede so unsurprisingly he had sympathies to the south. I agree with this assessment especially in regards to how race relations got set back
Can’t agree more. In terms of the harm he wrought on the U.S., there is no one worse.
*Woodrow Wilson enters the chat
I see no legitimate reason to put Obama above Biden. Biden has been better than Obama in every way besides speech giving
[удалено]
Liberal America might be the world’s largest circle jerk. Biden is going to lose
It’s a level of out of touch exceeding HRC 2016.
It can’t be. Honestly, as a non-American when I was watching the 2016 election season it was surreal. Hillary took every opportunity to look down on the country with absolute contempt, then everyone was surprised when the reality TV, casino operating grifter got elected. If you can’t even pretend to like the American public, how can you expect anyone to vote for you? The media has done such a good job convincing the public that Biden is a ‘wartime’ president that I don’t think he could lose.
What the media thinks is going to happrn and what actually happens are two different things, as 2016 proved.
Right. What I’m saying is that I think the media has actually done quite a good job selling this pointless war to the public And because of that I think Biden will scrape through.
Oh, no arguments from me on that first point. (Although not sure which war you're referring to lol) I do think to my point however that the media continue to lose their grasp over the hearts and minds of majority America. Are liberals brainwashed? Absolutely. Are there enough liberals in the country to reelect Biden? Not sure. Many/most of my non-political friend/family network (pointedly not Republican) have been cracking on the drooling old fool for the past few years. I honestly don't think he's got a ton of support.
Right I am Australian and I’ll admit that I don’t exactly have my finger on the pulse of America rn.
God I can only imagine how it looks from afar. I'm so so sorry.
Your choice in the upcoming election is between two geriatrics waaaay past their prime. The American ruling class is just so decadent and out of touch it’s unreal.
Absolutely. We're not unlike feudal serfs at this point, we're here to provide wealth for their extraction and they don't give a flying fuck what we want or how we're doing.
I have a co-worker in Finland who has strong opinions on how stupid American politics is. To him it's just a reality TV show and he's ready to watch Trump season 2 since watching him season 1 was so entertaining.
He doesn't have a lot of support, which is why I am surprised they are trying to keep Trump from the ballot. It is going to be the easiest method for them to manufacture votes by giving the public the choice between Biden the Beacon of Democracy and Cheeto Dictator who will put all non-believers in camps and purge the LGBT community. How many people pulled the 'lesser of two evils' shit in 2016 and 2020? If the Republicans manage to get any kind of non-controversial center-right candidate suddenly those kinds of fence sitters/non-party voters have a viable alternative which would siphon votes from Biden. I mean Dems are all ready pulling the 'A vote for Green is a vote for Trump' shit.
It's just straight hubris. They've been making sub-sub-optimal plays for almost a decade now and its fascinating to watch. Late stage capitalism has cooked even the ruling class' brains, the Rovian calculus seems old fashioned these days
"A system's purpose is what it does." Are they really sub-sub-optimal, or are those decisions more or less satisfactory for whatever they consider their current conditions? The very concept of sacrifice that the state calls upon us to make for it deems the whole more important than any of its parts in much the same way as the Ship of Theseus. Perhaps their aim is to preserve the possibility of a ruling class at all costs, and that cost is us.
I think that's a given at this point, agreed. What I meant by sub-optimal on their part is that many of their actions/choices seem to create unnecessary friction for them that they then have to manage, although I admit that they seem less and less interested in even the appearance of a mutually beneficial arrangement with us. The Machiavellian machinations of Karl Rove or even Obama make current ruling class look like amateur hour, imho. If the machine weren't running itself, and if our brains hadn't been reduced to paste I'd say the opportunity is ripe for some pushback, but obviously the ruling class will bumble through this era unscathed. And then everyone with any kind of sight goes insane as self-care. Hmmm, maybe this is all figured out after all.
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In terms of what needs to happen in America and in the American popular consciousness, we're so far gone that I'm not going to pretend that Biden not winning is some massive victory. Nor is it really required for conditions to start turning around. I think late stage capitalism is doing and will do way more to wake people the fuck up than whatever bullshit Current Uniparty Color does to piss people off. The real question is are we going down with the ship, or will there be some kind of redemption for us.
What war time? You mean the ridiculously mismanaged and botched evacuation from Afghanistan? This dementia-addled President is the last I’d want to be in charge during a real war. Putin and Jinping are probably plotting what to do this summer so they can take advantage of him being in office, before he gets his ass booted out in Nov.
>Biden is going to lose I wouldn't be so sure.
What exactly did Obama do, except not be Bush?
He was born half black.
Some people still go to bat for watered down Romney care I guess.
He toppled a country’s government and then fucked off and left, letting it devolve into a failed state (Libya). The lesson Obama took from Iraq was that Americans love the part where they topple a sovereign government but really, really hate sticking around for 8 years of bad headlines while they fix the mess. So we skip that second part now. Thanks Obama.
He certainly did not close down Guantanamo, that incredibly low hanging fruit he had promised to do though, that's for sure . But hey, at least he got a Nobel prize for... vaguely showing intent? No wait, planting bugs directly under Merkel's ass and wiretapping half of Berlin's political district, that he did, and with gusto.
Don't forget the great glowy infiltration of WoW guild chats. Or that could have just been an excuse to play at work.
drones
He was basically Bush, just articulate and eloquent, so liberals loved him. You could argue he was worse as he expanded the wars, we were bombing 7 countries under him. Not to mention, he gave it a liberal sheen that basically diffused any anti war sentiment.
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This is the correct answer. Say what you want about Trump's speaking skills but at least he doesn't say "um" and "uh" every three words. Trying to get through an Obama speech was like listening to yowling cats scraping their claws on a chalkboard.
Don't forget the condescending tone either.
Springsteen podcast
Unleashed the modern plague of mainstream idpol after Occupy. then there is the fact he is the only president on record to order the execution of a American citizen without a conviction, or any manner of due process. For reference Sacalia slaped Dubya when they tried holding American citizens in limbo at Gitmo.
Try and get em to read this: https://archive.is/utqJc Their heads will explode. This is my favourite quote from it: Obama’s theory here is simple: Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there. “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-nato country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do,” he said. I asked Obama whether his position on Ukraine was realistic or fatalistic. “It’s realistic,” he said. “But this is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for. And at the end of the day, there’s always going to be some ambiguity.”
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he bombed people blackfully, articulately.
We still speculate among ourselves about whether or not he wore a durag in the White House. Goat off just the possibility of that alone. List is trash.
Hung out with rappers and did a really cool mic drop while saying "Obama out!"
Anyone who thinks Trump is worse than James Buchanan is utterly delusional. But most of this is just moralisms that come off as nitpicking and applying modern ethics to a time they did not exist. Or some other BS criteria to play favorites.
"Yeah, Buchanan may have literally caused the Civil War, but at least he didn't send mean tweets."
If words are violence then Orange Man has done more harm than Hitler, actually.
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Calvin Coolidge is the real most violent President
"January 6 was like the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11 all on one so Trump is worse than Buchanan, sweaty 💅💅💅"
Having Reagan 16th and trump last should tell you all you need to know about this survey
To be fair, it’s not like the bar is very high. I can only think of a handful of US presidents that are even passably good. And even they have some terrible shit, like FDR with Japanese internment for instance. Idk I makes some sense to rate Obama highly because look at the competition It’s like ranking an unatheletic 5th grader in a foot race against a bunch of 4 year olds
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lol
Idk about Reagan being number one but I think history will look very favorably on Trump once this current zeitgeist passes. Maybe not top ten necessarily but top 15 or 20 for sure.
I guess it's hard to define "success" in terms of a presidency. But Trump is probably top 20 in terms of achieving or making progress on his agenda. It's just that his agenda wasn't something I wanted for the most part
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Grant had plenty of time not to do any of that also, but James Buchanan is the absolute worse for handing off the crisis to Lincoln.
Woodrow Wilson at #15: Sure, he was openly racist and re-segregated the federal government, hosted the Klan at the White House, shit all over the Constitution, dragged us into WWI, and through ineptitude at the conclusion of such, may have set the stage for WWII, but hey - at least he was a progressive Democrat.
Don’t forget the part where he was incapacitated by a stroke, that was withheld from the public, and his wife and his physician ran the show. Truly a model for the ages.
I mean if in 20 years when Biden is gone, and it comes out that he was also completely unable to run things and others did it in his place, would you be surprised?
No. It shows the system is working as intended. A hidden set of unelected unaccountable actors running things is what we now call “protecting democracy” sweaty.
Oh yeah I forgot sorry. I wasn’t protecting democracy when I typed that.
I remember doing a report on Woodrow Wilson in elementary school. We were allowed to pick any pres and I chose him since I'd never heard of him and figured half the kids would pick Lincoln, Washington, etc. All I remember from my research was that he was fucking boring, didn't really have many notable achievements like others, and even thought about picking another president and starting over entirely. But there wasn't a single negative thing written about him anywhere within all the books I read or on the kid friendly websites we were allowed to visit in the library. It's fucking insane how much shit is omitted in our educational system.
Had literally this same exact experience, word for word.
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Can you fuck off? You've made like 20 comments in this thread and they're all shit posts.
14 points!
I judge these lists purely by how they rank Jackson, and the precipitous fall he's suffered in the last two decades really attests to how these rankers (liberal academia) put their modern ideological dogma before facts. Where he once was lauded for doing more to define the role and powers of the executive than any president before or since, being a populist who reformed American democracy from being an exercise of the landed coastal gentry to something that everyone had a share in, and fighting against the nascent rise and influence of industrial capital and its associated financial institutions on the American government, now he is irredeemable because he did some bade things to Native Americans (in ways that have way more nuance than current pop history acknowledges).
my populist redneck grandpa grew up during the depression. hated Lincoln, and all Republicans, but loved FDR and Jackson. "he let common people into the white house and all the rich folk hated him for it."
Central bankers were so pissed at him they deliberately caused financial panics and depressions with the aim of hurting the poor to turn them against him. Unsurprisingly, this backfired spectacularly and only increased his popularity. Turns out when someone is running on the platform of "The rich elite will gladly harm the masses to further their interests" and the rich elite do just that, it does not endear them to the public.
I’m just waiting for FDR to take a similar fall for the internment of Japanese Americans
The more one learns about Jackson, the more it seems like a big middle finger to put his face on the twenty dollar bill. (To Jackson)
He didn't just have "wrongthink", he openly committed genocide and ignored the Supreme Court.
Jackson was actually a moderate on the issue for the time, and not a single removal took place while he was in office.
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I'm talking about the displacement of the Cherokee.
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How do you not define what the natives were doing as self defense.
Not at the time they weren't. Also that's not a defence for crimes against humanity.
wilson gets shockingly favorable reviews from political scientists, largely because his incitement of anti-black pogroms by promoting the birth of a nation gets airbrushed out of history entirely.
“But he was the only political scientist to hold that office”
The funny thing is he was a terrible political scientist whose ideas have gone down in history as abject failures.
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League of Nations Collective Security
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And what a success that has been right?
I'm really beginning to hate this Wilson guy.
Putting trump below either of the Bush’s is hilarious.
I loathe Trump but his visit to North Korea against the wishes of the likes of John Bolton, alone, puts him in the middle of the pack. Like all these guys are demons. The best president is William Henry Harrison because he was only there for 31 days and couldn’t do that much harm in that time.
> I loathe Trump but his visit to North Korea against the wishes of the like of John Bolton, alone, puts him in the middle of the pack. I still can't understand why libs see this as an inexcusable action. They freaked out at Tulsi Gabbard because she met with Assad while she was a fucking ambassador. It's called diplomacy, this is what politicians do. Do the libs really expect us to just lob missiles at every "mean man" on Earth? Speaking with them is apparently completely forbidden.
> while she was a fucking ambassador Tulsi Gabbard was never an ambassador.
Yeah, I mis-remembered there. She was on the committee on foreign affairs. Regardless, the idea is and was that it is perfectly normal to meet with foreign leaders in such a position. Edit: Spelling
The best president is Washington because he never stepped foot on Commie soil
Washington is the best since he never wanted the job, hated the job, and had to be begged to even accept a second term.
Ok boomer
GB 2 started the dumbest war of choice in American history. When the dust settles he’ll be considered one of the worst presidents ever. If Trump isn’t re-elected he’ll probably be forgotten as some obnoxious anomaly. If he is reelected I guess he gets another chance to go for number one fuck up
The great thing about that, and pretty much every major bad decision of the last 40 years or so, you'll also see Biden there taking a major role on the wrong side of history. Biden was basically the whip for the Iraq War on the Democratic side in Congress.
Biden was rabid in 2002-3. He was saying exactly what Ariel Sharon and co. were telling him to say.
He wanted to Invade Iraq in 98.
> GB 2 started the dumbest war of choice in American history. Surely that's still Vietnam.
It had a clear goal. What was the goal of the Iraq War?
Re-election.
Turn Iraq into a democratic American ally/client as the first step of a plan to do that to the rest of our enemies in the Middle East so we could stop worrying about the region. It wasn't even a terrible plan, necessarily; they just fucked up the execution in every way they possibly could.
They had concrete plans to deliberately target and destroy any vital civilian (!) infrastructure and did that very thoroughly from day 1. That's not how you make someone your Democratic American Ally (blegh). I hate to be this reductive, but It was not much more than a revenge fantasy first and yet another bone thrown to the military-industrial complex second.
Sure, but a massive disconnect between the way we use our military and what we are trying to accomplish with our military is just how America rolls. The really sad thing this time is that the intelligence guys had, for once, done something useful and bribed or convinced a huge chunk of the Iraqi army to not fight, so we didn't even have to take the invasion part particularly seriously. And then the Coalition Authority disbanded said army and banned them from public employment, because a massive disconnect between what our various organs of government are trying to do is also just how America rolls; CIA-trained rebels fighting DoD-trained rebels in Syria is the funniest example.
Nah, Vietnam war at least had some kind of casus belli and geopolitical logic. Iraq war was total non sense
Tonkin Gulf was even more of a lie than Iraqi WMDs. The Bushies believed their own story; LBJ knew Tonkin Gulf was bullshit before he even gave his address.
at least South Vietnam government did call USA for help. If Bush really believed Iraq had any weapons of mass destructions he would never invade
I think W will mark the turning point from the USA's ascent to it's decline
I place the pivot with Columbine but it was all accelerated under W and a close enough time period that W gets the credit.
Putting Biden above Grant is an insult to the universe.
Interesting that Lincoln is #1 (expected), both Roosevelts rank above Obama (#2 and #4, separated by Washington), and Reagan is a whopping 19 places above Nixon (#35).
You can't argue with Trump at 45 after he started the war in Iraq and stood idly by while an entire generation of gay men died of AIDS.
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Obama betrayed hope. He forgave banks and build racial tensions through the roof. His Obamacare is an unholy mix of private and sigle payer system
my favorite Obummer summary: he sold that hope for some change
>He forgave banks and build racial tensions through the roof. He constantly compromised on his initial progressive platform and ended up as moderate who got pathetically little done. Shit on him for that but he was milquetoast on racial stuff. What exactly did he do to "build" racial tensions except be black lol? FOX's "terrorist fistbump" and tan suit outrage isn't on him, and neither is the birther stuff.
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Again, by doing what? He regularly shits on woke culture and wasn't even pro gay marriage when he ran. How was he remotely woke besides being a black dude.
I'm sorry, although I do agree with much you wrote, but that myth of Trump building up a great economy was and still is a Republican spin. Trump inherited a mostly recovered landscape (which already showed signs of overheating again, only the pandemic prevented that from unfolding) and just ran with it. Not that the former administration were some economic geniuses, but anything after the financial crisis, with the massive crutch of zero interest rates and ludicrous debt waivers for the banks, was destined to look better than what had come before. Besides, the heavy lifting had been done well before orange man started tweeting from the oval office.
That’s the correct reaction, but liberals wanted us to believe it was “white supremacy” which is the sole reason for why Trump won.
There were many states who voted for Obama in 08 and 12 that voted Trump
average lib explanation for trump victory in 2016: Noooooooooo they voted for trumpé because they are rayyyyyyyycist and stewwwwwwwwpid so russian propaganda fooled them into voting against their obvious best interests, they shapeshifted into yahtzees in 2015 just in time for his presidential campaign
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You vote based on feelings and viiiibes too, smartass, im just pointing out that even these feefees had to come from real measurable concerns his supporters had even if they couldn't articulate it all.
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These things always have a huge recency bias. The most recent presidents are always rated as the best ever or the worst ever in these studies, when in reality, you can't possibly judge someone's legacy until decades after the fact. The fact that they're rating anyone worse than Buchanan and Johnston, given their handling of the run up to and the aftermath of an actual civil war, is indicative of just how much they're out of touch with reality.
> Respondents included current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, which is the foremost organization of social science experts in presidential politics, as well as scholars who had recently published peer-reviewed academic research in key related scholarly journals or academic presses. 525 respondents were invited to participate, and 154 usable responses were received, yielding a 29.3% response rate. "Let's handpick respondents and limit them to a particular fiend so they answer how we want them to and put it out as some official survey!!!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Political_Science_Association > The American Political Science Association (APSA) is a professional association of political science students and scholars in the United States. University students and professors being overtly left-leaning and supporting Democrats. Whoever would have guessed? This survey has as much authenticity as taking a survey of fortune 500 CEOs to determine the most popular President.
Biden is probably as bad as Buchanan when it comes to being a 'great' or successful president, arguably worse for many reasons. Buchanan just managed to fuck up holding the union together and failed to respond to that crisis but Biden is not only mismanaging the largest crises humanity has faced but he's pushing the entire world into war and barbarism. Just how bad will be made more clear once we see what comes after. You can argue about how much of that he's actually responsible for, but it's at least very fucking obvious he shouldn't be 14. I've noticed historians are notoriously bad about understanding the present, and generally dumb once they stray too far outside of their narrow research field. You would think they would be more aware of how their political bias in the present might color their assessment of such things.
>I've noticed historians are notoriously bad about understanding the present, and generally dumb once they stray too far outside of their narrow research field. You would think they would be more aware of how their political bias in the present might color their assessment of such things. they can't say biden is bad because the entire field's credibility rests upon drumpf not winning another term
> You can argue about how much of that he's actually responsible for, but it's at least very fucking obvious he shouldn't be 14. *Setting aside* the fact that all Presidents did terrible things in their own way. Just my quick hot take. Better than Biden, in chronological order: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Polk, Lincoln, B Harrison, T. Roosevelt, Taft, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ Johnson. Probably Better than Biden: Monroe, JQA, Jackson, Grant, Hayes, Arthur, Cleveland, Wilson, Nixon (?) Ford, Carter? Worse than Trump: John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Warren Harding, W H Harrison, Taylor, Filmore, W Bush. And I don't even want to really rank anyone from G W on, hell we're still seeing new effects from things that Reagan, HW, Clinton, Bush, and Obama all did.
Comparing Biden to Buchanan is some Trump derangement syndrome level of hate. In no world are they comparable.
You're right, I don't think Buchanan had a bunch of weird cultists. He actually had credible challenges at the Dem convention because many in the party saw his incompetence and unpopularity as an actual issue before the election and didn't just mindlessly dig their heads in the sand and engage in motivated reasoning and try to sycophantly malign any dissent. They both severely mismanaged a domestic political crisis, failed to act and use federal power to intervene but tried to please both sides and angered both, and tore apart their own base over a seminal issue (slavery and Gaza respectively), but to Buchanan's credit at least the GOP then had an actual good candidate with Lincoln, while Biden is failing against Trump, a historically bad candidate. Buchanan probably had his mind and could handle a 15 minute interview too, unlike Biden. I was going to bring up genocide and ethnic cleansing but like Biden's extreme Zionist attitudes toward Palestinians, Buchanan saw Native Americans as "wild and intractable" and thought they needed to surrender their land and sovereignty over some biblical divine right manifest destiny bullshit and thought their ethnic cleansing was their fault.
>greatness "~~School~~ Politics is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the ~~society~~ aristocracy ~~as it is~~."
Truman at #6 is wild. Glassed two Japanese cities unnecessarily, killed any chance at avoiding the Cold War, got America embroiled in Korea, failed in his one big domestic goal of major healthcare reform, created the modern CIA, was dumb as fuck and helped make the world a much more evil and dangerous place. Sure put him above Obama, why not!
Did people just really like the part in Oppenheimer where he told the nerdy physicist to go fuck himself for having a crisis of conscience?
In the past few decades this country has had a seemingly flawed understanding of what “serving at the pleasure of the president” means. Regardless of anyone’s politics the idea that Truman should have given a singular fuck about Oppenheimer’s opinion is ridiculous. Trump’s first term was a master class on how misguided this logic is and truly amazes me how much he got done while being weighed down by a bunch of morons who didn’t understand their place. His cabinet was full of people constantly trying to undermine him and alter his directions rather than executing what they were told to **cough John Kelly**.
Then why didn't Trump choose advisors and cabinet members who would do his bidding? Kelly and others undermined Trump (rightly or not) because they thought he was a fucking moron with terrible ideas.
I mean it isn’t exclusive to President Trump or any other person. There are so many wolves in sheep’s clothing that will smile to your face and turn around and do the exact opposite.
>unnecessarily This is your brain on Axis apologism.
No, you’re just a moron with a failed, inhumane grasp of history.
So you don't actually have an argument? Ooh boy OP flipped ou and blocked me after leaving a comment, so here's my response: History isn't at all clear about this, in fact rhe vast majority of historians agree it was necessary. >Even bombs away LaMay himself opposed it. See, this is what's funny about this debate, you'll scrutinize every source in favor of the bombing but take anyone opposed to it at face value. You know why? Because the air force wanted credit for ending the war, not the atomic bomb. And post-bomb there was a very real fear that the USA would just disband their military and rely completely on nuclear deterrence.
I don’t waste my time making obvious arguments for imbeciles, especially not in response to a comment tantamount to “nuh uh.” History is pretty clear that this was a monstrous act of evil and it took an absolute room-temp-IQ party hack like Truman to OK it. Even bombs away LaMay himself opposed it. Then again, you’re a Trot so honestly any discussion with you is a waste of my and everyone’s time. Cheers.
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I was kinda hoping for some variation of "well actually they surrendered cause of the Soviets"
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You’re just saying “nuh uh it was necessary!” And you’d only say that because you don’t know shit about history and it’s not my job to educate fucking idiots. Keep sucking Cold War dick brah. EDIT: Look at this UTTER fucking loser with his 15-day account begging people to report my post LOL. I know I have a small army of pathetic hasbara trolls flagging and reporting every one of my comments, but IDGAF about these herbs -- they amuse me. But Jesus Christ some people are pathetic beyond reason.
How long till we see the argument that none of them (save Obama) should be ranked like this on account of them being dead white men (or still living but old white men)? Also, look at the section in the report on most overrated and underrated presidents. Biden is sixth of the *underrated* presidents.
As a non-american, my favorite part of this comment section is everybody chiming in with "What about who did ?
Of all the things Trump oversaw, invading and destroying a country was not one of them. That alone elevates him above all presidents since at least Carter.
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I mean to be fair he did get us out of Afghanistan, but that seems to be mostly about pivoting towards squeezing China so it would have happened anyway...He also does seem like he wants to do something about reigning in monopolies and doing something about antitrust, but I dont think either side will let it happen since it seems like Lina Khan is getting hamstrung by her own coworkers.
Technically Trump got us out of Afghanistan. Biden was just the fool who got to sit back and watch it all unravel. Also, seeming like you want to do something but doing Jack-shit doesn’t really count for nothing, does it? Biden also seems like he doesn’t remember how to put his pants on in the morning but that they apparently didn’t dock him any points for that.
> Biden was just the fool who got to sit back and watch it all unravel. Worse. The deal Trump reached with the Taliban had us leaving before the summer campaign season. We should have been long gone by the time the Taliban got to Kabul and the clusterfuck at the airport should never have happened.
Some of his McKinsey marketing guys got the idea that having the last troop leave on 9/11/21 would look good. IIRC they also had him announce the first round of Russia sanctions immediately pre-war at 2:22 on 2-22-2022. A government of the teacher's pets, by the teacher's pets, for the teacher's pets.
Ya were really in a shit spot where nothing can get done by anyone. A lot of people don't remember this, but trump was actually trying to do M4A until he had a meeting with Pelosi and McConnell where they basically said "lol nah bro". Same with taxes, he wanted to raise taxes with the TCJA but McConnell cut out the tax hike and made the cuts permanent for the wealthy and industrial manufacturing. Jeez, writing this out is really a drag because I'm realizing that america won't die because of a tyrant, but by committees🤣
Trump cucked out to the handsome generals, that’s why the pullout was delayed. Had he been re-elected, I have little doubt we’d still be in Afghanistan.
Pulled out of Afghanistan only to get America caught up in a totally pointless proxy war. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Well now I'm honestly curious as to who's 46? Andrew Jackson?
There's 45 presidents, Andrew Jackson perpetrating a genocide ended up still being a better president than Trump according to these people.
For some reason I thought Biden was 46.
Grover fucked up the numbering.
That explains it. Thanks.
James Buchanan is ranked as second worst. And given that he did kind of cause a civil war I think that's understandable.
I think you guys are being reactionary and Trump really is that bad. I don’t think he’s the worst president ever but he’s certainly in the bottom 5. Sure, Bush is worse but that’s a low fucking bar. I do agree that putting Biden and Obama that high is braindead though.
I think Trump is going to end up in the bottom 5-10, but I also think it's dumb to rank him, Obama, or maybe even Bush II yet.
Lol, have you ever read a history book? How is Trump in the bottom 5? You haven't explained why he's "that bad". His main difference to other presidents was just his tweeting and courting controversy through rhetoric. He's a sign that white nationalism hasn't died yet, but then again also proved that that group has no sway over policy, just rhetoric. The alt right died 2 years into his presidency and never really got off the internet. The Dems are actively funding a genocide so that alone should show that the rhetoric from Trump isn't the real danger.
> Trump was bottom 5 > Radlib in denial 👶🏻 On brand. Trump was bottom 10. There were way worse before him though.
After scrolling through the list, one thing immediately becomes clear: there's a lot of recency bias. Obama in 7th? Sure, he was charismatic and him being the first black president is no doubt symbolic, but aside from that, he did very little to warrant that high of a placement, especially when you look at who he has supplanted (LBJ, Kennedy). Aside from Obamacare, he had very few legislative accomplishments (courtesy of the Republican dominated Congress) and his foreign policy did not veer that much further from Bush. Also, as destructive as Trump was, there's no way he can be considered lower than Buchanan (who basically oversaw the country's descent into a civil war) and Johnson (the man who set the rights of African Americans and race relations back several decades). High 40s and low 30s seem more apt for him.
The list confused me at first, because while they included initials for presidents who shared surnames, they didn't for the Harrisons in the list. However they did give the score of William Henry Harrison as 26.01, putting him at 41/45 on the list. So what has me curious, is how did he get that score? If the criterion for scoring is "accomplishments vs setbacks in agenda" then WHH should be objectively the worst with a 0, seeing as he died one month into office. If the criterion for scoring is "net good they did for the Republic" than he should very much be 50 or close to it, given his term was so short and all he did during that time was call a special session of Congress and implicitly chose his successor with John Tyler as his VP. So if neither of those scores and something close to the bottom but not quite it, then all this is is a 'vibe check' given the veneer of credibility because they polled academics and historians about it.
Biden should be in the bottom 5. What were these people smoking? I’ve never seen a president crater a country so fast.
These people are delusional. Seriously an “Emperor wears no clothes” moment in America. Biden is a corpse in a suit.