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.”
Some of these positions are a bit… subjective? Obama over LBJ?
The whole thing is subjective, they were rankings done by survey. No one is trying to hide that
You mean the guy who got the job cuz someone died, and then started the Vietnam War?
JFK definitely started the war. LBJ and Nixon just escalated it
He’s got a lot of social reform under his belt. You could argue a lot of that is from JFK. His international politics, not so much
I mean you couldn’t argue that very well. Anyone who thinks LBJ wasn’t largely a driving force behind social reform is insane. I mean personally he pushed a lot of that through. I doubt Kennedy could have.
He pushed it through because he had the career politician connections, which was admittedly 100% invaluable to actually get it done. But the vision came from Kennedy and LBJ largely carried out as Kennedy’s legacy rather than Johnson’s own cause.
In other words, he has large error bars that average out to OK.
To be fair Obama did end the war his predecessor started.
To also be fair, the US and NATO pulled out fast and let the Taliban take over a place we never should have been in the first place, making it even worse for the people there.
We all know Daddy Bush fucked this up, but the US left a huge mess they didn’t clean up.
Obama was the first President from a minority part of a population and signed Obamacare.
Well, the first part certainly is important. But isn’t related to “greatness” in terms of accomplishments during a presidency. Obamacare definitely counts. Also the repeal of DADT.
But during LBJ, black voting rights, Medicare and Medicaid, and making discrimination illegal (especially employer discrimination).
It’s all very subjective as I said earlier. But there would be no Obama without LBJ.
This list is created by historians. So, it is history of the time and President that is considered.
What you say about LBJ is mostly true, though it was JFK that set those programs in motion in Congress. But, what LBJ also did was entrench the US in a very unpopular war. So much so, he refused to run for a final term.
Which is why I mentioned JFK.