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.”

“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.”

  • MicroWave@lemmy.worldOP
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    9 months ago

    Here’s the full combined list:

    1. Lincoln
    2. FD Roosevelt
    3. Washington
    4. T Roosevelt
    5. Jefferson
    6. Truman
    7. Obama
    8. Eisenhower
    9. LB Johnson
    10. Kennedy
    11. Madison
    12. Clinton
    13. J Adams
    14. Biden
    15. Wilson
    16. Reagan
    17. Grant
    18. Monroe
    19. GHW Bush
    20. JQ Adams
    21. Jackson
    22. Carter
    23. Taft
    24. McKinley
    25. Polk
    26. Cleveland
    27. Ford
    28. Van Buren
    29. Hayes
    30. Garfield
    31. Harrison
    32. GW Bush
    33. Arthur
    34. Coolidge
    35. Nixon
    36. Hoover
    37. Tyler
    38. Taylor
    39. Fillmore
    40. Harding
    41. Harrison
    42. Pierce
    43. Johnson
    44. Buchanan
    45. Trump

    Source: http://www.brandonrottinghaus.com/uploads/1/0/8/7/108798321/presidential_greatness_white_paper_2024.pdf

      • Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Historians create the list, so sometimes it is about the history these Presidents lived through. Reagan is seen as an element in the fall of the Soviet Union, and thus the recreation of many countries and world order.

      • NewNewAccount@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Puts him at about average. Reagan represents a brand of conservatism that many disagree with but that doesn’t inherently make him a bad president.

      • Salix@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        I’ve met many people in real life who seem to believe Reagon is great due to his “very successful” Reaganomics. I don’t know if they actually knew what Reaganomics really was or the results of it.

      • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        This should really worry Republicans. Apparently this came from surveying people. If Reagan is 16 , and Obama is 7, and Trump is absolutely last, it says a whole fucking lot about the electorate.

        Edit: I’m mistaken, it’s political science folks. So probably not as worrying to them.

        • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          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

          • njm1314@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            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.

            • Please_Do_Not@lemm.ee
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              9 months ago

              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.

        • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          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.

          • Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            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.

        • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          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.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        9 months ago

        He may be the best human being in the office. He micromanaged his staff–he required personal signing off on the White House tennis court usage–and never figured out the sausage making process with Congress. His actual accomplishments were limited.

    • anon6789@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Presidental history isn’t my strongest area, but I’d bump up Eisenhauer before Truman.

      I feel the jump after #5 is a pretty sizeable one.

      I’m trying to justify moving down GHWB and Jackson, but looking at who comes in after them, it’s hard to come up with anything to put them over either of them.

      Looking at the list objectively, it’s pretty amazing the combined list of terrible things we can list off that all these people did. The tops 5 included. But I feel those are the only ones I can say what they did was so monumental that the country was better off after their terms and I wonder if we would ever get a leader like any of them again.

      Still sad to see the amount of slavery and war crimes in the top 5 though.