And I can already hear the responses that "Well the Dems want nothing to do with Trump's agenda and are Obstructionists". However I want to remind those folks that the single most divisive campaign promise Trump had (The Wall) Chuck Shumer offered to Trump which was rejected. Yes.... if a blue wave of progressives (hopefully) take back the House, they will be obstructionists, but the partisanship so far in Trump's presidency isn't put at the feet of the Dems. Hell... most legislation can't even get enough REPUBLICAN votes to pass because of the fragmentation with the Right, and the ideologues that refuse anything that doesn't 100% fit their distorted world view of no government, no taxes, no healthcare, and no non-Christians. This is the same House that Obama had to deal with only he was actually a Democratic president. Trump can't even deal with them and he is a Republican (I guess). So this notion that Obama was divisive because he didn't work in a bi-partisan manner is complete BS.
Imagine the absurdity here .Trump and the GOP somehow magically obstructed themselves in repealing the ACA, something that they regurgitated on a constant basis for the past 5 years as if they had Tourettes.
Don't know the exact specifics since in many situations a single or small number of people within a large crowd say things and it then gets blamed on others... but President Obama was pretty clear when he said: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obama-police-baton-rouge-225679 Don't know how much more clearly he could have spoken. But again, many people criticized Obama for partisan and ideological reasons reasons.
Here's another example... Law enforcement lobbyist says pro-police speech is 'markedly absent' from Obama http://www.politifact.com/punditfac...forcement-lobbyist-says-pro-police-speech-ma/
Do conservatives not realize that a large brunt of our military and law enforcement are heavily conservative leaning thus many of their comments are heavily biased?
SMH man you are just like trump everything President Obama did is wrong in your eyes but the rest of the people seem to have a different view on things so 10 on the list seems to but right while 40 yeah so far i can see that being real.
Trump can now "equally" condemn the black panther movie whenever a crazy white guy shoots people for his homeland. Clearly black nationalist propaganda.
Trump fails to condemn white supremacists in statement on Charlottesville violence https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/12/trump-white-supremacists-charlottesville-violence-241575 https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4679817/president-trump-statement-white-nationalist-rally And even then takes it as an opportunity to brag on his accomplishments...
there was a small write-up on this study this morning in Inside Higher Ed, more interesting for the comments though, some of which I'll copy here https://www.insidehighered.com/quic...-scientists-rank-presidents#.WoxqvQ4twdA.link william_sjostrom • 7 hours ago It is hard to say whether to be more disappointed by the political scientists' narcissism or their shallowness. The article refers to Trump's "ignominious debut". Seriously? Do Rottinghaus and Vaughn, the political scientists who wrote the piece, seriously believe that anyone's opinion will be changed by the opinions of a handful of professors, whose own opinions are driven largely by what is acceptable thought in the faculty lounge? There is no attempt to offer any sort of argument, just a ranking. Whose mind will be changed even slightly by that. But the shallowness of these views is just as bad. Clinton's predatory conduct has been known about for years, but this year #metoo is in fashion in academic circles, whereas twenty years ago, the fashion was "save the Democrat, screw the women". Andrew Jackson's treatment of Native American tribes has been known about and discussed for years. (I learned about it in high school in the 1970s.) These rankings seem to shift according to academic fashion rather than actual academic research. Perhaps best of all, of course, the ranking comes out, ranking FDR as third overall, and second among Democrats, on the anniversary of his order imprisoning everyone is America guilty of the crime of being of Japanese descent. Valcour william_sjostrom • 5 hours ago I am no fan of Donald Trump, a proud member of the "Never Trump" group, and a political scientist. Regrettably, this kind of exercise brings disrepute to our discipline. Can we really make a scholarly judgment about where a given president ranks compared to others after one year in office? It is only with some perspective that we can render such a judgment in a reasonable manner. In my role as a citizen, I share the strong negative views about President Trump that many other American share, but in my role as a political scientist it is impossible after a single year in office to render a scholarly judgment about where Trump stands compared to other presidents. Moreover, the inability of political scientists to set aside their partisan and ideological inclinations is in full view in this survey. Ranking Trump last permits survey respondents to vent about the sitting president, but does anyone really think that Obama ranks 8th among presidents? Seriously? Only among left-leaning partisans unable or unwilling to practice scholarly detachment would this be a result. If political scientists are to be taken seriously, we need to do much better than this. boiler8292 Valcour • 5 hours ago As a political scientist I agree with you. Presidential rankings to be taken seriously shouldn't occur for a decade after their tenure, to gauge the full effects of their tenure and policies. I'm no Trump fan by any measure, but to rank him last already? Based upon what? I think history will be kind to Barack Obama when his Presidency is measured and I was a strong supporter, but I'm not sure if he will be #8.AreaMan boiler8292 • 4 hours ago I'm also a political scientist and I do wish colleagues would stop this ranking business. It's actually quite in opposition to our training as social scientists and points back toward the bad old days of self-appointed "experts" who behaved more like pundits than scholars. Relevance is a worthy goal, but this is not the way to get there. Shawn AreaMan • 2 hours ago I'm also also a political scientist. I don't have a problem with the idea of rankings per se, though I would like the standard deviation around the means for the rankings. (Some irony intended). We rank and score things all the time in the discipline- ranks of democracy and scores of ideology being among the most obvious. But, to the point above, such rankings require reliable data accumulated over time and with perspective. Truth is, the further away from a President's term in office, the more stable the score should become. A few exceptions aside, like the role of Truman in the Cold War becoming more clarified once it ended, all new presidents should be middling because their impact is limited, and the rise and fall with time. We can certainly compare Trump's first year in office to other presidents (low performance) but to say that his overall impact on America has been worse than the guy who led us into a civil war, or the guy who led us into a depression...that's just dumb. Greg McColm • 4 hours ago These lists reveal more about the people listing them than the people listed. I remember about two decades ago, a huge internet poll on who the greatest American was: the top two turned out to be Ronald Reagan and Benjamin Franklin, which revealed who was on the web (and participating in such polls). The ancient criterion was who was the greatest, in the Alexander the Great meaning of the phrase. For some reason, political scientists don't use this unambiguous criterion (three presidents are responsible for a million square miles of territory each: Washington, Jefferson, and Polk). The whiggish criterion was who did the most good? This raised the awkward question about what good was, a difficult issue for, say, the man whom H. L. Mencken called Archangel Wilson (Mencken would probably make similar comments about Obama). The textbook criterion was, for those moments where the existence of a government of, for, and by the people was in question, who assured the future? That makes Washington, Lincoln, and FDR look like a slam dunk, assuming that you think that democracy or liberty really was at issue. The Modern criterion is who was the most successful. A few political scientists would brave Butterfield's denunciation of whiggery (or not know about it) and go for presidents who pushed American in successful / positive / etc. directions, which brings us back to the ugly question of whether we should say ANYTHING good about Polk. Others would claim that presidents should be regarded as successful if they were successful on their own terms: anyone for Coolidge? Altogether, and interesting sociological study of contemporary political science.
Not completely everything he did was wrong, but yeah, most of what he did was wrong as evidenced by the state of the country when he left office and the fact that he got nothing positive accomplished while president. That said, I understand that it's probably too much to ask for some people to be impartial about it. After all, he was the first black president and to some that fact alone is enough to list him as a top 10 president....hell he won a Nobel prize based entirely on him being the first black president. Clearly that fact matters more to some than others.
not sure what you're talking about, OP's post was about the same study by Rottinghaus and Vaugn, same as linked in IHE That was the finding of the 2018 Presidents & Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey, released Monday by professors Brandon Rottinghaus of the University of Houston and Justin S. Vaughn of Boise State University. The survey results, ranking American presidents from best to worst, were based on responses from 170 current and recent members of the Presidents and Executive Politics section of the American Political Science Association.
