Who are the 3 greatest and 3 worst presidents?

This is the Sunday Time's worst list:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5029204.ece

fascinating.

i'm going to guess that okie and ican would put Reagan up top, and their three worst would be
1. Barrak (tied with Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton)
2. Hussein (tied with Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton)
3. Obama (tied with Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton)

Wow! It is hard to believe that anyone could predict what those two savants, okie and ican, would say! You, djjd, have to be a genius or else the possessor of a marvelous crystal ball!

BEST:
1 ) GEORGE WASHINGTON, for beginning America and its freedom
2 ) RONALD REAGAN for destroying the communist empire and winning the Third World War
3 ) THOMAS JEFFERSON for the Louisiana Purchase




WORST:
1 ) WOODROW WILSON for stopping the US Army from defeating the communists in Russia
and bedeviling us with the Third World War;
WOODROW WILSON for ending the First World War prematurely (against the advice of Gen. Pershing)
thereby causing us to need to do it all over again in the Second World War, exactly as Gen. Pershing said woud happen.

2 ) HARRY TRUMAN for stabbing our ally Chiang Kai Shek in the back, and giving China into communist slavery,
from which it is only recently emerging

3 ) JOHN KENNEDY for his treachery against the Cuban Freedom Fighters,
giving Cuba into the commie empire only at our back doorstep
his foreign policy of:
"hostility toward our friends, neutrality toward our commie enemies
and friendship toward the commie-leaning 'neutralists' ".

I am tempted to add ( to a much lesser extent ) George Bush
for his failure to finish Saddam in the First Gulf War, after we had defeated him,
thereby necessitating the 2nd Gulf War, at huge expense of blood n treasure.





David

I had a hard time naming Lyndon Johnson as one of the best because of his terrible mistakes in Vietnam. I concluded that his efforts to end Jim Crow and segregation in the South, provide voting rights, open education, housing, and employment rights, and put an end to other forms of discrimination in both the South and the Northern states. Chicago, for example, was as anti African-American as the Southern States.

Johnson nearly missed the opportunity to change the South. If John Kennedy had not been murdered, Johnson would have never become president. If Kennedy had lived, how much longer would it have taken for a "Yankee" president to end African-American abuse? Only a southern president could achieve the improvements in rights for African-Americans.

BBB

well, it's obvious to me that when I attended the University I should have taken some US History courses.

Most presidents are a mixed bag, with just a few issues weighting the scale for or against, as Lyndon Johnson so aptly illustrates. For worst presidents, I have to pick from modern times. GW Bush, for just about everything he did. Nixon, for his gold policies, among other issues. Reagan for Reaganomics. But, all presidents since at least Kennedy have contributed to our ills and I personally don't really like any of them.

Edgar, thank you for responding in the spirit of my topic by not attacking the poster.

I considered adding Bill Clinton as a worst president. He participated in the Republication deregulation of the laws that were designed to protect people from abuse by the rich and giant corporations. I also fault him for the content of NAFTA for the damage it caused Mexican farmers and made illegal immigration worse---and the approval of massive transfer of jobs away from the U.S. which threatened the continuation of the middle classes in America.

BBB

Best
Teddy Roosevelt- I once lived on the block he was born on so wins he does.
James Garfield- Got out in less than a year so he couldn't muck it up too much.
George W. Bush- contrary to current beleif I find he will be later regarded as one of the best. He acted as he believed best would be for the country.

Worst
Grover Cleveland- darned attention hog couldn't stay out of the spotlight and ran a second time knocking out Benjamin Harrison (a so-so pres.)
Bill Clinton- the man was sleaze and stll is. Unfortunate people are attracted to his looks.
Millard Fillmore- the last of the Whigs he was a replacement for the dead Taylor (Zachary) he was a bit full of himself and never one knew what to expect of him to decide to do- pushing the Clay Compromise Measures (which had eventual benefits) and signing the Fugitive Slave Law (which made return of slaves who escaped a law even when they got to another state)

As unoriginal and banal as it sounds, ditto what you wrote.

My # 3 Top Prez

1. Geo Washington
2. Abe Lincoln
3. FDR

My Post-1900 Top 3

1. FDR
2. Teddy Roosevelt
3. JFK

Worst 3

1. Nixon - for adding another 4 yrs in Vietnam when it could have been ended earlier; Watergate affair -- causing the massive erosion of respect for the office of the Presidency.

2. Regan - for his general economic policies towards union-busting (PATCO). Regardless of his personally affable qualities, he also allowed Ollie North and the secret gv't (Iran-Contra funding) to exist

3 GW Bush - Dubyah ... where to begin with him? Start with him committing troops to a wasteful (human lives) never-ending foreign involvements in Iraq, Afghanistan etc.; increasing national debt to beyond-stratospheric levels, mishandling of 9-11 and mishandling of Katrina. this not just incompetence - and its impact is purely evil.

An honorable mention goes to Daddy Bush..for his lack of finishing the task of removing Saddam which precipitated the events which followed


Oh My..all 3 are Republicans? Such a co-inky-dink?

William Henry Harrison got out faster.

That was already in effect, as per Article 4 Section 2 of the US Constitution anyway.





David

Ragman, I was interested about your choice of George Washington. Washington was not a powerful president in his time because the Founders created their Constitution to give the Congress the most power leaving the presidency as the administrator who facilitates the Congress' legislation.

I give Washington applause for his setting the practice of no president for life (much like a king) and limiting the power of the president.

People often name Washington because of his leadership in the revolutionary war, but that was before he became president. That's why I didn't add him to my best three presidents.

BBB

Primarily (in proper context of that era) I took into consideration the monumental task of being the first President - thus setting the tone, His having the foresight to lead in such a way that differentiated from King as the leader of a our fledgling country.

It amazes me his humanity -- how can such a man subjugate his ego, keeping it in check while never having the precedent of a prior Presidential example!

That alone puts him at the head of the class. Yes, prior to his Presidency, he was an heroic figure, as we'd been at war with England (needless to say), all of which occurred when England was at or near the peak of its power. The fact that the office of the Presidency was not yet to become the bloated monster that it became is much to his credit rather than his detriment. Can't fault him for the proper direction as dictated by a Congress, many of whom became later Prez themselves.

Interesting and worth of remark is that the link and the judges of whom the best of US Presidents is from the UK-based London Times.

Well, we were allowed just three. Otherwise, I would have said all of them, at least since Eisenhower.

Interesting thread now I wonder if there should be a thread of men who should had been president but for one reason or another did not hold that office.

One comes to mind immediately. Al Gore should have been president instead of George W. Bush. I often try to imagine how things would have been different if the conservatives on the Supreme Court had not denied Gore's right to be president. No Afghan war, no Iraq war, no tremendous increase of our financial deficit. I don't know if Gore could have stopped the financial and real estate corruption and prevent the terrible recession. Probably not.

BBB

Lincoln had little interest in emancipating the slaves and repeatedly stated that he would be fine with not freeing a single slave if that would preserve the union. Many European nations had already banned slavery (because of Christian morality!), and the United States had outlawed the importation of slaves 50 years earlier. Slavery was clearly on it's way out in the English-speaking world. It would have ended in the southern United states as well sooner or later. Killing 600.000 soldiers in a bloody civil war did little to advance the emancipation of slaves.
I like Lincoln, I just don't think he quite was the cartoon hero we made him into.

The great depression may be the most misunderstood event in economic history. Roosevelt did not cure the depression, he caused it. The economy was about to recover on itself after the crash of 1929, unemployment was back to only 6%. It was after Roosevelt's disastrous economic policies that the depression really went bad.
And what ended the depression was not government in the form of public works programs or war spending. Think about it, if government spending could improve the economy, why wouldn't we do it all the time? It cant, we merely traded debt for unemployment. And as soon that unsustainable spending ends, the depression comes right back. And the depression was right back after the war, but this time congress enacted the right financial policies, cutting taxes and government spending, and it was nothing more than a minor recession, omitted by most history books. Those small government policies at the end of the war ended the great depression, though in hindsight it looks as if the government spending of the 30's and 40's ended the depression.
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/what-ended-the-great-depression/

Big government policies, such as those of Roosevelt and Johnson, did not improve the situation of the poor or the middle class, in fact it harmed them. The statistical data shows that "the rich" don't exist, there are far too few super-rich to make any impact on government revenue. Those we tax when we make "the rich pay their fair share" are mostly middle-class wage-earners and small businesses. Taxing them causes lower wages for bottom earners (because of less demand for low-skilled labor), higher prices for necessities (because of stifled competition and delayed efficiency improvements) and delayed technological progress. All these costs are heavily paid for by the poorest. Every Dollar that the poor get in "free" government services costs them 5 or 10 or 20 Dollars in lost standard of living. In other words, all taxes are indirect taxes on the poor. Of course wealth we never had shows up in no statistic, so it appears as though government helped the poor and middle classes.
And unions did not "create much of the middle class", the middle classes were created by the free market. Wages and working conditions improve gradually because of competition for labor, that is elementary supply and demand economics. The unions can improve the conditions of their privileged members, but only at the expense of others, and society as a whole is worse off because of them. If all a country had to do to raise it's standard of living was to form unions and demand higher wages and better working conditions, then Bangladesh could just do that to instantly raise their standard of living. Obviously it doesn't work that way.

Bush did not "follow and expand on Reagan's agenda", he was actually the greatest spender in presidential history. If you like it when Roosevelt and Johnson do it, why is it suddenly bad when Bush does it? If you judge by the numbers, Bush was a more compassionate president that any before him who "helped the poor" and "protected the working class from the rich".
Fact is, all Americans are better off if the political class does not meddle with the economic system to help them out. This may seem counter-intuitive, but in the 1800s, when government mostly stayed away from meddling with the economy, America progressed from near universal poverty at the start of the century to within reach of the world’s highest per capita income by the end, and that despite a horrendous civil war and waves of impoverished immigrants arriving. In the last 50 years big government has spent billions on trying to fix poverty but the results have largely been destructive.

As for my favorite presidents, I favor roughly the first two dozen presidents. The ones that stuck to the constitutional limitations of government instead of implementing spectacular programs to make it into the history books. And for implementing the most effective anti-poverty program in human history: limited government.