As a politician, certainly. Reagan surrounded himself with crooked cronies.
- As a person,* Ronnie was generally accepted to be a great guy.
So the Op is wrong, yet again.
Altho I don’t totally agree with the rankings here, you assessments are generally sound, and 1000% better than the Ops.
Say what? The most damning line from your quote is this:
(emphasis added).
Your cite pretty directly contradicts your claim.
I disagree with your assessment of LBJ–He’s the one who got Civil Rights/Voting Acts passed, which JFK couldn’t, or more accurately wouldn’t have pushed (if you read about JFK he was against March on Washington, called MLK “ML Coon”, didn’t want to upset South, et al). LBJ also pushed War on Poverty. In short, LBK did more than JFK ever did, except for Space Race. LBJ was crude, with zero charisma, but got things done!
and Nixon was more progressive than people realize. Got EPA established, tried to get a form of Universal Health Coverage, initiated programs for Blacks, made truce with China
That depends on how you define “re-elected.”
If “re-elect” means “to elect for another term in office” then yes, he was.
If it means “to elect again” then no, he wasn’t.
And, yes, of course, this is nit-picky.
I would probably rank them LBJ, Reagan, Clinton in that order; with Obama, JFK and Nixon in a 2nd tier. (But the criterion is rather ambiguous.)
I often read here at SDMB that Obama was a super-charismatic candidate who won the Presidency easily. No. His super-charisma, along with voter fatigue over Bush’s several blunders, led him to victory despite the millions of voters who would never vote for a black man. (I’ve previously linked to an academic study that strongly supports this claim.)
Not to say you’re wrong, but this is news to me. Some think Nixon “should” have won Illinois and Texas. What Nixon state should JFK have won?
Count me as another who puts LBJ at the top. He wielded the carrot and stick better than anyone, knew which was needed for any particular Congressperson, and where to hit when the stick was required.
No way is Trump at the top of any measure of political talent. He is good at rabble rousing, but has never cracked a 50% approval rating*. He can lock in his base, but he doesn’t have the politicla talent to do anything else. The only way in which Trump is truly exceptional is that he has done so amazingly well with so little actual ability.
*with possible the exception a of few weeks early on where his surprise win made people think they had underestimated his abilities only to later determine that, no, they were right he really was that bad.
LBJ was the most talented at getting legislation done. Clinton was the best at getting people to like him.
Obama was ahead of McCain in the polls the entire race, Palin was a hail mary to combat the fact that McCain was a giant long shot against Obama. If anything Obama won in 2008 because Bush was hated so much.
I think Obama lead Romney the entire race too, but not completely certain about that.
Trump’s biggest accomplishment has been getting elected President. I won’t dismiss that but most of the people who held the office have accomplished that much. Getting elected doesn’t make Trump a political genius among Presidents.
How about Eisenhower? Or Grant? Or Taylor?
When it comes to foreign policy I dont like any of them. Truman could have embraced Vietnamese independence back in 1946 and stopped the Vietnam conflict right there. Eisenhower supported the toppling of an elected president in Iran which started the mess we are in ow. Kennedy tried to oust Castro which pushed him into being a hard line communist when he was trying to make friends with the US.
So I dont think any have been that good.
This, both parts. JFK was glamorous and charismatic, but only succeeded with glamour projects like the Peace Corps and NASA. LBJ, with all his experience as House Majority Leader and in the Senate, knew how to get legislation passed, and use JFK’s legacy to assist him. Foreign policy, especially Viet Nam for LBJ and Cuba for JFK, were their weak spots, and JFK didn’t live long enough to suffer the consequences.
Clinton wasn’t that great at policy - he and Hillary were going to re-do health care in the US, and that blew up and people figured out he was unable to tell the truth on a bet. He was great at taking credit for things - the economy did well without his doing much and then the Republicans took over Congress and balanced the budget and passed welfare reform and the rest of the Contract with America and he spent his time triangulating and getting impeached.
Those two are head and shoulders above the rest. Bush 41 was great at foreign policy, but bad at hardball politics. He wins Gulf War I, and then loses to a draft-dodger. Bush 43 - 9/11 and Iraq and the economy recovered from the dot-com bubble pop. Reagan knew what he wanted to do as President, and did it, but he set the stage to win the Cold War by being Reagan. Carter was in way over his head, and the country figured it out before 1980. Obama was the first Black President, but even with a majority in Congress couldn’t do better than Obamacare and jacking up the national debt. Nixon was too paranoid - Watergate ruined any chance he had at being considered a successful President. Plus, Watergate was stupid - he was going to win in a landslide anyway - why did CREEP bother? Truman and Eisenhower were not exactly care-taker Presidents, but they were products of the 40s in the 50s. Trump is too soon to tell if he will be remembered as anything other than “he drove Democrats crazy”.
Regards,
Shodan
The problem with putting LBJ at the top is that he benefited greatly from the death of JFK and the country’s outpouring of love for JFK gave his vice president a lot of room to manoever on things like the Great Society. Immediately after Kennedy’s death, Johnson’s approval rating was almost 80%, but by 1965 it was down to 60%, and it kept declining all the way to the mid-30’s. After he announced he wouldn’t run for re-election, it jumped back up over 40%. In the meantime, his disapproval rating slowly climbed from 5% immediately after Kennedy’s death all the way to over 50% by the last year of his Presidency.
It’s hard to see how that translates into ‘great politician’. The end result of his Presidency was to give Republicans the Presidency which they would keep, with one four-year gap, for a generation. Yes, he got major Democratic legislation passed in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination when his and the Democrat’s popularity were at all-time highs, but that goodwill was quickly squandered. Any president who presides over a constant decline in popularity, and then chooses not to run rather than lose the next election, is not a great politician. He was also unrefined, crude, and foul-mouthed. If he had been around in the twitter era, he might have been another Trump.
Reagan is #1 as far as I’m concerned, with Clinton a close second. Reagan’s popularity remained relatively high, even when the nation went into a deep recession to break inflation. After a tough first term that included the recession, Reagan was re-elected in one of the biggest landslides in history, taking 49 out of 50 states. And when he left office he was still popular enough to help launch his vice-President into the Presidency.
Clinton also expanded his margin in his second term, as did Nixon and Eisenhower. Clinton is perhaps the most gifted natural politician, but his personal failings keep him out of the top spot for me. A great politician wouldn’t have gotten into an affair with an intern, and damned sure wouldn’t have done her in the oval office. Clinton showed (and shows) terrible judgement when it comes to his sex life, and it hurt him badly while in office.
Both Bushes sucked as politicians. Bush 1 had a 91% approval rating a year from the election, and still lost. Huge gaffes like “Message: I care” (which in turn was uttered because of Bush’s reputation for being a cold fish and an aristocrat who didn’t care about the average person). Bush 1 also tried to run for President before and got stomped by Reagan. Not a great politician, but a good man.
Bush II was very good at campaigning and coming across as a ‘normal guy’. He was likeable and seemed relatively down-to-earth. But his political instincts were awful, and he had terrible speaking skills. He’s near the bottom of the list with his dad.
Nixon was a skilled politician but like Clinton had personal flaws that kept him from true greatness. Middle of the pack.
Obama was a great campaigner, but as a President he proved himself incapable of working with Republicans on many issues, and very early on retreated to ‘using his pen and a phone’, which means almost everything he did was undone by Trump. Also, he horribly mismanaged the rollout of Obamacare, and made gaffes that hardened opposition to him. Despite a friendly media environment and all kinds of help from people like Harry Reid who lied about Romney’s taxes and Candy Crowley who intervened on his behalf in a debate, he almost lost his re-election bid. Middle of the pack.
Carter actually got quite a lot done. Aside from the things already mentioned, he also appointed Paul Volcker to the fed (probably the best Fed Appointment in history) and started the de-regulation of trucking and airlines, which revolutionized both industries. On the negative side, he also was strongly anti-nuclear, and signed an executive order banning re-processing of nuclear fuel, which led to the nuclear waste problem and helped keep nuclear power from growing. As a result, Carter may be more responsible for climate change damage than any other president. Unfortunately, as a retail politician he was terrible. He gave speeches that were constant downers, and his Presidency was synonymous for ‘Malaise’ for years. He lost in a landslide to Reagan after only one term. And I don’t see how any one-term President could be considered great.
As for Trump… He has a party trick that got him a whole lot of support from a specific group, but as a working politician he alienates everyone around him, and he can’t keep quality people in his cabinet. His unforced errors in insulting half the country have him capped at a below-50% approval rating at a time when the U.S. economy has been the strongest since the 1990’s. The only way he wins the next election is if the Democrats shoot themselves in the foot.
A president with Trump’s economy should be sitting in the high 60’s or 70’s. Given where Trump is, he’s a really terrible politician.
So…
- Reagan
- Clinton
- Eisenhower
- Nixon
- Obama
- LBJ
- Bush II
- Bush 1
- Carter
- Trump
Lyndon Johnson was one of the most skilled politicians in American history, possibly in the history of great nations with legislative systems. And the OP has him dead last? That makes this a joke thread.
As I mentioned, LBJ benefited greatly from goodwill following JFK’s assassination. He started his presidency with an 80% approval rating and only a 5% disapproval rating. He also presided during a 26 year stretch in which Democrats had a stranglehold on the House and Senate.
Nonetheless, despite all that wind at his back, his approval ratings plummeted steadily and his disapproval rose, leading him to decline to run for another term rather than almost certainly lose. In his last year his approval rating was in the 30’s and his disapproval over 50%. Both recovered slightly after he announced he wouldn’t run.
So how exactly was he so great? He was a decent wheeler-dealer in backrooms, but as a retail politician he sucked.
Reagan was smart enough to get himself a top drawer Chief of Staff and a reasonable core cabinet and content himself with reading Peggy Noonan’s speeches. People loved him. The press ignored him and it didn’t make any difference what he did. The fact that he was a divorced, has-been ‘B’ movie actor who ratted out his friends to McCarthy didn’t matter. Or his fruitcake Interior Secretary who did not need to protect anything because Jesus would be back real soon. And the couple over at HUD who were shoveling money out the door to their friends. And Ollies girlfriend who was smuggling classified material in her panties and Reagan and Rumsfeld approving the sale of gas components to Saddam so he could gas the Kurds and the millions he got paid by the Japanese just after he left office. It didn’t matter because they loved him. BTW the other President they loved was Harding.
The Republicans wanted Reagan because he looked good in the office…well he did until Raisa Maximovna Gorbacheva and her husband Mikhail Gorbachev came to town. Then he and Nancy looked like the DC Hillbillies. Just a couple of actors trying to play the part.
So, I believe Reagan was a modestly successful President who should rank in the middle third as Presidents go, but he wasn’t a politician in the class of LBJ.
It was a bad decision but Truman had good reasons for making. France was insistent on re-establishing its empire after WWII. Truman needed France as a part of plans for rebuilding Europe and resisting the Soviet Union. Supporting French efforts to keep Vietnam was the price Truman had to pay.
The dumb decision was for us to stay in Vietnam after the French left in 1954. Our problem was that the Truman and Eisenhower administrations had sold our intervention in Vietnam as a fight against communism rather than a fight for French imperialism.