CT Blue

It’s official. The American Historical Society announced today that it had taken a poll of its members, and there was surprising unanimity: Donald Trump is the worst president in American History. Well, actually, Donald Trump will be the worst president in American history, once he’s sworn in.

“There was a bit of debate about whether we should declare him the worst before his inauguration”, an Historical Society spokesperson said, “but in the end, we reached consensus that there was really no reason to wait, since he was such a clear winner….er… loser”.

Trump replaces George W. Bush as the Society’s worst president ever. Bush, unlike Trump, was not a unanimous pick for the highly coveted award. A history professor from Bowdoin College held out for Franklin Pierce, stating that while he saw the merits of the argument for Bush, as a matter of institutional pride, he felt it was important to stick up for a Bowdoin alum. That same professor was recently quoted as saying that “next to Trump, Pierce looks like Lincoln”.

The professors pointed to a variety of reasons for their unanimous decision. “We’ve had mentally ill presidents in the past”, one pointed out, “but you can argue that Lincoln’s occasional depression was part of what made him great, and while Andy Jackson was a bit of a megalomaniac, he simply can’t compare to Trump. ”

Another pointed out “that there’s no indication that any other president ever solicited payments from foreign powers, something that the constitution forbids, Trump has been pretty open about it, and then there’s the whole collusion with Russia thing prior to the election. It appears that a foreign power will have something on the president of the United States, and that as a result he may be forced to do its bidding, though I do admit that if the collusion did come out, it’s quite likely that Congress would do nothing about it.”

Many also felt that using the presidency for personal enrichment was a bit tacky, to say the least. Others pointed out that while there have been ill prepared presidents in the past, no prior president has ever lacked so much of the basic knowledge needed to do the job. “This guy makes George W. Bush look like a genius”, noted one historian.

Others pointed out that while most former presidents, with the possible exception of George Washington, sometimes told a lie, Trump will be the first president who has never told the truth.

The historians were nearly unanimous in their opinion that Trump will not hold his crown for long. As the Society’s spokesman observed: “We all thought you couldn’t do worse that George W, but the Republican Party managed to field a slew of candidates, each one of whom was worse than W, and from that pack they managed to select the very worst. We’re confident that the next Republican president will be even worse than Trump.”

Journalists attending the press conference at which the Society announced its conclusion went away puzzled. They noted that while all of the points the Society made about Trump were well founded as a matter of fact, that facts themselves clearly didn’t matter anymore, and that to them, Trump’s presidency was looking more normal by the day. Trump himself tweeted: “History on the way out. No one reads it and no one learns anything from it. So repetitious. Sad!”