Americans Hate the Present and Revere the Past

Positive Trump revisionism is part of a much broader trend.

by Jeremy Novak

I recently came across a poll that didn’t make any sense:

This means that, despite literally not achieving any meaningful infrastructure legislation, Trump gets almost the same credit as Biden on perceived infrastructure achievement. Biden, of course, actually got an historic infrastructure bill passed and has been touring the battleground states touting the local projects that are now moving forward thanks to his vision and support.

Seems a bit out of whack, right? Sure, there are major partisan splits here, but even so, the splits defy reality.

Biden should get all or at least almost all the credit for anything related to infrastructure. Yet, there he sits, essentially tied with Trump among the respondents, and even losing to Trump among independents.

The other part of the question is regarding “job creation”. Let’s also look at the facts here:

Pretty simple. Trump lost jobs (first president since Herbert Hoover in 1933, with 4 years of the Depression raging). Biden gained jobs. A lot of jobs. 14.8 million jobs. That’s a lot. 16.8 million more than Trump.

But let’s assume, as many in the media do in order to be “fair” to the non-Biden presidential candidate, that voters are actually high-information, not low-information, voters, and will pay attention to, and care about, nuance. So, let’s strictly take just the first 3 years of each candidate’s presidential term. This will not only do an apples-to-apples timeline comparison (as though Biden might possibly lose 16 million jobs in his last 12 months in office), but will also conveniently exclude the once-in-a-lifetime Covid pandemic from Trump’s record:

The margin is certainly narrowing here, but still a wide lead for Biden. BUT….let’s make yet another assumption—just for funsies— assuming that all voters all graduated from Harvard Business School. Let’s take only Trump’s first 3 years (thereby excluding the distortion of the Covid year), and Biden’s term after his first year, thereby excluding distortions of any potential Covid recovery enhancement.

This would be the equivalent of Biden fighting with his hand tied behind his back, since his timeline would be shorter. This 3-year vs. 2.25-year comparison is absurdly neutral, as it takes the best of Trump and worst of Biden. Heh-heh, no way Biden wins this one. Well, shit, actually:

Even in this ludicrous “apples-to-apples” approach, Biden still created more jobs under his term than did Trump. The point here is that there is no reality where Trump “promoted” job creation more than Biden, even if you exclude Covid. And yet, the poll suggests people feel otherwise.

Memories

Below is another recent poll result that was somewhat surprising at first, but again, makes more sense when you factor in America’s collective memory habits:

At least people do remember the oddity of Trump’s behavior as President. But it is interesting that “The economy” and “Immigration” are a significant 2nd and 3rd, ahead of “Jan. 6” or even “Covid”, which came in last? You’d think that those two things, which were literally once-in-a-lifetime events—perhaps even rarer than that—would stick in people’s minds a bit more than this, and be highly associated with the person that was in charge when they happened.

But as of today, it seems that Trump has paid very little price for these events. The same poll had the following question:

Considering Trump's first three years as "good", his term could be deemed "mostly good" despite the Covid-impacted final year.

But it’s difficult to make that leap with the understanding that most of America is “low-information”. It’s much more likely that they are answering off the cuff, as opposed to making a calculated pros vs. cons determination with this question.

The same poll asked a similar question about Joe Biden:

I wouldn’t have necessarily expected a plurality to say “mostly good”, but for that opinion to be minus-21 points is a head-scratcher—again, unless you consider the American electorate’s historical memory habits.

America’s memory habits and Trump

So what are these “collective memory habits” I keep referring to? See the below question, also from the same NYT poll:

More people in 2024 said that Trump “left the country better off” than otherwise. But, as you can see in the comparison follow-up, in 2020, nearing the end of Trump’s term and before Jan 6, more people said America was worse off, than four years previous.

What is happening here? Mostly it’s Americans looking fondly back on events, as opposed to living through them. Given the chaotic and unprecedented nature of Trump the politician, you’d think there would be an exception. But then again, it’s perhaps this historical nature of his presidency that emphasizes the rule.

Other unprecedented and chaotic events are looked back upon fondly. It’s largely forgotten or ignored how divided we were as a country just prior to and during WWII. It took Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor to nudge the country towards unification, and an impending U.S. victory to provide clarity as to what the right side of history would be, and thereby seal the deal. But we now talk about it as though everyone held hands and willed victory to fruition together.

Similar with the days just after our country’s founding. We look back now on those days with reverence and pride. But at the time, the political vitriol was fierce, even nastier than some of the language we see today. Thomas Jefferson was secretively orchestrating intense opposition against the policies of George Washington….in whose administration he was a high-ranking officer (Secretary of State).

Do approval ratings depict this effect?

Are these tendencies reflected in approval ratings? Let’s examine them to find out.

Let’s start with Trump. Here’s a chart from Gallup of Trump’s approval ratings throughout his presidency:

As you can see, pretty low overall. It starts at a high level, for him, in the 45 range, and quickly dips down, with a lot of time in the 30’s. As his term approached the end, it bumped up into the high 40’s, and even rebounded there again after being hit by Covid. Then a large dip as his post-election activities unsettled the nation, ending at 34. It should be mentioned that his 41.1 average is the lowest of any president in Gallup polling history.

Where is he at now? The NY Times poll has him at 43 favorable (strongly plus somewhat favorable). Note that you can’t do job approval ratings with someone that’s not on the job, so this is the next best comparison. For him, this is quite a bounce back from his final approval number of 34, and higher than his 41.1 average.

Overall, Trump is clearly benefiting from a “nostalgia bounce”.

Obama

Consider Trump’s predecessor, Barak Obama. He had higher overall ratings during his tenure than did Trump. But they did experience some volatile ebbs and flows that seem to correspond to the timing pattern I’m suggesting. When he took office in Jan 2009, his approval was a whopping 67. But over time, his approval dipped lower, went into the 50s after several months, and then stayed consistently in the 40's.

In the last year of his first term his approval went back well into the 50s, reaching highs from the last week of October through his 2nd inauguration in Jan 2013. After this, it went right back down within a few months, and stayed consistently in the low to mid 40’s for years. Then, it went right back up again in his final year, reaching 59% in his last week in office, the highest since July 2009. He began and ended each term on high notes.

Nowadays, he is considered a very popular public figure, ahead of many other contemporaries.

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Read the latest on The Banter:

Republicans Are Already Rejecting Trump's 2024 Loss*

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George W. Bush

Let’s look at George W. Bush’s approval ratings. These are more complicated, because they reflect two major acute historical events, something it can be argued that Obama didn’t have to deal with: the 9/11 terrorist attacks (Sept 11, 2001), and the beginning of the Great Recession (2008). As a result, he achieved some major highs and lows, but, in my opinion at least, you can still make out a similar pattern as with Obama and Trump.

The overall trend is down, largely because he got up to an unheard of 90 just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks; there’s only one way to go from there. But, again, as his first term ends in late 2004 and second one begins in late 2005, there is a sustained increase from low 40’s to mid 50’s.

Then there’s a consistent drop throughout his 2nd term, which gets continually worse as the damaging economic news that preceded the Great Recession starts coming in. But even in the midst of this historically bad economy, he gets a decent bump at the end of his term, going from an abysmal 25 to 34.

Currently, attributed somewhat to the magic of his hobby of painting, Bush is a very fondly reflected-upon former president with high approval ratings in the 60’s (scroll to the end of the linked article to see the Bush summary).

The power of nostalgia

The trends indicate presidents tend to get less popular as they govern, only to be considered favorably as their governing term ends, and even more favorably once they leave office. Americans get tired of the person in power until they’re faced with the prospect of losing that familiar presence.

Obviously, Trump didn’t get the benefit of this during his presidency, likely because of his unnerving personality and willingness to destroy norms. Jimmy Carter also didn’t get this benefit (although, even his approval ratings timeline is somewhat similar to the others). Both of them served one term and lost their reelection campaign. But both were under historically difficult conditions; Trump, due to his personal nature and the Covid pandemic, and Carter, due to the economic pain of Stagflation that gripped the nation and never seemed to go away.

But, overall, the message here is that even though it is surprising and unnerving to most observers, it shouldn’t too surprising, as Americans tend to reflect much more fondly back upon someone than they look at them during their time in power. Since Joe Biden is in his final year of the term, and the historical pattern of an approval bounce is likely to occur, we happen to have an interesting contest in 2024 between two candidates that may benefit from this effect. The election could be decided by who wins this nostalgia battle.

Jeremy Novak is the editor of Thinker at the Gates.