If Trump's presidency was to be ranked now, where would he be?

[Inmate Trump]

Based on his time so far, if he were to be ranked along with our nation's other presidents, where do you think historians would place him?  Near the top? Middle of the road? The bottom?

Just for reference, here's the most recent ranking:

https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2017/?page=overall

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I didn't think the subject of a damnatio memoriae got to be on lists.

[Illiniwek]

Please....he would be in last.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

A notch below Carter so far, but once the impeachment fails he'll rebound.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Below Benjamin Harrison

[The_Doctor]

Right now he's hovering between Carter and Hoover but not Buchanan losing the Union levels yet. I doubt though Trump will be a great or even good President at this point. The circumstances around him are too grave to warrant him being a good President.

[Person Man]

Right now he's hovering between Carter and Hoover but not Buchanan losing the Union levels yet. I doubt though Trump will be a great or even good President at this point. The circumstances around him are too grave to warrant him being a good President.

Basically, there's no recovering for him? He either is removed or defeated for good reason or serves all the time and just leaves carnage....but doesn't become an existential issue. Tgis is most likely. Best case, he is an "average" president that gets reelected but doesn't change America's course or does become that next person who breaks America.

[Cashew]

I didn't think the subject of a damnatio memoriae got to be on lists.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Trump being a bad president is in many ways a direct result of his personality and his character flaws. So, while he may become "more experienced", his personality won't change. As a result, I'd expect that he continues to be an "agent of chaos", so to speak, right until the very end of his presidency.

[The_Doctor]

Right now he's hovering between Carter and Hoover but not Buchanan losing the Union levels yet. I doubt though Trump will be a great or even good President at this point. The circumstances around him are too grave to warrant him being a good President.

Basically, there's no recovering for him? He either is removed or defeated for good reason or serves all the time and just leaves carnage....but doesn't become an existential issue. Tgis is most likely. Best case, he is an "average" president that gets reelected but doesn't change America's course or does become that next person who breaks America.

No. He's a minority presidency who lost the popular vote and really given the opposition he's engendered and the hostility of the institutions around him he's well, screwed. The allegations by the intelligence community around Russia, his own blunders in this area, etc all add to how steep his presidency will be from here on out.

An interesting and relevant trivia. Every president who lost the popular vote went on to have an unsuccessful presidency (Adams 1824, Hayes 1876, Harrison 1888, Bush 2000) -- defined by no notable achievements or one term or disgrace. W won a second term but left office highly unpopular. 

Why it matters: the popular vote confers legitimacy and political capital; losing it often correlates with a weak presidency. Big winners have enormous capital and mandates; the opposite holds true too.

No notable achievements is probably the upper boundaries of Trump's presidency -- and this is the best case scenario.

[Xing]

Probably in the low 30s right now, but give it time and he'll move down, especially if he costs Republicans the House in 2018.

[Clarence Boddicker]

Chester Arthur may be America's most underrated president (history nerd aside...)

Mid '30s so far, as active damage is relatively low given expectations.

[The_Doctor]

Sanchez, not sure why you deleted that comment, but I don't see Trump's legislative skill as a matter of negotiating and holding and folding. It's about the popularity of these measures, the coalition's ability to force Congress to pass it, and so on.

What you listed, altogether, is very arduous to pass, with a popular president. I don't see Trump having the capital or political cachet to pass it.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Sanchez, not sure why you deleted that comment, but I don't see Trump's legislative skill as a matter of negotiating and holding and folding. It's about the popularity of these measures, the coalition's ability to force Congress to pass it, and so on.

What you listed, altogether, is very arduous to pass, with a popular president. I don't see Trump having the capital or political cachet to pass it.

I did? I didn't realize I did.

[Kingpoleon]

last place...behind Hitler

Please tell me you don't really think he was worse than Stalin. Or, for that matter, Hitler.

[The_Doctor]

Sanchez, not sure why you deleted that comment, but I don't see Trump's legislative skill as a matter of negotiating and holding and folding. It's about the popularity of these measures, the coalition's ability to force Congress to pass it, and so on.

What you listed, altogether, is very arduous to pass, with a popular president. I don't see Trump having the capital or political cachet to pass it.

I did? I didn't realize I did.

You didn't; wrong thread. I'll repaste my answer in the right thread. Sorry about that.

[Bismarck]

Please....he would be in last.

He can't be behind Buchanan, surely? I mean our country is nowhere near disintegrating.

[Person Man]

Right now he's hovering between Carter and Hoover but not Buchanan losing the Union levels yet. I doubt though Trump will be a great or even good President at this point. The circumstances around him are too grave to warrant him being a good President.

Basically, there's no recovering for him? He either is removed or defeated for good reason or serves all the time and just leaves carnage....but doesn't become an existential issue. Tgis is most likely. Best case, he is an "average" president that gets reelected but doesn't change America's course or does become that next person who breaks America.

No. He's a minority presidency who lost the popular vote and really given the opposition he's engendered and the hostility of the institutions around him he's well, screwed. The allegations by the intelligence community around Russia, his own blunders in this area, etc all add to how steep his presidency will be from here on out.

An interesting and relevant trivia. Every president who lost the popular vote went on to have an unsuccessful presidency (Adams 1824, Hayes 1876, Harrison 1888, Bush 2000) -- defined by no notable achievements or one term or disgrace. W won a second term but left office highly unpopular. 

Why it matters: the popular vote confers legitimacy and political capital; losing it often correlates with a weak presidency. Big winners have enormous capital and mandates; the opposite holds true too.

No notable achievements is probably the upper boundaries of Trump's presidency -- and this is the best case scenario.

So he probably is one a termer or ends up "breaking" the country.

[Torie]

If a presidency were ranked for the first 4 months of office, Trump might be the worst. But they are ranked over the POTUS's entire tenure, so this is not a useful exercise. If the investigation reveals evidence that leads to Trump's removal from office in the ensuing months, then, yeah, he is probably the worst, in terms of fitness for the office, if not necessarily the most damage done. I doubt that Trump will not longer be POTUS in a few months. But it's bad enough, that it is reasonably possible.

I try not to think too much of Trump. I prefer to think more about my community. That cheers me up - a lot.

[MasterJedi]

Probably just above William Henry Harrison, made it longer then him, abject failure in everything.

[The Mikado]

Nothing Trump has done yet has quite the same consequences as:

Expelling thousands upon thousands of Native Americans from their land in direct violation of a Supreme Court ruling, condemning many of them to their deaths on the walk to Oklahoma. (Thank you, President Jackson!)
Launching an insane landgrab war to try to steal a third of Mexico under false pretenses and false accusations of Mexican aggression. (Thank you, President Polk!)
Signing the Compromise of 1850, allowing southern slavehunters to drag escaped slaves back south into lifelong bondage and servitude. (Thank you, President Fillmore!)
The Kansas Nebraska Act, abolishing the Missouri Compromise Line and allowing slavery to exist in any territory that wanted it. (Thank you, President Pierce!)
Allowing seven states to secede from the Union with complete inaction and leaving it as a problem for his successor. (Thank you, President Buchanan!)
Trying to undermine Reconstruction and sabotaging Congress' efforts to grant rights to freedmen. (Thank you, President Johnson!)
The sheer scope of felonious and unethical activity the Harding Administration managed to get through in 2 and a half years (Trump's gunning for Harding's record, no doubt).
Inaction and apathy in the face of the gravest and greatest economic disaster in human history. (Herbert Hoover)
Launching an illegal war in Cambodia without Congressional approval or even knowledge that ended up leading to the deaths of literally millions of people. (Thank you, Richard Nixon!)
Illegally running guns to the Iranian revolutionary government to pay for illegally funding Nicaraguan death squads directly counter to Congress. (Thank you, Ronald Reagan!)
Launching a brutal war under false pretenses that destabilizes the Middle East to this day, a war of which we are still dealing with the consequences. (Thank you, George W. Bush!)

Let's keep some perspective here when we say that Trump is the worst, OK?

[Illiniwek]

Please....he would be in last.

He can't be behind Buchanan, surely? I mean our country is nowhere near disintegrating.

It depends. Yes our country was in a monumentally worse place when Buchanan left office. But wasn't the country heading there anyway? Did Buchanan cause the war, or was he just too incompetent to stop us from going to war? I'm not saying that if after four years of trump he should necessarily be considered worse than Buchanan. But so far, from day one to day 100 to now, I don't think any president has made more of a cluster**** of every single move he has made. He has been a total embarrassment, a total failure, and hasn't given one positive thing to this country.

Plus I believe Nixon would be ranked as the worst president, if it weren't for the fact that he was a pretty good president minus Watergate. But if you have absolutely nothing positive to hang your hat on, a scandal like Watergate is so overwhelmingly bad, that it probably makes you the worst. And we might be heading there with how this presidency is going.

[The Mikado]

Please....he would be in last.

He can't be behind Buchanan, surely? I mean our country is nowhere near disintegrating.

It depends. Yes our country was in a monumentally worse place when Buchanan left office. But wasn't the country heading there anyway? Did Buchanan cause the war, or was he just too incompetent to stop us from going to war? I'm not saying that if after four years of trump he should necessarily be considered worse than Buchanan. But so far, from day one to day 100 to now, I don't think any president has made more of a cluster**** of every single move he has made. He has been a total embarrassment, a total failure, and hasn't given one positive thing to this country.

Plus I believe Nixon would be ranked as the worst president, if it weren't for the fact that he was a pretty good president minus Watergate. But if you have absolutely nothing positive to hang your hat on, a scandal like Watergate is so overwhelmingly bad, that it probably makes you the worst. And we might be heading there with how this presidency is going.

Causing a mess right out of the gate and being a screwup for the rest of the term? Look at John Tyler or Andrew Johnson.

[The_Doctor]

So he probably is one a termer or ends up "breaking" the country.

I don't see him breaking the country. It suggests he has a lot more legitimacy and a mandate than he did. Weak Presidencies don't break apart the country; circumstances beyond their control do. I've been thinking a lot about how Trump's Presidency will be viewed, as you know.

After the Russia revelations I think we can definitely say that people will conclude that his election was overshadowed by the specter of a geopolitical foe trying to elect him and who believed he was pliable enough to submit to their demands (or at least, not have the hard line Obama did). Maybe that was Russia's point: to elect a President so weak we had chaos within our country, thus unable to exert a strong line on them.

A weak president doesn't get to do much. And we can see this with the ACA (which will, after the Russia revelations, never be repealed - the GOP can either carry Trump's baggage or the ACA repeal, but not both) vote, the Trump Administration barely got it past the House. The GOP is too disordered, chaotic, to pass a repeal that works with both chambers.

Most people don't frame the Trump Administration within its logical and natural setting: disordered chaos and a symbol of chaos, a voice for chaos. Given that, it's very hard to see Trump moving the country towards a better economic or cultural or even politically stable position.

[Illiniwek]

Nothing Trump has done yet has quite the same consequences as:

Expelling thousands upon thousands of Native Americans from their land in direct violation of a Supreme Court ruling, condemning many of them to their deaths on the walk to Oklahoma. (Thank you, President Jackson!)
Launching an insane landgrab war to try to steal a third of Mexico under false pretenses and false accusations of Mexican aggression. (Thank you, President Polk!)
Signing the Compromise of 1850, allowing southern slavehunters to drag escaped slaves back south into lifelong bondage and servitude. (Thank you, President Fillmore!)
The Kansas Nebraska Act, abolishing the Missouri Compromise Line and allowing slavery to exist in any territory that wanted it. (Thank you, President Pierce!)
Allowing seven states to secede from the Union with complete inaction and leaving it as a problem for his successor. (Thank you, President Buchanan!)
Trying to undermine Reconstruction and sabotaging Congress' efforts to grant rights to freedmen. (Thank you, President Johnson!)
The sheer scope of felonious and unethical activity the Harding Administration managed to get through in 2 and a half years (Trump's gunning for Harding's record, no doubt).
Inaction and apathy in the face of the gravest and greatest economic disaster in human history. (Herbert Hoover)
Launching an illegal war in Cambodia without Congressional approval or even knowledge that ended up leading to the deaths of literally millions of people. (Thank you, Richard Nixon!)
Illegally running guns to the Iranian revolutionary government to pay for illegally funding Nicaraguan death squads directly counter to Congress. (Thank you, Ronald Reagan!)
Launching a brutal war under false pretenses that destabilizes the Middle East to this day, a war of which we are still dealing with the consequences. (Thank you, George W. Bush!)

Let's keep some perspective here when we say that Trump is the worst, OK?

This all depends on how you grade these presidents. While a lot of these presidents did some very bad things as you described above, most of these presidents also did many positive things as well that may or may not (depending on how you chose to evaluate) outweigh the negatives. Its just that in my eyes, I don't think trump can point to anything he has done as being in the plus column. That with a whole lot of bad things should make trump rate pretty low imo.