Bloodworth: History to define Trump’s legacy
By Jeff Bloodworth
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Donald Trump left the White House with a clear, early verdict on his presidency: a devastating low 29 percent approval rating. Plummeting popularity and the Jan. 6 insurrection freed the greater public, pundits and the press to excoriate the president as he left office. Though journalists often pen the first draft of history, their collective wisdom seldom endures.
Derided as a corrupt, out-of-his-depth bumpkin, Harry Truman’s approval ratings were mired at 32 percent when he left office. A generation later, historians reconsidered the conventional wisdom and turned Truman into a national folk hero. There is no reverse Newtonian iron law governing presidential reputations. What goes down does not inevitably go up; nevertheless, President Trump’s historical legacy is anything but cemented.