Who are your top 5 worst presidents (must be 20 years removed)

[UAH]

but this time, he totally means it when he talks about the no spin zone /s

My feeling upon seeing the article regarding the book is ....Why I would be interested in anything Bill O’Reilly writes or says? There just has to be more balanced information out there.

 

[92tide]

Who is a good Republican president not named Lincoln?

define good

hw bush wasn’t a total train wreck. ford and eisenhower weren’t either.

regardless, george w was a dumpster fire. somehow the gop figured out how to make that dumpster fire seem quaint in comparison

 

[AWRTR]

define good

hw bush wasn’t a total train wreck. ford and eisenhower weren’t either.

regardless, george w was a dumpster fire. somehow the gop figured out how to make that dumpster fire seem quaint in comparison

You need a definition of good? No president is perfect, but one that left the country better than they found it. The fact that you had to use the qualifier "wasn't a total train wreck" is telling.

 

[92tide]

You need a definition of good? No president is perfect, but one that left the country better than they found it. The fact that you had to use the qualifier "wasn't a total train wreck" is telling.

that’s to differentiate them from the total train wrecks

 

[JDCrimson]

Wasnt Teddy Roosevelt a Republican? He was pretty good.

 

[mdb-tpet]

Wasnt Teddy Roosevelt a Republican? He was pretty good.

Yes, BUT, and there's a big but here, he's not anything like a currrent Republican these days, he's more like Biden:

"In his role as President, Roosevelt expanded the powers of the executive office. He functioned as a moderate Progressive, effecting legislation which was pro-environment, supporting labor in the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, and "trust-busting" more than 40 holding companies during his terms in office. Behind all of these actions was his firm sense of moral correctness. The theme of his administration was fairness for all; he promised a "square deal" for all groups of people. This made him an enemy to the big business interests, who had been favored under McKinley's administration, and a hero to the "common man." "

Theodore Roosevelt | American Experience | PBS

Read about the life of the United States' 26th president.

www.pbs.org

 

[JDCrimson]

Yeah, Teddy would be as homeless as Liz Cheney in today's Republican Party...

Yes, BUT, and there's a big but here, he's not anything like a currrent Republican these days, he's more like Biden:

"In his role as President, Roosevelt expanded the powers of the executive office. He functioned as a moderate Progressive, effecting legislation which was pro-environment, supporting labor in the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, and "trust-busting" more than 40 holding companies during his terms in office. Behind all of these actions was his firm sense of moral correctness. The theme of his administration was fairness for all; he promised a "square deal" for all groups of people. This made him an enemy to the big business interests, who had been favored under McKinley's administration, and a hero to the "common man." "

Theodore Roosevelt | American Experience | PBS

Read about the life of the United States' 26th president.

www.pbs.org

 

[CrimsonTheory]

To me, no such thing as good and bad president, just terrible and less terrible. The modern presidents have all been terrible. I don't know if I have the stomach to even call them "presidents" just corporate stooges.

 

[Padreruf]

Andrew Jackson comes out on the top for me...

 

[DzynKingRTR]

Andrew Jackson comes out on the top for me...

How can you hate on a guy that beat his would be assassin with a cane after the shots misfired

 

[92tide]

Yeah, Teddy would be as homeless as Liz Cheney in today's Republican Party...

or a hungry and disheveled jesus in a church

 

[mdb-tpet]

How can you hate on a guy that beat his would be assassin with a cane after the shots misfired

Trail of tears for one.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

A YouTube craze of Ranking tiers has gotten everyone ranking presidents. As someone who loves history I’m always drawn to these debates. However as humans we tend to judge those who we lived through harder. I mean the typical conservatives will say “ Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden” and your typical democrat will most likely say “Reagan, W, Nixon, and Trump”. So for this debate let’s keep it at they have to be 20 years out of office. So Clinton is the furthest you can go. This kind of gives you the full effect of their reign as president

Here is how historians rank them
Presidents

I know it would be easy to say Buchanan and Henry Harrison because Buchanan couldn’t prevent the Civil War and Harrison was dumb enough to give the longest inaugural speech in cold rainy weather and died a month later. But I’m excluding them because I think the Civil War happens anyway and judging Henry on a month of sickness is a little too harsh.

so here are mine

1) Woodrow- Spanish flu denier, and allowing the lost cause to infect public education is enough for me. Plus reading about him in depth makes me think Taft and Teddy were better suited for WW1 and dealing with the European powers in an effort to prevent Versailles from being as bad as it was.

2) Nixon- I think Nixon did some very good things and probably was a guy who could have been one of the best presidents of the Cold War era but Watergate and the great abuse of power is too much to overlook. I think it is a huge stain that just can’t be ignored.

3) Hoover- easy one to argue for being horrible. But I think his decision to down play the public suffering and to push policies that were clearly not working is hard to overlook as being a horrible leader. I think the Depression was inevitable but there were clearly more sympathetic measures that could have been implemented to give the country more hope.

4) Fillmore- just a very unimpressive leader. He really exemplifies how some people are better VPs but very weak presidents

5) This is where it’s hard. Part of me wants to say Carter or grant but Carter had a tough job facing him before he got in office and it progressively got worse. Most issues were totally out of his control. Grant had nothing but scandal but at the same time was one of the best Reconstruction presidents in that period. I think this is where I would probably put anotherJohn Tyler or Gerald Ford type of never was meant to be President types. I know there are those who succeed when they are supposed to like Teddy and LBJ but far too many are like the three I mentioned who just sit until their time is up and don’t do anything. I think Ford is the easiest choice between him and Tyler because pardoning Nixon was career suicide for a guy that was seeking another term.

1) Warren Harding
2) Woodrow Wilson
3) LBJ (no, not LeBron James)
4) Andrew Johnson
5) James Buchanan

Aside from the exclusion of - basically - anyone after Clinton, we aren't even dealing with 41 guys we can really rank. William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, and James Garfield - IN MY OPINION - cannot even be ranked. Nor, in all honesty, is it really fair to rank Gerald Ford, who walked into a bad situation and was President for about 16 months and then spent the rest of the time running for the office.

That's just my two pennies.

The one surprise above is probably Lyndon, so allow me to explain. Had he handled Vietnam correctly, LBJ might rank in the top five Presidents of all-time. But having said that, his biggest accomplishment - Civil Rights - well, the ball was already rolling thanks to his three predecessors, and in essence, he used the martyrdom (for lack of a better word) of JFK to ensure it passed. He was on the record in the past as a segregationist (not uncommon for the time), did the smart thing politically (and right morally), but he's almost like the guy who shows up for the party at the last minute where they're drawing for a new car, purchases one ticket that he throws into the bucket - and son of a gun if his ticket isn't drawn about five minutes later, so he looks like a genius. All of the heavy lifting was done by his predecessors and in Congress you had folks like Dirksen and Hubert and others pushing it through. It's not that he deserves NO credit for it, but it's about like saying GHW Bush deserves credit for the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And Vietnam was such a diabolical miscalculation that if not for the CRA and VRA, he would probably be below Harding. Teapot Dome was horrible, but he didn't kill 58,000 of his fellow citizens in a futile whatever it was.

 

[Bazza]

It's said he could simultaneously write in Latin with one hand....while writing in Greek with the other.

Happy Birthday!

James Garfield

The 20th President of the United States