Survey of 154 scholars places 45th president behind even ‘historically calamitous chief executives’ linked to civil war

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.

  • BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee
    5·
    9 months ago

    jackson not being dead last just completely ruins the entire integrity of the list. how can genocide against native americans be better than trump? seriously?

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      1·
      9 months ago

      I suppose the argument might be that Trump attempted to ferment a war, and still to this day attempts to do so, that would kill his own countrymen.

      Which while morally probably isn’t worse than crimes against natives, is probably worse for a president to do?

      Also of course if Trump gets his way he’ll start world war 3, (because that’s a vote winter I’m sure) which would kill a lot more people.

      • BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee
        1·
        9 months ago

        then by all rights lincoln should probably be dead last, a war in which most if not all causalities were americans, regardless if at the time they “werent”

    • OpenStars@startrek.websiteEnglish
      22·
      9 months ago

      I mentioned in a comment a bit further up but thought I’d offer it here too:

      Trump also committed genocide against poor people by lying to them that a global pandemic was not airborne, when it actually was. In the Bob Woodsworth interview, he admitted it. In advance. He KNEW, and he did it anyway.

      Plus he led a coup to overthrow the nation so… there’s that too.

        • OpenStars@startrek.websiteEnglish
          3·
          9 months ago

          Not necessarily, but my point was to try and guess what they may have been considering. And if the absolute number of people killed is larger… that could have swayed their thinking there.

          Also, you expect more from adults - so if we really have learned from our history and thus are more culturally experienced now vs. hundreds of years ago, then is killing people nowadays “worse” or “better” than to do so back then? It’s really quite a shitty situation that we are in, and my main point is that it it not like we are comparing genocide to no genocide, but rather one form of genocide vs. another form of genocide.

          And yet… at the risk of offending you further, an argument can be made that indeed killing your OWN PEOPLE really is on a somewhat different level, as far as genocide is concerned, than killing the OTHER, outside-of-group people.

          Not that any of this is remotely “good”, when we are comparing dead last to second to dead last. But… it is somewhat understandable I mean, that the entire list may not need to be thrown out, just b/c the two last places both have genocidal people in them, but with whichever one or the other happens to be one rank higher or lower. :-(