Franklin Pierce

Nancy Pelosi Greatest Woman In American Political History, And Among Top Few Speakers Of The House!

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California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House (2007-2011) and (2019-2023) has announced her retirement at the end of the present term in 2026, after nearly 40 years in the House of Representatives.

There is no way that anyone can deny that Nancy Pelosi is the greatest woman in American political history for anyone elected, as only a few First Ladies (Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama) even come close in influence, and also Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be in that category.

Clearly, Pelosi is the best, by far, Speaker of the House in modern times, with only Sam Rayburn, Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, and Henry Clay competing with her for the greatest of all time.

Those three Speakers served 17, 10, and 10 years, respectively, as Speaker, while Pelosi served 8 years.

Her impact was massive, as she helped bring about the Affordable Care Act under Barack Obama, and resisted Donald Trump and his authoritarian impulses in his first term in the White House, and is still actively working against Trump’s dangerous moves in the first year of his second term. Also, she promoted the first gun violence prevention legislation since the early 1990s, during the Presidency of Joe Biden.

Pelosi was subjected to direct threat by the Insurrectionists on January 6, 2021 at the US Capitol, and the hateful rhetoric of Trump helped incite the attack on her husband in 2022.

Pelosi showed great courage and determination in the face of constant attacks by the opposition party in the House of Representatives over her two decade leadership of her party.

She was a master strategist, and had the respect of her caucus, which she was able to lead with great skill.

Not bad for a woman who had five children and did not enter politics until her mid 40s, a true model for women who wished to pursue public service.

The fact that Donald Trump continues to condemn Pelosi even now, says legions about the character of both Pelosi and Trump.

At the same time, the last six Republican Speakers since 1995–Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, and now Mike Johnson, have been steadily getting more outrageously horrendous with each new Speakership!

While Pelosi will go down in history as among the greatest Speakers and Congressional leaders of all time, Donald Trump is assuredly, more every day that passes, adding to the reality of being the WORST President, by far, in American history.

It is causing reconsideration of James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Franklin Pierce, the others Presidents, all around the Pre Civil and Civil War period, who have been rated as the worst Presidents of American history!

Past Presidential Disputes Never Anything Like Trump With His Predecessors!

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Donald Trump’s incessant attacks on many of his predecessors in the White House is unparalleled in American history!

Trump has attacked over the years not only Barack Obama, but also Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and both Presidents Bush in vehement and outrageous ways.

In the past, there were cases of “bad blood” between Presidents, but nothing on the scale of what Trump has done.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had strong criticism of each other, as well as Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, and neither Adams attended the inauguration of his successor. But later, Adams and Jefferson revived their former friendship, with extensive letter correspondence over the last 14 years of their lives.

John Tyler, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan were unhappy with Abraham Lincoln’s policies during the Civil War.

Andrew Johnson had issues with his successor, Ulysses S. Grant, and refused to attend Grant’s inauguration.

Theodore Roosevelt fought bitterly against his own annointed successor, William Howard Taft, and challenged him in 1912, and both TR and Wilson were at odds very often with Woodrow Wilson.

Herbert Hoover was very bitter in his loss to Franklin D. Rooosevelt, and during the terms that FDR was in office, probably more vehement than any other situation other than Trump, and FDR never invited Hoover to visit the White House.

Harry Truman was critical of Dwight D. Eisenhower to some extent, and he and Richard Nixon were dire enemies, until Nixon brought the Truman piano in the White House to the Truman Library in 1969.

Jimmy Carter tended to be critical of other Presidents, but in the case of Gerald Ford, they became the best of friends after both had left office. Carter remained a strong critic, but in a dignified manner, of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.

Despite past rivalries, both Bush Presidents and Bill Clinton became good friends in later years, and the same for Barack Obama and the two Bushes.

It is extremely inappropriate for the members of the “Presidents Club” to be lambasting others in that group, and it was refreshing that Carter and Ford became friends, and that the Bushes and Clinton were cooperative, as well as Obama with the Bushes.

But then, Donald Trump has destroyed the idea of camaraderie among the small, select group who have the opportunity to be President of the United States.

Talk Of A Trump Third Term And Putting Trump On Mount Rushmore Pure Lunacy!

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The lunacy and craziness around Donald Trump continues, with talk of a Trump third term, which will never happen, as it would require a new constitutional amendment and a repeal of the 22nd Amendment!

Both would need a two thirds vote in the House of Representatives and in the US Senate, followed by three fourths of the states (38) ratifying by a majority in both houses of the state legislatures in 49 states plus the one house legislature in Nebraska.

Additionally, Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna has, crazily, proposed that Donald Trump be put on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt!

First of all, putting anyone else on Mount Rushmore is a massive job, and highly unlikely ever to occur!

But if such a suggestion was to be followed through on over time, it should be Franklin D. Roosevelt, not Donald Trump!

And if one was to propose a Republican President, it would be more reasonable to put Dwight D. Eisenhower or even, although not something this author and blogger would promote, Ronald Reagan!

As it is, Mount Rushmore has a Federalist (Washington); a Democratic-Republican (Jefferson); and two Republicans (Lincoln and TR), so the argument for an additional President should be for a Democratic President, with FDR clearly the major example, or possibly Harry Truman!

All this is silliness, as there will never be additions to Mount Rushmore!

And with Trump rated either number 45 or at best number 43 tied with Franklin Pierce and above James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson, in surveys of historians and political scientists, it is truly delusional to consider him worthy of being on Mount Rushmore!

The way Trump is beginning his second Presidency will only insure that he will be number 45 in all rankings of intelligent, educated scholars, and with any American who has a brain, and ethics and morals!

Republican Attacks On Joe Biden Totally Disingenuous!

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With President Joe Biden having withdrawn from the Presidential campaign, opposition Republicans have displayed a total lack of respect, and being totally disingenuous about his time in office.

It is understandable that for political reasons, Republicans would be critical of Biden, but they are going beyond the pale, and asserting totally ridiculous and preposterous comments about Biden.

We see Donald Trump, but also many other Republicans, asserting that Joe Biden is the worst President in American history, which demonstrates not only the horrible character of all concerned, but also, a total lack of knowledge of Presidential history!

It is a fact that no reputable Presidential scholar or expert would rate Joe Biden at the bottom of the 45 Presidents America has had, while many have made it clear that, indeed, it is Donald Trump who is the worst ever occupant of the Presidency.

So for Donald Trump to make such a stupid, moronic statement, is again an example of the psychological definition of “projection”!

But beyond that reality, how can any intelligent person say Biden is the worst, when he is rated as the “best” domestic achieving President in 60 years, since the time of Lyndon B. Johnson?

Biden was rated number 14 in the recent assessment of the American Political Science Association!

And what about such Presidents as Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, Franklin Pierce, Herbert Hoover and a multitude of other Presidents who have been correctly rated as “disasters” or “tragedies” in office?

APSA Presidential Greatness Poll 2024–The Bottom 10 Presidents

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The American Political Science Association Presidential Greatness Poll 2024 makes clear that Donald Trump is the absolute bottom of all 45 Presidents, below James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, William Henry Harrison, and Warren G. Harding, all with very low total scores, but Trump with a final score of 10.92 as compared to Buchanan’s 16.71, Johnson’s 21.56, Pierce’s 24.6, Harrison’s 26.01, and Harding with 27.76.

The other four at the bottom, numbers 36 to 39 in order, are Herbert Hoover, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore.

Notice that of these 10 Presidents at the bottom, four are the Presidents preceding Abraham Lincoln and one following him.

The others are Harding and Hoover from the 1920s; and one month President William Henry Harrison and his successor John Tyler in the early 1840s, when the Presidency came under attack due to the first Vice President succeeding the President due to death of the incumbent.

And then there is Donald Trump, who ranks last for those participants in the poll who are identified as Democrats, Independents, Liberals, and Moderates; and even for those who identify themselves as Republicans or Conservatives, Trump only rises to number 43, with Buchanan and Johnson rated below Trump by Republicans, and Buchanan and Pierce rated below Trump by Conservatives.

Also note that the only Presidents of this group who served a full term were Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover, and Donald Trump.

Donald Trump Condemned To Last Place In Presidential Rankings For All Time!

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It is now official: Donald Trump is condemned to last place in Presidential rankings for all time!

With two impeachments and four indictments, and with a total of 91 counts against the 45th President, he falls into the basement, so to speak, as for all time the worst, most corrupt President, and it is hard to imagine any future President being as horrendous as he has now been judged by facts and reality!

His mugshot will reverberate in history for the long run, a symbol of a would be tyrant who would never leave office, if it had not been for courageous and principled people around him who stood in the way of the establishment of an autocracy that would have destroyed the American Republic!

A lot of this tragedy was caused by Donald Trump himself, and his desire to destroy American democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law, and puts him in an exclusive spot as a wannabe Fascist authoritarian who almost succeeded in his quest to be President for life!

And Trump is delusional, trying to raise money on his mugshot from gullible Americans, when to believe that he will evade ALL 91 counts in four cases against him, is truly a warped mind who lives in an alternative universe! Why would any sane American wish to buy a T shirt with the Trump mugshot on it is beyond all sanity!

Realize that almost all of the witnesses in the various cases against Donald Trump are REPUBLICANS, who thankfully refused to participate in the attack on democracy, at the same time that so many others, including present Republican contenders for the Presidency either stayed on the sidelines or participated in trying to overthrow the accurate results of the Presidential Election of 2020!

Yes, other Presidents have been judged in the past as the worst, including James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, and Warren G. Harding, but none of them, with their faults and shortcomings, come anywhere near the venality of Donald Trump!

Even the other most corrupt President, Richard Nixon, would be stunned at the level of evil that Donald Trump represents, and Nixon had some real accomplishments which have prevented him from ending up in the bottom few Presidents!

One might say Donald Trump accomplished some noteworthy achievements, but his level of evil is so massive that it cannot save him from the basement of history long term!

Ironically, Donald Trump will have a full scale Presidential funeral, and likely will have, at some point, a Presidential Library and Museum, as even Richard Nixon had, but the stain of what he did and tried to do to subvert American democracy will never be overcome in the annals of history!

Centennial Of Warren G. Harding’s Death, And Accession Of Calvin Coolidge Coming Up On August 2-3!

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The centennial of the death of President Warren G. Harding is arriving on Wednesday, August 2, with Harding passing away of natural causes in San Francisco, shocking the nation, as Harding was on the way to finishing a Western tour, which had included visiting the territory of Alaska.

The swearing in of President Calvin Coolidge took place in the early morning hours on August 3, with Coolidge being sworn in at his father’s homestead in Vermont, where Coolidge was visiting, and with his father, a local justice of the peace, swearing in his son, before he returned to Washington DC, and was again sworn in later in the day.

This was the sixth time a President had died in office, and was the second time that the Vice President who succeeded to the Presidency went on to win a full term of office in 1924, following Theodore Roosevelt, who succeeded the assasinated William McKinley in 1901, and went on to win a full term in 1904.

Harding is regarded by scholars as a failed President, with massive scandals occurring, similar to those of a half century earlier under President Ulysses S. Grant in the 1870s. While he had some successes, he is ranked in the bottom five of all Presidents, in the same category as Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Donald Trump, and Franklin Pierce.

Calvin Coolidge is perceived as higher in ranking, generally at the top of the bottom third of Presidents, but shortly after he left office, the Great Depression occurred, and his administration is perceived as having had major negative impact on the economy which led to the Crash on Wall Street seven months after his retirement.

Certainly, the Presidency is seen as having declined in the 1920s, after the Progressive Era of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson, and seeing rising fortunes after Herbert Hoover, with the coming to the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 Presidential election.

Donald Trump, The Most Character Flawed President In American History!

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America has had 45 men who have been President.

All of them had human frailties, as all of us have.

Some have been seen as horrible in their time in office, and lacking character.

This would include Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, and Richard Nixon for sure.

And others would be seen as failures in other ways, including Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, and Herbert Hoover for sure.

But there is no President quite like Donald Trump!

This is the “truthful” President, who has lied more than 30,000 times since 2015, more than any President by far!

This is a “genius” who hides his college grades!

This is a “businessman”, who had six bankrupticies!

This is the “billionaire” who continues to hide his tax returns!

This is the “Christian” who never goes to church!

This is the “father” who has been a terrible role model for his children!

This is the “philanthropist” who has defrauded charities!

This is the “patriot” who dodged the draft!

This is the “playboy” who pays for sex, and has had three wives, while ‘cheating” excessively!

This is the “employer” who cheats those he employed for his properties!

This is the “innocent man” who refuses to testify, utilizing the 5th Amendment!

And beyond these eleven statements, there are so many more, and that the total is uncountable!

The question is how Donald Trump can be so horrendous in character, and live within his own skin!

Clearly, he has no conscience, and the thought that he could become President again is a literal nightmare!

Possibility That Neither Donald Trump Nor Joe Biden Will Be On Presidential Ballot In 2024

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The possibility now exists that neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden will be on the Presidential ballot in 2024.

There are good reasons for this scenario.

Joe Biden would be 82 a few weeks after the Presidential Election of 2024, and Donald Trump would be past 78 and a half at the time of the inauguration, making both of them the oldest Presidential contenders in American history.

Donald Trump faces multiple lawsuits, and the strong potential for prosecution, both criminal and civil, which could harm any chance of him being the Republican nominee.

And there are many conservatives and Republicans who would want to be rid of the menace of Donald Trump.

Joe Biden’s age, and the hints of possible cognitive tests being bandied about by critics, makes it harder for him to consider a second term, along with all of the problems he is dealing with, which might undermine his future, particularly if the Democrats lose the House of Representatives, and even, potentially, the US Senate.

The feeling of a fresh start, and younger candidates is very appealing to many Americans.

If it turns out that neither Trump nor Biden, and even Vice Presidents Mike Pence and Kamala Harris, are passed by as alternatives, which could be a possibility, then we would have a scenario rarely seen in US history, of Presidential tickets that have neither the President nor Vice President having been nominated for either office.

The only elections since 1824 where no one nominated was ever on a Presidential ballot before being chosen are the following 12 elections out of a total of 50 elections:

1844 election of James K. Polk
1852 election of Franklin Pierce
1868 election of Ulysses S. Grant
1876 election of Rutherford B. Hayes
1880 election of James A. Garfield
1884 election of Grover Cleveland
1896 election of William McKinley
1920 election of Warren G. Harding
1928 election of Herbert Hoover
1952 election of Dwight D. Eisenhower
2008 election of Barack Obama
2016 election of Donald Trump

C-Span Presidential Historians Survey 2021 Announced Today!

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For all Presidential followers, including scholars and specialists in the American Presidency and Presidential history, today is a great day, as C-Span announced its Presidential Historians Survey results for 2021!

It will take time to analyze the results, but a few points stand out:

Barack Obama went up from 12th to 10th in the overall listings.

Donald Trump ended up tied for 42nd out of 44, with Franklin Pierce, with only James Buchanan at 44 and Andrew Johnson at 43 below him.

Woodrow Wilson slipped from 11th to 13th as he continues to decline in overall rankings.

Andrew Jackson slipped dramatically from 18th to 22nd, and is now just in the middle of the overall rankings.

James K. Polk slipped from 14th to 18th, a continued decline in overall rankings.

John Adams and John Quincy Adams both rose four points from earlier rankings.

Bill Clinton dropped from 15th to 19th, a dramatic decline after having risen in earlier rankings.

Jimmy Carter ended up tied with James A. Garfield at 26th, and in the “battle” of Gerald Ford vs Carter, Carter came out ahead for the third time in the four C-Span surveys, in 2000, 2008 along with 2021, with Ford ahead in 2017.