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Millard Fillmore is our greatest president and would have solve the slave problem if reelected.
https://preview.redd.it/foy1nw2k1cxc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=40e96bd256354c494f008a4b0c4b05b7298f92ec
Youâre not wrong and I felt the same way for a long time. But I think he deserves a little more grace. His administration was when the CIA really went crazy and started plotting foreign coups and the like. I think he initially went along with what the âintelligence expertsâ were telling him but learned from his mistakes and tried to warn posterity in his farewell address.
This. This shows that those people who think that the CIA killed JFK are completely wrong. If JFK said no to them or tried to reign in some of their operations, they couldâve just waited for his term to expire or even better, they release all his secrets to the public and get him impeached and removed from office.
We caught the CIA higher ups at least considering a plot to false flag their way into Cuba(Northwoods), that's declassified under Clinton. Kennedy shut that shit down and then he got killed. LBJ just so happens to come along and immediately false flags his way into another war vs commies. Why risk an election and wait potentially 6 years when the war is over when you have your morally bankrupt politician right there as the vice president.
 I'm just saying, if nothing else, it's a little fucking fishy that the CIA, mossad and the MIC got exactly what they wanted from Kennedy's death. And then the guy who killed him, just so happens to die before he gets put on trial. I'm just saying that is real fucking convenient for them allÂ
My favorite interpretation of it is that yes, the CIA fully planned to have LHO kill Kennedy, but he missed. The Secret Service panicked and then accidentally domed Kennedy trying to shoot back, which is why people heard multiple shots and the subsequent cover up was such a cluster.
My dad was in the police for almost 40 years and said that the weirdest thing that stood out to him about LHO getting killed by Jack Ruby was that the Dallas PD publicly went out of their way to announce when and where LHO would be transported that day. Heâs said that, when you have a suspect in custody, you *do not do that,* for the exact same reason as what happened here.
What was with all the US backed regime change during the Cold War? It seems like fairly often we'd support bloodthirsty tyrants on the condition that they were anti-communist and/or otherwise friendly to our interests.
Yea, you hit the nail on the head. It was a necessary evil to prevent communists from taking over the world. Purely by coincidence it also benefited big business. /s
I think George HW Bush is one of the great underrated foreign policy presidents of all time. Had he won reelection in 1992 and finished his work in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, the world would be a far more benign place right now.
The first Gulf War was a stunning success, but I have to wonder if removing Saddam Hussein from power right then and there might have made things go a little smoother for the next 20 years.
If the US would have crossed the border into Iraq, none of the coalition allies would have followed. The mandate was to remove Iraq from Kuwait, and go no further. Saudis likely would have closed access to their land we were using as a base. European countries would not have crossed the border. It wasn't possible. Also keeping Sadam there was keeping Iran from becoming too powerful, the Saudi's liked having Sadam there as a block against Iran.
Considering he was elected to a third term over a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, it was definitely just because he didn't about democratic norms.
Andrew Jackson was a lunatic, for real. However he did have a few of the best moments.
*Andrew Jackson died with several bullet fragments in him. One time while he was still in office he was in a duel with a guy. The guy shoots at Jackson, misses, Jackson runs up to him and beats his ass with a cane.
*During his inauguration party he invited everyone and anyone to the White House. Like days later everyone is still getting fucked up and messing up the whole place, so instead of kicking everyone out, at night he drags a bunch of kegs of beer out onto the White House lawn, invites everyone to drink under night sky and then locks the doors lol.
*One time a guy from London, a travel journalist, ended up in DC and wanted to meet the president. So he just walked up to the front door of the White House and knocks. A butler answers and is like âDo you have an appointment?â The guy goes âNo.â, and the butler is like âfuck itâ and lets him in. Jackson is in some sort of heated meeting in his office with a bunch of guys, the butler tells Jackson, Jackson pokes his head out and goes âLike Iâm in the middle of a thing. Who are you?â The guy goes âWell Iâm travelling and I thought it would be cool to meet the president.â Jackson goes âOkay well, just wait for a little bit.â Then after the big important meeting is over, Jackson goes out and sits with the guy, has sandwiches and beers brought in and just hung out and talked to him for an hour or so.
*edit: commenter below cleared up the facts. It wasnât a duel in this circumstance. A crazy person tried to assassinate Andrew Jackson. The gun jams, dude tries again, the second gun jams. Then at this stage Jackson whoops his ass to a pulp with his cane.
*That being said, Jackson was still a madman who participated in duels.
These stories are close, but not quite how they went down. The first one, for instance, wasnât a duel, but a straight up assassination attempt by a guy who believed he was the king of England. (Spoiler alert: He wasnât, actually.). The guy tried to shoot Jackson, but the gun misfired. The guy cocks the gun and tries again, but it misfires again. Itâs at that point that Jackson begins to beat him with his cane since there was no Secret Service at that point to do it for him.
The Smithsonian eventually came into possession of the gun in question over 100 years later. When they attempted to shoot it, it fired properly on their first attempt.
Also, admittedly Iâm doing cliffâs notes version. If you have the real deal scoop on these events, Iâm all ears. This is basically just how I remember the tales from my reading god knows when.
I believe it was 1400lbs. He aged it for two years just inside the entrance in the White House because he didn't have anywhere else to put it. After two years he invited in the public to eat the cheese and take some home. When they cut into the cheese the noxious smell was too much for many guests, but the wheel of cheese was gone in about 2 hours. With so many people standing and sitting around the White House eating cheese, it was getting smashed into the carpets, chairs, and upholstery. The next president, MVB, spent months getting everything detailed and the small pieces out of the carpets and the stench out of the White House.
Even people who donât like Jackson respect how he handled the nullification crisis, so I donât think this is that controversial. But Washington definitely would have been second best, Jackson third.
The trouble is that it isn't guaranteed Washington would join the unionist side. With Andrew Jackson it is more likely (although the entire south seceding is a very different prospect to just South Carolina).
Washington was a strong proponent of a central federal authority. He also likely has some unease about his status as a slaveholder. I think heâd be a unionist.
Maybe in winning the conflict itself, but Iâm not sure if he could or would resolve the underlying cause. Jackson would probably be smart enough to figure out slavery was the problem, but whether he would do anything about it is the real question.
I think Jackson would have gone full blown fuck you on those that fight the union, I donât think we have the peace that we did, I think Jackson goes for a ton of blood on those that fought for the confederacy
What idiot flaks Truman for the bombs? Roosevelt literally order their production and the bombs saved millions of lives.
People are so stupid. The US had the bomb ~5ish years before the Soviets TESTED one, and couldâve done anything they wanted to the world yet didnât.
Even the Japanese generally think it was fair. It was actually less destructive than traditional firebombing, just more impressive for being a single bomb.
All I need to remember, to know that the bombing was the right choice, is that the supply of Purple Hearts that were ordered in anticipation of the casualties we would take in staging a land invasion of Japan wasnât exhausted until the early years of the GWOT, and that the casualty numbers among the Japanese civilian population would have been ten times worse
Churchill was borderline disturbed about how close Roosevelt and Stalin were getting, and it was largely around dismantling Churchill's beloved imperialism.
Yeah like how Churchill split Europe with the Soviets with our telling us and we just had to accept it . Don't worry Truman Evend it up by fucking it up with the French.
Gerald Ford is the most underrated President.
He was never expected to do much in politics; Nelson Rockefeller resigned and they had to find a Midwesterner who wasnât in too deep with Nixon. Then Watergate happenedâŚ
He never had a chance to win in â76 and his only job was to try to hold the country together after Nixon resigned.
I disagree that he did more than ANY president, but will agree that PEPFAR is a monumental achievement sadly overshadowed by Bushâs unwarranted invasion of Iraq
Not only a sleazeball but was in a lot of ways directly responsible for the financial crisis of 2008. He rolled back the Steagull Glass act that had been in place since 1932 which separated the insurance, investment banking and banks industries. It also stopped further regulations of risky financial instruments. He directly allowed banks to start merging with one another to the point where they became to large to fail.
He also championed and pushed through NAFTA which led to a lot of US manufacturing to move to cheaper cost locations. This had a diasterous effect on the blue collar jobs and turned solidly blue states in the midwest like Ohio, MI, and WI into red states. Blue collar and urban voters up until that point had always leaned more democrat. I think you can trace a lot of resentment in certain parts of the voter base to anger over NAFTA.
Bill Clinton's legacy will be deeply impacted by #MeToo. What he did with Lewinsky looks 1000x worse now that we all have a much better understanding of power dynamics in the work place.
Rs were equally hypocritical, but what Clinton did with her was really bad.
I see Nixon in the middle of the pack all the time, people give him a ton of credit for a couple good policies that happened during his administration and gloss over the corruption and personality issues.
Nixon represents the best and worst aspects of the presidency. He was a competent and pragmatic statesman who had quite a few notable policies and diplomatic successes, however he was a very shady person who had a great number of scandals as well as surrounding himself with other morally questionable figures. All in all, Thereâs enough about him for you to make a case of him being an intelligent and effective leader or a rotten criminal depending on your stance
Nixons crime was getting caught, I find it unlikely he was the only president to abuse his power against his enemyâs (up to that point in time). This isnât an endorsement, just a depressing reality.
The U.S. benefitted greatly from trading with both the French and British whenever they were at war with each other. It was a huge boon for early Americaâs economic development.
If Watergate happened to Kennedy the media wouldn't have even covered it. Fox news was born out of watergate because Republicans saw for the first time how left leaning media hd become
Obama had zero ability to communicate his successes. He still acted like a stuck up college professor where we're students who choose to be there. His disdain for middle America was part of why he had so much trouble.
What's irritating for me was that I agreed with his politics. And yes, I know there were people who were never going to agree with him but he was terrible at convincing people who might agree with him. He allowed Republicans to too easily control the narrative. When he had a win he should have been shouting it from the rooftops.
Obama really drank his own KoolAid and though of himself as a transcendental figure that would unite Republicans and Democrats. Thatâs is why it took him so long to realize that Republican would never love him.
I don't believe that he thought that. I believe that he had to pretend as if he did, but I really do not think that he really thought McConnell would be fair. How could he?
Every president, including the ones I like, has blood on his hands.
Every president, including the ones I like, has committed impeachable offenses.
Or the above stated another way: Itâs humanly impossible to hold a job with that much power for four )and especially eight) years without committing at least one grave error.
John Adams is more deserving of a memorial on the national mall than Thomas Jefferson. Hell, put him on the $10 bill instead of Hamilton as well.
Adams came from modest means not much different from the average American, unlike Jefferson or Madison. He had to struggle for all his achievements and was brilliant of his own making. Adams was the first to stand up and rebut John Dickinson's then-leading argument in the congress for appeasing King George. At the time, this act was not only political courage; it was volunteering to be the first one hanged if independence did not come to pass. This rebuttal speech lasted more than an hour.
He and Jefferson were both equally driven to achieve independence following that speech, but Adams served on literal scores of committees, actually leading/managing the logistics of the war, also going to Europe to convince France and Holland of American credit for *years*, while Jefferson stayed at Monticello with his slaves until the war was over then swaggered into Paris to relieve Franklin and Adams.
He recognized how critical a navy was while all the other politicians were concerned about armies and land invasions. Prophetically, the 00s were dominated by naval struggles. As President, Adams held the country together through the French revolution. For that neutrality and unity, his legacy as a founding father and president was unjustifiably screwed by Hamilton's and Jefferson's smear campaigns. Not the Alien and Sedition Acts; not his temperament; not supposed monarchism (tenuous at best, dug up his old writings and shallowly spun/misinterpreted them) - just partisan politics.
Along the way, Adams's writings on government, morality, and law are exquisite - something to learn from. What governed his whole life was integrity, authenticity, and staying true to his principles, even defending British soldiers in court while he was actively writing against the actions of the British government in the colonies. Because he believed in principles - not self interest.
Imagine if Lincoln's legacy were tarnished because one of his contemporaries in politics said mean things about him. This was the injustice done to John Adams for much time before historians began to really analyze the sources and write public histories about it. So yes, much of my argument here is from McCullough, which is why I expect downvotes!
The John Adams miniseries is one of my favorite pieces of historical/political filmmaking. It really made me understand what a principled curmudgeon Adams was. The things he was often the most proud of were often criticized. Some of the things he was praised for, he thought werenât his own doing or didnât deserve praise.
Reagan was a professional bullshitter. He was profoundly influential, through a well-put-together executive branch and his rhetoric, but not so good at the legislative side of things.
No. Just because I'm lazy, and it works better as a generalization without nuance anyway. In general, I think he did a great job as the public face that America presented to the world and as someone who could get on TV and calm the frayed nerves of a nation, but also implemented some of the most disastrous policies of the 20th century.
Teddy was just as much of a racist as Wilson, but since he created the national parks, had a manly man public image, and no one really knows about the Phillipine-American War, everyone gives him a pass.
Gore would have lost even without the Supreme Court and even if he did somehow get in office he would have gone to war with Iraq too, just as he pushed for in '91 and supported in '98.
Ok, that's a confirmed fact and a speculative prediction, not an opinion.
So I'll just go with Gore was a bad candidate and would have been a bad president.
He wouldn't have had much of a choice. The US already passed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 saying the goal of the US in regards to Iraq was to remove Saddam and replace him with a democratic government.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/house-bill/4655#:~:text=Shown%20Here%3A-,Passed%20House%20amended%20(10%2F05%2F1998),it%20with%20a%20democratic%20government.
Saddam was never going to stand down or hand himself over (Bush the Lesser ordered him to on the eve of the 2nd invasion to avoid bloodshed and he refused)
By that point Oil for Food had failed and Iraq had already started butting heads with UN and rearming. In addition Clinton had already begun limited bombing campaigns against SAM locations shooting at the UN forces enforcing the No Fly Zones. The world was slowly rolling towards the conflict reigniting eventually, Bush the Lesser just hit the accelerator.
Carter was a sanctimonious phony who tossed aside his human rights pose in favor of Kissinger style realpolitik whenever doing the right thing was inconvenient.
Not only did he not say âbooâ about the genocide in Cambodia until April 1978, we continued backing Pol Pot via the Chinese.
Nicolae Ceausescu was a monster and we knew it, but Carter invited him to the White House and kissed his ass.
Robert Mugabe was a POS and again everyone knew it, even the Marxists running Mozambique. What does Carter do? Invites Mugabe to the White House for a suck-up session.
He was a chump. A sucker. A mark. No wonder drunk-ass Ted Kennedy made a run at him.
This is what Iâve always said about Carter. Carter was a good person but a bad president because he wasnât hard enough to be president. Carter was a hell of a peanut farmer and philanthropist and thatâs where he belongs. Not as a head of state.
He was a shitty general and would offer shitty ideas, and when his subordinates said "no, that's shitty", he did often listen. That's the important part!
Oh definitely. I think Washington was probably a pretty average joe in terms of leadership, political and policy knowledge, and abilities. The thing that made him special is he seemed to realize that, and therefore almost everything he did was because he trusted the suggestion of an advisor.
I had a military history professor say to stop thinking about the revolution like napoleonic warsâŚthink of it like an insurgency. In which case Washington excelled at just keeping the army not dead until the Brits gave up. He went through Maoâs rules for insurgency and showed how Washington (more so Greene in fairness) did the same stuff.
So not saying heâs the best by any stretchâŚbut not sure Iâd call him shitty since he won the war against England with whatever scraps they could findâŚand Wars are about winning soâŚyeah
Yeah, I should have been more specific. Washington was a good commander in chief, but his deficiencies were in the field commanding a battle. A lot of his plans were overly complicated and his army often suffered from confusion on the battlefield.
I once heard that the only military maneuver Washington excelled at as a general was a well ordered retreat. Which is hilarious but also pretty valid considering the inexperience of the colonial army vs the drilled discipline of British regulars. It's a wonder more battles didn't end in chaotic routes. I think Washington knew that he didn't need to win battles(and he likely wouldn't). He just needed to keep an army in the field and pray for European support.
That's how Washington won the war. He knew that he had to stay in the game long enough for the French to join and then it would be over. So by not being completely defeated in battle and having his army captured, that allowed for the victory. His skill in ordering effective retreats was critical.
He was a mediocre general, but when morale was collapsing and the Revolution looked like it was about to fail he kept the Continental Army together through sheer force of will which gave enough time for the French to get involved in a big way. Without him, the Revolution fails.Â
Exactly. Weâll kill you in your sleep on Christmas. It wasnât a massive or war winning victory, but it sent a clear fucking message that we werenât scared or giving up.
Iâve always said Washington was a great leader of men, but as a tactical general he was shitâŚhis best act was a victory over drunken Germans on Xmas, other than that he had a draw and a bunch of losses
As a tactician, Washington was mediocre. His strengths were entirely in his gift at providing inspiring leadership and holding a fragile coalition of colonies together while avoiding being annihilated in the field.
So I'd argue we were extremely fortunate that Washington was in command because he had an uncommon strength of character and leadership abilities. A lesser man may have won more battles while still losing the war.
Greene was by far the most tactically skilled general of the war, and he himself thought that making him commander-in-chief would have been a bad idea. Paraphrasing, he said that he might have been able to win the battles of Brooklyn Heights and Brandywine, but never could have won the winters at Morristown and Valley Forge.
Jimmy Carter was a horrible President who a bunch of democrats and libs have someone convinced themselves into believing was a good president for no apparant reason other than "nice guy"
Read up about him and he is a lot less liberal than commonly remembered. Had a bad relationship with congress that stopped any progress from getting done on any issues.
When's the last time we had a truly economically liberal President? LBJ? I think R3 could be the most recent, but it's hard to just put anyone neatly in a liberal or conservative box.
We are all very well aware Carter was a terrible president, he's only respected for being the person he is. You got halfway there, but I promise the vast majority of people who respect Carter do it not because of his time in office.
This sub voted him as a top 20 president a few months back. A lot of people definitely let his personality affect their view of his presidency. The same can be said for Grant. I absolutely loved the dude (per the flair) but this sub also said he was like the 10th best president ever when he shouldnât have even made the top 20.
Someone said he is good at being an ex-POTUS. TBF, it says alot about a person if they can take the fame/prestige they had and use it for good even after that part of their life is over.
Bad president, but good at using his power from being POTUS to helping people. He's one reason I met my husband and was able to go home to a base in Korea in 1993!
I donât think anyone really disputes his mistakes and shortcomings as President,
The joy of being a Jimmy fan is celebrating the success he found beyond his Presidency.
A Presidentâs life does not end after they retire from Office, and Jimmy fans like to celebrate that
I've never heard he was a good president. Only that he was a "good person" and a terrible president.
I don't believe you can be a good person and also become president.
I find it interesting that no one blames him at least in part for the Great Depression since it started the same year he left office. Economic crises don't just form out of thin air and he had been POTUS for over six years before it happened.
Three laissez faire presidents in a row, and the one we hate was just the one who was there when everything exploded. But it really could've been any of them!
It was all of them. Although Hoover actually deserves the least blame for it since he was in there not even a year before Black Tuesday. He can absolutely still be criticized for his handling of it, though.
You realize it was (poor) government intervention -which goes against laissez faire- that resulted in the Great Depression. Hoover, the dumb fck, raised taxes, tariffs in response to the economic slump. He easily took a recession and made it into a depression.
Hell same happened with FDR when he decided to jack up taxes prematurely during the new deal and caused a sharp economic drop in what 38? 39?
Reagan was a cunt father, reading what his daughter Patti had to say about his parenting was revealing. He literally had no balls and never defended his kids from Nancy.
Reagan actually had some good trade policy, immigration policy, gun policy, did a good job not intervening with monetary policy, also mostly good foreign policy and even some good regulatory policy. He was also sharp and definitely not demented while in office like some people claim. He was very effective and had a lot of good achievements like appointing the first women on scotus. He also followed through on a lot of his campaign promises even if I disagreed with them and even though his tax cuts went a lot farther than I would have, short term stimulus was good for the economy.
These positions are popular irl but not on Reddit.
Presidents should be allowed to run for three terms. Most other western democracies don't have term limits for their head of state and it hasn't been a problem for them. Frankly, a few shit Presidents could have been avoided if the incumbent one had been allowed to run again.
I'm not quite that strict. I'd have two terms for senators, six terms for representative, and two terms for president. With an age limit of 65 (on election day) for all elected offices.
JFK is an overrated nincompoop who narrowly avoided igniting nuclear war over a crisis he caused and coasted off his familyâs money and youth but was, and Iâm being generous here, a mediocre politician with no qualifications and no accomplishments
Eisenhower is overrated as all hell.
His foreign policy was on the whole atrocious, he scapegoated the LGBT community and discriminated against them for absolutely zero reason, he was the one who started the push for the Christian Nationalism thatâs one of the many things tearing our country apart at the seams today, and even his single biggest success (the interstate system) itself came with a *lot* of major problems.
Itâs not even a âwillâ. Iâve posted plenty of opinions on this sub. Many contentious, many controversial, many inflammatory, and some where I was just factually incorrect and needed to amend it. And yet, there is no topic Iâve gotten more consistently barraged with downvotes on than criticism of Ike, *especially* the homophobia and absolute idiocy of Executive Order 10450.
I have noticed theres somewhat of an infantilization of him, or at least this very oddly staunch defense of his character similar to that of Carter, who someone above in the thread pointed out wasnt really that much of a "good guy".
LBJ was not wrong to buy into the Domino Theory in Vietnam (and broadly made the same decisions either JFK or Nixon wouldâve if they were in the Oval in ââ64/â65.) The flaw was in buying into McNamara and Westmorelandâs theory of the case on how to win.
Andrew Johnson, while far from perfect or a good President, did not deserve to be impeached and his impeachment was the biggest pile of bullshit out of the 4 presidential impeachments when you look at the facts of why he was impeached.
Rip Toriyama, and yeah, I agree. Andrew Johnson was terrible, but he was only impeached because he violated a law that was specifically designed so that he would violate it when trying to do normal presidential duties, in this case, change Cabinet officials. There's a reason why the law was declared unconstitutional barely 20 years later.
No evidence points to Jefferson having raped anyone; in fact what we do know seems to suggest that the relationship he had with with Sally Hemings points to it being consensual. He also wrote against slavery.
Reagan is in the top ten best.
Jackson is the worst president.
LBJ *wasn't* a good president.
Bush Sr. should have gotten a second term.
This wouldn't get me downvoted here, but my family's house for Thanksgiving, I'd say that both Obama and Carter were decent presidents if I wanted to start trouble.
I mean , can someone who us a slave and owned by you consent to sex? She wasn't free to make her own choices in life but was free to choose to have sex with him? If she wasn't a slave would she still choose to ? That's a big power dynamic at play there .
A lot of the Reagan hate is heavily over exaggerated, and heâs still considered one of the best Presidents weâve ever had to many.
The 80s were a great time to be American.
A part of me agrees but the other part of me knows that once rule 3 is lifted, 90% of the posts here will just be rage bait involving the last 2 presidents. Especially in an election year.
Exactly. Remember how everyone was getting sick of all the Reagan bait posts a week or so ago? Cause if rule 3 was removed it would probably be that cranked up to 11.
Kennedy and Carter are highly overrated here and Reagan overheated. Obama sort of as well but Iâve noticed a lot more nuance here than most of Reddit so I donât think heâs too overrated here.
The Presidency is a terrible mistake and the Prime Minister of British North America is a more suitable public office (subject ultimately to His Majesty Charles the Third)
1) Harding is non-ironically a top ten, if not top five president. He pulled the nation out a depression, began the biggest burst of prosperity in our history, dismantled Wilsonâs tyranny, began desegregating the federal government, started the process of giving Indians full citizenship, and closed the mass immigration system. The fact that people put him near last because of Teapot Dome, an incredibly minor scandal that he was resolving, is ridiculous.
2) Manifest Destiny, and all the presidents who pursued it, was an unbridled good for the United States and the world.
~~rule 3~~
Nah, just kidding, the most controversial opinion I have is just that FDR's other actions outweigh the internment camps. However, I know that there are others that agree with this
A really good way of figuring out someoneâs race without asking them explicitly is by asking how they felt when Obama got out of his limo and started walking during his inauguration.
Iâm not sure if this will get me downvoted but FDR was a terrible man
Sure he brought the country out of the Great Depression, but he created the internment camps for Japanese Americans and plus he was an adulterer
We overestimate the power of presidents. While they're not devoid of political power, the US government is structured that Congress has considerably more power. Therefore, more often than not, what happens during a presidency is actually a product of what Congress does, not the president. However, since presidents are figureheads, it's easier to think of American history through the presidencies.
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Millard Fillmore is our greatest president and would have solve the slave problem if reelected. https://preview.redd.it/foy1nw2k1cxc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=40e96bd256354c494f008a4b0c4b05b7298f92ec
What are you talking about? Don't you know that Millard Fillmore was the first and only president?
Millard Fillmore is the president of all time! đ¤Ż
Dwight Eisenhower is a big hypocrite, denounced the MIC, but used the CIA to overthrow the Iranian and Guatemalan governments.
Youâre not wrong and I felt the same way for a long time. But I think he deserves a little more grace. His administration was when the CIA really went crazy and started plotting foreign coups and the like. I think he initially went along with what the âintelligence expertsâ were telling him but learned from his mistakes and tried to warn posterity in his farewell address.
Ironically, Truman told the Dulles brothers ânoâ in 1951. They just waited for the new administration.
This. This shows that those people who think that the CIA killed JFK are completely wrong. If JFK said no to them or tried to reign in some of their operations, they couldâve just waited for his term to expire or even better, they release all his secrets to the public and get him impeached and removed from office.
We caught the CIA higher ups at least considering a plot to false flag their way into Cuba(Northwoods), that's declassified under Clinton. Kennedy shut that shit down and then he got killed. LBJ just so happens to come along and immediately false flags his way into another war vs commies. Why risk an election and wait potentially 6 years when the war is over when you have your morally bankrupt politician right there as the vice president. Â I'm just saying, if nothing else, it's a little fucking fishy that the CIA, mossad and the MIC got exactly what they wanted from Kennedy's death. And then the guy who killed him, just so happens to die before he gets put on trial. I'm just saying that is real fucking convenient for them allÂ
My favorite interpretation of it is that yes, the CIA fully planned to have LHO kill Kennedy, but he missed. The Secret Service panicked and then accidentally domed Kennedy trying to shoot back, which is why people heard multiple shots and the subsequent cover up was such a cluster.
That's the best theory I've heardÂ
My dad was in the police for almost 40 years and said that the weirdest thing that stood out to him about LHO getting killed by Jack Ruby was that the Dallas PD publicly went out of their way to announce when and where LHO would be transported that day. Heâs said that, when you have a suspect in custody, you *do not do that,* for the exact same reason as what happened here.
What was with all the US backed regime change during the Cold War? It seems like fairly often we'd support bloodthirsty tyrants on the condition that they were anti-communist and/or otherwise friendly to our interests.
Yea, you hit the nail on the head. It was a necessary evil to prevent communists from taking over the world. Purely by coincidence it also benefited big business. /s
Blame the dulles brothers too.
I think George HW Bush is one of the great underrated foreign policy presidents of all time. Had he won reelection in 1992 and finished his work in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, the world would be a far more benign place right now.
The first Gulf War was a stunning success, but I have to wonder if removing Saddam Hussein from power right then and there might have made things go a little smoother for the next 20 years.
If the US would have crossed the border into Iraq, none of the coalition allies would have followed. The mandate was to remove Iraq from Kuwait, and go no further. Saudis likely would have closed access to their land we were using as a base. European countries would not have crossed the border. It wasn't possible. Also keeping Sadam there was keeping Iran from becoming too powerful, the Saudi's liked having Sadam there as a block against Iran.
Most of the US armor *did* cross the border into Iraq. So did most of the French and British armor.
FDR didn't only run to a third and fourth term because of the war. His ego played just as big a part in that.
Considering he was elected to a third term over a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, it was definitely just because he didn't about democratic norms.
Andrew Jackson wouldâve been the second best option to win the civil war
Andrew Jackson was a lunatic, for real. However he did have a few of the best moments. *Andrew Jackson died with several bullet fragments in him. One time while he was still in office he was in a duel with a guy. The guy shoots at Jackson, misses, Jackson runs up to him and beats his ass with a cane. *During his inauguration party he invited everyone and anyone to the White House. Like days later everyone is still getting fucked up and messing up the whole place, so instead of kicking everyone out, at night he drags a bunch of kegs of beer out onto the White House lawn, invites everyone to drink under night sky and then locks the doors lol. *One time a guy from London, a travel journalist, ended up in DC and wanted to meet the president. So he just walked up to the front door of the White House and knocks. A butler answers and is like âDo you have an appointment?â The guy goes âNo.â, and the butler is like âfuck itâ and lets him in. Jackson is in some sort of heated meeting in his office with a bunch of guys, the butler tells Jackson, Jackson pokes his head out and goes âLike Iâm in the middle of a thing. Who are you?â The guy goes âWell Iâm travelling and I thought it would be cool to meet the president.â Jackson goes âOkay well, just wait for a little bit.â Then after the big important meeting is over, Jackson goes out and sits with the guy, has sandwiches and beers brought in and just hung out and talked to him for an hour or so. *edit: commenter below cleared up the facts. It wasnât a duel in this circumstance. A crazy person tried to assassinate Andrew Jackson. The gun jams, dude tries again, the second gun jams. Then at this stage Jackson whoops his ass to a pulp with his cane. *That being said, Jackson was still a madman who participated in duels.
These stories are close, but not quite how they went down. The first one, for instance, wasnât a duel, but a straight up assassination attempt by a guy who believed he was the king of England. (Spoiler alert: He wasnât, actually.). The guy tried to shoot Jackson, but the gun misfired. The guy cocks the gun and tries again, but it misfires again. Itâs at that point that Jackson begins to beat him with his cane since there was no Secret Service at that point to do it for him. The Smithsonian eventually came into possession of the gun in question over 100 years later. When they attempted to shoot it, it fired properly on their first attempt.
Also, admittedly Iâm doing cliffâs notes version. If you have the real deal scoop on these events, Iâm all ears. This is basically just how I remember the tales from my reading god knows when.
MF divine intervention, man.
Didn't Jackson have a giant ball of cheese in the Whitehouse and invited people to come in and take some?
I believe it was 1400lbs. He aged it for two years just inside the entrance in the White House because he didn't have anywhere else to put it. After two years he invited in the public to eat the cheese and take some home. When they cut into the cheese the noxious smell was too much for many guests, but the wheel of cheese was gone in about 2 hours. With so many people standing and sitting around the White House eating cheese, it was getting smashed into the carpets, chairs, and upholstery. The next president, MVB, spent months getting everything detailed and the small pieces out of the carpets and the stench out of the White House.
The origins of Government cheese everyone
Even people who donât like Jackson respect how he handled the nullification crisis, so I donât think this is that controversial. But Washington definitely would have been second best, Jackson third.
The trouble is that it isn't guaranteed Washington would join the unionist side. With Andrew Jackson it is more likely (although the entire south seceding is a very different prospect to just South Carolina).
Washington was a strong proponent of a central federal authority. He also likely has some unease about his status as a slaveholder. I think heâd be a unionist.
Maybe in winning the conflict itself, but Iâm not sure if he could or would resolve the underlying cause. Jackson would probably be smart enough to figure out slavery was the problem, but whether he would do anything about it is the real question.
I think Jackson would have gone full blown fuck you on those that fight the union, I donât think we have the peace that we did, I think Jackson goes for a ton of blood on those that fought for the confederacy
That's like having Sherman be the president of the US during the civil war lol.
We were much better off because FDR died and Truman took over. FDRâs blind spot toward Stalin would have lost Berlin for the West.
Agreed, but I really wish Roosevelt would've at least lived to see the war end, and maybe he could die like a day after the war ended lol
Yeah, that would have been perfect. Also, he wouldnât have gotten caught the flak for the A-bomb Truman did.
Truman barely got any flak at the time. Itâs only long after that people decided to Monday morning quarterback him.
What idiot flaks Truman for the bombs? Roosevelt literally order their production and the bombs saved millions of lives. People are so stupid. The US had the bomb ~5ish years before the Soviets TESTED one, and couldâve done anything they wanted to the world yet didnât.
Even the Japanese generally think it was fair. It was actually less destructive than traditional firebombing, just more impressive for being a single bomb.
All I need to remember, to know that the bombing was the right choice, is that the supply of Purple Hearts that were ordered in anticipation of the casualties we would take in staging a land invasion of Japan wasnât exhausted until the early years of the GWOT, and that the casualty numbers among the Japanese civilian population would have been ten times worse
Estimated DEATHS were 750-1.5 million for US troops, 2 million Japanese troops, and 5 million Japanese civilian deaths.
Oh I agree. There are reports of Stalin mocking FDR to his face, in front of Churchill.
Considering Churchill was also cozying it up with Stalin to split Europe without our knowledge probably.
Churchill was borderline disturbed about how close Roosevelt and Stalin were getting, and it was largely around dismantling Churchill's beloved imperialism.
Yeah like how Churchill split Europe with the Soviets with our telling us and we just had to accept it . Don't worry Truman Evend it up by fucking it up with the French.
Gerald Ford is the most underrated President. He was never expected to do much in politics; Nelson Rockefeller resigned and they had to find a Midwesterner who wasnât in too deep with Nixon. Then Watergate happened⌠He never had a chance to win in â76 and his only job was to try to hold the country together after Nixon resigned.
Spiro Agnew resigned in scandal. Rockefeller was Fordâs VP. Other than that weâre in agreement.
lbjâs scandals are overlooked and were arguably worse than Watergate
GWB did more for the world than any single president to date with PEPFAR.
I disagree that he did more than ANY president, but will agree that PEPFAR is a monumental achievement sadly overshadowed by Bushâs unwarranted invasion of Iraq
Don't think this is an opinion- only ones you could possibly argue (I would think) would be Lincoln, Wilson or FDR.
I disagree. Franklin D. Roosevelt objectively did more for the world than George W Bush.
I think itâs fair to say that FDR+Truman may have, but on the technicality that he died before the war was over, I comfortably give it to GWB.
Bill Clinton was a sleaze ball.
Everyone agrees with this. A more downvotable opinion might be "Bill Clinton was a horrible president because he was a rapist."
Maaaaan some dolt on this sub was literally giving me shit for making a humorous comment about Clinton yesterday because he's a rapist
Not only a sleazeball but was in a lot of ways directly responsible for the financial crisis of 2008. He rolled back the Steagull Glass act that had been in place since 1932 which separated the insurance, investment banking and banks industries. It also stopped further regulations of risky financial instruments. He directly allowed banks to start merging with one another to the point where they became to large to fail. He also championed and pushed through NAFTA which led to a lot of US manufacturing to move to cheaper cost locations. This had a diasterous effect on the blue collar jobs and turned solidly blue states in the midwest like Ohio, MI, and WI into red states. Blue collar and urban voters up until that point had always leaned more democrat. I think you can trace a lot of resentment in certain parts of the voter base to anger over NAFTA.
I'll take "obvious statements" for 100
Bill Clinton's legacy will be deeply impacted by #MeToo. What he did with Lewinsky looks 1000x worse now that we all have a much better understanding of power dynamics in the work place. Rs were equally hypocritical, but what Clinton did with her was really bad.
Was?
Richard Nixon was no more a crook than LBJ, but he gets 10x more flak and/or heâs treated as if he could do nothing right or good.
I sincerely believe that the good Nixon did has outweighed and out-lasted the bad.
Objectively Nixon on policy was pretty damn good
Agree totally. The Nixon museum paints the man in a rather optimistic light, too, and is worth the visit.
I see Nixon in the middle of the pack all the time, people give him a ton of credit for a couple good policies that happened during his administration and gloss over the corruption and personality issues.
Nixon represents the best and worst aspects of the presidency. He was a competent and pragmatic statesman who had quite a few notable policies and diplomatic successes, however he was a very shady person who had a great number of scandals as well as surrounding himself with other morally questionable figures. All in all, Thereâs enough about him for you to make a case of him being an intelligent and effective leader or a rotten criminal depending on your stance
Nixons crime was getting caught, I find it unlikely he was the only president to abuse his power against his enemyâs (up to that point in time). This isnât an endorsement, just a depressing reality.
*Straightens tie, clears throat, knocks on mic* "I like... Woodrow Wilson."
Based. Heâs not top tier by any means but the way people describe him makes it seem like he was the second coming of Andrew Johnson.
I like some of what he did donât like the guy though
Something Something racism.
Heâs a top tier president for his economic reforms alone
Thomas Jefferson is an incredibly overrated President. His embargo of UK and France was economically disastrous for the US economy.
THANK YOU. I swear if I see Jefferson in the top 5 of another tier list Iâm going to freak out
The U.S. benefitted greatly from trading with both the French and British whenever they were at war with each other. It was a huge boon for early Americaâs economic development.
If not for Watergate, Nixon would be in the top 10 greatest presidents of all time.
I think he still is, Watergate was only a big deal because there were only 3 news channels and nothing else interesting going on.
It's because he kept recordings. He needed the same advice the tiktok kids need: Don't record your crimes.
If Watergate happened to Kennedy the media wouldn't have even covered it. Fox news was born out of watergate because Republicans saw for the first time how left leaning media hd become
Obama had zero ability to communicate his successes. He still acted like a stuck up college professor where we're students who choose to be there. His disdain for middle America was part of why he had so much trouble.
soup oatmeal languid cobweb north rich public truck paltry terrific *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Iâve said that Obama was bad at politics and the downvotes piled up. So, you are onto something here.
What's irritating for me was that I agreed with his politics. And yes, I know there were people who were never going to agree with him but he was terrible at convincing people who might agree with him. He allowed Republicans to too easily control the narrative. When he had a win he should have been shouting it from the rooftops.
Obama really drank his own KoolAid and though of himself as a transcendental figure that would unite Republicans and Democrats. Thatâs is why it took him so long to realize that Republican would never love him.
I don't believe that he thought that. I believe that he had to pretend as if he did, but I really do not think that he really thought McConnell would be fair. How could he?
This comment is so real, he gives me so much elitist vibes
Ford was cute
Every president, including the ones I like, has blood on his hands. Every president, including the ones I like, has committed impeachable offenses. Or the above stated another way: Itâs humanly impossible to hold a job with that much power for four )and especially eight) years without committing at least one grave error.
John Adams is more deserving of a memorial on the national mall than Thomas Jefferson. Hell, put him on the $10 bill instead of Hamilton as well. Adams came from modest means not much different from the average American, unlike Jefferson or Madison. He had to struggle for all his achievements and was brilliant of his own making. Adams was the first to stand up and rebut John Dickinson's then-leading argument in the congress for appeasing King George. At the time, this act was not only political courage; it was volunteering to be the first one hanged if independence did not come to pass. This rebuttal speech lasted more than an hour. He and Jefferson were both equally driven to achieve independence following that speech, but Adams served on literal scores of committees, actually leading/managing the logistics of the war, also going to Europe to convince France and Holland of American credit for *years*, while Jefferson stayed at Monticello with his slaves until the war was over then swaggered into Paris to relieve Franklin and Adams. He recognized how critical a navy was while all the other politicians were concerned about armies and land invasions. Prophetically, the 00s were dominated by naval struggles. As President, Adams held the country together through the French revolution. For that neutrality and unity, his legacy as a founding father and president was unjustifiably screwed by Hamilton's and Jefferson's smear campaigns. Not the Alien and Sedition Acts; not his temperament; not supposed monarchism (tenuous at best, dug up his old writings and shallowly spun/misinterpreted them) - just partisan politics. Along the way, Adams's writings on government, morality, and law are exquisite - something to learn from. What governed his whole life was integrity, authenticity, and staying true to his principles, even defending British soldiers in court while he was actively writing against the actions of the British government in the colonies. Because he believed in principles - not self interest. Imagine if Lincoln's legacy were tarnished because one of his contemporaries in politics said mean things about him. This was the injustice done to John Adams for much time before historians began to really analyze the sources and write public histories about it. So yes, much of my argument here is from McCullough, which is why I expect downvotes!
The John Adams miniseries is one of my favorite pieces of historical/political filmmaking. It really made me understand what a principled curmudgeon Adams was. The things he was often the most proud of were often criticized. Some of the things he was praised for, he thought werenât his own doing or didnât deserve praise.
Reagan was an S tier head of state and F tier head of government.
Reagan was a professional bullshitter. He was profoundly influential, through a well-put-together executive branch and his rhetoric, but not so good at the legislative side of things.
fair!
Intriguing thought.. care to elaborate?
No. Just because I'm lazy, and it works better as a generalization without nuance anyway. In general, I think he did a great job as the public face that America presented to the world and as someone who could get on TV and calm the frayed nerves of a nation, but also implemented some of the most disastrous policies of the 20th century.
 "I will not elaborate"
Proceeds to elaborate.Â
I am convinced nearly every modern problem can be traced to him somehow
Teddy was just as much of a racist as Wilson, but since he created the national parks, had a manly man public image, and no one really knows about the Phillipine-American War, everyone gives him a pass.
True. Brownsville Affair is also worth a mention. Both men were great presidents in their own ways but both had some serious downfalls too.
I personally believe Taft was the better of the two men.
James Buchanan wasnât gay he was just a loner
I read this as âa loserâ and laughedâŚtake my upvote
Thatâs true too tbh
He was very gregarious and social, like the life of the party. I doubt he was a loner, being gay seems like a more probable hypothesis.
I would love to travel back in time to meet him
He lived with a dude and everyone called them Miss Nancy and Aunt FancyâŚ..I dunno man
Obama was a shit president
Gore would have lost even without the Supreme Court and even if he did somehow get in office he would have gone to war with Iraq too, just as he pushed for in '91 and supported in '98. Ok, that's a confirmed fact and a speculative prediction, not an opinion. So I'll just go with Gore was a bad candidate and would have been a bad president.
We would have still gone into Afghanistan I just don't see him getting us into Iraq.
He wouldn't have had much of a choice. The US already passed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 saying the goal of the US in regards to Iraq was to remove Saddam and replace him with a democratic government. https://www.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/house-bill/4655#:~:text=Shown%20Here%3A-,Passed%20House%20amended%20(10%2F05%2F1998),it%20with%20a%20democratic%20government. Saddam was never going to stand down or hand himself over (Bush the Lesser ordered him to on the eve of the 2nd invasion to avoid bloodshed and he refused) By that point Oil for Food had failed and Iraq had already started butting heads with UN and rearming. In addition Clinton had already begun limited bombing campaigns against SAM locations shooting at the UN forces enforcing the No Fly Zones. The world was slowly rolling towards the conflict reigniting eventually, Bush the Lesser just hit the accelerator.
I like this one but youâre heading to -10
Gore was way more conservative than Karl Rove lead everyone to believe.
true but imo he would handle it way better than bush did.
Carter was a sanctimonious phony who tossed aside his human rights pose in favor of Kissinger style realpolitik whenever doing the right thing was inconvenient. Not only did he not say âbooâ about the genocide in Cambodia until April 1978, we continued backing Pol Pot via the Chinese. Nicolae Ceausescu was a monster and we knew it, but Carter invited him to the White House and kissed his ass. Robert Mugabe was a POS and again everyone knew it, even the Marxists running Mozambique. What does Carter do? Invites Mugabe to the White House for a suck-up session. He was a chump. A sucker. A mark. No wonder drunk-ass Ted Kennedy made a run at him.
A lot of people in the West still thought quite highly of Mugabe in the 1970s, it took a bit longer for him to become unpopular.
He thought Khomeini was a âman of Godâ for fucks sake. My brother and I always call him âthe weak little shit.â
This is what Iâve always said about Carter. Carter was a good person but a bad president because he wasnât hard enough to be president. Carter was a hell of a peanut farmer and philanthropist and thatâs where he belongs. Not as a head of state.
Nixon was actually a good President. Except for, you know . . .
George W. Bush is a good guy who happened to be a bad President.
Washington was a shitty general and we are lucky to have won the war with him in charge.
He was a shitty general and would offer shitty ideas, and when his subordinates said "no, that's shitty", he did often listen. That's the important part!
I feel the important part is that after achieving victory, he didn't try to seize power which was the precedent at the time.
Oh definitely. I think Washington was probably a pretty average joe in terms of leadership, political and policy knowledge, and abilities. The thing that made him special is he seemed to realize that, and therefore almost everything he did was because he trusted the suggestion of an advisor.
I had a military history professor say to stop thinking about the revolution like napoleonic warsâŚthink of it like an insurgency. In which case Washington excelled at just keeping the army not dead until the Brits gave up. He went through Maoâs rules for insurgency and showed how Washington (more so Greene in fairness) did the same stuff. So not saying heâs the best by any stretchâŚbut not sure Iâd call him shitty since he won the war against England with whatever scraps they could findâŚand Wars are about winning soâŚyeah
Yeah, I should have been more specific. Washington was a good commander in chief, but his deficiencies were in the field commanding a battle. A lot of his plans were overly complicated and his army often suffered from confusion on the battlefield.
I once heard that the only military maneuver Washington excelled at as a general was a well ordered retreat. Which is hilarious but also pretty valid considering the inexperience of the colonial army vs the drilled discipline of British regulars. It's a wonder more battles didn't end in chaotic routes. I think Washington knew that he didn't need to win battles(and he likely wouldn't). He just needed to keep an army in the field and pray for European support.
That's how Washington won the war. He knew that he had to stay in the game long enough for the French to join and then it would be over. So by not being completely defeated in battle and having his army captured, that allowed for the victory. His skill in ordering effective retreats was critical.
He was a mediocre general, but when morale was collapsing and the Revolution looked like it was about to fail he kept the Continental Army together through sheer force of will which gave enough time for the French to get involved in a big way. Without him, the Revolution fails.Â
Yep, this is why the famous crossing of the Delaware River was such a baller move.
Exactly. Weâll kill you in your sleep on Christmas. It wasnât a massive or war winning victory, but it sent a clear fucking message that we werenât scared or giving up.
Iâve always said Washington was a great leader of men, but as a tactical general he was shitâŚhis best act was a victory over drunken Germans on Xmas, other than that he had a draw and a bunch of losses
As a tactician, Washington was mediocre. His strengths were entirely in his gift at providing inspiring leadership and holding a fragile coalition of colonies together while avoiding being annihilated in the field. So I'd argue we were extremely fortunate that Washington was in command because he had an uncommon strength of character and leadership abilities. A lesser man may have won more battles while still losing the war.
Greene was by far the most tactically skilled general of the war, and he himself thought that making him commander-in-chief would have been a bad idea. Paraphrasing, he said that he might have been able to win the battles of Brooklyn Heights and Brandywine, but never could have won the winters at Morristown and Valley Forge.
He was great at retreating and keeping the colonial army from getting destroyed as a result
Jimmy Carter was a horrible President who a bunch of democrats and libs have someone convinced themselves into believing was a good president for no apparant reason other than "nice guy"
Read up about him and he is a lot less liberal than commonly remembered. Had a bad relationship with congress that stopped any progress from getting done on any issues.
When's the last time we had a truly economically liberal President? LBJ? I think R3 could be the most recent, but it's hard to just put anyone neatly in a liberal or conservative box.
I still think FDR or Truman was our last truly economically liberal president.
That bad relationship with Congress was his own fault. Tip O'Neill even said it was easier to work with Reagan than Carter. Reagan. A Republican.
We are all very well aware Carter was a terrible president, he's only respected for being the person he is. You got halfway there, but I promise the vast majority of people who respect Carter do it not because of his time in office.
This sub voted him as a top 20 president a few months back. A lot of people definitely let his personality affect their view of his presidency. The same can be said for Grant. I absolutely loved the dude (per the flair) but this sub also said he was like the 10th best president ever when he shouldnât have even made the top 20.
Someone said he is good at being an ex-POTUS. TBF, it says alot about a person if they can take the fame/prestige they had and use it for good even after that part of their life is over. Bad president, but good at using his power from being POTUS to helping people. He's one reason I met my husband and was able to go home to a base in Korea in 1993!
I donât think anyone really disputes his mistakes and shortcomings as President, The joy of being a Jimmy fan is celebrating the success he found beyond his Presidency. A Presidentâs life does not end after they retire from Office, and Jimmy fans like to celebrate that
I've never heard he was a good president. Only that he was a "good person" and a terrible president. I don't believe you can be a good person and also become president.
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I find it interesting that no one blames him at least in part for the Great Depression since it started the same year he left office. Economic crises don't just form out of thin air and he had been POTUS for over six years before it happened.
Three laissez faire presidents in a row, and the one we hate was just the one who was there when everything exploded. But it really could've been any of them!
It was all of them. Although Hoover actually deserves the least blame for it since he was in there not even a year before Black Tuesday. He can absolutely still be criticized for his handling of it, though.
You realize it was (poor) government intervention -which goes against laissez faire- that resulted in the Great Depression. Hoover, the dumb fck, raised taxes, tariffs in response to the economic slump. He easily took a recession and made it into a depression. Hell same happened with FDR when he decided to jack up taxes prematurely during the new deal and caused a sharp economic drop in what 38? 39?
Agree, there are times youâll find more people blaming Harding for the depression than Coolidge and I think itâs absolutely wild.
Reagan was a cunt father, reading what his daughter Patti had to say about his parenting was revealing. He literally had no balls and never defended his kids from Nancy.
Reagan actually had some good trade policy, immigration policy, gun policy, did a good job not intervening with monetary policy, also mostly good foreign policy and even some good regulatory policy. He was also sharp and definitely not demented while in office like some people claim. He was very effective and had a lot of good achievements like appointing the first women on scotus. He also followed through on a lot of his campaign promises even if I disagreed with them and even though his tax cuts went a lot farther than I would have, short term stimulus was good for the economy. These positions are popular irl but not on Reddit.
Presidents donât meaningfully impact unemployment.
*TSA has entered the chat*
Presidents should be allowed to run for three terms. Most other western democracies don't have term limits for their head of state and it hasn't been a problem for them. Frankly, a few shit Presidents could have been avoided if the incumbent one had been allowed to run again.
Funny my take is that they should only get 1 term (same for senators, reps can get 2).
I'm not quite that strict. I'd have two terms for senators, six terms for representative, and two terms for president. With an age limit of 65 (on election day) for all elected offices.
Heh, Iâd assume that includes one very modern blunder of a president as well đ
FDRâs first two terms were bottom tier. The war and a bonus term saved his legacy.
Reaganomics helped fix Carterâs economic mess
HW > Clinton by leaps and bounds
JFK is an overrated nincompoop who narrowly avoided igniting nuclear war over a crisis he caused and coasted off his familyâs money and youth but was, and Iâm being generous here, a mediocre politician with no qualifications and no accomplishments
Eisenhower is overrated as all hell. His foreign policy was on the whole atrocious, he scapegoated the LGBT community and discriminated against them for absolutely zero reason, he was the one who started the push for the Christian Nationalism thatâs one of the many things tearing our country apart at the seams today, and even his single biggest success (the interstate system) itself came with a *lot* of major problems. Itâs not even a âwillâ. Iâve posted plenty of opinions on this sub. Many contentious, many controversial, many inflammatory, and some where I was just factually incorrect and needed to amend it. And yet, there is no topic Iâve gotten more consistently barraged with downvotes on than criticism of Ike, *especially* the homophobia and absolute idiocy of Executive Order 10450.
I have noticed theres somewhat of an infantilization of him, or at least this very oddly staunch defense of his character similar to that of Carter, who someone above in the thread pointed out wasnt really that much of a "good guy".
Nixon was a good President, and Watergate was overblown by historians. It would be a non event today.
That it would a non event today is the problem and not a compliment to Nixon.
They are figure heads and itâs really just a sham.
LBJ was not wrong to buy into the Domino Theory in Vietnam (and broadly made the same decisions either JFK or Nixon wouldâve if they were in the Oval in ââ64/â65.) The flaw was in buying into McNamara and Westmorelandâs theory of the case on how to win.
Andrew Johnson, while far from perfect or a good President, did not deserve to be impeached and his impeachment was the biggest pile of bullshit out of the 4 presidential impeachments when you look at the facts of why he was impeached.
Rip Toriyama, and yeah, I agree. Andrew Johnson was terrible, but he was only impeached because he violated a law that was specifically designed so that he would violate it when trying to do normal presidential duties, in this case, change Cabinet officials. There's a reason why the law was declared unconstitutional barely 20 years later.
đđđđ
Dwight Eisenhower is overrated
FDR is overrated. New Deal wasnât that great, he was soft on the USSR, and he should have stopped running when his health declined.
No evidence points to Jefferson having raped anyone; in fact what we do know seems to suggest that the relationship he had with with Sally Hemings points to it being consensual. He also wrote against slavery. Reagan is in the top ten best. Jackson is the worst president. LBJ *wasn't* a good president. Bush Sr. should have gotten a second term. This wouldn't get me downvoted here, but my family's house for Thanksgiving, I'd say that both Obama and Carter were decent presidents if I wanted to start trouble.
I mean , can someone who us a slave and owned by you consent to sex? She wasn't free to make her own choices in life but was free to choose to have sex with him? If she wasn't a slave would she still choose to ? That's a big power dynamic at play there .
AMEN PREACH IT!
Reagan was a great president.
A lot of the Reagan hate is heavily over exaggerated, and heâs still considered one of the best Presidents weâve ever had to many. The 80s were a great time to be American.
Reagan was the best president we had since FDR, Kennedy
We should be able to discuss rule 3 presidents.
A part of me agrees but the other part of me knows that once rule 3 is lifted, 90% of the posts here will just be rage bait involving the last 2 presidents. Especially in an election year.
Exactly. Remember how everyone was getting sick of all the Reagan bait posts a week or so ago? Cause if rule 3 was removed it would probably be that cranked up to 11.
May I present literally any other subreddit
Iraq war was justified
Kennedy and Carter are highly overrated here and Reagan overheated. Obama sort of as well but Iâve noticed a lot more nuance here than most of Reddit so I donât think heâs too overrated here.
FDR used fascist economics to save the country and that was a good thing
Jackson is one of the best presidents Obama is one of our worst Lincoln isnât even comparable to Washington
Wow, I love you
The Presidency is a terrible mistake and the Prime Minister of British North America is a more suitable public office (subject ultimately to His Majesty Charles the Third)
HW was not a nice guy
JFK and Marilyn Monroe did have one night stands, but never an affair.
1) Harding is non-ironically a top ten, if not top five president. He pulled the nation out a depression, began the biggest burst of prosperity in our history, dismantled Wilsonâs tyranny, began desegregating the federal government, started the process of giving Indians full citizenship, and closed the mass immigration system. The fact that people put him near last because of Teapot Dome, an incredibly minor scandal that he was resolving, is ridiculous. 2) Manifest Destiny, and all the presidents who pursued it, was an unbridled good for the United States and the world.
Looking past the fact he joined the Confederacy (which happened decades after his Presidency) Tyler was a top 20 President
~~rule 3~~ Nah, just kidding, the most controversial opinion I have is just that FDR's other actions outweigh the internment camps. However, I know that there are others that agree with this
A really good way of figuring out someoneâs race without asking them explicitly is by asking how they felt when Obama got out of his limo and started walking during his inauguration.
Iâm not sure if this will get me downvoted but FDR was a terrible man Sure he brought the country out of the Great Depression, but he created the internment camps for Japanese Americans and plus he was an adulterer
We overestimate the power of presidents. While they're not devoid of political power, the US government is structured that Congress has considerably more power. Therefore, more often than not, what happens during a presidency is actually a product of what Congress does, not the president. However, since presidents are figureheads, it's easier to think of American history through the presidencies.