Presidential Rankings

[Cairo_East]

Here is my list.  A couple of notes:

I didn't include James Garfield, WH Harrison, and Zachary Taylor because they didn't have enough time to establish a presidential legacy.  I didn't include Clinton and GW Bush because it is too soon to recognize their legacy.  In fact, I think it's still a bit early to recognize GHW Bush's legacy, but I included it anyway.  Even though I'm fairly young, my choices lean more toward the historic than the modern.

Great Presidents

1   George Washington
2   Thomas Jefferson
3   Franklin D. Roosevelt
4   Abraham Lincoln
5   James K. Polk
6   Lyndon Johnson
7   Theodore Roosevelt

Excellent Presidents

8   Harry S. Truman
9   Ronald Reagan
10   John F. Kennedy
11   Dwight Eisenhower
12   James Madison
13   Andrew Jackson
14   GHW Bush
15   William McKinley

Good Presidents

16   Grover Cleveland
17   James Monroe
18   Calvin Coolidge
19   John Adams
20   JQ Adams

Good Presidents with critical negatives.

21   Richard Nixon
22   Woodrow Wilson
23   Benjamin Harrison
24   WH Taft
25   Jimmy Carter
26   Herbert Hoover
27   Ulysses S. Grant
28   Gerald Ford

Poor Presidents

29   Martin Van Buren
30   Rutherford Hayes
31   John Tyler
32   Franklin Pierce
33   Andrew Johnson
34   Chester Arthur
35   Millard Fillmore
36   James Buchanan
37   Warren G. Harding

Washington is easily the greatest president of all time, because he could have maintained power, becoming a defacto monarch or dictator.  It was critical to the success of democracy that he voluntarily pass on the power of the presidency.  He was also instrumental in maintaining the legimacy of federal power in a very weak and unstable union.

Harding made a mockery of the Presidency.  Whatever lack of respect you have for Clinton, it should be magnified one-hundredfold for Harding.

[Cairo_East]

LBJ's legislative legacy is far better than his foreign policy legacy.  He passed the most important legislation of the latter 20th century, directly affecting the social make-up of the USA today.

The Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Housing Act effectively ended segregation, the Fair Immigration Law of 1965 eliminated the quota system and vastly increased the cultural diversity in the US, and of course Medicare.

The riots and demonstrations are long gone, and what is left from his presidency far better America than it would have been without him.  It's why I put him in my Top Ten list.