Everyone has already dunked on this when it came out on Presidents’ Day, but as someone that has a minor obsession with US Presidents, this really blew my mind.
This came from the official GOP twitter account, so this represents the official thinking of the Grand Old Party. And what thinking it is!
To fill in the grid, you need to have eight Republican Presidents. First of all, it’s amusing to me that, for the ninth President, they put Joe Biden in the middle. As any child that has ever played tic-tac-toe can tell you, that is the most powerful position on the grid. Visually presenting Biden in the center makes the other Presidents seem like mere appendages to him. Even grammatically, it would make more sense to put him in the lower right hand corner (Happy Presidents’ Day To Such Great US Presidents. Not You!). Whatever.
Of course, you have Abraham Lincoln. On the one hand, it’s a no-brainer. Any list of great Republican Presidents has to start with him. On the other hand, the power base of the Republican party is now in the South. Considering how so many modern Republicans love to wave the Confederate battle flag, it seems somewhat incongruous to have Abraham Lincoln as your standard bearer.
Next is Calvin Coolidge. If shown a picture of Calvin Coolidge, how many members of the modern Republican Party would even recognize him? How many of them could list his policies? It was some of his administration’s policies (led by his Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon) that led to the Great Depression. At the time of the Great Depression, many recognized this and he subsequently experienced a serious decline in popularity. In Presidential rankings, on his best day he’s in the third quartile.
We next have Dwight Eisenhower. As everyone knows, he led the Allied military to victory in WWII. He’s consistently in the top quartile of the Presidential rankings. Over the last several years, the Republican party has been increasingly flirting with authoritarianism, if not actual fascism (Nazi flags seem to be making a comeback). As the architect of the victory over fascism, what do you think Eisenhower would make of the modern Republican party and its on-again / off-again lapdog acquiescence to figures such as Putin?
Richard Nixon in the house! Facing near certain impeachment and conviction, he chose to resign in disgrace. After many years, he managed to claw his back into some mild respectability as an eminence grise. On his best day he makes it into the third quartile of the rankings. He’s now on the list of great Republican Presidents!
Ronald Reagan is an altogether unsurprising choice. After all, his Presidency represents the flowering of the modern conservative movement. On average he appears in the top or second quartile in the rankings. One of his most famous policies was ramping up Cold War rhetoric and dramatically increasing defense spending. His summits with Gorbachev nearly resulted in dramatic reductions of nuclear weapons. How do you think he’d think about the modern Republican party cozying up to the ex-KGB Putin?
Next comes George H W Bush. He lost his reelection effort to the much hated Clintons. He and Clinton later teamed up on several humanitarian efforts. He is the epitome of the East Coast intellectual elitist that the modern Republican party now despises.
Then we have George W Bush. Although serving two complete terms, he is now so hated by the modern Republican party that he hasn’t even been invited to talk at their national convention since 2012.
Finally, of course there is Donald Trump. Among his inglorious achievements is losing his reelection (in the popular vote by what is considered, in modern times, to be a landslide) to the notably uncharismatic Joe Biden and getting impeached not once, but twice.
And this is the great gallery of Republican Presidents? Presidents that resigned in disgrace, that lost reelection, that were impeached, that sunk in popularity by the end of their terms, that would have been heartbroken at the current state of their party, or have themselves come to be despised by the modern Republican Party?
Let’s talk about the Presidents that they left off the list. First of all, seriously, no Theodore Roosevelt? How could they have left him off? You’d think that his manly, rough and tumble image would be purpose built for the modern Republican party. How about William McKinley? He was exceedingly pro-business and arguably launched the modern US empire with the successful execution of the Spanish American War. Both of these have a greater claim to be on the list than some that made it. Let’s not forget about US Grant. Sure, he had his shares of scandals, but as the general who led the North to victory in the Civil War and then in his efforts at Reconstruction, his great acts outshine most others on this list. Oh wait, given the modern Republican party’s love of the Confederate battle flag, maybe they were a bit uncomfortable with the military man most responsible for its destruction appearing on this list.
If you wanted to keep the losing reelection theme going, they should have included William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, and Gerald Ford. At least Taft went on to become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Hoover, for all of his Presidential fumbling, at least had the reputation of being a great humanitarian after helping feed Europe after WWI. From a Republican point of view, Ford’s pardon of Nixon removed the possibility of a former Republican President being hauled off to jail. Throw in Benjamin Harrison, who as sitting President lost the rubber match with Grover Cleveland, and six of the eight slots on this list could have been populated by reelection losers. It is interesting to contemplate that, in the 120 years of Presidential elections from 1900 to 2020, that of the six sitting Presidents that have run for reelection and have lost, five of them have been Republicans.
Be that as it may, this picture, if nothing else, inspired amused thoughts in this Presidential geek’s head. In the year 2020, this is the best Presidential hall of fame that the modern Republican party could conjure up.
As that once great but now banished tweeter would say, “sad”.
dorkenstein 