What’s surprising about spending a trillion dollars and getting a result slightly better than before you spent the trillion dollars?
During a very rocky period when the states could easily have gone their separate ways, and wanted to, he held the union together by force of his personal prestige, and then gave the example on how to leave with dignity. It was no easy task to get Hamilton, Jefferson and Adams to work together. No one else could have done that. He envisioned trade networks and avoided and set the tone for avoiding entangling alliances. The only reason the current constitution was ratified was because George Washington put his personal prestige behind it and agreed to be president under it. As a Federalist, which his own state would soon repudiate. He was the primary founder of a small country and the way that he founded it gave it the potential to be the most important country in the world. No mean feat. And he did it without letting his enormous ego get the better of him even once.
English Canadian, I take it?
I’ll say LBJ was the “greatest” (for good or ill) POTUS in the last 60 years. I’m a little more partial to Truman for foreign policy reasons, but in general, I agree with what Truman, Johnson, and Humphrey were doing in moving the USA away from an de jure racist state. That said, a lot of Americans hate LBJ immensely–the “liberalism” that the conservative movement exists to fight is pretty much exactly LBJ’s domestic policy. So there is a better than even chance that any Yank you meet will be worse than indifferent to him.
For what?
Lincoln or FDR. Washington & Teddy just behind. Clinton is probably top 10, but not a serious contender. LBJ deserves a lot of credit for his domestic policy…foreign policy, not so much. Nixon is a bit better than his reputation, but seriously a candidate? You have to be kidding me. It’s only the current state of the GOP that makes him look sane.
Speaking as a foreigner, I regard LBJ rather disdainfully solely because of the Vietnam War, a disaster he is largely responsible for.
Vietnam was vastly more ruinous, and just as dishonest, as the Iraq War.
To my mind the only reasonable answers to the question are Washington and Lincoln, and everyone else is way behind.
William Henry Harrison had nary a scandal, bad decision, or malaprop as President. My vote goes to him.
I wish I thought of that.
Exactly. The effect to dollar spent ratio is wayyyyy out of whack. The taxpayers got little value for their money.
Such programs only provide basic survival and are not geared towards people pulling themselves out of poverty. In fact, it deters it.
Give someone just enough kibble so they’ll have little motivation to improve on their own, and do it at the expense of the more capable elements. Then that underclass will typically out-breed other segments of the society which increases the base of the pols providing the kibble. It’s a vicious, vicious circle. Bread and circuses. Talk about dehumanizing.
This may astonish you, but Quebec doesn’t take kindly to terrorism.
I’d say we get more value out of it then we do spending on aircraft carriers or nuclear weapons we most likely won’t use. The fact is besides Medicare and Social Security, none of the Great Society programs actually use all that much money up considering huge chunks of the federal discretionary budget are taken up by the military, infrastructure, and other non-Great Society program.
Why would providing health care to the poor under Medicaid so that they don’t go bankrupt should they fall into illness or an accident prevent people from pulling themselves out of poverty? Why would ensuring children are nourished through food stamps and thus will actually be able to pay attention in school prevent them pulling out of poverty?
So then what would you propose to do in lieu of the Great Society? The status quo before Great Society wasn’t alleviating poverty either.
But under it we weren’t spending billions. The value to cost ratio is highly persuasive to not initiate the program.
Really? I would think any state would be proud to be the home of the president who gave us Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act.
Of course, on the other hand, there was Vietnam.
I have walked through the rubble of the pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan that he destroyed with a cruise missile… a plant that was making anti-malaria medication in a desperately poor country. I wouldn’t give him anywhere near a B+.
Lincoln was our greatest president.
My vote is for Lincoln. I was going to pick Washington but he didn’t become president until 1789. Both had a hand in our most trying times.
Worth mentioning, though it was long before he was president, was the electrification of rural Texas. No small feat.
I vote FDR. Followed by Lincoln then Washington.
Do you oppose all Great Society programs then? The ones we have spent the most money on such as Medicare and expansion of Social Security have been the most effective.
Nothing. Did I say it was surprising? But it might surprise pkbites.
didn’t William howard taft get stuck in the white house bathtub. that’s impressive