Who do you think was the best US president in history?
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47 Answers
Washington because if he hadn’t been successful, there may not have been another President.
I’m inclined to say Franklin Roosevelt, followed by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin’s cousin Teddy Roosevelt. Essentially the presidents who did what they could to create a more equitable, if still flawed, society.
FDR or Lincoln. Both were wartime Presidents, and had to prepare the nation for the difficult fight.
Lincoln, though we were damned lucky that Washington was first.
There’s also what @filmfann said. Both FDR and Lincoln led their nation through the two bloodiest conflicts this young country has known.
FDR. Hands down, no question. He faced the worst economic crash in US history and then the worst war in Earth’s history, and handled both very well.
Thomas Jefferson…not only was he instrumental in all those formative years of our independence he masterminded the Louisiana purchase that gave us much of our heartland. TJ all the way.
I’d say Washington, Lincoln, and Reagan in that order. The votes for FDR always amaze me but in school that’s what I was taught, what a great President FDR was. In looking at the depression era however, FDR prolonged the depression. He didn’t pull us out of it. Hell, we didn’t recover until he put 12 million men in uniform. It’s amazing how that can lower the unemployment figures.
Lincoln was probably the best.
Hands down, Washington. He set a standard that has not been – and probably cannot be – equaled. He had the opportunity to be Emperor, and turned it down. Then he could have been President-for-life, and turned that down as well. He could have abused the Executive powers more than most of the executives who have followed him, and did not. He bound himself to the Constitution, generally.
After that, perhaps … Coolidge. He understood that the job of the President is “to lead the government”, not “to lead the nation”.
@ucme Harrison Ford was a much better President…just sayin
Thomas J. Whitmore. He led the first successful attack on the aliens!
I have only really been paying attention since 2000. You can probably see where I am going here.
Bush is a war criminal and was a daily embarrassment in the eyes of the world. I don’t really have to worry with Obama. A grown-up is behind the wheel.
So Obama gets my vote since I wasn’t paying attention in 1940.
It’s a three-way tie with me.
Washington for all the reasons stated above.
Lincoln, who had an amazing learning curve and strength of character. If he had lived, I am convinced we wouldn’t have had the brutally punitive reconstruction period, the South would have come back into the fold a lot sooner and we may have been able to skip the whole Jim Crow thing, been at 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education by 1880 and saved ourselves 75 years of unnecessary grief and animosity.
FDR who, through his programs staved off a revolution that I am sure would have erupted under a second helping of Hoover, kept the populace alive and relatively stable during the Depression Era, oversaw the incredibly rapid, massive buildup of arms and army required to successfully meet the simultaneous Japanese and Axis challenge.
@Jaxk
You’re neglecting the fact that many of the programs, policies and agencies that FDR implemented are still in effect and of great benefit to the country to this day. Social Security is the one that most recognize immediately. There’s also the FDIC, the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Tennessee Valley Authority transformed Tennessee and Kentucky (and bordering states), spurred economic development, created navigable waterways, recreational bodies of water (Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley being the big two) and provided electricity to the region. He also reversed the worst man-made ecological disaster this nation has yet seen. On a more personal level, I know that the skills my grandfather learned while working under New Deal programs/agencies led to a lifetime of gainful self-employment for him.
@ucme Yup…and the line of interns would be around the block
@Darth_Algar – You seem to forget that when we were starting to emerge from the depression and indeed Europe was emerging as well, FDR’s social security, threw us right back into depression. That was 1936. Union workers did quite well during the depression, making good money with good raises but if you didn’t have a job, you couldn’t get one.That was also FDR who created that environment and kept it alive throughout the Depression. He tried to stack the Supreme Court by adding as many as 8 new judges to it. Even the Democrats couldn’t go along with that one. His main asset was his ability to make the people think he felt their pain. They did love him even while they were being screwed by him. Great? I think not.
Thomas Jefferson
I’m with Thomas Jefferson on several crucial points that I feel are tremendous errors, for example, that ideas should not be considered owned. I think copyrights, trademarks, and patents are all mistakes, particularly as they are in current US law.
“if nature has made any one thing less susceptible, than all others, of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an Idea; which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the reciever cannot dispossess himself of it. it’s peculiar character too is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. he who recieves an idea from me, recieves instruction himself, without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, recieves light without darkening me.”
He also wouldn’t stand for Citizen’s United, nor all of the corporate corruption in our government, let alone the general stupidity level.
@Jaxk
Swell, but that did not address my point at all.
@Zaku
So Jefferson didn’t think that a creative work could be owned, but did think that people could be. Awesome.
@Darth_Algar IMO that is a bit unfair to saddle Jefferson with anything to do with supporting slavery as there were 15 other great Presidents before Lincoln who did little to nothing to stop the ownership of other humans. It will be like saying 150 years from now that Obama did think the slaughtering of animals for food was somehow OK simply to make an offhanded irrelevant remark.
@Jaxk It always tickles me when conservatives are called to badmouth the man who is by any measure the most popular president the country has thus far produced. If Roosevelt were alive he’d STILL be president. Furthermore, it can be well argued that the only reason the financial disaster of 07 (through which we currently live) does not exceed that of the 30s is due to the measures he initiated expanded, and which remain in place. To claim that the nation is worse off as a result of the Social Security Act is a lonely argument indeed, and even the dullards running the right have better sense than to make such a claim in public. Roosevelt was an astute politician who effectively recognized the truth, and in so doing, rescued his class from almost certain destruction. The big difference between then & now is that even with all the warning signs (Trump for example) clearly in place, his class no longer has the sense to recognize them for what they are, and for those who do, greed allows no thiught of remediation.
Richard Nixon, closely followed by G.W. Bush.
@stanleybmanly – Yes the old ‘it would have been so much worse if he hadn’t done what he did’ argument. I think you’ve been listening to too many Obama speeches. FDR was such a great President that when he died, congress immediately put together a constitutional amendment (the 22 amendment) and got it ratified in record time, to make sure it never happened again.
Popularity doesn’t make you great.
@Jaxk
Which nothing whatsoever to do with his policies, and everything to do with the fact that FDR broke with precious tradition established by George Washington (who himself stated that his decision had nothing to do with trying to establish precedent, and everything to do with him simply wishing to retire).
Man, you are a master at evading the point.
@Cruiser
I wasn’t really attempting to single out Jefferson there. In my view the keeping of slaves tarnishes all their legacies a bit (perhaps none moreso than Washington, who spoke out against slavery while keeping slaves himself). I was just a bit amused by the, ummm, skewed (for want of a better term) view of property rights there.
@Darth_Algar – I don’t know what you expect. Yes, FDR created SS which threw us back into depression and it’s still around. It’s still a Ponzi scheme as well. FDR also created the Japanese internment camps. Let’s not forget that. That alone should drop him out of greatness status.
And the 22nd amendment wasn’t because he broke tradition, it was because he amassed incredible power and it scared the shit out of everyone in Washington. He became a virtual dictator.
Lol. Folks do love to throw around the term “dictator” towards any president who’s policies they disagree with.
A rose by any other name…......
@Jaxk Roosevelt did indeed have a heavy hand, but his achievements were extraordinary. Prior to social security, the primary indicator for destitution in the United States was old age. Roosevelt transformed that reality overnite. The man singlehandedly brought virtually the entire black population (those permitted the vote) over from the party of Lincoln to the democratic rolls. And that 22nd amendment exists simply because even democrats realized there would never be another man to match FDR. But all of this aside, the only reason Roosevelt was able to wield near dictatorial authority was that he was truly beloved by the common man in this country. In fact, he was so reverred by the populace that the Republican party was reduced to irrelevance. There were those who could not forgive Roosevelt for “betraying his class”, but I still contend that the plutocrats of today would do well to heed the lessons from the man on uniting the population through assuring the well being of the common man.
@stanleybmanly – Life expectancy when SS was enacted was in the 50s. SS was designed so that most people would be dead before they received any benefit. The destitution was a result of the depression and SS only made it worse.
You seem to want this to be a Democrat vs Republican thing but it’s not. The 22nd amendment could not have been passed without Democratic support. Republicans and Democrats joined together not because they didn’t believe there would ever be another FDR but rather to insure there would never be another FDR.
No I’m not pitting this as a Democrat vs. Republican issue because frankly Republicans were irrelevant for the most part while Roosevelt was in office, which is why he was able to pack the Supreme Court and wield those dictatorial powers you spoke of earlier. And the 22nd amendment was ratified after Roosevelt’s death as you say to assure that no one else pulled off the feat of a 4 term Presidency. But it’s also important to note that the amendment came to pass following his death because of the impossibility of its passage while he lived. He was THAT popular.
Old age was recognized as the leading indicator of poverty decades before the onset of the great depression when the government began gathering and analysing statistics. Sure life expectancies were in the late 50s, but for the literally millions living in the country who beat the odds, endemic poverty was guaranteed a staggering and expanding percentage of old folks. The depression exacerbated the problem as old folks formerly dependent on the charity of their children found those children strapped themselves. The point is that the Social Security Act virtually eliminated elderly poverty in this country in the middle of the great depression, and it did it overnite.
Explain to me how Social Security “made destitution worse”.
The unemployment rate dropped from almost 30% to around 15% in 1936. SS brought it back up near 20%. FDR was more interested in social engineering than he was improving the country. It’s that simple.
The 22 amendment couldn’t have passed before his death because he wielded way to much power. That was why it couldn’t have happened before his death and why it was imperative after.
How did Roosevelt weld too much power for the 22nd Amendment to have passed during his tenure?
Yes. Why do you suppose it was that he was able to wield all that power? Why exactly was it that he was re-elected 3 times with growing landslides? Why was Roosevelt able to tell the rich. “Since you made all that money driving us into depression, and since you’re the only ones with money, YOU are going to finance the recovery”? How did he get away with it?
Hmmmm…. @stanleybmanly just how far would your exalted FDR get today with grandiose ideas like these??...
__“Roosevelt tried to keep his campaign promise by cutting the federal budget — including a reduction in military spending from $752 million in 1932 to $531 million in 1934 and a 40% cut in spending on veterans’ benefits — by removing 500,000 veterans and widows from the pension rolls and reducing benefits for the remainder, as well as cutting the salaries of federal employees and reducing spending on research and education.“__ Such a new deal.
@stanleybmanly – Popularity begets power. Remember that Hitler was very popular during the same era. They both used populism as a tool promising jobs for the unemployed prosperty for businesses, food for the hungry, and unity for the country. Before you jump on the Hitler comparison remember that they were both doing the same thing at the same time in an environment of depression. That’s not say they were the same they weren’t. But if someone had wanted under those circumstances the results could have been similar and that scared the shit out of Washington. That was the environment that sparked the 22nd amendment.
@CWOTUS – Good article! It pretty much lays out my argument only with much better literary skill. The only thing that it doesn’t mention that I think plyed a big role in our recovery is our manufacturing capability. Atthe end of WWII we were the only major industrial nation left standing. We produced fully half of the entire world’s gross product. We produced goods for everybody else. That played a huge role in our recovery. IMHO
@Jaxk Your point is taken. Nothing threatens a political system like hard times. But the striking thing to note is as you said, the difference between Hitler and Roosevelt on the paths taken as remedies. THIS is why I and most others view him as a truly great President. He bent the rules considerably
and was rather ruthless about it. The difficulty with great men is that things always boil down to ends justifying means. The opposing views of you & I on say Roosevelt & Reagan are pretty much about our views on the ends involved. It’s easy to forget when looking at Roosevelt, Hitler, Obama, Bush, whoever, that these men almost certainly believe their behaviors and decisions in the best interests of the people and nations they govern.
I agree 100% on your take about the economic advantages granted the Postwar United States. Ours was a country in which manufacturing had been modernized and totally advanced AT GOVERNMENT EXPENSE. Hitler pulled Germany out of recession gearing up for war AT GOVERNMENT EXPENSE, while Roosevelt took Keynes to heart, and even with the glitch of the dowturn in 36, the country was climbing steadily out of recession because of it. But I tell you as sure as I’m writing this, that all of us including the plutocrats currently deriding him have Roosevelt to thank for the fact that the country neither mirrored the German reaction, nor fell into the bloodbath of lynching the rich. The question today is around whether our luck of the right man in the right place at the right time has finally petered out. And with this in view, I ask you to consider the REAL implications of Donald Trump.
@stanleybmanly _“He bent the rules considerably
and was rather ruthless about it. The difficulty with great men is that things always boil down to ends justifying means.“_
And that’s kind of the crux of the issue isn’t it? How many presidents haven’t bent the rules? Very few noteworthy ones I’ll wager. The fact is that men who are unwilling to bend the rules almost never make capable leaders.
Amen! Compliments on the observation!
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