Months before the November election, a research study with which I was involved asked respondents which of 10 historical presidents they wished were in the Oval Office today.
To prevent “recency” bias, we kept the list to former presidents whose legacies are largely defined: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy.
Lincoln topped the list by a significant margin. When we probed for why, most of the answers had to do with Lincoln’s steady hand in preserving the republic through a time of great division. In a country that once again is divided, that’s the medicine for which many Americans of all political persuasions are reaching.
Given those findings, I find President-elect Donald Trump’s recent magnanimity toward his…
