The Civil Rights act, the Constitutional Amendment to support the Civil Rights Act, i mean, he was a Southern Democrat who declared War on the Klan, and provided the top-down impetus to help MLK and his movement to get as far as they did. And the war on poverty was the most noble endeavor undertaken since the New Deal, but the problem was Johnson couldn't support the two Wars simultaneously

Vietnam is a black mark against him historically, but domestically he's possibly one of the best we've ever had, ever. Kinda the opposite of Nixon, who really played foreign affairs well (opening China was a genius move), but had one of the most horrid domestic agendas out of the set

He had a projected surplus that was never achiveved.

It's hard for anyone to complain about Clinton soley for the fact that he didn't have any problems to worry about.

It's kinda like how everyone loves Lincoln, Wilson and FDR even though they were extremely ghoulish presidents who were only excused for being a president during times of war.

Espiecally FDR.  He was just craaaazy.  Never was there a president who tried so hard to emasculate the other 2 branches of power.  He wanted to literally castrate every german male.  It took STALIN to be the voice of reason. (Churchill's middleground solution was to strangle to death every german officer who was a major or higher.

Lincoln kind of deserves it in my opinion. Well depending on your point of view on secession and civil rights anyway. Theres no denying he was a strong president who improved things for the blacks.

Also you have to ask, is not having anything to worry about the cause of Clintons good governance or the effect of it?

I guess from a policy stand point he did as much as a president could to combat blantant, violent racism. To that extent you are correct.  I guess laying down the framework...yeah I can see that. Really that's all he needed to do.

As far as combatting poverty with ineffiecient government programs and not being able to effectively lead the nation in a war, he's not a great president in my eyes. But I guess we'll agree to disagree on the economics/poverty issue.

Interesting comparison between Nixon and LBJ. The Irony was in the 68 election Nixon was painted to be more likely to purge the U.S. into vietnam(more than we already were).

I'd say cause honestly... I mean, it's not like he stopped any external threats.  Every president but Obama had a huge external threat to worry about.

Also economically he came in right during the good part of the dot.com bubble.   He didn't have anything to do with the bubble and there was nothing that was going to prevent it's burst.

As for Lincoln.  He was important in providing black people with civil rights... while simaltaniously taking rights away from everybody else.   He illegally suspended haibus corpus and constantly imprisoned people for no reason and raided all media that disagreed with him.

Lincoln's main benefit was that the presidents around him were hisorically bad.  If he was put in a non-crisis presidency....

if Obama was shot and killed the month he became president, he would have gone down in history as the greatest who ever served.

That's the thing about people who get killed (JFK, Lincoln)... we always think from the point of view of optimism. JFK didn't have time to show how ineffective he would have actually been.

To answer the question, I would have to go with John Adams. In the timeline of all leaders, every president for the US is a modern one. We are so young a country.

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*

I like to think that Kennedy (and Khrushchev) are the reasons we're not all living in nuclear winter right now. If nothing else, that makes him worth it

Though i generally agree that the Kennedy worship is misplaced from him being killed before his time (but that happens outside the presidency a lot too. I entirely doubt that John Belushi would be remembered as fondly as he is if he hadn't destroyed himself), but Kennedy's problem was that he really came in with no mandate. The election of 1960, despite being one of the closest in American history, was really a pointless election (in the sense that it didn't pivot on any major issue, kinda like the election of 2000), and Kennedy entered the presidency much like W did, lacking a mandate.

I find it hard to say on Clinton. I feel it was probably a combination of good luck and good diplomacy.

Also in a non-crisis situation Lincoln wouldn't have suspended Habeus Corpus and etc.