POLITICS SCHMALITICS

[Motown Bombers]

Donald Trump is ridiculously high in that ranking. 

[CMRivdogs]

58 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

Stay classy Trumpublicans....

 

I also think it says something that they left out Teddy Roosevelt, McKinley and Ford but kept Nixon and Collidge

[pfife]

CNN just started a series on LBJ.   They slotted Obama right ahead of LBJ which on its face strikes me as a tad not right.   I think the next few episodes of the LBJ series are going to be about Vietnam which may have me lowering LBJ, I'll admit I know not much of it.

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, CMRivdogs said:

I also think it says something that they left out Teddy Roosevelt, McKinley and Ford but kept Nixon and Collidge

Perhaps if they'd remembered that Nixon had signed the EPA bill and played kissy-face with China, they would have disregarded his picture and used a second picture of Trump instead.

[CMRivdogs]

3 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Perhaps if they'd remembered that Nixon had signed the EPA bill and played kissy-face with China, they would have disregarded his picture and used a second picture of Trump instead.

History is hard. Especially if it's ancient history.

[oblong]

44 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Perhaps if they'd remembered that Nixon had signed the EPA bill and played kissy-face with China, they would have disregarded his picture and used a second picture of Trump instead.

Of that picture - Lincoln, Ike, Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes would not be welcome in today's version of the GOP.  Maybe Coolidge too but I'd have to research Silent Cal some more.  Never interested me.

[gehringer_2]

2 hours ago, buddha said:

obama is ridiculously high in that ranking.  so is grant.

polk and jackson way too low.  

opinion on grant seemed to have pinballed all over the place - he was either a useless drunk or a great visionary. Guess you had to be there....

Same with Jackson to some degree. When I was in school opinion on Jackson in History books was pretty positive, today he commonly seems to be considered to have been an idiot.

[buddha]

3 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

opinion on grant seemed to have pinballed all over the place - he was either a useless drunk or a great visionary. Guess you had to be there....

Same with Jackson to some degree. When I was in school opinion on Jackson in History books was pretty positive, today he commonly seems to be considered to have been an idiot.

jackson and polk fall because they were expanantionist and very anti-mexican and anti-american indian.  i would say anti-black but that would be just about every president weve ever had.

both were extremely important and influential presidents, much moreso than barack obama for god's sake.

grant rises up the ranks because he did his best to put through reconstruction, put down the klan, and be at least civil to native americans.

but because grant was not a natural politician, he did what he did at everything in life except being a general: he failed.  reconstruction ended as soon as he left, the klan went on terrorizing the south for a hundred years, and grant authorized war with the sioux once gold was found in the black hills.

but at his heart, grant was a decent person. he was decent to black folk, thought the mexican war was unjust for what it did to mexico, and genuinely wanted and worked to uphold the treaties with the native american tribes.

grant was a good general (although overrated now) and a bad president.

[gehringer_2]

Obama was only important because of his bio. That is still saying a lot - a huge amount really. Politically, it's not clear to me if anyone could have done anything more with the GOP opposition he faced, though it's probably safe to assume that at heart a lot of that opposition was also because his bio, so the two things are probably inseparable. In all respects other than his ambitions for health care Obama was a frightfully conventional thinker, and despite his obvious intellectual candlepower he really had no sense of what the US economy needed beyond the need to prevent Wall Street from imploding. But there was really no hope for any meaningful economic progress to come out of the 2008 election. Clinton and Obama were both in thrall to the NY banking establishment and McCain didn't have an economic thought in his head.

[Motown Bombers]

 

[oblong]

Earlier presidents, prior to the civil war, also get some extra credit because as the nation was forming and expanding the decisions were larger in scope and scale.   It’s hard for a tax policy to compete with doubling the size of the county. 

[1984Echoes]

2 hours ago, gehringer_2 said:

Obama was only important because of his bio. That is still saying a lot - a huge amount really. Politically, it's not clear to me if anyone could have done anything more with the GOP opposition he faced, though it's probably safe to assume that at heart a lot of that opposition was also because his bio, so the two things are probably inseparable. In all respects other than his ambitions for health care Obama was a frightfully conventional thinker, and despite his obvious intellectual candlepower he really had no sense of what the US economy needed beyond the need to prevent Wall Street from imploding....

The funny thing is Obama was pushing for a monster Infrastructure Bill early on but then the Tea Party came to power and said FU Obama we won't agree to anything you want. Period.

And since infrastructure is intensely (almost 100%) blue collar... it would have stoked up/ built up/ raised up the blue collar working class mid-westerners.

The very dudes who flipped to Trump.

If the Republicans hadn't said "screw you", Obama would have been know as the guy who rebuilt this country. Infrastructure-wise, that is...

I think Obama should be high up, for multiple reasons. Including what you've mentioned. But... he's probably too high based on what he was actually able to accomplish. Not all his fault, but if it doesn't get done, it doesn't get done, no matter the reason.

The reasons he is that high however, I think really revolve around recency bias more then anything. Yes also because of bio... but, after another decade, I believe he'll fall back below the LBJ's and other Prez's that accomplished great and significant things but fall behind in recency bias and popularity issues...

[buddha]

lbj got the great society passed but also ripped the country apart because of vietnam.  any reckoning of lbj has to deal with that.

wilson too.  he passed many progressive laws and led the country through a world war.  at one time, he was surely in every liberal professor's top ten.  but with the country's re-examination on race taking central stage at the moment, the focus has turned to wilson's horrible personal racism and terrible record on race.  the man re-segregated the government.

so he drops.  

jefferson hanging on to the top 10.

without polk we may not have california...some may see that as good or bad...

[gehringer_2]

28 minutes ago, buddha said:

lbj got the great society passed but also ripped the country apart because of vietnam.  any reckoning of lbj has to deal with that.

 

odd thing is that I think there is a LOT of revisionist history in the US about VN. We are a little bit like the French after WWII, in the same way you could find enough 'partisans' on every Paris corner in 1950 to make you wonder how the Germans ever got there, conversely by 1980 you couldn't find all the people who elected Nixon - who was still a big time hawk running for the WH in '68. The country only really came apart about the war after it was over, the majority of Americans supported it long after LBJ had left the scene. Sure, those of draft age made a lot noise at places like Chicago, but in they end it wasn't them that finally moved the public, is was only exhaustion with military failure that finally turned the tide. 

Edited February 22, 2022 by gehringer_2

[buddha]

15 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

odd thing is that I think there is a LOT of revisionist history in the US about VN. We are a little bit like the French after WWII, in the same way you could find enough 'partisans' on every Paris corner in 1950 to make you wonder how the Germans ever got there, conversely by 1980 you couldn't find all the people who elected Nixon - who was still a big time hawk running for the WH in '68. The country only really came apart about the war after it was over, the majority of Americans supported it long after LBJ had left the scene. Sure, those of draft age made a lot noise at places like Chicago, but in they end it wasn't them that finally moved the public, is was only exhaustion with military failure that finally turned the tide. 

the country was ripped apart by vietnam and racial unrest much moreso than it was in 2020.  come on.  they stormed the democratic convention in chicago, not to mention the white house.  federal buildings were bombed.  the press uncovering lying was as much a factor in the unraveling of support for institutions as watergate.

lbj's dalliance into vietnam cost him the presidency and cost the country multiple years of unrest.

[gehringer_2]

31 minutes ago, buddha said:

the country was ripped apart by vietnam and racial unrest much moreso than it was in 2020.  come on.  they stormed the democratic convention in chicago, not to mention the white house.  federal buildings were bombed.  the press uncovering lying was as much a factor in the unraveling of support for institutions as watergate.

lbj's dalliance into vietnam cost him the presidency and cost the country multiple years of unrest.

but politically the country was still behind the war in 1968. LBJ couldn't win in '68 because he was losing the war, not because he was executing it. Don't confuse the noise with the real action. The activity of the hippies were largely futile. But they were the college crowd who grew up to be the liberals/literate ones so they have written the history as though they won it. The real numbers in even in their own generation are still conservative Trump voters today.

The thing is, the upheaval between the boomers and our parents, which was real, was about much more than the Vietnam War. It had it seeds in the great Depression and WWII. And LBJ's presidency had nothing to do with that.

Edited February 22, 2022 by gehringer_2

[Mr.TaterSalad]

Obama didn't support slavery, so that's always a good start to be higher than a President who did support slavery, like Polk and Jackson.

[buddha]

1 hour ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

Obama didn't support slavery, so that's always a good start to be higher than a President who did support slavery, like Polk and Jackson.

so higher than george washington and thomas jefferson?

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

Obama didn't support slavery, so that's always a good start to be higher than a President who actually owned human beings as property, like Polk and Jackson.

 

[Mr.TaterSalad]

34 minutes ago, buddha said:

so higher than george washington and thomas jefferson?

Yes, absolutely. Other than Adams' John and John Quincy, because they opposed slavery, I don't look at the founding fathers or early Presidents with much fondness. Jefferson was himself a slave owner and a skank who slept around with his servants. And I never buy the argument of "well times were different" because you had President's like John Adams and JQA who opposed slavery. Albeit, they weren't abolitionists, but at least they knew it was morally wrong and voiced some opposition to it.

All the slave-supporting Presidents belong at the bottom of the list IMO because outside of killing, mass murder and genocide, there isn't much that is more morally repugnant and a greater stain on our nation than slavery.

Presidential lists are tough because all these men have flaws. The fact that not one woman is on the list is a flaw. Beyond Lincoln at #1, it's tough to rank who, where. My gut reaction is to say FDR at #2, but it can't be him due to what he did to Japanese Americans during WWII. It can't be Johnson due to Vietnam. It's can't be Truman due to him dropping the bomb. It's can't be Teddy due to his staunch opposition to Civil Rights laws and support for Jim Crow. I guess I'd say Lincoln at #1, Eisenhower at #2, Obama at #3, FDR at #4, JFK at #5.

Edited February 22, 2022 by Mr.TaterSalad

[oblong]

Ike moved like a snail on civil rights and segregation, if at all.  He was even too afraid to give an outright rebuke to Joe McCarthy because he needed Wisconsin.  JFK lacked courage on civil rights too because he needed to be re-elected.  JFK's benefit is his brief time in office and staving off nuclear war.

The country was on thin ice for much of it's history and a President who "did the right thing" would have probably ended it.

[Mr.TaterSalad]

LBJ did the right thing on Civil Rights and enacted the Great Society to tackle poverty. If he had the courage to end Vietnam he'd easily be my #1, but alas he extended and escalated the war and then lied about the "progress" we were making with McNamara.

[buddha]

as i said to g2 before, what matters isnt what you did for the country as a whole or how your actions moved the country in one direction or another, or how your actions influenced society. all that matter is how you thought about black people.

[buddha]

48 minutes ago, oblong said:

Ike moved like a snail on civil rights and segregation, if at all.  He was even too afraid to give an outright rebuke to Joe McCarthy because he needed Wisconsin.  JFK lacked courage on civil rights too because he needed to be re-elected.  JFK's benefit is his brief time in office and staving off nuclear war.

The country was on thin ice for much of it's history and a President who "did the right thing" would have probably ended it.

every president "lacked courage" on civil rights because they wanted to get elected.  

you judge presidents by what they did in their time, not by 2022 morality.

[Jim Cowan]

JFK caused the Cuban missile crisis by installing missiles in Turkey in 1961; Khruschev's counter move of installing missiles in Cuba in 1962 made Kennedy back down and remove them .  And, he couldn't keep his pants zipped up.  So just leaning over your back fence, I'd say that he does not belong in your top 15.