George W. Bush will be viewed as the real needle-mover in terms of launching the US on a markedly more authoritarian trajectory. Obama and Trump will be viewed as two who carried out the policy momentum of the Bush administration, albeit with different styles of demagoguery and points of emphasis.
When we are talking about “the history books”, we are talking many presidents and how they are viewed. Not just how interesting is a single book focused on one president only.
Trump himself will likely be dead within 10 years. He will no longer be around to fan the flames of his personality cult. So there’s that.
Look at Nixon. Look at Clinton. Again, we are taking a wide sweep of history. How much time can you really spend on Nixon and Watergate? Despite its enormous import to the people of the time, I maintain that historically, it’s a lot less significant than that. Even the endless “-gate” meme has been deflated with Trump. So again, in a wide sweep
If we are talking about the history books, we’re taking a wide sweep, comparing many presidents against each other. Not how interesting a biography of one president only will be.
What about Nixon? What about Clinton? Many books were written about Nixon and Watergate. It had enormous import to the people of the day. Yet… outside of itself, it’s not particularly historically significant. It didn’t affect people’s lives directly or change policy. Even the relentless “-gate” meme has been put to bed by Trump’s behavior.
How much time can you spend on Watergate? With Nixon, I’d lump him into “Nixon-Ford-Carter 1970s malaise.” Nixon didn’t change policy in any meaningful way. Like I said, Watergate lacks historical impact. You can maybe mention he resigned, but the resignation is at odds with his behavior as president, so elevating Watergate historically is an inaccurate message.
Same with Clinton. His affairs are irrelevant at this point. “Presided over the dawn of the Internet era and peaceful economic expansion.” That’s it. His affairs are not historically significant.
W - “9/11, Iraq War, housing bubble.” Obama - “First black president.”
Trump? He isn’t going to be a part of the COVID story, which is the most historically impactful, BECAUSE of his mismanagement and inaction. Same with Hoover and the other failures. Yes, they were there, but they didn’t deal with the issue competently, so they tend to get written out of history. Now you can say W and Iraq War and housing bubble, yes, but those are things he had more of a direct hand in. Even the housing bubble was due to decades of economic policy, and while it happened on W’s watch, he probably doesn’t need to be cited in that part of history. So with him it’s more 9/11 and Iraq War. Trump had nothing to do with COVID itself starting, he bungled the response, so he’s out of the story in the big sweep.
With the other parts of his administration, again in the big sweep sense, they don’t affect the country at large. Hijacking your story of history for that tale can’t happen. It’s like the 1920s with Harding and Coolidge. Harding had the scandals, more “interesting”, but he died and the scandals aren’t of primary importance in telling the tale of the 1920s. Coolidge is probably more emblematic of the laissez-faire policies and Harding more of a distraction.
The 1/6 insurrection, if that is repudiated and we move on, will not be all that historically significant, and again you are hijacking your story to make a failed presidency more important. Now if we really go down that road and break apart as a country, for the sake of an incompetent former ruler with no plan who will be dying fairly quickly in historical terms… well, there will be people more interesting than Trump on that journey. Competent people. Trump would quickly be killed and replaced by a Putin type in any actual insurrection or upheaval.
Buchanan is generally considered the worst of the 19th c. presidents. Although I wonder about both Andrews (Jackson and Johnson).
Since we’re still where he took us, W is certainly more impactful in that regard.
Obama “didn’t vote for the Iraq war” which helped him in 2008. Conveniently, he was not a part of Congress when the vote took place. He wound up emphasizing Afghanistan over Iraq. And he did give the orders to kill Bin Laden. But it wasn’t really a shift in eras or anything. More like Nixon vs. LBJ.
Trump seemed to not want us in either place, but was too incompetent to do anything about it. That would have required political skill and the willingness to spend political capital in the traditional sense, and Trump was either ignorant of the actual means, disdainful of them, or both. So Trump did nothing, seethed at the existence of the military, was voted out, then issued orders which were easily reversed by Biden. Historically, not significant.
The Bush/Cheney crowd are not going anywhere. They can outlast the batshit fury.
Non-American histories will treat Trump as a footnote. How often do you think American history books will mention Boris Johnson?
McCarthy gets mentioned but notice the way his story is framed. It’s presented as a victory over McCarthyism. We tell the story of winning rather than losing. We defeated McCarthy just like we defeated polio.
As for Jefferson Davis, compare the amount of mentions Davis gets to the amount that Lee gets. People would rather think of Lee as the symbol of the Confederates rather than Davis - because Lee won a lot of battles. All people remember about Davis is that he was the Confederate President and he lost the war. More people can tell you the name of Lee’s horse than can tell you a single political issue Davis was involved in.
I hope you’re right, because that will mean that Trump and his administration will have had little lasting effect on America and the world.
How many people talk about Alfred Hugenberg? If somebody worse comes along, people will talk about that person. If nobody follows Trump’s lead, then he’ll be a historical dead end.
Trump himself was just another step in a path laid about by people like Bush, Cheney, and Nixon.
No way. Obama will be remembered as a better than average president who implemented the first universal health care program in the US and who presided over the economic recovery after the 2008 financial debacle. And he’ll ultimately be most remembered as the first African-American president in the nation’s history.
Trump on the other hand won’t be remembered for very many of his policy implementations, except insofar as they illustrate what an ass and a crook he was as President. He’ll ALWAYS be remembered as the first president to be impeached twice while in office, and may well be remembered as the first to be convicted after impeachment. But the rotten cherry on the turd sundae of his presidency will be that he’s the first president to actively challenge the results of a fair and transparent election through violent and foul means, both the spurious legal challenges in multiple states, as well as the “Stop the Steal” nonsense, and finally through his insurrectionist coup attempt on Jan 6, 2021.
There’s no comparison- Trump is SO far out of the pale, that he’ll be notable for that very reason for decades, if not centuries to come.
Maybe, maybe not. How much time passed between the first two Catholic Presidents? And I’d say the first black President is going to be seen as a far bigger sea change in terms of race. I think the Black Lives Matter movement will be seen in terms of increased race consciousness which the Obama Administration will be used as the narrative center. To be honest, I think Trump will be viewed as a racist reaction to Obama (as he basically was)
I’m pretty sure Alfred Hugenberg is in EVERY decent WWII history text, and we are talking about Trump in the context of history books.
However, I’ll echo Thudlow_Boink 's sentiments and say I hope you’re right, as someone who has no lasting effect is quickly forgotten.
I think we may be talking about different levels of historical awareness. I know who Alfred Hugenberg is and obviously you do as well. But I wouldn’t describe my knowledge of history as typical. I enjoy history, I was a history major in college, and I read dozens of history books each year. So I’m probably way out on the end of the bell curve.
I was thinking of a more general standard, like the knowledge of history that a typical high school graduate would have. Maybe a college graduate with a major other than history. The history books I’m talking about are textbooks. Obviously, there will be specialized works of history that will devote volumes to both Obama and Trump.
African history books will definitely talk more about Obama than Trump.
I think it’s highly likely that Obama will be seen as notably better than average while Trump bumps along the bottom of the list - the Wiki page on Historical rankings of presidents provides some support for that view (and note that the surveys used are pre-COVID, pre-impeachment and pre-insurrection).
However, historians also like to focus on scandals, disasters and wars. And while neither Obama or Trump had any new major wars likely to be the focus of great historical interest, Trump had a lot more in the way of scandals and disasters on his watch. The reasons behind his rise and fall will be being unpicked for decades.
Obama, on the other hand, will be about as interesting as James K. Polk who was himself quite a solid, competent and somewhat “boring” president who suffered from various partisan slanders during his lifetime but who, with the passage of time, has survived the critical judgement of history relatively unscathed.
From a foreign point of view, I suspect that Trump will fade out of the historical consciousness fairly quickly. Our news media had been all Trump for the last four years and we are all heartily glad that he is gone.
American presidents frequently feature as questions in quiz shows here and few contestants get them right. People under 50 don’t even remember JFK, let alone the more obscure incumbents.
I also wonder how much history will be taught in the 2070s. Children today seem to learn about ancient history - Vikings, Romans etc, and WW2. In fact history is pushed off the curriculum by ‘more important’ subjects like maths and science.
I believe there is an important distinction. Hoover had held administrative positions in government and was an experienced manager. Buchanan less so but at least he was educated in the law. Both formed governments with functioning cabinets.
Trump is unique in that he never formed a stable government and he never governed. In fact his stated goals were to undo anything associated with Obama and to dismantle the structure of government - the deep state. In the end his administration was a tattered fringe on the edge of disaster.
His legacy will dwell on that uniqueness. Trump should never have been President. He had no talent or program or experience that qualified him for the position. He was an unfortunate phenomenon. And that will create a bookmark in the timeline of our history. Washington’s famous willingness to allow the transition of government will forever be contrasted with Trump’s attempt to end it. Beyond that he will be an intrinsic component of the COVID disaster.
So, I believe Trump has earned fame on the level of Washington and will overshadow Obama.
This is an interesting question, but we are almost certainly too close to events (even for Obama) to know for sure.
I think you need to define at least two parameters: 1) What kind of history book? and 2) When is the book written?
So let’s talk about your bog-standard high-school US history text book (say, post-Civil War US history, like we had during junior year when I was in high school). And say it’s published about 20 years from now (so, 2040).
I think Obama will pretty much only be mentioned as the first Black President, and possibly for Obamacare as the first step towards universal health care in the US. Other than that I don’t see much making the cut. He wasn’t part of any larger trends or massive events. Perhaps a small mention about OBL being killed as the final sentence in a section about 9/11 and the War on Terror. Basically the last section of the chapter on the War on Terror (9/11/2001 - 2012 or so).
Trump will be a main player in the section about social media platforms and the division of the country. He will have the usual blurb about corruption (like Harding and Grant) with perhaps some information his kids getting prominent roles in the Administration and personally profiting from them. Depending on how the social media bubbles breakdown of “truth” play out, he could have an even larger role.
Then, there will also be a section regarding the COVID pandemic and the failure of US response. Trump will also get referenced in this section. So, basically a key player in the “Post-WoT/Social Media Revolution/Rise of Disinformation” chapter.
So I think in the context of high-school US history written in about 20 years, it will almost certainly be Trump just because he is part of broader social trends that will have to be discussed to understand the US around 2015-2025. Obama was just the next (last?) step in the broader trends of 2000-2015.
Indeed… I have no clue who Alfred Hugenberg is. Even Googling him, I realized I never heard of him.
I agree that Trump is an example of why we should avoid electing presidents with no political experience. But even here, there are precedents like Grant and Taylor.
So I feel that Trump doesn’t fall that far out of presidential norms. In terms of inexperience, he’s comparable to Grant or Taylor. In terms of incompetence, he’s comparable to Buchanan or Hoover. In terms of deceitfulness, he’s comparable to Johnson or Nixon.
I will acknowledge that Trump is the most personally corrupt president our country has ever had. But we have had other corrupt administrations.
So Trump’s contribution to presidential history is he managed to combine every bad trait ever held by a president into a single person, without possessing a single off-setting good trait.
These aren’t the comparisons I would have made. Trump’s particular style of incompetence reminds me more of Harding or A. Johnson than of Hoover. And “deceitful” suggests a level of guile and cunning. I’d describe Trump as more of a blatant bullshitter than a deceiver.
Little_Nemo,
Ah, true, but no President has ever reached the Limbaugh level of speaking totally in bullshit. Most, or all, Presidents have concealed some facts with good or sometimes bad intent. FDR lied to protect his knowledge of the Japanese code, Nixon lied to protect himself, Clinton lied to cover up an embarrassing blow job. Technically Trump didn’t lie, In critical meetings he just babbled inane nonsense causing Tillerson to publicly label Trump “a fucking moron”.
Trump will become a bookmark in Presidential history because he is unique:
Trump lied about critical issues with deliberate intent - he lied about the severity of the pandemic so as not to alarm the public.
Trump so incessantly babbled bullshit (‘speech without regard to truth’) that the media credits him with thousands of lies - ie “I am the team”, 10% military raises, I created the new military with the most modern weapons, beautiful perfect health care, etc…
Trump engaged in a deliberate attempt to circumvent the election process and remain in office. He did so over time and by different means.
Trump did not accept the results of the election.
Trump is unique and will be used as the example of how our system protects itself - even in high school history classes.