Ranking the presidents

BSNN ^ | 01.21.03 | By John Flaherty

[bankwalker]

could not disagree more, Bush I was a failed president primarily because of one individual: Sadamm Husein!

could not disagree more, Bush I was a failed president primarily because of one individual: Ross Perot!

[meandog]

I do not believe Wilson or Lincoln are ever mentioned on worst lists by any historian I've ever read...and, IMHO, Ford does not belong there. Ford, to me anyway, restored the dignity of the presidency and brought back our nation after the turbulence of Watergate.

[KC_Conspirator]

I have in fact watched almost every single tape about the Gulf War on those channels and in fact the History Channel has updated the ones with Kent Clark, the guy who covered the first Gulf War, were run last week and re-run during the weekend. The only person who said they felt bad about the Highway of Death was Colin Powell, which is most likely some revisionism. However, the Highway of Death had nothing to do our armored "left hook" that was halted from driving to Baghdad, since the arabs and liberals made sure the resolution did not upset that non-existant 'arab street'. Consequently, the Iraq "cease fire" was a UN resolution since our units were mixed.

[Destructor]

No, the Liberals haven't gotten to me. It so happens that JFK made a speech to the Economics Club of New York to pitch his plan to jumpstart the economy by lowering taxes. That came from Rush Limbaugh not any damned Liberals! The thing about the "space race" was my recollection of High School History (courtesy of the Public School System),so that is questionable.

I will not sit idly by and be accused of letting Liberal get to me. Get bent!

[Austin Willard Wright]

The illegalities in the justice department weren't numerous. Daughtery, for example, was never convicted of any crime. The VA was a different matter. Forbes was a real scum-bag.

Harding was not involved, however, in any of these scandals hence at best you could fault him for incompetency on this matter not "total" immorality. Again, when taken as a whole the money and power manipulations in these scandals were minimal compared to funny business which went on under FDR, LBJ, and Nixon. BTW, remember Truman and the Pendergast machine? In many of those other presidential scandals, unlike those under Harding, the presidents were directly involved.

[KC_Conspirator]

Ahhh what's the use - we are just going to have to agree to disagree.

[ZULU]

Well, everybody is entitled to their own opinion.

I don't like Wilson because he started the income tax and got us involved with WW1, which, I believe, was a mistake.
The Europeans were quite good at killing each other without any help from us. They had done so for years. Wilson was a elitist Anglophile and was providing the British with assistance long before we actually got into war with the Germans. The Kaiser's record on human rights was no worse than the British - look at Ireland, India and Africa. As for the French - they were spoiling for a fight over Alscae-Lorraine - really GERMAN territory returned back to the Germans a few centuries after Louis XIV stole those territories. We should not have gotten involved.
Look at the gratitude we have today from our European "allies".


I don't like Lincoln, because I believe that in saving the Union, he destroyed the Republic.

I though Ford was a bumbling idiot and still is. Rumor had it Nixon selected him as insurance against his own removal from office. I remember Ford as a bit of a clown and an embarrassment who could scarcely deliver an intelligible address. Some of his recent comments on issues also leave me guessing about his intelligence if not his political viewpoint - but I couldn't give you specifics on that so don't ask me.

[WaveThatFlag]

I will not sit idly by and be accused of letting Liberal get to me. Get bent!

Um, "Liberals have gotten to you," was said with tongue in cheek, so there was no need to get so offended. We're on the same side.

Just out of curiosity, when did you graduate from high school? I'm interested in documenting the Kennedy myth as developed by liberal "Social Studies" teachers, who, I'm sorry to say, did in fact "get to you."

[meandog]

The illegalities in the justice department weren't numerous. Daughtery, for example, was never convicted of any crime. The VA was a different matter. Forbes was a real scum-bag. Harding was not involved, however, in any of these scandals hence at best you could fault him for incompetency on this matter not "total" immorality. Again, when taken as a whole the money and power manipulations in these scandals were minimal compared to funny business which went on under FDR, LBJ, and Nixon. BTW, remember Truman and the Pendergast machine? In many of those other presidential scandals, unlike those under Harding, the presidents were directly involved.

...Harding is more history's choice as a bad president, than mine...

[Austin Willard Wright]

If historians determine "history," that might be changing. See the latest work by the respected presidential historian, and Truman biographer, Robert Ferrell on Harding.

[Ditto]

I think Johnson's manuevers were crucial to the breaking of Jim Crow - whatever his shady motivations.

For the same reason, Ike should be moved up the list. His appointment of Republican Federal Judges in the deep south are what began breaking the back of Jim Crow.

As to the criticism of not doing anything about the Hungarian Revolution is bogus. The fact is that in 1956, the only thing we could have done was either go for all out nuclear war or get our asses kicked in a conventional European land war against a much larger Soviet Army.

As to the tin foil hat stuff about Panama, the writer says this;

"On Christmas Eve, 1989, George Bush ordered the invasion of Panama, a sovereign neighbor, to remove the arguably popularly supported head of state..."

There was nothing popular about Noriega. He was a pure thug who had his hired goons beat and kill opposition leaders and eventually sent them after Americans who happened to venture outside the Zone.

[537 Votes]

III Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

Saved the world from the greatest evil in the history of civilization.

Fascism killed six million, Communism killed a hundred million. Are we indulging in another round of Communist Holocaust Denial here?

[WaveThatFlag]

Fascism killed six million, Communism killed a hundred million. Are we indulging in another round of Communist Holocaust Denial here?

Um, facism killed six million Jews, and six million "others." But who's counting, right?

[x]

He's right that if you want to do this at all seriously, you have to have, state and defend objective criteria, not just one's own subjective preferences. But that is very hard to do.

In no way is JFK even close to the top ten. Anti-imperialist Cleveland looks strange sandwiched between expansionists like Roosevelt, Polk, Jackson and Jefferson. Something doesn't look too objective there. Cleveland also convinced very few that free trade was the right policy. It would be later Democrats, more committed to big government, who did that. And if we blame other Presidents for not coping with depressions and recessions, Cleveland's desire to let the economy fix itself, an admirable decision in itself, lowers him rating. Grover Cleveland may have been an admirable man, but clearly he doesn't belong with the others.

Buchanan has to be the worst, but Pierce was a worse President than Coolidge. And worse than Grant, Harding, Carter, Ford, Bush or either of the Johnsons, too. Zachary Taylor, like Jerry Ford, falls in a category close to that of Garfield and the first Harrison: those who weren't in office long enough to do much good or evil. Taylor might have been a very good President had he lived. And Ford did much to pick up the pieces after Nixon.

Ford may have been the most mediocre of mediocrities, but he was not a failure in the same sense as the others. In fantasy, he might have done any number of things. In reality his options were limited, and he did leave the country better than Nixon left it to him.

Probably the George Bush rating is the most controversial. I don't want to believe it, but GHWB did blow a lot of splendid opportunities.

[meandog]

Grover Cleveland may have been an admirable man, but clearly he doesn't belong with the others.

"Ma, Ma, where's Pa?"

[Destructor]

"Um, "Liberals have gotten to you," was said with tongue in cheek, so there was no need to get so offended."

The only thing that ticks me off more than the Liberals themselves is the accusation of being a sympathizer, or lacky to the ideology of Liberalism.

You are wrong in stating that JFK didn't accomplish anything. I previously mentioned the only two things that he did accomplish. Jimmy Carter, William Jefferson Clinton were the two Presidents that didn't accomplish anything.