I’m curious to know which U.S. Presidents Dopers consider the best and worst. I’d like to keep the discussion limited to those who served since 1900. List your top and/or bottom 3, and any reasons you may want to provide.
It might help if you define best and worst.
Leadership? Politics? Morality? Ability to lie and get away with it? Comparing their campaign promises to what they actually did/did not do in office?
Sorry I wasn’t clear about that. I’m not really looking to impose my own criteria. Whatever forms your personal opinion is what I’m after. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a deep discussion (but it could be.) I’m really just curious to see if there is any consensus on either side of the fence.
Worst Presidents as people, or worst Presidencies, though?
Presendencies.
Well it seems as if somebody has to start this off:
Best
- John Kennedy
- Franklin Roosevelt
- Theodore Roosevelt
Worst
- George Dubya Bush
- Richard Nixon
- Warren G Harding
Best:
- FDR
- Truman
- LBJ (who actually accomplished everything JFK tried to do. Vietnam was a mistake, but he ended up realizing that).
Worst
- Dubya
- Warren Harding (Both Bush and Harding were in over their head, but Harding realized it, while Bush did not).
Best:
-
FDR - WWII, doing the moral/morale thing during the depression
-
Truman, ending WWII, making tough choices in the aftermath, desegregating the military
-
Clinton would go here if he hadn’t made us all aware that he had oral sex in the Oval Office and took us through every detail of it & lied about it & hadn’t missed on Rwanda so badly
3.Eisenhower - like choosing vanilla - but I think he “got it” unlike the 3-4 administrations that followed him that you didn’t need to militarily confront communism at every turn to be effective and strong. It was a tough time in many ways and he earned a gentleman’s C+/B- adequate & made no horrific misteps.
Worst
-
Nixon if you have to resign and no one else in 230 some-odd years before and since never has … you stink
-
Hoover - if you end up in a world-wide Depression and are so bad that you set-up your rival opposing party for the next 20 years - even if it is only partially your fault … you stink.
-
Bush II
Best.
-
FDR
-
Bill Clinton
-
Jimmy Carter
Worst
-
Warren G Harding
-
George W Bush
-
Ronald Reagan
Best
- FDR
- TR
- Truman
- LBJ
- Ike
Worst - Nixon
- W
- Hoover
- Clinton - for disrespecting his own office. Only an idiot would diddle with the office staff in this age of sexual harassment.
- Bush the first - did nothing for the country on the domestic front and left Saddam in power, after calling him “as bad as Hitler” right up to the war.
Others: Reagan, Carter, Ford, Taft, Wilson, Coolidge, Harding, JFK. I hope I didn’t miss anybody.
Best -
FDR - Took us successfully through the two toughest challenges of the 20th Century - The Depression and WWII.
Teddy Roosevelt - Introduced America as a Major Power to be reckoned with.
Truman - The Marshall Plan, by itself, should earn him a spot in the Top 3. In addition, he took over for FDR, and shepherded America through the Post-WWII years without letting us slide back into isolationism.
Reagan - As much as it pains me to say it, he was responsible for ending the Cold War by being able to come to terms with Gorbachev.
Worst
Harding - Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt.
Nixon - Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt - but at least opened a dialog with China, so he doesn’t get the top spot.
W - He had the world’s sympathy and support after 9/11, managed to piss it away by invading Iraq through either stupidity or outright deceit.
Coolidge - Did he ever do ANYTHING in office, other than hand Herbert Hoover the s*itbag that became the Depression?
Clinton (Honorable Mention) - If you’re gonna get hummers from the interns, don’tlie under oath about it. Only a personal foible, so it doesn’t really affect his Presidency rating.
Just my opinion.
Best
- Reagan
- FDR
- JFK
Worst
- Carter
- LBJ
Best:
- FDR
- Teddy
- Reagan
Worst:
- Harding
- Carter
- Nixon
W will probably come in between Harding and Carter in terms of worst-of, but I’ll hold off evaluation until he’s out of office.
**Theodore Roosevelt ** was our best President, but then I think he is our best ever.
Trust Buster, Peace Maker, brilliant historian, broke many of the racial barriers of his day, cleaned up the completely corrupt NY police force in his 2 years as president of the board of New York City Police Commissioners, prepared the US Navy as a top notch fleet for the first time as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy that actually ran the Navy for a Secretary that was an appointment only.
He brought peace to a violent winter coal strike and of course negotiated the ending of the Russo-Japanese War as a peace maker.
Teddy established the United States Forest Service, 42 million acres of national forests, 53 national wildlife refuges and 18 areas of “special interest”, including the Grand Canyon.
Roosevelt pushed Congress to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, as well as the Meat Inspection Act of 1906.
He built the Panama Canal and established our first overseas Naval Bases. He prepared the US to become a world power.
It is worth mention that another legacy he left us was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. as a Justice to the Supreme Court of the United States.
He was a great man and a great President.
I feel **Bush/Cheney ** represent the worst President since 1900. It is painful for me to detail how many ways I think these two have failed us and perverted the US government and ruined our hard earned reputation around the world.
Illegal wars, torture, funneling federal money to religious groups, funneling far more money to cronies, the sad lack of rapid response to Katrina, the hiding in our day of need on 9/11, torture, domestic spying, frightening detentions in Guantanamo, delaying our response to global warming by 8 years, being draft dodgers but starting and war for false reasons and sadly more.
Jim
The tops in my book:
FDR-He wasn’t perfect, but he was pragmatic and a problem solver. Not an ideologue, couldn’t be to solve the problems of a rapidly shifting grosspolitik. As Wargamer noted, he faced difficult situations, and was able to offer solutions.
HST- The single most difficult decison ever made by the head of a state.he did what he thought was in the best interests of his country and his allies. Was he right? Speculation answers no questions. The Marshall plan showed his ability to let people take leadership postions when it was best to be a secondary actor. MacArthur…should have fired that Prima Donna long before he did, though.
Eisenhower-Led ina time of seismic convulsions to the American body politic. Didn’t always get it right at first, but like FDR was willing to be shown a new direction on some issues. Lastly, he really did come to understand the peril of the growing muscle and influence of corporations…and warned us of the situation. Needless to say, it has come home to roost.
The worst:
Bush II-Unqualified to hold the office. Surrounded by incompetent self-serving operatives out to aggrandize their own wealth, power and influence. Makes Harding look honorable and emminently qualified.
Carter-Incompetent micro-manager, without the ability to skills to right the ship. Went halfway on most things. Funny, I like the man alot, but his presidency was inept. BTW, the only winning presidential candidate I have ever voted for…and I started in 1968…I’m a Cubs fan, too.
Nixon-He really deserves a higher (lower) rating because he was a scoundrel. But, I give the benefit of doubt to the disabled. He was, sadly, quite deranged. We are fortunate that no worse outcomes occurred under his miserable watch. He was America’s Nero.
Honorable mention:
Reagan-ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…Iran-Contra? Huh? ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…Deficit spending? Huh? The Laffer curve? Makes perfect sense to me. Ad infinitum. Yes, he did manage to bankrupt the Soviet Union, which is what he set out to do…and now, we have safer world???
Tycho
Best:
- FDR. Do I need to explain this one?
- Reagan. Hey, the 80’s were good for me and my family.
- Teddy R. The right man for the age.
Worst:
- Wilson. No one “flip-flopped” like Wilson did on WW1… and then F-ed it all up in the end-game. Of course, the stroke (or whatever) didn’t help him either.
- W. If the consequences of mis-playing WW1 (Hitler) weren’t so huge, W would be #1 for the sheer ineptness of his administration. It is difficult to think about something that W accomplished that was for the positive benefit of the country. All by himself, destroyed the moral and intellectual impulse for late 20th-century American conservatism.
- Carter. What W was for conservatives, Carter was for the New Deal. Became the face of “ineffective” American liberalism for the next 15 years. Aggressively campaigned for negative points after leaving the WH by positioning himself as the worlds ethics arbitrator until Sweden tried to purchase his silence by giving him a Nobel prize in moral vacuousness
I have no best list.
Worst (Purely in chronological order.):
[ul]
[li]Franklin Roosevelt: Failed to realize the Government will never shrink back to its original size once expanded. We’ve never fully recovered from the New Deal, which should have been a brief experiment ended entirely in the 1950s.[/li][li]John Kennedy: The pretty-boy moron who botched the whole Cuba scenario from the Bay of Pigs to the Missile Crisis, escalated Vietnam simply so he could have a crusade, and picked the Texan yahoo Johnson to be his VP.[/li][li]Lyndon Johnson: Escalated Vietnam for even less reason than Kennedy had, created the “Great Society” instead of solving any of the problems, and generally bullied his way through office. His “Daisy” ad was a masterpiece of propaganda for idiots.[/li][li]Richard Nixon: Slime inexplicably in human form. Abused the powers of office even worse and more egregiously than Bush is doing now and managed to get away mostly clean.[/li][li]Gerald Ford: Richard Nixon managed to get away mostly clean.[/li][li]Ronald Reagan: Completed the decline of the Republican Party into the platform for Religious Zealots. Pissed on Goldwater’s grave and planted a gaudy gold cross right in the middle of it.[/li][/ul]
Best:
- FDR
- Reagan
- Teddy Roosevelt
Worst:
- Johnson
- Nixon
- FDR (New Deal era)
Most overrated: JFK
Most underrated: Truman
Non American. so I suppose I don’t have the insight as many of you do. However, I am in agreement with poster #16 abover that Wilson must (oe should) rate in the lower level (maybe not #1) due to his belief that he had a mission in life outside running the USA.
I am sure you are taking poetic licence, but just to clarify, Barry Goldwater died May 29, 1998. Reagan was only pissing in his Depends[sup]TM[/sup] at that point.
Please note, I actually liked and will defend the Reagan presidency, but he did open the door to the ruination of the party. He brought the Theo-Cons too much into the fold.