I ran across an interesting focus group study by Navigator. They spoke with Democrats in Georgia, Republicans in Arizona and voters from both parties in Ohio and found that 61% of their respondents associate the above image of the Capitol riot with the Republican Party, although among Fox News Republicans only 33% associate it with Republicans, almost as many as associate it with Democrats!
That said, CSpan just released its 2021 presidential historians survey in which something like 140 historians rate all past American presidents. Overall, Lincoln remains in the top slot, Washington is again #2 and FDR #3, as usual. Extremely hard to believe but there are 2 presidents considered worse than Señor Trumpanzee and one, Franklin Pierce, considered just as horrible. America's ten worse presidents:
35- Zachary Taylor
36- Herbert Hoover
37- Warren G. Harding
38- Millard Fillmore
39- John Tyler
40- William Henry Harrison
41- Trump (tied with Pierce)
42- Franklin Pierce (tied with Trump)
43- Andrew Johnson
44- James Buchanan
How can anyone have been worse than Trump? Trump's score of 312-- compared to 897 for Lincoln, 664 for Obama and 594 for Clinton-- indicates that there were probably quite a few historians who agree with me that no president was as bad as Trump and that he is the worst ever. No doubt, he will take his place at the bottom of the list in the future. That said, the 2 with worse scores, Buchanan (227) and Johnson (230) are no one's idea of a model national leader. Buchanan was a closeted gay pro-slavery hack from Pennsylvania who wrecked the Democratic Party from within-- the only good thing he ever did, since it led directly to the election of Abraham Lincoln. In his last miserable weeks as president, Buchanan refused to stop southern states from seceding. He was widely considered the main culprit for the Civil War, although his defenders noted that he more more incompetent than venal.
Andrew Johnson was another loser-- like Trump and Buchanan-- who made the U.S. a worse place in his miserable 4 years as president. Never having gone to school, he was Lincoln's vice president-- a pro-South Democrat-- and came to office by way of the assassination. He was impeached by the House but won acquittal in the Senate by one vote. His brand of reconstruction led to all the bad guys from before th Civil War returning to office and Blacks being returned, in all but name, to slavery. Congress refused to seat legislators from those states and passed legislation to overrule the Southern anti-Black actions. Johnson vetoed their bills, and Congressional Republicans overrode his vetoes. Congress passed the 14th Amendment-- despite Johnson's opposition-- which granted full citizenship to former slaves. He was considered so toxic that he lost his own party's nomination but was later elected to the Senate from Tennessee, although he died 5 months later. He is possibly the only president more racist than Trump... but that is debatable.
no problem putting AJ and JB lower than trump. trump's venality dovetailed with his stupidity to make him incompetent, which at least temporarily kept us out of new wars. The totality of his damage may not be known for over a decade, so don't close the book just yet.
My problem is in the elevated status of slick willie (who gave us the 2008 crash) and obamanation (who did nothing about anything except making CEOs of health insurance and phrma richer).
If Hoover is vilified, so should be slick willie. if FP is loathed, so should be obamanation. At least FP was a chronic drunk (and ancestor to the dry-drunk coked-out W). Obamanation was just a pussy.
And what of…