Who is the greatest US President in history?

[ShiftyPowers]

It's hard for me to give Reagan too much credit or place too much blame on him for what happened during his presidency. He was old, lazy and uninformed on many issues. His policy decisions were heavily influenced by his advisors. Reagan acted more like a ceremonial figure than a real president. He did very well in that respect, he communicated well with the American people and foreign leaders respected him. He had to work with a Democratic Congress, and he managed that quite skillfully. Even liberal historians generally rate Reagan as one of the better presidents in US history. The bottom line is, the American people liked him. Well, white people liked him.

The best and worst thing about Reagan was his profound hatred of Communism. Reagan's policies helped bring about the fall of the Soviet Union (although, to be honest, Gorbachev contributed more to the USSR's demise). On the other hand, his ardent anti-Communism meant he was willing to do anything to hurt the Commie bastards, even if it meant putting money and weapons into the hands of other bastards.

Reagan was a man of simple philosophy: he believed in the efficiency of the private sector, the inefficiency of the public sector and in the inherent evil of Communism. Everything else was details.

No that's not true, Reagan is generally considered weak, or at least average by historians, and poor by political scientists. Like you said, he was barely a real president, he would ask for 1 page summaries on complex issues and would then make a decision based on his one page briefing. George H. W. Bush was a better President than Reagan and it is NOT CLOSE.

Best President is probably Lincoln, and it's a pretty major consensus among historians and political scientists. He suspended habeus corpus against the Constitution, and the Court actually did rule against him, but other than that there's not too much bad about him. Everyone has flaws, but Lincoln was a real mythic figure in office. Washington and Jefferson too.

Carlos*son is awful. Cleveland.... meh, ok. Probably not one of the "greatest".

My personal favorite because I did not have to live through Vietnam is Johnson. Johnson minus Vietnam is one of the absolute best. With Vietnam he's seen as average.

 

[Run DMB]

No that's not true, Reagan is generally considered weak, or at least average by historians, and poor by political scientists.

I don't know, he does pretty good in this ranking, and that's a composite of a number of rankings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor...Presidents#Presidents_by_average_scholar_rank

 

[ShiftyPowers]

1) George W. Bush is in right at the half way point, when anyone who isn't completely blind from political bias will tell you that he is right now in the bottom 5 at LEAST. I mean seriously, I would take Nixon over Bush without even thinking about it. Nixon was a major figure and an influential president, Bush is horrendous.

2) Regardless, Reagan is not above any good President save perhaps James Monroe who may not have even been that great anyway, just the last in line of the Virginia Democrats.

 

[Yossarian]

FDR

Gave the working man hope - enough said.

The New Deal - enough said

LOLzer@ getting schooled by a bunch of teabags on the history of American Presidents....reminds me of the time when I was schooled hard on Funk/R&B/Soul music by this cute, little chick who was like the whitest of the whites that you could find, man.

 

[Hyun]

harry truman is truly underrated. during his tenure:
ww2 ended (a bomb)
military was desegregated
marshall plan was created
un was found
nato was found
truman doctrine was created
mcarthur was stopped (from creating nuclear disaster i.e. fallout in manchuria)

 

[nird]

god I hate politics. What about the guy who removed slavery? That got to count for something.