In another indication of the partisan bent of modern academia, a recent survey of scholars on the American presidency, performed at two U.S. universities and subsequently published, is gaining attention for its questionable and controversial results.
The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey, led by Brandon Rottinghaus of the University of Houston and Justin S. Vaughn of Coastal Carolina University, surveyed experts at the American Political Science Association, as well as scholars who had recently published peer-reviewed academic research on the U.S. presidency.
The survey has current President Joe Biden as the 14th greatest president in American history. His predecessor, President Donald J. Trump, is ranked dead last.
Biden was ranked ahead of Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, and Ulysses S. Grant. Former President Barack Obama was placed seventh, up eight points from last year’s survey.
Trump scored the survey’s lowest ranking of 45, trailing James Buchanan at 44th, Andrew Johnson at 43rd, Franklin Pierce at 42nd, and William Henry Harrison at 41st.
Abraham Lincoln was selected by the scholars as America’s best president.
The poll also ranked respondents’ party and ideological differences, but the surveyors claimed it did not “tend to make a major difference overall.”
However, there was a clear party divide in the ranks for Obama and Biden, with Democrats putting them 6th and 13th on average, while Republicans placed them 15th and 30th, respectively.
The presidential rankings are notable for their lack of objective measurement for Americans’ quality of life under a given president, and appear to be ranked according to how a president’s ideological disposition matches those of typically left-wing political scholars.
The Biden presidency and the Trump presidency represent a major political litmus test for the ability of scholars to assess elected leaders based on objective merits.
Donald Trump’s economy, up until the moment state governors began locking down under the Covid pandemic, was one of the best in modern history.
As Atlantic scholar Derek Thompson summarized in August 2019:
- Jobs have grown for 106 consecutive months, the longest streak on record.
- At 121 months, this is the longest bull market in American history.
- The unemployment rate has been at 4 percent or less for 16 consecutive months, the longest such streak in 50 years.
- Inequality remains a crucial problem, but wages are now growing the fastest among the lowest-wage industries, thanks to state-by-state increases in the minimum wage and the effects of low unemployment.
- The University of Michigan’s consumer-sentiment index, which peaked at 112 in 1999, has hovered above 90 for more than four years, something that hasn’t happened since the 1990s.
- Latino unemployment has fallen to its lowest rate on record.
- Black unemployment, too, has fallen to its lowest rate on record, and, as the investor and Bloomberg columnist Conor Sen points out, the unemployment rate for black teenagers, which peaked at 48.9 percent in 2010, has plunged to yet another record low in 2019.
The United States was also kept out of foreign wars, which were sparse on Donald Trump’s watch. The Trump presidency brokered peace deals in the Middle East and successfully promoted deterrence through a ‘peace through strength’ approach.
In addition, the 45th president secured the southern border, preventing the human catastrophe and widespread national disruption of a full-blown border crisis.
The Biden presidency has witnessed a massive spike in inflation, a surge in energy prices, rampant spending fraught with waste and corruption, reckless brinksmanship and foreign interventionism, and a border crisis that has exploded out-of-control.
Biden’s presidency has been one of the most chaotic and controversial in American history.
- The Department of Justice on his watch has politically prosecuted a former president, raising major questions about corrupt weaponization of the agency.
- Biden’s family has been thoroughly exposed as having participated in multiple foreign influence peddling schemes with the aiding and abetting of Joe Biden.
- His administration has pursued unconstitutional censorship and surveillance of the American people.
It has been a disaster for the rule of law and for the social contract with the federal government as stipulated by the U.S. Constitution.
The quality of life for the vast majority of Americans was much better under the Trump presidency than the Biden presidency. The Trump presidency gets zero credit from scholars for it, while they give Joe Biden maximum credit for simply being a Democratic president.
Academia is broken. This presidential survey is yet another example of how modern scholars are completely out-of-touch with the interests of the American people.
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Miami Book Cafe That Banned Black Conservative Closes Its Final Chapter on Bigoted Business
The book has been closed on a North Miami café that banned Fox News political analyst Gianno Caldwell for his conservative beliefs.
That black conservative pundit, Gianno Caldwell, was eating breakfast with friends when he was asked to leave the book café in January 2023, according to the Miami News Times.
The conservative pundit spoke out about the event on Fox & Friends Weekend and Twitter, claiming that his group was discussing what it was like “working over at Fox News,” their “values,” “violent crime” and “progressive [district attorneys]” before being shown the exit.
“I can’t believe what just happened,” Caldwell wrote on Twitter after the incident. “I met up with friends for breakfast at Paradis Books and Bread in North Miami & while we were having discussions about politics we were told by the owners that we were not welcomed there because we aren’t politically aligned. Outrageous.”
Paradis Books & Bread said that it had ejected Caldwell and his pals from their company for a “zero-tolerance policy” for opposing political beliefs. The book café owners related that one of Caldwell’s group members reacted with, “That is your business model, and I respect that,” before leaving.
The Miami-based book café said that its booting of a black conservative and his friends led to a backlash on social media.
“Since the incident, we have been getting harassed on the internet, specifically on t*itter, google reviews, and… on this platform,” Paradis Books & Bread wrote on Instagram at the time.
According to its last statement on the company’s website, Paradis Books & Bread gave a half-baked reason for shutting its doors.
We have made the heavy decision not to reopen paradis, and this is our way of letting you know why. We’ve come to the end of the line, and we’re ending this project on our own terms. To our haters, we suppose congratulations are in order, so you can go ahead and stop reading now! But, to those who have loved us, supported our many changes, laughed with us, danced with us, and maybe even cried with us, we wanted to give you this parting explanation, as well as a wholehearted thank you.
The Paradis book café proceeded to render its last chapter before filing for Chapter 11.
The explanation for our closing truly isn’t just one reason, or one problem that we can point to and blame; it is a whole tangled knot of things, issues that both stand alone and compound one another, ultimately making this project unsustainable for us. Some of the main reasons that we need to close are deeply personal, and they’re the most important ones insofar as paradis is, afterall, a very personal project. Paradis has always been an owner-operated business, and, while we were once a team of five, we’ve been a team of just three for quite some time now. Making this place run when there were five of us was always challenging and emotional, as bringing different personalities and work ethics together towards one goal can be. The gradual disintegration of our team brought up a lot of difficult conversations, compromises, and, ultimately, the singular heartbreak of long-held friendships ending. While we have had various friends work part-time at paradis helping us push through busy service nights and “volunteering” during our parties, everything else has landed in our laps. It was never our intention to hire a different team of people, nor has it been ultimately sustainable, because what paradis has always required was an equal sharing of responsibilities, both during service and when the doors are closed.
The café makes it abundantly clear that its vision was one of a socialist salon.
Paradis, on its very best day, has been an experiment towards an otherwise. An experiment in connection, in “speaking our thoughts into being,” in hope, in rage, in love. In a society such as ours, it is a constant fight to be connected, to be supported, to live. Any project that attempts towards an otherwise is indeed a hard-fought experiment, and we have to keep fighting and attempting and tweaking and failing and trying again. Paradis, like other political spaces before it, are projects that often don’t last forever. They squeeze themselves uncomfortably into the vestments of a business model until the seams eventually burst. They’re often deeply personal spaces, and when those persons or personal circumstances change, the space and the project must transform with them. Interdependence and care are incredibly difficult things to instill into a business model, but we’ve tried our best to do just that. If this place has truly touched you, it’s likely these tenets were reaching out to pull you in. As many of you who have been conspiring with us at paradis over the years already are and have been, we urge us all to continue to reorient ourselves purposefully and lovingly to the world and to commit to others, to question, to study. It’s ok that it’s ending, ok that it failed, because failure is momentary, clarifying, and fortifying. The heart of paradis, the intent, the ideas of it, remain always. It is a building, and not. It is, moreso, a community of people who have come and gone and come back again, revolutionary ideas and intentions and attempts that never end.
Vive la révolution! Well, not really.
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