Trump Will Be Remembered As One Of The Worst Us Presidents Nearly Half Of Americans Say
As President Donald Trump prepares to leave the White House, 47 percent of Americans say he will be remembered as one of the worst presidents in American history, according to the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll.
Chart by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour
Sixteen percent of Americans overall, including a third of Republicans, think Trump has been one of the countrys best presidents, and roughly a third of Americans 38 percent approve of his performance over his tenure.
At Trumps inauguration in January 2017, he described a United States that he said was besieged with crime and gangs and drugs and littered with rusted-out factories, while vowing to put an end to American carnage and put the nation first. Now, as the country prepares to usher in President-elect Joe Bidens presidency, the Capitol is being guarded by more than 20,000 National Guard troops after a deadly attack by Trumps supporters, the U.S. has lost roughly 400,000 lives to the coronavirus, due in part to a haphazard pandemic response, and the countrys economy has been battered in the fallout. Presidential historian Jeffrey Engel said history will remember Trump as a person who focused primarily on himself and left carnage in his wake.
US President Donald Trump takes the oath of office with his wife Melania and son Barron at his side, during his inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 20, 2017. Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Chart by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour
Heres What You Need To Know For Thursday Morning
Utah news
-
The head of Utahs Republican Party wants to sit down with Utah Jazz star Donovan Mitchell to discuss critical race theory and why he thinks it should not be taught in Utahs schools.
-
Utah leaders are begging the public to ditch fireworks this year amid the severe drought and high fire danger.
-
President Joe Biden pledged to help Western states with fighting wildfires across the region.
-
Reps. Blake Moore and Chris Stewart voted to remove Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol, while Reps. John Curtis and Burgess Owens opposed the move.
-
The Utah County Commission voted Wednesday to reduce taxes, reversing a decision to hike property taxes two years ago.
-
Utahns are moving into RVs, trailers, or vans because of rising rents and housing prices.
National news
Uspc Uk Survey Of Us Presidents
In September/October 2010, the United States Presidency Centre of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London surveyed 47 British specialists on American history and politics. Presidents were rated from 1 to 10 in five categories:
William Henry Harrison and James Garfield were not rated because they died shortly after taking office. Barack Obama ranked 8th in interim ranking as of January 2011, but was not counted in the final results because he had yet to complete a term.
One of the more significant differences from American polls is the relatively low ranking of John F. Kennedy , who placed fifteenth. British academics “seemingly faulted JFK for the gap between his rhetoric and his substantive achievements as president.”
- Abbreviations
You May Like: Is Donald Trump Wearing A Toupee
The White House Has One Problem That Rules Them All: Gas Prices
For nearly a month, Biden and his inner circle have agonized over whether to make a trip to Saudi Arabia, a nation the president deemed a pariah after its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden, for a time, angrily rejected meeting with the crown prince, arguing the presidency should stand for something, according to two people with knowledge of his thinking.
But he has recently relented, recognizing a need to push Riyadh for more oil production. Still, the dates for the trip remain fluid, leaving some aides to wonder if the president will change his mind again.
Bidens inner circle is well aware of recent presidential precedent. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both overcame a rough first midterms only to benefit from economic turnarounds and cruise to reelection. But George H.W. Bush and, especially, Carter were felled by shaky economies and rising inflation.
lost because of inflation and bad feelings about the economy and a sense that America was flailing and Biden is finding now that its hard to be a leader when other things are unraveling, said Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian at Rice University. He cant just be a mourner-in-chief, he cant just play defense. He needs to be on offense and convince Americans that, despite the challenges, better days are ahead.
- Filed under:
Maybe Trump Wasnt The Worst President Ever
-
Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.
Give this article
- Read in app
Mr. Updegrove, a historian and the author of Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency, is a participant in the 2021 C-SPAN Presidential Historian Survey.
During his presidency, John F. Kennedy, perhaps with a wary eye on the future, met with David Herbert Donald, a biographer of Abraham Lincoln, and expressed his displeasure with historians presidential rankings.
No one has the right to grade a president, even poor James Buchanan, he told Donald, who has not sat in his chair, examined the mail and information that came across his desk, and learned from the decisions he made.
Historians have nonetheless persisted. On Wednesday, C-SPAN issued a report card of past presidents, its fourth since 2000 and the first to include Donald Trump. James Buchanan has held a lock on the bottom spot as the worst president. Would Mr. Trump change that?
No though he has very little to brag about. Historians deemed him the fourth worst of the 44 former presidents .
The scores, rendered by over 140 independent historians looking at 10 criteria like crisis leadership and performance within context of times, range from 897 for the top-rated president, Lincoln, to Buchanans 227. Mr. Trump got 312.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on , and .
Read Also: Fact Check Trumps Lies
Is Donald Trump The Worst Us President Ever Actually
If you wanted to identify, with confidence, the very worst president in American history, how would you go about it?
If you wanted to identify, with confidence, the very worst president in American history, how would you go about it? One approach would be to consult the various academic polls on presidential rankings that have been conducted from time to time since Harvards Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. pioneered this particular survey scholarship in 1948. Bad idea.
Most of those surveys identify Warren G. Harding of Ohio as the worst ever. This is ridiculous. Harding presided over very robust economic times. Not only that, but he inherited a devastating economic recession when he was elected in 1920 and quickly turned bad times into good times, including a 14 percent GDP growth rate in 1922. Labor and racial unrest declined markedly during his watch. He led the country into no troublesome wars.
There was, of course, the Teapot Dome scandal that implicated major figures in his administration, but there was never any evidence that the president himself participated in any venality. As Theodore Roosevelts daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, put it, Harding wasnt a bad man. He was just a slob.
That illustrates the difference between failure of omission and failure of commissionthe difference between presidents who couldnt handle gathering crises and presidents who actually created the crises.
- 1
The Most Mendacious President In Us History
- Save Story
Save this story for later.
- Save this story for later.
Content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
On Sunday, on Tuesday, and again on Wednesday, President Donald Trump accused the TV talk-show host Joe Scarborough of murder. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, he attacked the integrity of Americas forthcoming RIGGED election. When he woke up on Wednesday, he alleged that the Obama Administration had SPIED, in an unprecedented manner, on the Trump Campaign, and beyond, and even on the United States Senate. By midnight Wednesday, a few hours after the number of U.S. deaths in the coronavirus pandemic officially exceeded a hundred thousand, the President of the United States retweeted a video that says, the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.
In recent months, however, his tweeting appears to have taken an even darker, more manic, and more mendacious turn, as Trump struggles to manage the convergence of a massive public-health crisis and a simultaneous economic collapse while running for reëlection. He is tweeting more frequently, and more frantically, as events have closed in on him. Trailing in the polls and desperate to change the subject from the coronavirus, mid-pandemic Trump has a Twitter feed that is meaner, angrier, and more partisan than ever before, as he amplifies conspiracy theories about the deep state and media enemies such as Scarborough while seeking to exacerbate divisions in an already divided country.
Recommended Reading: Washington Post Trump Won
Opinion: Donald Trump Is The Worst President In Us History For Three Big Reasons
- Copy Link URLCopied!
The editorial board operates independently from the U-T newsroom but holds itself to similar ethical standards. We base our editorials and endorsements on reporting, interviews and rigorous debate, and strive for accuracy, fairness and civility in our section. Disagree? Let us know.
Donald Trump is the worst president in U.S. history for three huge reasons and tens of thousands of lesser ones. Only the reasons order is up for debate.
Trumps attacks on institutions the press, the judiciary, the intelligence community culminated in his war on voting. The Jan. 6 mayhem at the Capitol was a direct result and rightly led to a previously unimaginable second presidential impeachment.
The second huge reason is Trumps stunningly incompetent response to the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of seeing the virus as a public health threat, he treated it as a threat to the economy and thus to his re-election downplaying it even after it hit in full force in April. He refused to use White House clout to obtain basic supplies and offer guidance to states, then pushed the view that wearing a mask was a political statement against him not an attempt to keep people safe. More than 400,000 Americans are dead at least partly as a result.
Build that wall? No. Its time to rebuild it all.
Vision Critical/angus Reid Poll
A Vision Critical/Angus Reid Public Opinion poll taken on February 1819, 2011, asked 1,010 respondents about 11 former presidents plus the current president and whether each was a good or bad president.
Read Also: How Many Lies Has Trump Told To Date
Who Were The Best And Worst Presidents Everand How Do Historians Decide
C-SPANs 2021 ranking places Trump near the bottom of the list. Obama, Grant rises higher, while Lincoln holds steady in first
Daily Correspondent
United States presidential history is rife with complexity: each leader governed according to his own mores, channeled his unique skills , was buffeted by the social, economic, and political winds of his time, and made decisions both good and bad for the nation.
How can historians wring order from the chaos? It helps to start with a list. Since 2000, at the end of each administration, C-SPAN has asked a group of presidential scholars to rank each U.S. president on a scale of 1 to 10 in ten areas: public persuasion, crisis leadership, economic management, moral authority, international relations, administrative skills, relations with Congress, vision/setting an agenda, pursuit of equal justice for all and performance within the context of the times.
These anonymized scores are then averaged to produce a list of presidents ranked from best to worst. The fourth such report card, , considers all 44 presidents no longer in office: from George Washington, who maintained his number 2 position, to Donald J. Trump, who debuted at a dismal 41st place.
Trump was not ranked worst overall, though some historians, such as survey participant and NYU historian Tim Naftali, argued he should be. The 45th president earned his highest scores in public persuasion in the categories for moral authority and administrative skills, he ranked last.
American Politics And The African American Quest For Universal Freedom Polls
Professors Hanes Walton Jr. and Robert Smith conducted a poll in 2002 for their book American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom, where 44 African-American political scientists and historians ranked presidents for their personal and institutional racism against their policies to counter racial subordination. The polls have been updated for subsequent editions of the book. The results were as follows. Note that “white supremacist” refers to personal belief the other categories refer to policy.
Rating of presidential racismAlso Check: How Many Times Did Trump Lie In The Debate
People Are Also Reading
While Lincoln tops C-SPAN’s ranking for the fourth survey in a row, Trump doesn’t quite get there.
Trump comes in dead last in moral authority and administrative skills. On both issue areas, he ranks 44th of 44. Trump’s low moral authority rating likely has something to do with the number of lies he perpetuated before, during and after his presidency.
Trump is rated highest for his public persuasion, a ranking of No. 32, and economic management, at No. 34.
There could be some good news for Trump in the next survey. Some fellow recent presidents have experienced bumps in their rankings as time has passed …
As C-SPAN put it:
- Barack Obama rose to #10 from his #12 ranking in 2017.
- George W. Bush continued his steady incline, now ranking at #29, from #33 in 2017 and #36 in 2009.
- Bill Clinton began at #21 in 2000 and held steady at #15 in 2009 and 2017 before declining this cycle to #19.
