Clinton presided over eight years of peace and prosperity, with dropping crime rates, rising home ownership, important progress in diplomacy (Northern Ireland, the Middle East), and U.S. prestige the highest it had been in years. He successfully stopped the genocide in Kosovo. With the exception of healthcare reform, he got most of what he wanted from Congress, incl. FMLA, NAFTA, an expanded EITC, the Brady Bill, CHIP, AmeriCorps, welfare reform, and a minimum wage hike. He was the first Democrat elected to a two full terms since FDR. He left behind a balanced budget and record surpluses.
Even offset by Monica, DADT, failing to capture or kill OBL and his out-the-door pardons, that’s a pretty impressive record - IMHO, far better than Monroe’s, in particular, and arguably even better than Jefferson’s (with the exception of the Louisiana Purchase, which as I’ve noted before flew in the face of Jefferson’s limited-government, states’-rights ethos).
My rankings say Clinton should be the next to go, so I’ll vote Clinton.
But if my three year-old self (“He plays the saxophone! He must be awesome!”) or my ten year-old self (“You argued about the Lewinsky scandal in the middle of the class prayer book! Stand up for him now!”) saw this, they’d bite/kick me and then change the vote to Cleveland.
Monroe shouldn’t be here, and Jefferson wasn’t nearly as good a president as he was a founding father. And I’m not a huge LBJ fan. But of everyone left…’
Well, it pretty much became certain that a few losers would float to the top when Reagan got voted off the island. I think Cleveland got this far by not knowing enough to complain about. Therefore, I hope he makes top 10.
LBJ
I was never a big Clinton fan and voted against him twice, and I certainly don’t think he was one of our top 10 presidents. The “peace & prosperity” defense didn’t save Reagan from an early exit, tragically; and Clinton was even more polarizing than Ronnie.
But… he’s not the only one who doesn’t belong in the top 10. LBJ does. Monroe, arguably, does for the influence he had on the geopolitics of the western hemisphere for 150 years. Nothing against Cleveland, but he just didn’t have the same lasting influence.
Cleveland this round, then once he’s gone I’ll jump on the Clinton wagon.
It looks like either Johnson or Clinton will be ejected. These two have similarities: Both had moral failings and were noted instead for great political skill. (Opposite to Cleveland.) Both achieved much legislative success, but results were marred by catastrophes: Vietnam for LBJ; GOP victory in 2000 for WJC. The question is how much blame to assign.
It seems to me that recent politics shows that GOP can control Congess with 50 Senators, while Democrat Party needs 60 – simply because one side knows how to play hardball Parliamentary-style politics, and the other side refuses. If Clinton was such a great politician, why couldn’t he teach the Democrats to beat the GOP at their game? If “political skill” means “promoting unity”, does anyone believe Clinton accomplished that? Much of Clinton’s legislative success was with “right-of-center” policies that had support from GOP. The prosperity of his term was due in part to encouragement of a credit bubble.
In a future 1-paragraph summary of Clinton’s administration, the key item may be just that it led to the unfortunate GWB administration.
EL BE JAY. I suppose more because he betrayed campaign promises than because of anything he actually did or didn’t do. I don’t have to be rational in these choices do I?
“Hey, hey, ho, ho, LBJ has got to go,” said the voters. And so he did.
George Washington (None, 1789-1797)
Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican, 1801-1809)
James Monroe (Democratic-Republican, 1817-1825)
James Polk (Democrat, 1845-1849)
Abraham Lincoln (Republican, 1861-1865)
Grover Cleveland (Democrat, 1885-1889, 1893-1897)
Theodore Roosevelt (Republican, 1901-1909)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Democrat, 1933-1945)
Harry S. Truman (Democrat, 1945-1953)
Dwight Eisenhower (Republican, 1953-1961)
William Jefferson Clinton (Democrat, 1993-2001)
Eliminated Presidents:
James Buchanan (Democrat, 1857-1861)
Franklin Pierce (Democrat, 1853-1857)
Andrew Johnson (National Union, 1865-1869)
Warren Harding (Republican, 1921-1923)
Millard Fillmore (Whig, 1850-1853)
Richard Milhous Nixon (Republican, 1969-1974)
Herbert Hoover (Republican, 1929-1933)
Ronald Reagan (Republican, 1981-1989)
Andrew Jackson (Democrat, 1829-1837)
Rutherford Hayes (Republican, 1877-1881)
Ulysses Grant (Republican, 1869-1877)
John Tyler (Whig, 1841-1845)
James Earl Carter (Democrat, 1977-1981)
James Madison (Democratic-Republican, 1809-1817)
Martin Van Buren (Democrat, 1837-1841)
Woodrow Wilson (Democrat, 1913-1921)
Calvin Coolidge (Republican, 1923-1929)
John Adams (Federalist, 1797-1801)
Benjamin Harrison (Republican, 1889-1893)
Gerald Ford (Republican, 1974-1977)
Zachary Taylor (Whig, 1849-1850)
George Herbert Walker Bush (Republican, 1989-1993)
John Quincy Adams (Democratic-Republican, 1825-1829)
Chester Arthur (Republican, 1881-1885)
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Democrat, 1961-1963)
William McKinley (Republican, 1897-1901)
William Howard Taft (Republican, 1909-1913)
Lyndon Baines Johnson (Democrat, 1963-1969)
Still James Monroe. Cleveland’s honest anti-imperialism endears him to me, even if I think his economic policies were wrongheaded.
Voting closes Wednesday at 2 PM. Elections will be suspended for Christmas Day, so the following election (for the first of the top 10 to be removed) will end next Monday.