The Trump Legacy

It May Be Bigger Than Many Think.... <puke>

Historians are usually pretty loathe to discuss presidential legacies for recent presidents. It’s just that it’s relatively too soon and we do not yet fully understand the ramifications of what a current or recent president has done. It’s hard, if not impossible, to rate someone on how consequential their terms were when the amount of time since those terms transpired is relatively small. Some small items in this day and age can have hugely beneficial or catastrophic consequences years, even decades from now. What may be utterly inconsequential now may in fact be a huge deal years down the road. The butterfly effect in action.

Take Woodrow Wilson for example. For years he was viewed as a very good president. He regularly rated in the top 10 presidents in the CSpan or Sienna Polls of historians rating the presidents¹. He helped America win the “Great War” and defined the post-war world with his “Fourteen Points.” He established the Federal Reserve System, which helped regulate banks and moderate many of the boom/bust cycles that predated him. He supported many progressive economic reforms including the Clayton Antitrust Act, establishing the FTC and establishing the 8-hour workday, while trying to stop child labor. He was by most historians’ accounts a pretty consequential president. However, in recent years his record has been criticized and tarnished by a pretty awful attitude regarding racism for the day² and general belief in eugenics. In many historical polls of presidents, Wilson has seen the most precipitous drop in recent years as race relations became elevated and moved to the forefront of many issues.

Following Trump’s first term, however, there was almost universal disdain for the Donald. On most every measure, he registered almost uniformly in the bottom tier, if not the bottom itself. A general lack of achievements. A lack of character and a penchant for corruption. An utter disregard for social norms and standards. A withdrawl from the world stage of which the United States had managed since the end of World War II. A collapse in the economy. A once in a lifetime pandemic handled ineptly. A personal integrity that made Richard Nixon look angelic by comparison. In every poll of legitimate historians I saw, Trump was below William Henry Harrison, and his presidency lasted only 30 days. In most cases, Trump was last, or very near it behind only James Buchanan who did nothing as the country slid to Civil War in the late 1850s. On some polls occassionally, you’d see him edge out Franklin Pierce, Warren Harding or Andrew Johnson, none of whom were good presidents in any practical way. Compared to any modern president, he was bottom of the barrel. Even George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter fared considerably better. In any event, for Trump, there really was no place to go but up.

But that was before he won back the White House again. Only one other president won the White House after previously serving as president and then losing it, Grover Cleveland. Where does Cleveland usually rank in these polls? Of the 45 different presidents, he’s usually around 22-25, practically dead center. What previously could have been just a one term blip, frantically erased and memory-holed after he lost office, now becomes 8 presidential years out of 12 and an era defining legacy of sorts. We can no longer discount that Trump had no long term lasting damage effects on the Presidency as an office. As much as many (including myself) hate to admit it, Donald Trump has the capacity to redefine the presidency and impact American government for decades into the future.

For example, take his grasp of the Supreme Court. In his first term, he nominated three people eventually confirmed to the Court (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett). With Thomas and Alito aging, he has the capacity to appoint a total of five (it’s unlikely Roberts or one of the three liberals leaves during Trump’s term). Think about that- Trump would have put on the nation’s highest Court the entire majority. Only six other presidents have nominated that many; Washington, FDR, Taft, Lincoln, Jackson and Eisenhower.³ A president’s Supreme Court nominees have the capacity to have a profound impact on a president’s legacy.

Speaking of Andrew Jackson, the man may not be liked for a lot of the acts he did as president⁴, but he is often credited with greatly expanding the scope of presidential power and of the appointments spoils system that we still adhere to for many of the appointments today.⁵ A lot of this was reined in after the Civil War and in the early 1900s as part of civil service reform. Nonetheless, Jackson regularly appears in the top 20 presidents. Like Jackson, Trump has taken a flamethrower to the very idea of non-partisan civil service and has either pressured many long time government employees out, eliminated their jobs altogether, or made their lives hell as he installs toady loyalists into positions within agencies all throughout the government. Many of those loyalists will remain long after Trump leaves office in 2029, wreaking havoc on whoever becomes president afterwards.

Trump completely changed the way the world looks at the United States. Where before we were the one superpower relied on as a beacon for opportunity and security in the world, now we are untrusted, unreliable and uninterested in solving world problems. Pax Americana is dead, and now a new, more unstable world order is emerging. The global events of the next couple decades for good or ill could be deliberately laid at Trump’s feet because of his foreign policy choices.

With the passage of the BBB, he’s greatly amped up ICE and Border Patrol to a degree that it is now the largest domestic enforcement organization in American history. It’s pretty explicit now and can be said America is no longer welcoming to foreigners. Trump has essentially created his own masked military force, answerable directly through the political chain of command (instead of through the indepedent FBI) and consisting of the same wannabes that committed the insurrection on January 6th. Frightening stuff. If nobody steps in though, where does America go? Right where Trump wants it to. On top of that, the manner in which it has defied due process, deported individuals without regard to the law and gotten away with it is something future presidents will be more willing to emulate.

His legacy gets even more support if the Republican Party continues to adopt Trumpian style politics in elections into the future. If his successor takes the same coarse, unapologetic route Trump does in steamrolling and getting what he wants, then Trump’s legacy extends even further. If Democratic candidates adopt his undignified style and swagger, Trump would have redefined how presidents get elected generally.⁶

Which is all to say, Trump’s legacy from a historical point of view is going to change in a major way as we continue through his second term. How we tend to rate presidents over time has a lot to do with the stamp they put on the office. Make no mistake, Trump is stamping ALL OVER the Oval Office. If future presidents adapt to Trumpian politics, well then, who could argue he wasn’t a consequential president? On the other hand, if he just continues to ruin the standards, sully the office and do to the hallowed halls of the West Wing what occurred on the “pee tape,” well then all he’ll be known for is defining presidential deviancy down and speeding through to the bottom of the list ensuring he’s always considered dead last for as long as the republic still stands.

Elections have consequences. And those consequences can last a very long time.

PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner

So a few notes on these presidential polls.

First off, they’re all subjective but you can generally accept in a roundabout way where these individuals tend to line up, kind of more as tiers than they would be really a sequential order. The first thing I always look at is who sits below William Henry Harrison. Having served only 30 days, if someone didn’t get above him, it can be assumed that that president did consequential harm to the country. It doesn’t take much to do more than a guy who died a month into the job.

The presidents usually at the top are Lincoln or Washington for good reasons. FDR usually cracks the top 3. Teddy Roosevelt, Jefferson, Truman and Eisenhower often are in the top 10.

When it comes to modern Presidents, I usually pay no mind to them, starting with Kennedy. The reason being is too many boomers still remember Kennedy from their youth and revere him. Once that generation goes, presidencies start to be defined more by their papers, the events, the historical context, rather than more subjective emotions. From an era standpoint, I think many of the presidents between Kennedy and Clinton will fare pretty well in the long run. I’ll never really get to find out in the long term, as future historians will likely hold them up in a much more historical context long after I kicked the bucket.

Obama always tends to do very well and that seems a little perplexing to me. He’s a very likeable guy, and being the first African-American to become president says something, particularly about where we are as a country. But are his achievements really better than Eisenhower, or Madison, or Kennedy or LBJ or even Reagan? He only really had a majority for 2 years and then kind of coasted the rest of the way, unable to get much else done with an antagonistic Congress. He was a great steward of the nation, but there are other presidents who exhibited far more leadership and ability than Obama did. Just my thoughts. In the end, these rankings are all subjective, and the more recent tend to be more subjective than others.

As if to prove my point, the most recent poll cited is from 2024, and in that Biden got a ranking of 14th. I like Joe, but 14th is ridiculously high for him in every way, shape and form, even viewing it from everything he did just until 2022. Also, Trump winning in 2024 is forever going to be a part of Joe’s legacy. I don’t see Joe cracking the top 25 when all is said and done.

If I were asked my opinion, I would place Trump dead last; no president had ever proactively done so much damage to the country intentionally as Trump has. Others usually scoring so low, did harm, sure. However, there was mostly still a moral compass and what they did for their own reasons, often out of political self-preservation, poor judgment or just outright neglect, unintentionally damaged the country. What Trump has done has been solely for his own benefit, with utter disregard for the country and it’s foundational principles, and he does all of these horrible actions with intent to do them. ⁷ I’m dumbfounded he ever won. I’m utterly flabbergasted he won again after the horrorshow that was his first term. But now he has the potential to redefine a party and a country for generations to come. That can’t be dismissed out of hand; it is very likely he will be a very consequential president in that regard. One hundred years from now it may be common to create your own cryptocurrency or meme stock fund; it may be second nature to use the Justice Department and the FBI to go after one’s political enemies. If that’s the case, American altruism be damned, then that could all be traced back to Trump and his Banana Republic methods.

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

The longest lasting presidential legacy? Of course it belongs to George Washington, but do you know what it is?

When first taking the Oath of Office as this nation’s first President, at the end of the Constitutionally required oath, Washington ad libbed the line “So help me God.” Since then, most every other President has selected to include the line, including every President since FDR.

When it comes to Presidential legacies, you can’t get much older than that.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

“Don’t judge a person on what they reaped during their own lives, but on what seeds they planted for the generations to come.”

LIKE WHAT YOU SEE? MAKE SURE TO SUBSCRIBE AND SHARE!!!

Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States

2. He once hosted a showing of “The Birth of a Nation” at the White House; while the film is reknown for it’s innovative filmmaking methods, the “Nation” being born in the movie was the Ku Klux Klan, who were also his guests at the showing.

3. One of the greatest presidential quotes of all time was when a reporter asked Eisenhower if he made any mistakes, and Ike replied, “Two, and they’re both on the Supreme Court.”

4. The Trail of Tears comes immediately to mind.

5. Prior to Jackson, the general SOP was to appoint someone from either party who was extremely knowledgeable and competent for the role he would play in the cabinet. Jackson was the first to say “F**K THAT” and went ahead with appointing cronies and others throughout the government in patronage positions. As much as everyone criticized it, successors adopted it and the idea which is a staple of “Jacksonian Democracy” still permeates our culture.

6. I would argue “Not for the better” but the same could be said of the televised Kennedy/Nixon debate, where those who heard it on the radio thought Nixon won, but television helped Kennedy, ushering in an age where telegenic candidates were favored.

7. In criminal law, an elevated charge is applied if the person had intent to commit the crime and particularly so if they had “malice aforethought.” For instance, the difference between manslaughter and murder is if there is intent, and the difference between first and second degree murder is if you planned it ahead of time. In Trump’s case, he’s clearly had intent on doing many of these things, and his motivation has been consistently to “stick it to the libs” meaning he’s thought specifically of doing these horrible actions for a long time. In that sense, he’s the death row inmate of presidents when it comes to harming the nation.