GeneralMacArthur
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« on: July 30, 2021, 11:28:38 PM » |
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As the owner of the official Atlas presidential ranking, this is very interesting to me.
The rankings as presented by the tweet are not very good. They're in descending order of popularity, but that's heavily biased towards the more well-known presidents. So Trump, who has a 39-54 approval split, is tied with James Madison, who sits at a much more respectable 39-9. Really you should do it by ratio and ignore anyone who can't form an opinion. Just because nobody's heard of poor, virtuous Chester A. Arthur doesn't mean he was a bad president -- in fact I think most historians would agree he was an above average president and an upstanding guy!
When you sort by Approve / (Approve + Disapprove), basically the ratio ignoring undecideds, you get this list:
Lincoln 91.9%
Washington 89.7%
J.Q. Adams 86.3%
Eisenhower 84.1%
JFK 83.9%
Teddy 83.8%
Madison 81.3%
Adams 80.7%
Jefferson 80.5%
LBJ 80.4%
Truman 78.5%
FDR 78.5%
Grant 74.6%
Monroe 70.7%
Reagan 63.5%
Garfield 58.9%
Carter 58.4%
Ford 57.7%
Taylor 57.7%
Obama 56.8%
McKinley 56.7%
Wilson 56.1%
Coolidge 55.8%
Hayes 54.5%
Jackson 53.9%
WHH 53.3%
Clinton 51.7%
Ben Harrison 51.7%
Biden 51.6%
HW Bush 50%
W Bush 50%
Taft 50%
Van Buren 50%
Johnson 48.9%
Pierce 48.3%
Tyler 48.1%
Arthur 48%
Cleveland 45.6%
Hoover 45.6%
Polk 45.2%
Fillmore 44%
Trump 41.9%
Buchanan 40%
Harding 37.8%
Nixon 32.1%
Some interesting notes:
For some reason, everyone loves the Adamses, even though both were mediocre-to-bad presidents.
With the exception of the Adamses, the elite tier is fairly conventional. Lincoln, Washington, Eisenhower, JFK, Teddy, Madison, Jefferson, LBJ, Truman, FDR, Grant, Monroe. So you've got the 4 Rushmore presidents, FDR (a little lower than usual, but he has a dedicated cadre of conservatives who hate him), our strong run of mid-20th century presidents with Truman/Ike/JFK/LBJ, our two solid founding fathers Madison/Monroe, and Grant who has been getting a lot of love lately. Doubt anyone would really argue with that.
How can you "not have an opinion" on some of these people? 25% no opinion of FDR? 18% no opinion of Washington? 11% no opinion of Lincoln? Who are these 4% of people who still have no opinion of Trump?
The disgusting and disgraceful historical rehabilitation of George W Bush, one of the worst presidents in history, continue. He now sits at 50%, tied with his dad. Folks, W was a terrible president. Please see my other thread where I listed the top 10 worst things Bush ever did.
Trump's deeply-underwater 39/54 split sends him straight to the bottom, next to Buchanan, Harding and Nixon. Both Buchanan and Harding have at different points been considered the worst president of all time. I earnestly hope and believe that Trump will continue to decline as more Republicans come to their senses, as opposed to the sickening rehabilitation W is receiving.
Nixon is interesting because I think most people would say he was a better president than the truly deplorable villains like Trump, Buchanan, Johnson, etc., there's not really a lot of folks running around with a positive opinion of him. Just about everyone knows that Nixon was a bad guy, and he's much more notorious than someone like Andrew Johnson, thus earning him the basement position. Similarly, I think most would agree that JFK wasn't a GOAT president, but pretty much everyone, regardless of political affiliation, has fond memories of JFK. What kind of asshole do you have to be to dislike JFK? C'mon.
More Americans need to read their history books. James K. Polk was an excellent president and I'm not sure why so many folks have negative opinions of him. Andrew Johnson was an abysmal president and person, and I don't know why anyone would have a positive opinion of him. I also don't know why so many people like Rutherford B. Hayes, the worst of a bad run of late-1800s presidents.
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