<p>Favorite: Not sure. Jefferson is up there. “We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt” -TJ. Well…we kind of let it happen. </p>
<p>Reagan is close, but even though I’m kinda a conservative, I also have a libertarian bent to me, and I don’t like the way he really ran the deficit up. He was a bad@$$ though. Same with Andy Jackson, even though he really didn’t give a crap about the Constitution. But hey, none of our politicians care today… </p>
<p>Like the above poster said, LBJ gets a lot of crap because of Vietnam, but his social reforms were great. </p>
<p>Surprised more people didn’t say Bush as the worst, but I think history will be a lot kinder to him than people now are…</p>
<p>Worst: Woodrow Wilson is up there. He had some good policies, but something no one else has mentioned is that the Federal Reserve Act happened under his time in office. And ever since then we’ve been creating money out of thin air, hence why inflation sky rocketed after 1913. And now the USD’s value is dropping like lead in value compared other forms of money. For awhile in 2007 I believe, the Canadian dollar was worth slightly more than ours.<br>
Now, I know this is not all Wilson’s fault. Sentiment for a Fed-like bank started under Teddy Roosevelt and Taft supported it. </p>
<p>Teddy Roosevelt was a mixed bag for me. BA, made some good reforms, but really started the U.S. on a crazy path of imperialism. </p>
<p>I guess I can’t name the worst president ever (IMO at least), but those guys ^^^ and other guys like Ben Harrison, Coolidge, Andy Johnson, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanon, etc… were pretty bad.</p>
<p>Best: Lincoln. Hands down.</p>
<p>Worst: Buchanan, Harding, Johnson were all pretty terrible.</p>
<p>Overrated: Thomas Jefferson. I think he should be in top 15, but not necessarily top 5. He gets way too much credit over John Adams. Most of Hamilton’s policies were adopted soon after Jefferson stepped down from office, and we really only laud him for the Louisiana Purchase, which a lot of presidents could have accomplished under the conditions. He didn’t even plan it, seeing as he was only trying to buy New Orleans. His foreign policy otherwise sucked, particularly his and Madison’s Embargo act.</p>
<p>Underrated: Nixon. His foreign policy was very good, though Vietnam could have been handled better. Kissinger was awesome. Just wish he was less paranoid and insecure (if you remove Watergate from his presidency, it looks significantly better).</p>
<p>Also, to some extent, Lyndon Johnson. Domestic policies were good, Vietnam sucked. However, I find that a lot of liberals overrate him a bit, and tend to glaze over Vietnam.</p>
<p>Truman used to be underrated, but not really anymore.</p>
<p>Surprise “eh”: Teddy Roosevelt. Loved domestic policies, iffy on American imperialism and hegemony.</p>
<p>(I consider myself a moderate democrat/liberal.)</p>
<p>math+sci=asian: I can relate to your opinion very well, but I don’t believe Thomas Jefferson was overrated. His presidency shaped the idea of government, hence his time as president was noted as the Jeffersonian Era. You do not hear that for Lincoln (Lincolnian doesn’t sound right) or FDR (Delanian sounds pretty good). His views on government shaped the presidency for better whereas the Jacksonian Era and Jackson’s views shaped the government into a system for truly the people, which may go down as bad or good in your books (but since you advocate communism according to your post in “form of gov’t,” I would take a stab in the dark and say good). Jackson also doesn’t go well for me due to his intransigence and the consequences of that intransigence like the Trail of Tears.
With Nixon: Removing Watergate and Vietnam from his presidency would make him a good president. For Buchanan and Johnson, take out the situation with the Civil War and they are perfect. Harding… well I denounced his lame-duck attitude and sexual promiscuity in a previous post.
If you take the catalyst to do wrong from presidents, everyone would be like FDR or Lincoln… except Harding, Taft, and other lame-duck conservatives who only desired for Conservatives to have power in the government once again. You can see how that failed today. I mean no offense whatsoever to Conservatives.</p>
<p>By the way, I loved Truman. He goes in my top fifteen just because he was FDR’s VP (not really–I analyzed his presidency a couple times and it’s obvious that he was a great president).</p>
<p>^ Actually I hate Jackson. Bottom 10 for me. Violated constitutional rights, made trail of tears… <em>shudder</em> I don’t like mob rule. At all. At the least, he did go against Calhoun’s nullification thing, though.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t compare Nixon to other bad presidents. Nixon helped cool off the cold war and established relations with China (which has been huge, even to today) and his domestic policies were relatively good. He didn’t do as bad as Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, he actually did ok on it (I’d say a C+ to B-…could have gone a lot smoother). Watergate is and will be his legacy, though. He’s not like other, in popular view, “terribly” bad presidents where he messed up everything… I’m not saying he’s a good one, but he shouldn’t be in the bottom 5. I’d say bottom 10.</p>
<p>I said I didn’t advocate communism at all in form of gov’t… I said it could work but it’s far from ideal. By communism I really just meant totalitarianism, once you get into the economic/proletarian elements of it then you’re talking about socialism, which I am against.</p>
<p>For Jefferson if you’re giving him that much credit for ideas vs. policy making, then I don’t really see how we can really evaluate presidents that well. As I’ve noted, most of his proposed policies were shown to be incorrect and the federalist policies of the era were for the large part adopted later. Policy wise he didn’t do much. If you’re talking about ideas, then I would give more credit to the founding fathers as a group as a whole, but if we’re talking about specific administrations, we can’t really say that. I get that he established an era, but I’m arguing that that doesn’t really mean he was a great president in a vacuum. (And like I’ve said, it didn’t shape the era completely, as really everybody kind of took his philosophy, then passed federalist policy and then we had the Era of Good Feelings and a whole shift after that). Good president, but in my opinion we need to weight policy making over ideology. There have been better presidents in that respect. (And just because people lend names to an era doesn’t mean it was completely about their ideas…we don’t see an Reaganian era, rather we see a neoconservative era, similarly with people like Teddy Roosevelt or FDR who shaped a lot of political ideology but honestly I don’t think historians named the eras after them because, well, Rooseveltian really doesn’t roll off the tongue. A name’s got to sound nice, after all.)</p>
<p>Teddy Roosevelt = Awesome.</p>
<p>We had a lot of other presidents that did good things, but most of them also had major flaws as well. But try though I may I can’t pin anything on T. R. Not only were his policies smart, he also led a very admirable personal life.</p>
<p>Least favorite… Wow, pretty tough competition here. Clinton ranks quite low. Probably others were worse, but I wasn’t alive to see it. Bush wasn’t anything to brag about, but he gets bonus points for a couple good things and I’m giving the rest time for history to kick in.</p>
<p>^^Jackson would have been an awesome folk legend, but yes, he was pretty bad as president. The Trail of tears was one of the most unpardonable things our nation has done.</p>
<p>MosbyMarion: I’m sure that people during let’s say Harding’s reign didn’t realize that they lived during a time of lame-ducks. We need time to take its course and show us how our actions affected us. But I think it would be better to evaluate presidents right now to prevent mistakes from happening in that administration happening in the current administration.</p>
<p>Let proactive behavior shine a bright light for the future!</p>
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<p>this is pure BS. The supreme disallowed recounting. Bush maintained THROUGHOUT the whole process a margin over Gore in Florida, however narrow it may be. The supreme court didnt “elect” anyone; they simply stopped a dead end process that would have wasted more tax dollars (no one counts ballots by hand for free). I stand by my statements.</p>
<p>And countries fight for resources and land all the time. Think imperialism, Bismark, and Japan. Obviously they don’t propagate their intent. Furthermore, this suggests that countries are VERY willing to trade blood for wealth.</p>
<p>^Sure, countries fight wars for money and resources. Is that any reason to support such wars?</p>
<p>Favorite:
McKinley. Bad things would’ve happened with 50% inflation. (FDR is runner up)</p>
<p>Least favorite:
LBJ (second term)/Jimmy Carter
I’m leaning more towards Jimmy Carter.</p>
<p>I don’t think Teddy Roosevelt was that great of a president, but he sure as hell is a very interesting guy.</p>
<p>Also, I second Carter for being in the running as the worst.</p>