Fox News reported on some new presidential rankings, which purportedly show Barack Obama as the #6 president in U.S. history and Donald Trump dead last, and MAGA was not happy.
Fox News on Sunday posted an article about the new rankings by the Presidential Greatness Project, which Fox describes as “a group of self-styled experts.” It states that Abraham “Lincoln topped the list of presidents in the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project expert survey for the third time, following his top spot in the rankings in the 2015 and 2018 versions of the survey.”
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“Rounding out the top five in the rankings were Franklin Delano Roosevelt at number two, George Washington at three, Theodore Roosevelt at four, and Thomas Jefferson at five,” according to the report. “Trump was ranked in last place in the survey, being ranked worse than James Buchanan at 44, Andrew Johnson at 43, Franklin Pierce at 42, and William Henry Harrison at 41.”
The report states that Obama and Joe Biden “ranked an average of 6th and 13th, respectively, among Democrat respondents, and 15th and 30th by Republicans.”
One of the problems with lists that rate “greatness” is indeed recency bias. It takes a generation or two before a President’s legacy is understood. Reagan’s legacy is still volatile. Will Iran-Contra, voodoo economics, and the War on Drugs be considered significant in 50 or 100 years? Hard to know.
If Trump loses the next election and MAGA burns out, Trump will be remembered as a buffoon who lamely and unsuccessfully tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power. If his actions eventually lead to the overthrow of the US constitutional order, then he’ll either be considered the Second Coming or worse than Hitler, depending on your perspective. I think/hope the US constitutional order will survive Trump and that he will be largely forgotten by history, like other lesser known Presidents.