Things like that are why I respect him. If he honestly believes that the US was partially behind the coup attempt (and as you said, it doesn't seem particularly farfetched) then why shouldn't he come out against that? The USA shouldn't be trying to topple democratically elected regimes.

Obama is a bit slow on the withdrawal but at least he's doing it. I'm not defending Obama here. You're the one who said he would go down as one of the worst and it's waaaaayyy too early to make that call. He inherited a lot of shit and second terms are usually the stick by which Presidents are judged (and it's very likely that Obama is going to get a second term).

This thread is impossible to take seriously when you have these two at the top of your "worst" list.

Both Presidents did things I do not agree with, that much is certain. On the other hand, they are also the two Presidents that faced far more hardship during their terms than any other President since, oh, probably John Adams. You know, the second guy to ever take office.

And you completely manage to ignore the good things done by each man. You know, like Lincoln managing to restore the Union into one again, despite having the most imcompetant general staff imaginable for half the war. You also attribute him lording over the South's rebuilding process, yet fail to mention that he was dead during the entirety of it. And FDR... Well, he did a lot of crappy things as well. He also introduced the New Deal. Hard to complain too much about that, given the fact that we were in the middle of the Great Depression and it helped thousands of people avoid starvation. He was also very adept when it came to handling the war situation, gently nudging the American people toward that inevitable conflict and making sure they were prepared for it.

On top of that, both men were stable influences in a country gone mad with dischord. You may not think that sort of thing counts but if you look through books written by actual historians, they tend to take a different stance on the matter. While I'm not sure either of those Presidents were our greatest ever (I tend to not believe that, either), saying they were the two worst is just damned foolish and naive and completely dishonest with the facts of the matter.

Again, it's impossible to take your list seriously when you include the man who wrote the Emancipation Proclomation and the man who signed into law the Civil Rights Act. I don't worship Lincoln like many others do and he did a lot wrong but he was also put into a terrible situation and the country emerged as a better nation after his term. I'm also not fond of LBJ at all but he did more for equality in this country than any President since Lincoln. The ball was rolling in that direction anyway but he's still the guy who signed the bill. That in itself is enough to keep him off any "worst President" list, just as Nixon opening trade agreements with China and ending the Vietnam War is enough to keep his disaster of a Presidency off the list.

Both you and Samuel are taking an incredibly narrow view of what makes a President "good" (economics and executive power, mainly) while completely ignoring the situations in which these Presidents were placed. This kind of thing cannot be viewed in a vacuum. You have to factor in all the elements that made each President do the things he did. Did Lincoln overstep his powers? Oh, most certainly. Was there another option? I'm not so sure of that. The sheer amount of turmoil during that time almost mandated a strong hand to right the ship. It's an ugly reality of a war President. A real war President, not a "fake war" President like LBJ or Bush who used their executive power unnecessarily to advance their agenda during a manufactured war we shouldn't have been fighting in the first place. On top of that, you're dismissing that those two men, despite their faults, advanced actual "freedom for all" more than anyone else in our history. You can't ignore that. It's kind of respulsive, actually, and very dishonest with who we are as a nation and the tragedies we've caused in the name of slavery, racism, and intolerance. I'm just about the biggest Jefferson fan there is but if I was to take the antithetic, yet just as narrow, view as you're using, I could place him at the top of the worst list for sheer hypocrisy. His belief in slavery was questionable at best. He wrote the Declaration of Independence. Yet, he didn't do a damned thing about inequality during his Presidency and just "let it ride". But I take a larger view of his Presidency than that and realize that, yes, the Louisiana Purchase was beyond his scope of power. But he saw an opportunity, one of the largest and best ever offered this nation, and grabbed hold before it disappeared. We emerged a much better and stronger nation because of it.

And before you start, yes, I realize that the duality between Lincoln freeing the slaves and bringing the hammer down on Native Americans is a little hypocritical. But, as I said, he did a lot wrong but I'm not going to ignore the right he did because of it, much like Jefferson.

Mikhail Gorbachev ended the Cold War, all Reagan did was continue the Carter Doctrine. Now look what we have as a result, several well funded terrorist organizations that we continue to fight to this very day. To me, that was a huge strike against him. Also, his economic track record would have been mixed even if you did not factor in the staggering increase in debt. Truly the beginning of the end for the once mighty nation.

Edit: The Cold War never really ended. The wars in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan are all relics of that era and tensions with Russia are on the rise as they modernize their military and assert themselves on the world stage once more.

You read my post, right? I said I'm not an LBJ fan. I think most of his decisions were terrible. But signing that one document (the Civil Rights Act) is enough to keep him off any Worst President List, even if he wasn't the guy who sent that ball in motion. I said it right there in my previous post. Shit, I even called him a "fake war President" who overstepped his power to advance an agenda. The Civil Rights Act is one of the top ten most important events in the history of this nation. The guy who signed it into law gets at least a little credit for making that happen.

Yes, Lincoln allowed Jim Crow laws to slow civil rights advancement for a century. He was also dead six days after the South surrendered. I suppose you think he should have fought harder for equality from the grave but most people are going to have a hard time sharing that sentiment. Lincoln absolutely exascerbated the situation at Sumter. But no matter what he did or did not do, the war was coming. It could have been prevented for weeks, months, maybe even years. But it was coming because of the fundamental problem that the South really, really liked its slaves and the tug-of-war between the South and North over non-slave territories entering the Union was going to come to a head sooner rather than later.

Without either of these two men, your sorry ass would be speaking German. 

Republicans are and have always been isolationists, that was one of the stark differences with G.W. Bush, he is the first and only US president ever to wage a preemptive war against an aggressive nation (Iraq).  The realities of this were clear in the US with most conservatives either outright supporting Hitler and his war effort, or cautioning the FDR administration about any involvement in war.  Wilson had essentially the same situation, but a less clear reason to engage in war.

And don't be an apologists for Imperialist Japan.  Had it not been for the British, the Japanese would never have been able to mount an air war against the US.  It was British advisors that taught the Japanese how to properly engineer and build planes and it was British manufacturers that licensed production of planes to Japanese manufacturing plants. 

In 1924 Gen. Billy Mitchell of the US Army Air Force warned if the coming attack by the Japanese against the US base at Pearl Harbor.  A warning that Harding ignored, and one for which Mitchell was drummed out of the military for.

How were the actions of the FDR administration questionable before the war?  Japan was engaged in a war of expansion.  China being the non-aggressors in the situation, were allies of both the US and the UK, in a war against Japan.  Japan on their part were committing atrocities left and right.  The only two things the US could do, besides continued talks (which they did), was cease trade with Japan so they couldn't wage war and provide military aid to China, which they did.  The reason Japan attacked the US was two-fold, one simply is oil, the other was to draw the US into a two front war that the Japanese mistakenly thought would bring the US to better terms.

It was Japan that deceived the US while in negotiation.  It was Japan that attacked the US unprovoked.  It was Japan that took over an hour after the attack to notify the US that it was ending negotiation with the US.  Did the US have knowledge of that before we were given it by Japan?  Yes.  However, the information wasn't acted upon quickly mostly because of the fact that we were still in negotiations with Japan.  In fact, a formal declaration of war wasn't presented to the US until 10 hours later.   Had officials used the Navy's telegraph system rather than the Army's, Pearl Harbor might have been aware of the situation in time.  But again, you're talking about a nation not in a state of war, in negotiations with a trade partner, subsequently being blindsided.  Japan was actively planning and preparing to wage war against the US months prior to the actual attack.  The US was not planning to wage war with Japan.  You may argue that we should have known better, but hindsight is 20/20.

I mean, the British should have known that aiding the Japanese in engineering and manufacturing of aircraft, a nation that routinely had been aggressively attacking its neighbors since the late 1800's, might wage war with airplanes if it had them.  Then again, what am I thinking.  The Brits were all about capitulating to Hitler and Churchill boasted state secrets on how the Allies were able to decode German transmissions in his memoir of WWI.  Ultimately resulting in the Germans creating one of the best encryption/decryption schemes in history and stymieing the Allied efforts in WWII.

So, what exactly did the US do wrong again in saving your limey asses?  Twice.

FDR(Dem), Lincoln(Rep.) and Wilson(Rep.) three heroic US Presidents united the country during difficult periods in history: WW2, Civil War and WW1. George W. Bush did a good job, having to fight two wars against the terrorists that threatened US interests domestically and internationally.

Numerous US Presidents reigned during peaceful and prosperous times and they did not have to deal with world war, terrorism or Civil War. The best Presidents were effective decisive leaders that lead the nation during the difficult times.

Wilson was a Dem.