5 best and 5 worst

[Lord Bitememan]

This is a bit of a different spin on the "who's your favorite pres." subject. Irrespective of how much you like them, I'm inviting people to identify the 5 best presidents and 5 worst in their opinions.

5 Best:
1. Abraham Lincoln
2. Theodore Roosevelt
3. Ronald Reagan
4. James K. Polk
5. Richard Nixon

5 Worst:
1. James Buchanan
2. Franklin Pierce/Herbert Hoover
4. Ulyses S Grant
5. Jimmy Carter

And because it bore mention,
1 Good President/Bad President: Andrew Jackson  

[Rainbowfied Mouse]

Best
1) FDR
2) Teddy Roosevelt
3) Abe Lincoln
4) Washington
5) Reagan

Worst
1) Carter
2) Hoover
3) Bush
4) Clinton
5) W. Bush  

[DanskiWolf]

Best:
Lincoln
Washington
Teddy Roosevelt
Nixon
Reagen

Worst:
Buchanan
Carter

That's all I can think of for now.  

[x_ScreamoSaur]

Best:
1) Reagan
2) Nixon
3) Lincoln
4) W. Bush
5) Washington

Worst:
1) Obama
2) Clinton
3) JFK
4) Hoover
5) Tyler  

[Lord Bitememan]

Isn't it just a bit soon to make substantive evaluations of W's presidency, let alone Obama's?  

[Latopazora]

I need to do a little more research on American history, but I'll go with what I know.

Best:
1. Reagan
2. Washington
3. Lincoln
4. Thomas Jefferson
5. Teddy Roosevelt (the Trust Act, he stopped feudalism from springing up in the US)

Worst:
1. Carter
2. FDR (he prolonged the depression and started the whole socialism trend that we can't get out of now)
3. Hoover

ok, I need to do more American history research after this, which is sad, because my dad is an American history buff.

I'm up in the air about Nixon, didn't he get us into China in the first place? I'm in the thought process that if Nixon had not opened trade with China, we wouldn't have poison prodects being sold in our stores.
I wanted to put JFK into the best list, but he wasn't president long enough and he was just made a hero because he was killed. But according to my republican family, he would have made a very good president because of his tax cuts.
Its hard to say if the W. Bush was a good or not, we may think he was good or bad during his presidency, but we need to see how it effected the future.
I know Obama just became president, but he's on his way to my worst list. It took W. Bush 8 years to put us billions in dept, it took Obama a few months to put us 4 trillion in dept. I know its too soon, but he's already digging his grave.  

[Lord Bitememan]

If Nixon hadn't opened relations with China they still would have been in the Soviet bloc. That would have put them in far too powerful of a bargaining position when Reagan later came along demanding the Soviets out of Eastern Europe. It would have meant greater logistical support for the Soviets in Afghanistan. It would have meant no capitalist China. Sure, warm relations with China have had some downsides, but they've had unimaginable upsides too. No Sino-Soviet split, no victory for the West in the Cold War.

Also, it should be noted that Bush did not put us "billions" into debt, he added well over a trillion into an already large debt. Obama has proposed larger debts, but Bush was no saint on the balanced budget front.  

[Lord Bitememan]

Bump  

[Twisted_Lover21]

Best:
1. Reagan
2. Teddy Roosevelt
3. Lincoln
4. Washington
5. Thomas Jefferson

Worst:
1. Nixon
2. FDR
3. Hoover
4. Carter
5. Clinton  

[xxpeaceful_dreamsxx]

Best:
1. W. Bush
2. Reagon
3. Bush
4. Lincoln
5. Roosevelt

WORST:
1. OBAMA
2. CLINTON
THOSE ARE MY TOP TWO  

[Vasilius Konstantinos]

Five best Presidents:
1. George Washington
2. Thomas Jefferson
3. Grover Cleveland
4. William Howard Taft
5. Calvin Coolidge

These men lowered taxes, lowered tariffs and maintained a Gold Standard and increased the wealth and capital of the United Stated, they kept peace on our shores, extended trades with other nations and defended the Constitution to its fullest extent by applying its laws and not changing them to fit their own wishes. These men knew the meaning of what Liberty is.


Five Worst Presidents
1. Abraham Lincoln
2. Woodrow Wilson
3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
4. Harold S. Truman
5. Lyndon B. Johnson

1. Surprised by Lincoln on my bad list? Well, look at his record: Lincoln achieved his presidential immortality by quite unnecessarily plunging America into its greatest bloodbath--ostensibly to maintain the boundaries of an existing federal union, as if those boundaries possessed some sacred status.

2. Wilson, on his own initiative and against the preference of a clear majority of the American people, propelled the country into a grotesquely senseless, shockingly barbarous clash of European dynasties in which the United States had no substantial national interest. On such savage and foolish foundations is presidential greatness constructed. Wilson's decision to take the United States into World War I: Allied victory, a harsh Versailles treaty, German resentment, the rise of Nazism, and the future of World War II, not to speak of the rise of Communism, which also followed in World War I's wake. He also signed into existence the Federal Reserve Bank which turned our monetary standards into the hands of Private Banking firms and gave them leeway to run afoul the tides of our nation's economic prosperity.

3. FDR? The New Deal and an Imperial American Dynasty in refusal to leave office, though elected, but never relinquishing the model set by Washington. Also his abuses of the Constitution and the Blue Eagle. Sadly no other President since FDR has done what should have been done which is undoing everything he did in office.

4. Truman, now so elevated in the estimation of the historians, left office in unpopularity bordering on disgrace because of his Korean War disaster, but the historians forgive him, admiring his use of nuclear weapons and attempts to preserve and extend the New Deal.

5. Lyndon Johnson belongs at the bottom of the bad list for his Statist economic policies as well as his supremely catastrophic war policies.  

[Lord Bitememan]

Quote:

Wilson's decision to take the United States into World War I:

Okay, let's play.

Quote:

Allied victory,

Would have happened without US involvement. Britain had already knocked out the Ottoman Empire, and without significant US involvement had defeated Austria-Hungary as well. British blockades were starving Germany into submission, and even Brest-Litovsk had no hope of providing Germany access to food without major logistics work taking place. In short, the US entered WWI as a largely decided affair.

Quote:

a harsh Versailles treaty,

US involvement in the talks largely tempered the conditions thrust on Germany. Without a US presence, you likely would have had harsher conditions from France, plus no Dawes plan to soften the blow.

Quote:

German resentment, the rise of Nazism, and the future of World War II,

Would have happened anyways. German defeat and the Depression were key causes of the rise of Nazism, both of which were only tangentially related to US involvement. European disarmament and aversion to warfare left the French unable to impose Versailles conditions and led to the emboldening of Hitler.

Quote:

not to speak of the rise of Communism, which also followed in World War I's wake.

Again, would have happened without US involvement. Communism spread to Russia as a result of destabilization brought on by the war. The Tsar was already overthrown by the time the US entered the war, and the inability to bring the war to a conclusion led to the rise of the Bolsheviks. The Russian Civil War was won by the Communists despite US involvement, and the growth of the Soviet Union occurred in diplomatic isolation.  

[Vasilius Konstantinos]

Play what?

You are entitled to your opinions. This was not a debate. Just a posting.  

[Lord Bitememan]

Just a turn of phrase. Calm down guy. But your facts about US entry in WWI are wrong. The US saw very little action in the conflict, entering only in 1917 and not sending substantial troops till 1918. During the Spring Offensive, which was Germany's big thrust after the defeat of the, then, Soviet Union, most of the action was seen by British and French troops with the result of the halting and turning back of the offensive (largely the result of highly flexible Australian divisions fighting up and down the zone of the offensive). Americans really had yet to arrive in force by the time of the Spring Offensive. Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire capitulated to British forces in September and October respectively. The Italians, actually (I stand corrected on those facts), knocked out Austria-Hungary by early November. Germany was isolated by this point largely without significant involvement by US troops. So, no, Germany was going to lose even without US involvement. It's a fact.  

[Vasilius Konstantinos]

So where did I say anything wrong with what you are saying?
Truth be told we did enter late, but we also fought in many harsh battles, killed thousands of our soldiers in a conflict Wilson propelled us into, against a majority populace.

Fact is we lost 116,516 soldiers in that war, especially when the population of the United States was 103,000,000 that is quite a loss. Sadly over half of our troops in WWI lost their lives not in battle but to friendly fire and unprepared, uneducated circumstances. It was a war, that you agreed with me on, that was unnecessary for us to enter and that Wilson dragged us into, proof that he deserves to be on the worst list. And the outcomes of the harsh Treaty secured the seat of Hitler for the Third Reich.

But yes I concur we were weak in the Treaty of Versailles, but that was due to the pressure on Wilson just to get us out of there.