Best Modern President?

[mrstickball]

Mr Khan said:

It's a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Hoover would have been a tremendous president if he and Coolidge had switched terms (plus then people would've gotten a better look at how truly lazy Coolidge was. The man slept 12 hours a day not including naps, which i didn't think was possible for a healthy adult. Imagine if he had been given a crisis of any sort), Hoover was good at promoting business, and would have done well at keeping the boom times rolling, but he had no feel at all for Depression.

But we can't afford those little what-ifs, can we? Judging presidents on their ideological merit is pointless at best, and revisionist at worst. We can only judge based on what they *did*

Hoover was a horrible president, and made the depression worse. He knee-jerked various laws into being to save America, which had the opposite effect (the same can be said for FDR).

I don't understand how he was pro-business, either.

IMO, the 4 worst presidents of the past 100 years are as follows:

FDR (expanded government by ~4000% while in office with too many programs to name)

Woodrow Wilson (same as FDR, but on a smaller scale. At least Harding/Cooledge reversed the crap he did. Plus he got us into a meaningless war in Europe)

Hoover (Smoot-Hawley, did far more to hurt deepen the depression than help it)

Johnson (Vietnam, Medicare)