Who is Your Favorite U.S. President?

In no particular order...

JFK - the ultimate idealist
FDR - the ultimate pragmatist
TR - champion of the people
Truman - seamlessly continued FDR's success
Jefferson - the most brilliant American philosopher?

If I had to pick one, I guess it would be FDR, leading our nation through the hardest possible times.

Clinton has been my favorite during my lifetime (born '77).

GW has to be the first,FDR close second .for WW2....JFK..the Cuban missile crisi,best handled,hate to think that happend now.....
Then Carter...followed by Clinton..2terms ;no war great economy ..and plenty of 'cigars'.....now I would think Arnie but for the same thing I'd go for OZZY...it'll be a hell of an interesting time in the worlds history..

[edit on 5-12-2004 by Horus_Re]

Anybody who has GW at the top or toward the top is short-sighted and quite possibly an idiot. Same goes for Clinton people. If these people truly impressed you so much that you put them into your favorite spot, you would crap your pants when a truly great leader assumes the top office. Perhaps it is due to the stagnation of our leaders in the past thirty or so years...dunno...

Reagen had to many spooks in his administration for me to put him up there. Yes, I am refering to many shady things that his administration did. (Iran-Contra ring a bell) For the most part, I do believe was in control over his staff, though. Also, he was a union buster. That right there is why he was never given the SAG achievement award. (And I will be pissed if the posthumously give him that award.) I will say this though, he is probably the best of my lifetime so far. He could probably talk his way out of murder charges with video evidence of him doing it. (That counts for a lot with me) His approach to USSR was very ballsy. It was an all or nothing approach which could have very easily backfired. Luckily, Russia's mounting problems made them topple. Besides, they had a wimp like Gorbie running the place. Now, whoever says that we didn't fire a shot, that is very true. However, we did arm nations to do our bidding against the Ruskies. That was a little short-sighted, but it worked out in helping to collapse the USSR. But then on that fateful morning in September, our 80's friends shocked the crap out of us. Using the training and money they received from us, they committed a string of terrorist actions stretching for eight years culminating in the worst attack ever on American soil. There is plenty of blame for that situation to go around (Clinton, both Bushes, the Saudi's, etc...) but I can't place the top award in the hands of someone's policies laid the ground work for those events.

Abe Lincoln was as dirty as anyone else and don't let anyone else claim otherwise. On top of how he set the stage for hideous racism and Jim Crowe laws, he also led to his own assassination. Jefferson Davis was nothing if not an honorable man. Even when faced with Lincoln pretty much handed to him, he said no. It was against honor. He would not have him kidnapped or assassinated. Then, a platoon of men were marching to Richmond with one thing in mind, killing Jeff Davis and many of his cabinet. You know how we know this, the main officer was carrying a letter authorizing him to do it...and who did it come from...the highest levels of government. That's who. Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the first President to start the trend of ending states rights. He is out.

I would love to include FDR, but I still think he, like Wilson, allowed an attack on us to draw us into war. (Pearl Harbob/Lusitania)

JFK was a good leader, but too short lived to be able to tell if he was going to do anything worth a damn. If what he was trying to do before he was killed is true, then he would probably be my favorite. But the fact remains, he got us into the Vietnam War...a huge friggin' mess.

Nixon could never be top choice because he is a bigger bigot than me.

Jefferson or Washington would probably be my top choice, but everyone has been kissing their ass, so I will stray from that.

I will have to go with Ole' Hickory himself...Andrew Jackson. He was the most hardcore mofo ever in the Whitehouse. (He even beats out circus freak Teddy Roosevelt.) He had been in numerous duels. He kicked all of them injuns into one state. Nah, I'm kidding.

My real choice is perhaps Andrew Johnson. He took more crap than anyone, ever. He thumbed his nose at Congress. He helped a lot in the rebuilding of the South. He survived impeachment. He got the country back on track. Oh well...my 0.02.

I assumed that "GW" meant George Washington and not "George Dubya"... I still hope that's the case

Even if you're not a Bush basher, I defy anybody to actually defend the position that Bush is one of the best Presidents in history - and do it without taking without the luxury of looking at the future with rose-tinted glasses.

Err...I assumed that many of them were GWB. Perhaps some meant George Washington. Dunno...

my friend and i made our list of the top ten, ill post it here with explanations. for the record, we're both centrists, but shes slightly more liberal, and im slightly more conservative.

1. FDR
1. Lincoln
3. washington
4. TR
5. truman
6. wilson
7. jefferson
8. jfk
9. polk
10. clinton

FDR and Lincoln each had one of the most trying presidencies in american history, and both would have been a sure failure had not both men been there. we put them both at the top because we could not decide. lincoln handled the civil war perfectly, and had he survived reconstruction would have been a success rather than an utter failure and the deep, deep racism in the south would have been much softer. he was also one of the most presidential men ever, in character. FDR likewise handled the depression nearly perfectly, and designed such a fantastic system that will last and succeed for a long, long time. he had blemishes, especially the packing of the courts, but on the whole it was beautiful. he also faced the advent of WWII. again, the internment camps are a (major) blemish, but he handled all the affairs brilliantly. it would have been interesting to see what wuld have happened had he survived.

washington, as the first president, set the stage for every other president. every president, 2-43, has modeled their presidency and administratin after his in some way or another. he had so much power, so much ability, everything was so undefined, he could have been king. he left after two terms. he crushed shays rebellion. nothing extraordinary, but he warrants the position.

TR for being TR. foreign policy was superb, domestic affairs (trust busting) were superb. and lets not forget setting the first land aside to be preserved, and a huge amount. truman takes fifth for coming in at the end of WWII, and ending it in the best way possible. he handled a very, very testy situation fantastically. United nations. and lets not forget the marshall plan, shall we? rebuild europe?

wilson takes 6 for similar reasons. progressive measures, but sterling service during the war. his 14 points were amazing, and had the congress not shifted, his plan for global government would surely be the current one. jefferson (although a total racist prick) did one of the greatest things ever, highly against his own personal views, and bought the louisiana purchase. doubling the size of the country, without that we would have remained a tight, conservative country, nowhere near our current expansive power. he had a number of other views (he hated the bank) that he forwent (thankfuly).

jfk took 8. charming, well carried, beloved. his space program defined america, and we can attribute a lot of our current successes in technology, not just space, to that initiative. bay of pigs, bummer, but the cuban missile crisis was a miracle, thanks to him. and, had he not been killed, he would have seriously, seriously, lowered the troop count in vietnam (a good idea). polk, with 9. most people dont no what polk did, but he did. we basically owe the entire western country to him. california, oregon, texas, all that. and a nicely done war with mexico. clinton takes 10 because he was a good president. smart, terribly smart, and a fantastic orator. the boon of the 90s is a huge credit to him, but the rest of his domestic affairs was held up to the same standards.

she and i made this list last year, and we finally numbered them. it coincides perfectly with a list made by 200 historians, except they replaced clinton with reagan. they made theirs in 1999, they would never have put clinton on there. personally, i would put polk at 11, and sneak in reagan at 10. otherwise, reagan, jackson, eisenhower are the next three, in that order (not sure about eisenhower). nixon is higher than most would want (he was a great president, truly great, the cover up/money scandal was a terrible, terrible marr.

its also worth noting that one of the things we included in our criticisms was the time. jackson left a trail of terrible miseries (literally) but he was, at the time, the best thing to happen to the country. he also shaped the office of president, and made it more like what it is today, less aristocratic

Originally posted by OXmanK

JFK was a good leader, but too short lived to be able to tell if he was going to do anything worth a damn. If what he was trying to do before he was killed is true, then he would probably be my favorite. But the fact remains, he got us into the Vietnam War...a huge friggin' mess.

.

EXCUSE ME !! He's done 'Nothing' worth a damn..????...

He ONLY STOPPED the Whole World from experiencing a FULL out Nuclear War.... sparing Us All from Armageddon...and if I might add with all the Top Military Advisors teling Him To 'Strike' Back ..At WHAT???..a political Game Called 'BLUFF'....
I DO NOT DARE TO Even 'Wonder' HOW Bush would have taken the trigger happy 'ADVICE' He got....WHAT..???...

p.s. Your post However GOOD based or researched it was is still FLAUD on this Particular MAN...WE All possibely owe our Exsistence TOO...
It's Easy,sitting behind a screen some 30years later,with the central heating on ..Say He is Over rated,for what little he acchieved..Little..THINK Again...
As For Vietnam,...America was busy with it scince 1945..
Read all about it down here..

www.colorado.edu...

Please notice 'Sen.Kelly's Involvment..

JFK was a great man, and, more to his credit, he would have been a greater man. he DID NOT get us into vietnam, and in fact he was trying to get us out. as stated, he effectively prevented WWIII, and what could possibly have been the worst period of history, ever. and he ignored the best advice to make that decision. civil war, depression, world wars, they all happened. the cuban missile crisis, that was waiting to happen. he didnt let it. theres a lot to be said for that.

and that isnt even touching on the space program, which has a special place in my heart.

Originally posted by Horus_Re

Originally posted by OXmanK

JFK was a good leader, but too short lived to be able to tell if he was going to do anything worth a damn. If what he was trying to do before he was killed is true, then he would probably be my favorite. But the fact remains, he got us into the Vietnam War...a huge friggin' mess.

EXCUSE ME !! He's done 'Nothing' worth a damn..????...

I'm not going into all of it. Just a bit of it.

Who uses the word Nothing?

IF he was GOING TO DO ANYTHING worth a damn.

That would be future tense. If + past + future continuous (or something like it).

Not

He did nothing worth a damn.

One action does not a great man make. (Even as seriously great as that action was, which it was). Rudy led NY through Sep 11, the only great thing he's done in his life, everything else is the work of a narrow-minded dogmatic (well, except for his work as a prosecutor, but I'm using his example as Mayor to illustrate the example of Kennedy as Pres.)
What did Kennedy actually do? He sounded off on civil rights, he told NASA to go to the moon. But what was his real legacy, except for some half-remembered, hazy images of a better time "back then".

Remember pay any price, bear any burden? JFK had decided to get the hell out of VN because he could see it was a losing proposition. LBJ took him up on his any burden challenge and it turned out the US wouldn't pay any price or bear any burden.

#49 was good for finally unwinding the damage done by the uniquely corrupt and inept Bush administration.

Originally posted by MaskedAvatar
#49 was good for finally unwinding the damage done by the uniquely corrupt and inept Bush administration.

close, 48. assuming each following president serves a single term, ill be #48. and i definitely remember that being part of my agenda.

although, itd be pretty cool to be fiftieth. oh, and your tense is wrong. unless you're from the future, in which case can i have your autograph?

assuming each president serves an average of 1.5 terms, thats 36 years. thats a long time. id shoot for 15-22ish, depending on how the whole rebuilding thing goes, and how nice the world decides to be.

As the concept of a "favorite" implied knowledge of present and past presidential performance, the poetic licence applied in the use of "was" is in keeping with the flow of the topic. It depends on what your definition of was is.

That, and/or clairvoyancy, and/or your temporal travel hypothesis, should clear up any discombobulation that you may have experienced.

How was that?

Good luck #48, who by then will have been known only by number and not name...

Originally posted by MaskedAvatar
As the concept of a "favorite" implied knowledge of present and past presidential performance, the poetic licence applied in the use of "was" is in keeping with the flow of the topic. It depends on what your definition of was is.

That, and/or clairvoyancy, and/or your temporal travel hypothesis, should clear up any discombobulation that you may have experienced.

How was that?

Good luck #48, who by then will have been known only by number and not name...

that works. im a big fan of poetic liscence. my teachers, eh, notsomuch.

Thanks! I hope I can count on your vote! God Bless America!

It sure woulda been interesting how JFK's presidency would've shaken out had he lived. He got off to a rocky start, held it together, got us through a nuclear nightmare, got the economy headed back in the right direction and wanted to bring the troops home from 'Nam. He was strong, intelligent, fiscally sensible and idyllic (aside from being a womanizer). His killing tells us he was definitely on the right track w/his policies. You can only poke your finger in power's chest for so long, though.

I've grown to appreciate his leadership much more through the years. When I was a younger, more hot-headed partisan, I couldn't stand him.

Another president I thought was great (minus his faults) was Richard Nixon. Say what you will about the man, he did some great things. He was a foreign policy genious. The funniest thing about Tricky Dick was that by 43's standards, he was a domestic LIBERAL.

The only difference between Nixon and the rest, I think, is that he was caught with his pants down. I'm sure there have been presidents who were much more sinister. They just escaped being found out.

Would you care to go down to that Berlin Wall thingy that happened during JFK's reign?

I am in no way saying that JFK was useless or a bad man. Major US offenses started under him. He may have been trying to get us out, but we won't ever truly know that.

Ultimately, my previous post was giving reasons why any of the main presidents would not be my top spot. It was not a knock at them.

Originally posted by OXmanK
Would you care to go down to that Berlin Wall thingy that happened during JFK's reign?

I am in no way saying that JFK was useless or a bad man. Major US offenses started under him. He may have been trying to get us out, but we won't ever truly know that.

What 'berlin wall thingy'?

What offenses started under him? He can't be blamed for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, for one thing. The spooks left him outta the circle till it went down. He was mucho pissed b/c of it. He was handed Vietnam. His answer was to start pulling the troops out. The directive he signed was reversed as soon as LBJ took over.

lincoln was a tyrant who marched into my state and threw everyone who disagreed with him in jail and suspended the writ of habeus corpus. he also imprisoned civilians who disagreed with him in point lookout prison and they had no protection from the elements except for tents. he shut down the local press because they reported on his atrocities commited against citizens in the south, and through the editior in jail.

and people whine about bush.

how do i know this?
my end of the semester 12 page report was on the prison at point lookout.
didnt know anything out it before, opinion of lincoln will never be the same after.


T. Jefferson was the greatest.

It's true that Lincoln got very creative with his his constitutional powers in his approach to the war. (If congress had found his rationales legally wanting, they could've put a stop to it. He had enuff enemies in his own camp to do so. As it was, his arguments held up to their scrutiny.) The Civil War was like none other in our history. It was closer than breath; hand-to-hand, brother vs. brother. Their enemies were everywhere within. It's not unusual that they would undertake new and different methods of dealing with the problem. It would have been derelict to not calibrate to the threat.

His main, unchanging goal from beginning to end was to keep the Union together. It's true that he gave Seward, his Secretary of State, exceptional powers to arrest and detain people who were, as they saw it, harmful to the Union's interests. The difference between their actions then, and Bush's actions now, is that Lincoln had a clear outcome in mind. He had that one goal. He wanted nothing more than to bring the South back into the fold and to be done with the slaughter. Whatever he and his men did, they did for the larger good.

Once the war was over, Lincoln gladly laid down those extraconstitutional presidential powers. He may have been a consumate politician, but he was not a warmonger drunk on power. And it was never about personal gain. Quite the opposite actually. I believe Lincoln was a man of providence. Like Reagan holding fast to his vision of bringing down the Soviet Union, when everyone around him scoffed, Lincoln's vision of a House not divided against itself was bigger and more powerful than any other in their midst. Only God knows what would've become of the USA had it not been for Lincoln's vision, character and wise leadership.

Having said that.. the argument with Lincoln should be 1A: States Rights. According to the Constitution, the states, we the people, have the right to throw off our current government and form a new one. If we deem it to be corrupt or harmful to our interests. Lincoln stepped in it when he took that right away and demanded the South return to the Union.

I myself, am all for states rights. Luckily, though, I have the benefit of hindesight in this matter. Lincoln held the Union together and it all worked together for the good. Because of that vision, the United States became the most powerful country the world has ever seen. Hail "The Tycoon!"

Hmmm, George Washington was elected with no contest, so he mus have been a good guy. But I like Lincoln, he kept the nation together when the now known as Republican people wanted to break away. BTW, how did this happen? Lincoln was a republican, but he beleived in freedom, the country, not the 2% rich people and corruption. Nowadays the only non-corrupt republicans are who? Colin Powell, McCain, and Ah-nold? I know there are more, but the whole Bush family is corrupt, the whole cabinet is now that Powell left, basically the ones with exectutive power. At least Lincoln wasn't a warmonger who decided after taking the south to go to Canada, then Mexico, then South America, the Europe, then Africa, then Asia, then Australia..... and all the other places Bush wants.

You're right. Lincoln was not a warmonger. A politician, he was. A banker's boy, he was not. When he put his cabinet together, he brought in men who were his greatest rivals. Why? To keep them in (his) plain sight and close by. Brilliant move. It also showed that he was quite wiley and unafraid of dissent. He used it all to his advantage. Take his Secretary of State, for example - Seward - that guy was another Aaron Burr. He wanted to make peace w/the South by talking them into invading Mexico and crushing the European element there. He actually believed that common goal would heal the rift and solve the problems. As history has proven, he was not the man for the job (presidency). Both he and Chase (Sec. of Treasury) were consumed with thoughts of their own presidency. Seward actually believed he would make Lincoln his puppet while in office and that he would take over once the weak Lincoln was done away with. Chase had similar delusions. Lincoln, being the consumate politician he was, laid waste to both of the men's fantasies. All I can say is Thank God. Lincoln did what needed to be done. And that was miraculous. He had no template, no precedent to rule from, unlike all presidents before him. I believe God's hand was upon him.