Donald Trump: polls of approval and favorability

[pbrower2a]

(07-01-2021, 06:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Under Abraham Lincoln, you wrote that Trump gets a #1 rating.

I don't really agree with these historian evaluations, especially because they rate one of the worst presidents, Reagan, as one of the best. I guess they are trying to be ideologically neutral, but I suggest that in the long run, a president with a wrong and destructive ideology is a bad president, even though Reagan was "successful" in imposing this wrong ideology and distorted and destructive "vision" upon us.

Of course Reagan also rates highly in my horoscope scoring of candidates. He has an awesome persuasive ability, which got him elected. Trump doesn't do too badly by this measure either. But I don't see how Trump can be rated as anywhere but as #44. And I disagree with the new high rating of Eisenhower. The mistakes you mentioned brower help sink him in my estimation.

Correction made here.  I'm sure that plenty of people think Donald Trump "up there" with Washington, Lincoln, and FDR (Egad!).. I see him as the worst President in American history, differing from Buchanan in inadequacy only that Buchanan did not get away with it. Buchanan might have been a fine president twenty to thirty years earlier... but by the late 1850's he was way past prime. Donald Trump was never adequately prepared for the President, nothing about his life grooming him for the greatest responsibility in American life. 

I fault Eisenhower on two issues of foreign policy -- Jacobo Arbenz, who would have made Guatemala a much different country than what it became. Ike was under pressure from the United Fruit Company that wanted to keep Guatemala as its complete fief. United Fruit succeeded, and the Guatemalan people have paid a high price... which includes the reality that many Guatemalans have sought refuge in America from civil strife relating to economic entities far worse than United Fruit (drug cartels) ever was. The other is Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. Shah Reza Pahlavi II had a love-hate relationship with America as a puppet for over twenty years . Look at how that turned out! Perfect knowledge of the future is not available even with astrology. 

Modified post:

Quote:C-Span just released a poll by historians of how Trump rates against other Presidents. Of the 44 Presidents that we have had (Cleveland counted as one) Trump gets an overall rank of #41, reflecting assessments of being  

#32 in public persuasion
#41 in crisis leadership
#34 in economic management
#44 in moral leadership
#43 in international relations
#44 in administrative skills
#42 in relations with Congress
#36 in vision and setting an agenda
#40 in pursuing equal justice for all
#42 in context for the times.

The strongest aspects of the Trump Presidency were his ability to persuade some mass support (even though he offended slightly more people almost all the time, and having a vision (even if terribly one-sided and flawed). Trump had trouble dealing with his own Party in Congress when it was his Party that had the majority! To say that Trump was at the bottom in both moral leadership and administrative skills indicates a singular lack of those. Obviously it is impossible to demonstrate moral leadership if one is grossly immoral or amoral; nobody speaks of the "moral leadership of John Gotti" except as irony. A low value for administrative skills is what one expects from someone who demands blind loyalty but rewards it with legal problems from blind obedience.

Let's contrast a President who rates really high.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN  

Of the 44 Presidents that we have had (Cleveland counted as one) Lincoln gets an overall rank of #1, reflecting assessments of being  

#2 in public persuasion
#1 in crisis leadership
#1 in economic management
#1 in moral leadership
#3 in international relations
#1 in administrative skills
#4 in relations with Congress
#1 in vision and setting an agenda
#1 in pursuing equal justice for all
#1 in context for the times.

It's a shame that those two are in the same Party.

Here is our fifth-best:

 Of the 44 Presidents that we have had (Cleveland counted as one) Eisenhower gets an overall rank of #5, reflecting assessments of being  

#11 in public persuasion
#6 in crisis leadership
#6 in economic management
#4 in moral leadership
#5 in international relations
#4 in administrative skills
#6 in relations with Congress
#16 in vision and setting an agenda
#12 in pursuing equal justice for all
#7 in context for the times.

The old rap that Ike got elected on his military record and coasted through the Presidency was once the normal assessment. At one time he was seen as a mediocre-to-poor President, at least among academics. As time passes one recognizes that he translated administrative skills suited to mapping the D-Day invasion of Europe into skills appropriate for other things, like sponsoring the Interstate Highway System. He got America out of the Korean War with honor, and to spoof Lincoln Steffens, one could say of South Korea "I have seen the future and it works". He prevented a great blow-up in the Suez Crisis. I can fault him for greasing the skids for Arbenz in Guatemala and Mossadegh in Iran, for which Americans, Guatemalans, and Iranians alike pay a high price. But he stayed off the Joe McCarthy bandwagon and came out unscathed when the lying demagogue imploded.

This will surely grate upon Trump should he read this:

   Of the 44 Presidents that we have had (Cleveland counted as one) OBAMA gets an overall rank of #10, reflecting assessments of being  

#9 in public persuasion
#17 in crisis leadership
#9 in economic management
#6 in moral leadership
#21 in international relations
#14 in administrative skills
#32 in relations with Congress
#12 in vision and setting an agenda
#3 in pursuing equal justice for all
#10 in context for the times.

(I would have rated Obama higher on economic leadership for getting America out of the most dangerous economic meltdown since that of 1929-1932). He's #21 in international relations, which is near average... but "mediocre" by standards of the Presidency is still very good because Americans generally elect above-average people to be President. He is on par with Trump for relations with Congress; he did not successfully ram-rod much when he had both Houses of Congress on his side, but when the Other Side greets him with "We will make him a one-term President and do everything possible to make that so", then the Other side has ensured a stormy relationship. Aside from the economic mess while he was inaugurated, Obama seemed to avoid crises well more than to solve them. That is how caution works.  

If you are to rebel against something, then make sure to rebel against something worthy of rebellion -- like alcoholism, addiction, child abuse, economic exploitation... Bill Clinton knew enough to preserve the one strong point of his predecessor in adopting his foreign policy intact. Trump saw Obama as a pure bogey.

OK, so how about a President who is a mixed bag?

  Of the 44 Presidents that we have had (Cleveland counted as one) Jimmy Carter gets an overall rank of #26, reflecting assessments of being  

#35 in public persuasion
#35 in crisis leadership
#37 in economic management
#7 in moral leadership
#28 in international relations
#34 in administrative skills
#34 in relations with Congress
#24 in vision and setting an agenda
#5 in pursuing equal justice for all
#30 in context for the times.

Jimmy Carter is the last President to have fully become an adult before the end of the last completed Crisis Era, and he is the last to have pushed a New Deal agenda. Carter is generally understood as a troubled President for trying to fine-tune the Presidency at a time in which America was undergoing hige changes in political and intellectual culture. He was President when the Religious Right transformed Carter's "New South" into a world that he could hardly recognize. Carter would be the last Democratic nominee for President to win Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina and the second-to-last to win Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and West Virginia. It's hard to see much of an ideological difference between Carter and Clinton, but Clinton stayed away from fine-tuning something that was losing its relevance.

Carter exemplifies a disjunctive President in the Skowronek cycle for very different reasons than Trump.

So what of Carter's successor, the one who set the mood as the "Redemptive" President of the neoliberal era as FDR was the Redemptive" President of the New Deal era?

 
... Liberals may not like how Reagan did things, but he did put an end to inflation (mostly by compelling young and unconnected  workers to lower their expectations -- work at jobs that they despise for harsh management and abysmal pay, and if unsatisfied with the pay, then do another such job and always remember to keep that "happy-to-serve-you smile"). Reagan's economy was the "take a second job to make ends meet" economy which was great for creating the basis of creating prosperity if spreading it poorly. He did get away with much.

Of the 44 Presidents that we have had (Cleveland counted as one) Reagan gets an overall rank of #9, reflecting assessments of being  

#5 in public persuasion
#9 in crisis leadership
#15 in economic management
#13 in moral leadership
#9 in international relations
#30 in administrative skills
#8 in relations with Congress
#5 in vision and setting an agenda
#22 in pursuing equal justice for all
#8 in context for the times.

Reagan shaped American politics for at least forty years, but as a Redemptive President hs is far below Washington, Lincoln, or FDR. Maybe it takes less time to deteriorate from 9th to 44th than from #3 (FDR) to #26 (Carter) than from #9 (Reagan) to #44 (Trump). Reagan was no saint, but he could moralize. He had good people around him to cover for his dementia. Trump's idea of moralizing was to have law-enforcement tear-gas protesters so that he could raise a Bible that he neither reads nor heeds high in front of a church that is not his denomination.  

 Statistical source at C-SPAN

The analysis is mine. History will judge Donald Trump, but the historians of our time give little cause to rate him high -- ever.

Donald Trump is the Nero of American Presidents.