Bobby Burack
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Since year-end lists have become a joke, tier rankings have taken their place. The most interesting, debatable hierarchy of all is that of our U.S. Presidents.
Last week, Ben Shapiro revealed his:
I’m glad to see Shapiro waste no time pondering whether a third name should join Abraham Lincoln and George Washington in the top tier. I lean Lincoln first, Washington second, though it’s close.
Two entries in the F category will elicit online reactions. The first is Franklin D. Roosevelt. College professors often spend an entire semester declaring that FDR’s “modern-day” accomplishments are unmatched and that he needs his own tier below Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. And, unfortunately, many students believe them.
CBS News is among those who agree, ranking FDR in that discussed third spot.
The other, of course, is Barack Obama. I put stock into the impact presidents have post-election. How they left the country, the minds and influencers they changed. While the Democratic Party has certainly gone further Left since Obama’s final year in office, much of the leftward trend was initiated by his presidency. As Shapiro notes, his outlook increased the desire to “divvy up America into various victimized groups.”
The media’s biases were also exacerbated during Obama’s year. Eight years of praise, lack of skepticism, and celebrity-like coverage reversed dramatically during Donald Trump’s presidency.
Interestingly though, the killing of Osama Bin Laden often doesn’t make the first few paragraphs of Obama’s story. I give Obama and his administration immense credit for this accomplishment.
I was curious to see where Shapiro would rank President Donald Trump, whom Shapiro didn’t vote for in 2016 but did in 2020. Shapiro put Trump in the B category. In terms of policy, Shapiro says Trump is closer to an A, but adds that Trump’s rhetoric was “self-defeating.”
Trump’s reign will forever be attached to COVID-19. Before COVID, I predicted he would win re-election on the economy alone. Around July, due to the reaction of coronavirus and how the blame was disproportionality spread, I began to think Trump would lose.
When Americans are unhappy — say, because of a global pandemic — they often look at the potential grass on the other side. In this case, Joe Biden.
OutKick VIP members, comment with your tiers below.
i can’t believe that lucid adults that are personally meeting with Biden aren’t terrified knowing he may be sworn in.
some conspiracies are hard to prove, but this ‘cabinet’ of Bidens would be actually running Biden like the CCP.
All this does is make me excited to learn more about the S, A, and B presidents. History is such an uneven ledger, especially recent education, because it does make it seem like FDR is so great. They made us memorize like every alphabet soup organization he created and they did not present that he prolonged the great depression for 8 years. Seems like an important factor to bring up but that would only be logical.
Agreed. I was taught in school that FDR saved us from the Great Depression. Later I read a book that showed how ineffective his policies were.
A couple of quotes in that book that were made by Henry Morganthau, FDR’s secretary to the Treasury, late in FDR’s second term really hit home. They are:
“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.”
“I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot!”
FDR was a good cheerleader during the Great Depression but was totally ineffective in fixing the economy.
I think Washington should be on level of his on. Without him there would of not of been an us.