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Forums - Politics Discussion - Best/Worst Presidents

Rath on 29 May 2012
Marks said:
rocketpig said:
Marks said:
Obama will go down as one of the worst later on. He contributed more debt than all previous presidents combined, launched more invasions than Bush, failed to get the troops out of the middle east (which was a pre-election promise), bailed out big corporations, and much more. 

You've been watching too much Fox News. Only if you tack on Bush's stimulus package does Obama's "debt contribution" go that high.

And who cares how many "invasions" Obama "started"? Bush started an entire god-damned war that involved hundreds of thousands of troops, got thousands of troops killed, and what do we have to show for it? A country that nobody wants? Yay, America.

This partisan bullshit needs to stop. Bush was a lousy President. I don't think Obama is much better but I'm certainly not going to lay Bush's mistakes on him. He has enough to answer for after four years without taking on Dubya's clusterfuck of a Presidency.

I never said a good thing about Bush here man. And I also could have thrown on SOPA/PIPA and giving himself the right to imprison Americans without a warrant to Obama's resume. And these are just things I'm remembering off the top of my head, if I dug deeper I could find more goodies. 

And yeah Bush's war in Iraq/Afghanistan was terrible and nothing good came from it, but that doesn't take away from Obama continuing the war well into his presidency, as well as invading Libya and wherever else. What was to stop Obama from keeping his pre-election promise of bringing the troops home? Did Bush somehow still have some power to keep them there as of November 2008? 

1) SOPA/PIPA/CISPA have not been supported by the White House and Obama has threatened to use his veto on them. He cannot be blamed for them.

2) Obama has never suspended the writ of habeus corpus as far as I can see. Interestingly enough Bush did.

3) Obama never promised to bring the troops home straight away. Doing so would have left those countries without a stable government...

 

It's too early to judge Obama's presidency but some of the things he gets criticised for are simply incorrect.



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Dark_Lord_2008 on 29 May 2012

I like what you did here. The Best Presidents are regarded as the Worst Presidents and the Worst Presidents are regarded as the Best Presidents.



mrstickball on 29 May 2012
Flanneryaug said:
Wow, this list is a joke. FDR is debatably the best president ever, not one of the worst. Also, while I hate Bush, there have been many worse presidents than him. Also putting Obama on this list means nothing because current presidents are always on the opposite parties worst president list.

 

Here's a task:

Tell me why FDR is the best president ever. List specific characteristics that make him unique in the situations he faced, as well as what he did that no other president could do during his presidency.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

Adinnieken on 29 May 2012
Mr Khan said:
On "technically a democrat" you have to note that the Democrats stood for the stuff that Cleveland stood for at the time. He was constitutionalist in the sense that he was anti-industry, whereas the Republicans were pro-tariff and pro-subsidy. He built his popularity on the large resentment for industrialization that was in full swing in America at the time.

Best:

1 - Johnson: Stood up to the racists and worked to weed out the KKK fairly aggressively. Arguably politically motivated more than personally (given that he obstructed such efforts as Senate leader in the '50s). Great Society, etc.

2- FDR: essentially laid the foundation for modern America in terms of policy, military, diplomacy, he stood up for the poor and provided real leadership out of the depression and through the second world war.

3- Lincoln: Held the nation together against the instance of states' rights run amok that was the Confederacy.

4- Theodore Roosevelt: certain racist tendencies, though not overt support for the KKK (which hadn't been revived yet). However, he helped lead the cause of progressivism in the early 20th century for pushing America into modernity.

5- Andrew Jackson: Stood up to the lunacy of nullification in his day. The Trail of Tears is a black mark against him, but he took no prisoners and helped sharpen the focus of the Federal Government.

Worst:

1- James Buchanan: Largely his fault the civil war was allowed to happen.

2- Warren Harding: Fairly incompetent (largely the reason why he died.) Although his supply-side fixes temporarily abated the economy, he ignored underlying issues that tore into the 20s.

3- Ronald Reagan: Set this country back 30 years. The poisonous political ideas he helped champion are what holds this country back today, the fruits of his labor.

4- Andrew Johnson: Accidental president who was unfairly hounded by the Republican congress at the time, but he was ill-suited for his time. Real post-civil-war leadership was needed.

5- John Q. Adams: Cheated his way into the presidency and was made largely ineffectual because of it.

I mostly agree with everything you say, but Ronald Reagan wasn't the father of the new American Conservatives and their ideals, that was Barry Goldwater.  Reagan just became the person Conservatives rallied behind after the 1964 elections. 



SamuelRSmith on 30 May 2012

Obama opposed SOPA/PIPA because it would have cost him too many votes.

He opposed CISPA because it didn't go far enough.

Hardly reasons for celebration.

I think he also opposed the indefinite detention clause of NDAA12 (despite, according to Levin, asking for more broad language), didn't stop him signing it.



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SamuelRSmith on 30 May 2012
Flanneryaug said:
Wow, this list is a joke. FDR is debatably the best president ever, not one of the worst. Also, while I hate Bush, there have been many worse presidents than him. Also putting Obama on this list means nothing because current presidents are always on the opposite parties worst president list.


He is debatably the best President ever, all Presidents are. Also debatably the worst, hence the point of this thread.

Also, all you've made here are assertions. In order to make arguments, you need to back up your statements with actual facts. I can just as easily refute what you're saying with a simple "you're wrong".



SamuelRSmith on 30 May 2012
Dark_Lord_2008 said:
I like what you did here. The Best Presidents are regarded as the Worst Presidents and the Worst Presidents are regarded as the Best Presidents.


A little tip that will go a long way in life: whatever the "establishment" says, the opposite is true.



Rath on 30 May 2012

@PDF. You're criticising Carter for his post-presidency?

He was a rubbish president, but he's one of the best ex-presidents the US has ever had.



SamuelRSmith on 30 May 2012
PDF said:
I am not only interested in the policies, and legacy but also there political ability.

I also found the OP list silly. Choosing people like Harding who was surrounded in scandal over Lincoln who kept this country together. Your argument against Lincoln is silly as well. What should Lincoln have done? Not tried to keep the nation together?


Do you care about liberty vs tyranny? Or do you just care about keeping the Federal Government in control, no matter what?



Rath on 30 May 2012
SamuelRSmith said:
PDF said:
I am not only interested in the policies, and legacy but also there political ability.

I also found the OP list silly. Choosing people like Harding who was surrounded in scandal over Lincoln who kept this country together. Your argument against Lincoln is silly as well. What should Lincoln have done? Not tried to keep the nation together?


Do you care about liberty vs tyranny? Or do you just care about keeping the Federal Government in control, no matter what?


What a biased video. No the emancipation proclamation didn't abolish slavery, the thirteenth amendment did. Yes the war was essentially over slavery - primarily the fear that slavery would become legal in the free states. Attempts to paint it otherwise are generally historical revisionism by states rights advocates who don't want to be seen as standing up for slavery but supported the right of the southern states to secede.

 

I'm not arguing that Lincoln didn't have a strong authoritarian streak or that he didn't trample quite a few human rights in his time in office, but he did abolish slavery and the war was largely about slavery.

 

@PDF. Post presidency he's taken some pretty extensive diplomatic action in N. Korea, the Middle East, Africa and S.E Asia. Rather than summarize I'll just link the relevant section of the wiki article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_carter#Diplomacy