Contemporaneous assessments are not particularly reliable forecasts of their actual consequentiality.

From Trump’s Approval Rating Is Incredibly Steady. Is That Weird Or The New Normal? by Geoffrey Skelley. Interesting in a speculative way throughout. The accompanying data is even more striking in a way.

Click to enlarge.

Break free from the anchoring effect of the focus on Trump. There are a couple of intriguing oddities here.

I have always known that Nixon was vilified by the press in his time. However, simultaneously, many of his policies were actually widely supported by the public, even though despised by experts and the chattering class. Ever since his resignation in 1974, he has been the bête noire of all right-thinking members of the Mandarin Class and inside the beltway talking heads. Nixon is held up as the archetype of evil politicians. There are a few thinkers out there who will take the contra point, but the default position is "Nixon = Bad".

But in terms of the contemporaneous popularity during their presidencies, of the thirteen presidents since World War II, Nixon holds the fifth position in their then popularity.

And if we use Nixon as the break point for the modern era (globalized trade, floating currencies, reentry of China into the international system, etc.), Nixon is the third most popular president among those nine presidents.

In contrast, Truman was known to have low popularity during his own terms as president and was controversial among many parts of the electorate but his standing among historians has steadily risen in the decades since. He is now generally held in quite high regard in most historical/political quarters. However, he has the lowest median contemporaneous public popularity among all post-war presidents.

Solon told Croesus "Count no man happy until he be dead." Seems we need a modern corollary, "Count no president respected until he has been long dead."

The reputation of presidents, like that of books, art, ideas, like scientific discoveries, often only comes into focus years and decades later. Contemporaneous assessments are not particularly reliable forecasts of their actual consequentiality.