And companies like Sinclair give the local anchors scripts that make it sound like this is organically coming from local sources rather than being handed down from corporate.
Simply not true. Let's examine excess mortality (compared to 2015-2019) during five windows: start of the pandemic death toll (I'll utilize the first week with more than 1,000 deaths due to Covid) to the end of 2020, the first 14 weeks of 2021 when vaccine availability was expanding to all those over 16 in stages, post-vaccine availability in 2021, 2022, and 2023. 2020 Pandemic average excess mortality: 14,203.09 per week 2021 Partial availability of vaccines excess mortality: 13,085.87 per week 2021 Full availability of vaccines excess mortality: 12941.59 per week 2022 excess mortality: 9,533.67 per week 2023 excess mortality (excluding the last 4 weeks of available data due to incomplete reporting- which lead to much lower reports for now): 5,091.44 Mortality, by week : Excess deaths by week, 2020-2023
No bias here LOL No problem with ranking Trump last if you think he was the worst. His record bears out awful governance. Big problem with ranking Biden 14th. His record also bears out awful governance. My bottom 5, in no particular order, are Trump, Biden, Carter, A Johnson, Pierce.
Does it, though? I mean, search the archives of this board. How many people said that there would be a recession in the past few years and laughed at the notion of a soft landing? And yet, here we sit with a stock market near record highs, a labor market in shortage, and Real GDP growth that is quite robust while inflation has dramatically decreased from its peak. When you are considering that nobody knew how to manage an economy during a recovery from a global pandemic, things could have been a lot worse (as you see in a number of other major economies undergoing recessions right now).
It's a stupid point. Obama had higher unemployment than Bush. The 2008-2009 meltdown must be Obamas fault and not Bush's. Give me a break.
Start a thread and I'll jump in. This thread is about why Biden is ranked above average despite doing a completely forgettable job as president.
I’m not arguing with any of that. IMO FDR would rank among the highest for all the reasons you have given. To a lesser degree you could say the same of Reagan. He transformed the role and attitude of/towards govt, instilled a national confidence that had been lacking for almost 2 decades, helped to win the Cold War (arguably), started (or resurrected)a trend that made the US the overwhelming dominant economic engine, etc. Of course liberals would argue many of those points and to a degree rightly so. But to leave him out of the top 15 really destroys the credibility of the poll and as much as I like Obama I don’t think he rates over Reagan. Obama went up 9 places. I would say where he was before was probably more accurate.
Uhhh, scroll up and look at the post of yours he replied to (which was your reply to him, in response to a reply from him to you).
Lol..thank, Ben. I simply questioned his definition of conservative on his own post. Got confused about who wrote what.
The difference is that you might consider FDR's impact to be a negative or a positive depending on your view of the federal government and his philosophy, but there's really no denying that he did what he did. Outside of the point about the Cold War, I see all of your Reagan points as contestable. You can accurately say that Reagan majorly influenced the Republican Party and that his influence is still felt today. But what enduring impact did he have on the country as a whole? What's his legacy? That's without even getting into all of the harm Reagan did. After all, while I spoke of impact, this list is technically about who the best presidents were.
I think much of the the division right here is many here think Biden is great while many of us on the right and in the middle think Trump sucks at this point and some does Biden…
The Fed deserves the credit for mitigating the effect of the continued superfluous spending by Biden. Other than the Chips act (a long term need), what legislation did Biden pass that has helped lead us toward a soft landing? Biden’s best move was doing nothing and letting the Fed do their job, and despite many economists predictions seemingly negotiating a soft landing. Perhaps one could argue all the extra cash Americans were flush with help some of which came from federal spending passed under Biden.
Well sure but you’re contesting Reagan’s legacy because of ideology. I don’t know your age but I suspect your weren’t old enough to really understand the impact. You’ve probably never really experienced the self doubt the country had by the late 70s. Nearly a decade of on and off inflation, high gas prices, rising interest rates, a lack of confidence in our military capability due to Vietnam, Watergate, the feeling that we could all be annihilated in a nuclear war with Russia, stock market was terrible, US industry was becoming less competitive, high taxes, Iran hostages etc etc. The national mood changed almost instantly when he came in. It took the economy a couple of more years but then it turned around and started a 40 year uptrend. Of course, you can debate the cause and impact of all of those and point out the negatives, just like I pointed out the alternative view of FDR. I’m not putting Reagan at the level of FDR, but to be objective it isn’t fair to apply an ideological lens to evaluating the effectiveness of a president.
Chips act, inflation reduction act, infrastructure bill. This is the greatest level of government investment probably since Eisenhower. You can blame Biden for excessive stimulus, as I have but at the same time that stimulus is probably part of the reason we came out of the Covid recession much stronger than many other nations. We could have had marginally less inflation coupled with a weaker economy. Is that better? I’m not sure that it would have been. The issue with Biden is his age. In terms of governance I think he has done a pretty solid job.
Im not even sure if Trump is “correctly” fairly low on the list. I can see criteria where he would be low, but I can also see criteria where he wouldn’t. Wide Popularity (rather than base enthusiasm), display of traditional leadership qualities, lack of controversy, unifier would all put Trump pretty low on the list. If policy is by far the greatest factor, I think I would put him around 13-17, and he may be higher if you ignored all of the criteria that work to his detriment, but I don’t think that would be fair either. I also think any policy-based ranking would be far too subjective to be reliable. Might as well conduct a poll on ideology if you were to do that. Even though some of these Presidents are apparently getting a “policy bump” despite being absolutely atrocious on policy. FDR and Woodrow Wilson in particular stand out. EDIT: If we were ranking Presidents on stand-up comedy potential, Trump would be #1 and it wouldn’t be close.
