Who was the best US president?

[CanuckInUSA 0]

Who was the best US president to date?

Please think carefully about this question before you answer. Not being a Yank I have to admit that I don't know much about your leadership before guys like Woodrow Wilson but the question still remains. Who has been your best prez? Guys like JFK were very charismatic and one would never know JFK's true potential if his life wasn't snuffed out and I think his speech where he said "ask not what your country can do for you but instead what you can do for your country" is something that most citizens from most democratic countries around the world should be following. But I (very uneducated when it comes to US history) would like to table Dwight D. Eisenhower as possibly one of your best ever presidents. Not only did this man come from a respectable military background where the US did fight in a just conflict against Germany and Japan, but the man also had the foresight to warn the American public of the dangers of letting the "industrial military complex" run rampant on his farewell speech. So who do you think was America's best president?

PS: If anyone seriously answers GWB, then I'm sorry you really are messed up and please check out of this world on your earliest convinence as the man and his cronnies truly are evil and the 50.1% of the public who supported this man in previous elections really should be ashamed of yourself because your man has made the world a much more dangerous place and America has lost much of it's respect in the world because of him. Plus I would like to add that I'm not anti-American, I do think that for all the bad that comes from you guys and equal amount of good also can be seen.

So who is it?

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[lawrocket 3]

I would table Jefferson if merely because he set the precedent for peaceful transfer of power to his rival, Madison (whom I believe was a greater American than Jefferson but a lesser POTUS.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[Frenchy68 0]

I tend to like Mr Adams (Sr) myself, although probably more for the man than his presidency...
My favorite POTUS as far as sound bites?
Well, but of course... BwahahahahaGWBwahahahaha
Can't help but adore the man everytime a mic is on in front of his mouth.

"For once you have tasted Absinthe you will walk the earth with your eyes turned towards the gutter, for there you have been and there you will long to return."

[Gawain 0]

Presidents Truman for his transition out of WWII, Reagan for his final blow to end the Cold War, and G.H.W. Bush for his transition out of the Cold War environment.

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[kbordson 8]

I agree.

Truman. Stong values. Very difficult time for the Nation during his term in office.

But... I also admire Lincoln. Not just because of the Emancipation Proclamation, but rather for his larger view on the United States of America.

Other great presidents: George Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan

[rushmc 18]

Reagan

In my time anyway

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 18]

Now, if you really want honest answers you should not preface your question with comments about something you do not agree with. Shame and you.

As for GWB being evil You watch too much CNN, NBC, CBS go to Moveon.org and the underground democrates sites way too much.

Any, what actions prove him to evil in your mind?

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[warpedskydiver 0]

1. Thomas Jefferson
2. Theodore Roosevelt
3. Abraham Lincoln
4. Ronald Reagan
5. Harry Truman

All of them had done a few things badly but their intent and their desire to protect us as a nation were never understood in their own time.

All of them were brilliant and had a deep sense of honor and respect. Some of them are very remarkable in that they amounted to anything at all, let alone reaching adulthood.

Jefferson may have been the toughest of them all.

Lincoln was nothing more than a child slave.

Teddy was a weakling child and sickly.

Reagan was so poor as a child if he and his brother failed in their hunting efforts on any day their family did not eat.

Truman was hated by his own party and Roosevelt could not stand him, he didn't take shit from anybody and by all accounts care deeply for the men in his charge as president.

FDR and Wilson may have been the worst.

LBJ may have been almost as bad.

[narcimund 0]

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Any, what actions prove him to evil in your mind?

I have an idea. How we leave this thread to discussion of the "best US president" instead of replaying the 10,000 threads about Bush?

Nice try though.

First Class Citizen Twice Over

[warpedskydiver 0]

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Any, what actions prove him to evil in your mind?

I have an idea. How we leave this thread to discussion of the "best US president" instead of replaying the 10,000 threads about Bush?

Nice try though.

How about you stay on topic?

[rushmc 18]

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Any, what actions prove him to evil in your mind?

I have an idea. How we leave this thread to discussion of the "best US president" instead of replaying the 10,000 threads about Bush?

Nice try though.

OOoookkkkkkkk mommy

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[CanuckInUSA 0]

If I could edit my comments about GWB, then I would since I am obvious bias against the man (I thought his father was okay, what happened to GWB). But I can't edit the message anymore since a certain amount of time has passed.

But yes ... if possible let's keep this thread on track by discussing who you people think was the USA's best prez.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[Andy9o8 0]

Grover Cleveland - who can resist a president named after a Muppet?

Then there's William Henry Harrison, who had the good sense to die after just 30 days in office.




Anyhow, here's an interesting compendium of presidential rankings, from several different perspectives:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_United_States_Presidents

[crwtom 0]

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But... I also admire Lincoln. Not just because of the Emancipation Proclamation, but rather for his larger view on the United States of America.

Lincoln easily has he highest average ranking among historian polls.
( 1.58 )

If you want to get a sense for the gravity and difficulty of the time look
at the presidents right before and right after Lincoln. They are
consistently rated among the worst.

Buchanan honestly though that the break up of the United States was
inevitable and there was no point trying to stop it. With someone
other than Lincoln the split into a northern and a southern nation
would have had a very high probability.

Johnson, of course, stands for the reconstruction debacle, attempts
to reverse the Emancipation Proclamation and the only
impeachment justified by real political/power issues.


As to Truman - there were certainly a few important decisions that
could have gone another way and made our world look different
today (Mashall vs Morgenthau, Israel vs Palestine, etc) . The cold
was confrontation, though, was a huge train everyone saw coming
from miles away, and socially Truman was pretty much a traditional
new deal democrat. He did what he had to do without major
blunders - but it's harder to find the depth in foresight or originality
that you'd hope for in a #1 ranking.

However, Truman seems to resonante a lot with conservatives these days:
The moral decent guy, who is fighting the war he has to, who is so
badly misunderstood by the public, but later vindicated by history.
... Ring a bell?

You can safely bet your pay check that the name Truman comes up
a lot in White House pep talks given to GWB these days. It is an
open secret that GWB gets his comfort in the delusion to be a second
coming of Truman.

Cheers, T

*******************************************************************
Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

[CanuckInUSA 0]

I'm not so certain I would agree that Truman should be held in such high esteme. He was the one to make the decision to drop the bomb. There are those who say that dropping the bomb saved a million American lives (for sure there would have been massive bloodshed on both sides had America had to invade the Islands of Japan). But there are also those who say that the Japanese we're trying to surrender the entire summer of '45 and Truman wouldn't have anything to do with this since he wanted to send a strong message to the Soviets.

But what do I know? I wasn't around in WWII (very few of us were).

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[tbrown 26]

I would have to say Washington, Licoln, and Frankin Roosevelt.

Washington was of course our first President and the only one elected by acclamation with no opponent. He resisted the all too human urge to become a king, or a dictator for life and set a precedent by stepping down after two terms, saying that should be enough for anybody, a precedent that has held with just one exception (FDR), and then became law with a Constitutional Amendment.

Lincoln of course saved the republic, though at the cost of the bloodiest war in our history. He really only freed those slaves living in the Confederate states, which only gradually came back under our control. But his death and legacy led to the Amendments that finally abolished slavery and granted equal protection under law to all citizens, though in practice that took another century and is still being contested today. I don't think anyone here could honestly imagine a United States that had fractured into two or more regional nations. Our entire place in the world would be so dramatically reduced - we might never have able to stop Hitler. Or Stalin.

And finally FDR, elected at the very depths of the Great Depression. Though the conservative Roosevelt haters (the ones who are still alive anyway) brand him to this day as a Commie, he got this country back on its feet at a time when the entire social fabric was falling apart, along the way founding the Social Security system. And then he led us through the Second World War, truly a war to save the world from a real Axis of Evil. Most people have no idea how close the Axis powers actually came to winning that war. As it was, they succeeded in murdering tens of millions of innocent people before they were finally stopped with nuclear weapons. The nukes were of course Harry Truman's decision, as Roosevelt unfortunately never lived to even see V-E Day or the death of Hitler. But he took us within days of that victory.

Without those 3 Presidents, the USA as we know it would not exist. Period.

Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

[kallend 1,643]

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Our entire place in the world would be so dramatically reduced - we might never have able to stop Hitler. Or Stalin.

Ummmm - it was the English Channel and Stalin's USSR that stopped Hitler. By 7th December 1941 Hitler's Germany had already failed in its invasion attempt on Britain, and was in process of failing in its attempt to take Moscow. The Eastern Front is what destroyed the Wehrmacht.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Gawain 0]

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I'm not so certain I would agree that Truman should be held in such high esteme. He was the one to make the decision to drop the bomb. There are those who say that dropping the bomb saved a million American lives (for sure there would have been massive bloodshed on both sides had America had to invade the Islands of Japan). But there are also those who say that the Japanese we're trying to surrender the entire summer of '45 and Truman wouldn't have anything to do with this since he wanted to send a strong message to the Soviets.

But what do I know? I wasn't around in WWII (very few of us were).

There were some backchannels open about "conditional" terms to Japan's surrender. President Truman wisely rejected all of them, accepting only an unconditional surrender.

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[Gawain 0]

Quote

Quote

Our entire place in the world would be so dramatically reduced - we might never have able to stop Hitler. Or Stalin.

Ummmm - it was the English Channel and Stalin's USSR that stopped Hitler. By 7th December 1941 Hitler's Germany had already failed in its invasion attempt on Britain, and was in process of failing in its attempt to take Moscow. The Eastern Front is what destroyed the Wehrmacht.

Yeah, the US wasn't involved at all in the Battle of Britain... Your sense of history is warped beyond reproach.

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[shropshire 0]

I'm not sure it's due to our celebrity centric nature these days or not.. but I dont believe that our leaders are the sole source of what is good or bad (at any particular time in history) They can't be. No single man won the 2nd world war, or scared off those pesky Commies... It may have been their name at the top of the Bill, but they seldom had the actual ideas or even drove them forward.. they are/were just the figure head .... members of a team.



.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[warpedskydiver 0]

Yeah, the US wasn't involved at all in the Battle of Britain... Your sense of history is warped beyond reproach.

[kallend 1,643]

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Our entire place in the world would be so dramatically reduced - we might never have able to stop Hitler. Or Stalin.

Ummmm - it was the English Channel and Stalin's USSR that stopped Hitler. By 7th December 1941 Hitler's Germany had already failed in its invasion attempt on Britain, and was in process of failing in its attempt to take Moscow. The Eastern Front is what destroyed the Wehrmacht.

Yeah, the US wasn't involved at all in the Battle of Britain... Your sense of history is warped beyond reproach.

You are correct, US pilots in the Battle of Britain comprised 0.25% of the total. No US radars, and no US fighter planes were involved.

The pilot roster was:

UK 2316
Polish 141
New Zealand 129
Canadian 90
Czech 87
Belgian 24
S. African 22
Aussie 21
FRENCH 13
Irish 9
US 7
Rhodesian 2
Jamaican 1
Palestinian 1

I don't often hear the FRENCH, Irish or Jamaicans trumpeting how they stopped Hitler at Calais, though.

I take it that you are well aware of the defeatest messages the US Ambassador to Britain was sending Roosevelt inthe fall of 1940, telling him NOT to send any help because Churchill would surrender within 3 weeks. That was REALLY helpful.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[crwtom 0]

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There were some backchannels open about "conditional" terms to Japan's surrender. President Truman wisely rejected all of them, accepting only an unconditional surrender.

it was surely the right thing to do - but hardly a novel idea at the time.

Unconditional surrender for Germany was a foregone conclusion
among allies in the last year of war. And after Germany was
unconditionally defeated, after Russia launched its attackes on
Japan through China, and the US has the bomb no one seriously
questioned to extend the same treatment to Japan, even when some
Japanese politicians tried to attache terms in the last minute.

Cheers, T

*******************************************************************
Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true

[Gawain 0]

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You are correct, US pilots in the Battle of Britain comprised 0.25% of the total. No US radars, and no US fighter planes were involved.

Where did Britain get the fuel for all of their aircraft? I'm sure there are plenty of Merchant Marines who transported untold tons of materiel who may also disagree with your perception.

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[martin-o 0]

Of the approximated 6 million dead Germans during WWII, 4 million died during op. Barbarossa. I’d say it’s pretty safe to say that the eastern front was the most important factor of Adolf’s defeat. That said, American assistance, especially in the reconstruction of Europe is of a magnitude we don’t see today and for that every European should be thankful. Just as we should remember the 27 million dead Soviets.