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Vindicated/Vilified by History! Which President was the best?
joshofalltrades
Class TraitorSmoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
Class TraitorSmoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
The Bernie thread started talking about ranking the Presidents and so I thought it might be a fun idea to debate and discuss which Presidents are actually the best, and which were incompetent buffoons who were way out of their depth.
But the thread would be kind of boring if it was just a poll over which Presidents you like or hate, so I'd like to open it up to discussion of all politicians. Perhaps some were far ahead of their time but didn't get credit for it in their own day, and perhaps others were lauded at the time but have been shown to be utter cretins. The point of this thread is to learn more about the historical figures that have made our country greater or ultimately perpetuated awfulness -- especially if most people have never heard of them before.
Do you think a politician was underrated? Tell us why! Do you think one gets way too much credit in the public consciousness? Explain your reasoning!
For instance, Dwight D. Eisenhower is commonly seen as an "ehhhh" President. Never ranked terribly highly or in the lowest of lows. But beneath Ike's affable exterior lay the heart of a master politician; someone who ended the Korean War, who balanced the budget by refusing to cut taxes or raise defense spending, who kept us out of conflict with Southeast Asia, and sponsored/signed the first major Civil Rights bill since Reconstruction.
Is he a little bit boring when compared to some of the more visionary Presidents? Maybe. But Ike got shit done and kept America out of war by keeping a cool head, and I say that deserves some recognition.
But the thread would be kind of boring if it was just a poll over which Presidents you like or hate, so I'd like to open it up to discussion of all politicians. Perhaps some were far ahead of their time but didn't get credit for it in their own day, and perhaps others were lauded at the time but have been shown to be utter cretins. The point of this thread is to learn more about the historical figures that have made our country greater or ultimately perpetuated awfulness -- especially if most people have never heard of them before.
Do you think a politician was underrated? Tell us why! Do you think one gets way too much credit in the public consciousness? Explain your reasoning!
For instance, Dwight D. Eisenhower is commonly seen as an "ehhhh" President. Never ranked terribly highly or in the lowest of lows. But beneath Ike's affable exterior lay the heart of a master politician; someone who ended the Korean War, who balanced the budget by refusing to cut taxes or raise defense spending, who kept us out of conflict with Southeast Asia, and sponsored/signed the first major Civil Rights bill since Reconstruction.
Is he a little bit boring when compared to some of the more visionary Presidents? Maybe. But Ike got shit done and kept America out of war by keeping a cool head, and I say that deserves some recognition.
joshofalltrades on
Vindicated/Vilified by History! Which President was the best? 207 votes
Franklin D. Roosevelt
21%
44 votes
Abraham Lincoln
29%
61 votes
George Washington
12%
25 votes
Thomas Jefferson
1%
3 votes
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt
15%
32 votes
Woodrow Wilson
0%
2 votes
Barack Obama
8%
17 votes
Ronald Reagan
1%
4 votes
John F. Kennedy
1%
4 votes
Other
7%
15 votes
0
Posts
FDR was easily the best of the 20th century at the very least.
The space race kind of overshadowed all of that in the public eye, and the guy was maybe the most charismatic President we ever had.
Also, getting assassinated tends to get some sympathy points.
But yeah he was kind of a shit.
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
Yep. I'm on this train as well.
I'm very boring with the top of my list, 1. Lincoln 2. Washington 3. FDR
As for overrated presidents, I think Kennedy is usually pretty overrated. He was good, but I don't know that he was great. Cuban Missile Crisis was obviously a thing, and We choose to go to the moon is still one of my favorite speeches, but he usually gets kicked a bit above his pay grade. Oh also Reagan, Reagan was a bad president at best and he constantly gets shoved into the top 10 which is just absurd.
Reagan is actually in my bottom 3, I think. It's tough to top Buchanan's awfulness, but we eventually (sort of) got past it, and we're still dealing with Reagan's bullshit today.
His best stuff is really the environmentalism and trust busting.
and I would agree
I would go so far as to say that he's absolutely the best postwar president
Usually he's lauded by conservatives more than liberals.
But as the liberalist libby lib that ever libbed, I really like the guy. If modern Republicans were modeled after Ike rather than Reagan, I might consider tossing them a vote once in a while.
Probably not the most overrated president just because Reagan and Jackson exist, but putting him anywhere near the top 5 is absurd.
Buchanan will forever be the worst, unless a future president ends the union/world and another one doesn't claw it back together. And he's the only President from PA too. Sorry America.
Reagan is certainly bottom quarter, it gets hard to rank them down there though. Compounded by, as you said, the real effects we are still feeling today from Reagan's presidency. Makes it harder to be impartial.
Saint Ronnie is a posionous lie, but I don't know that he can really beat out Jackson or Andrew Johnson for a bottom spot.
I think I'd go with A. Johnson for worst, his abandonment of reconstruction has been fucking us for 150 years.
I could only pick 10 poll options, because that's all the forums will allow. I would put all of them up if I could.
I tried to pick a balance of typical top 10 choices with some unconventional ones because it would be weird of me to only put up the ones that I personally think are great.
The Other option is right there.
(LBJ was pretty good but by all accounts a total asshole)
Didn't kill enough kids today?
He managed to be a credible thorn in the side of the reigning superpower.
A shame his warnings against party were not taken to heart as much as his term limits... but I suspect weariness after eight years helped.
Lincoln would be my vote some days too though... or most days, if we consider only achievements in office.
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Being an asshole is a plus in my book. He was the asshole we needed for the time
I think that's mainly just because he has an R next to his name
if they knew anything about his record, or how parties were structured in the 50's, they wouldn't like him
like I cannot imagine any modern Republican being aware of his farewell address and thinking highly of him
and yeah, agreed--if the GOP of today was full of people like Ike, I'd be much happier with the state of our government
Pretty much
Jefferson Adams and Madison all had more eventful presidencies
I feel like Adams gets shorted in his contributions
And National Parks!
Pretty great stuff.
Never enough
it wasn't his abandonment which really fucked us, though
Grant's reconstruction policies were working until the party decided they'd rather have Hayes in office than continue Grant's reconstruction efforts
He was also freakishly charismatic, incredibly intelligent, and somehow managed to be a populist without ginning up the negative aspects.
The Hayes decision was probably the worst policy decision to happen in america post civil war, with internment being a close second of course.
yeah
although, realistically, Tilden won the popular vote and certainly would have tried to end Reconstruction himself if he'd been elected, but it would have been nice if the GOP had actually fought for it
He had a curiously endearing nickname however. "The Old Public Functionary".
I think my top three are kinda boring, but:
Lincoln: Dealing with what was probably the greatest existential crisis to the US while making a substantial leap forward on a matter of principle
FDR: I don't think WW2 directly threatened the US like the civil war did, but his determination to oppose the Axis had good benefits for millions of people
Washington: Because I respect people who go full Cincinnatus
Bottom Three:
Jackson: Trail of tears aside, vetoing the National Bank not only helped cause a recession while he was still alive, it helped lay some of the seeds for the Great Depression
Buchanan: A poster child for the price of inaction in either way
Nixon: This was a hard one, but I think all the illegal stuff he did didn't help, as well as kinda sending the drug war into overdrive as a way of discrediting his critics has had terrible consequences
Lincoln's achievements are legendary - putting the US back together and ending slavery - but ultimately I think that Teddy's achievements set the stage for the 20th century. His Square Deal broke up the trusts, regulated industry, established standards for food and drugs, created national parks, and some of the things that he tried to push for were higher inheritance taxes to prevent the extremely rich from creating a perpetual de facto aristocracy, postal banking to compete with local banks, he wanted to cut down on injunctions against striking unions, for corporation law to be national rather than by state, a federal income tax, etc. He was the first modern Progressive President, and in some ways he was more of a lefty than politicians today.
If you're judging a President solely by what they did in office, Teddy was absolutely remarkable,
Adams at least refused to use slave labor and was outspoken about how he found it abhorrent. Too bad he tried to keep the issue out of national politics because it was "too divisive" or whatever, but he was far more enlightened on the issue than most of his contemporaries.
This one is difficult for me, but depending on my mood it's either FDR's internment of Japanese-American citizens, or Woodrow Wilson's occupation of Haiti