Ulysses S. Grant vs. Dwight D. Eisenhower

[President Johnson]

Battle of the great generals whose popularity advanced them to the presidency without further experience in political office.

I would consider both somewhat above-average president, but would prefer Eisenhower. I think he was more capable as president overall.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Eisenhower easily . Grant’s second term was a disaster and undermined much of his accomplishments from his first term

[President Johnson]

Eisenhower easily . Grant’s second term was a disaster and undermined much of his accomplishments from his first term

Do you think he should have declined to seek reelection?

[Lechasseur]

Eisenhower

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Grant easily. Eisenhower's biggest legacy as president (the Interstate Highway System) was bad and helped segregate and depopulate American cities for decades. His foreign policy was a disaster including essentially destroying Guatemala as a functional state. Not to mention, he groomed Reagan to be president down the road. Unforgivable.

[LBJer]

Not to mention, he groomed Reagan to be president down the road.

What do you mean by that? 

[President Johnson]

Grant easily. Eisenhower's biggest legacy as president (the Interstate Highway System) was bad and helped segregate and depopulate American cities for decades. His foreign policy was a disaster including essentially destroying Guatemala as a functional state. Not to mention, he groomed Reagan to be president down the road. Unforgivable.

I definitely agree that his foreign policy is vastly overrated. Not to mention he approved Operation Ajax, which in my view is the biggest stain on his legancy. He should have kept Truman's policies, who told Churchill that the US wasn't going to overthrow Mossadegh.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Not to mention, he groomed Reagan to be president down the road.

What do you mean by that? 

Got that from this article I read years ago (obvs not a great source, but info seems historically accurate): https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/magazine/967702/unearthing-the-eisenhower-reagan-connection/

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Eisenhower easily . Grant’s second term was a disaster and undermined much of his accomplishments from his first term

This

[Sir Mohamed]

Tough call, but I would say Grant. Eisenhower is an overrated prez. His foreign policy is full of blunders (Iran, Guatemala, U2 incident, Sputnik, early involvement in 'Nam) and even domestically, he was kind of weak. Especially his lukewarm response to the civil rights movement.

[TDAS04]

I like Grant more.

[MR DARK BRANDON]

Definitely Eisenhower. One of the greatest presidents and Americans of all time

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Ike is a mixed bag on civil rights. He helped integrate the Arkansas schools, but he was far worse than Trump on immigration, even deporting US citizens with Operation Wetback.

[LBJer]

Ike is a mixed bag on civil rights. He helped integrate the Arkansas schools, but he was far worse than Trump on immigration, even deporting US citizens with Operation Wetback.

Ike also integrated Washington D.C.

[Obama24]

Grant. Ike's only major accomplishment was the interstate system. Ike only integrated schools because the Supreme Court made it the law of the land, and even then, full integration wasn't seen until the early 1970s, nearly 20 years later. He wasn't some warrior on civil rights. Grant was despite the weakness of the office and the mores of the time.

[Obama24]

Tough call, but I would say Grant. Eisenhower is an overrated prez. His foreign policy is full of blunders (Iran, Guatemala, U2 incident, Sputnik, early involvement in 'Nam) and even domestically, he was kind of weak. Especially his lukewarm response to the civil rights movement.

The fact that he allowed us to fall to second place by way of inaction in the space race was bad. Even after Sputnik, he didn't really grasp the importance of us having a space program. He wasn't very fond of it.

Ike to me is overrated due to the massive wave of nostalgia for the 1950s that happened in the 70s and 80s. It's very much a product of the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers, who looked back on his time as being 'innocent' compared to the turbulent 60s and 70s.

He was a much greater general than he was President.

Grant on the other hand was the only President, really, between Lincoln and McKinley or TR who wasn't weak. He was subject to near 70-80 years worth of Lost Cause character assassination and propaganda, painting him as a drunkard, a weak leader, when really he wasn't.

[SWE]

Grant. Ike's only major accomplishment was the interstate system. Ike only integrated schools because the Supreme Court made it the law of the land, and even then, full integration wasn't seen until the early 1970s, nearly 20 years later. He wasn't some warrior on civil rights. Grant was despite the weakness of the office and the mores of the time.

Yeah but that was something that Ike very obviously wanted the Supreme Court to do. Ike knew Brown v Board was being litigated when he appointed Earl Warren, someone Ike knew was very much in favor of desegregation, as Chief Justice. That would be very strange to do if he did not want the Court to rule in favor of desegregation. Ok, you might say, maybe Eisenhower didn't have to agree with his SCOTUS pick on every issue and picked a nominee he respected even if they weren't ideologically identical. After all, Eisenhower did express his disagreements with Warren's jurisprudence down the line, particularly how favorable he was to criminal defendants.

Except Warren wasn't his only SCOTUS pick. He had four more choices, and in each case the faced heavy pressure to pick segregationist judges. All four times he doubled down. His second pick, his first choice for a pro-Brown nominee, was John Marshall Harlan II, son of the sole dissenter in Plessy. Harlan spoke very openly about his pride in his father's vote and his support for Brown. Imagine if Biden picked Rehnquist's son to replace Breyer after Dobbs, and this guy spoke at his confirmation hearing about being proud of his father's dissent in Roe and explicitly affirmed his support for Dobbs. I think that would very widely be seen as an expression of Biden's support for Dobbs. If Eisenhower ran around DC with a megaphone screaming "Brown v Board was rightly decided" it wouldn't have been any less subtle a message than appointing Harlan was.

The next three SCOTUS nominees represented the ideological spectrum - Brennan a liberal, Stewart a conservative, and Whittaker a centrist. All three saw eye to eye, however, on Brown, and made that explicitly clear at each of their confirmation hearings. Brennan's appointment is particularly remarkable - this was right before the election, and the Eisenhower campaign saw it as a big priority to try and expand its support in the formerly Solid South. Ike sacrificed his electoral goals in order to put a northeastern liberal desegregationist on the Court!

Also worth noting Ike's attorney general, Herbert Brownell, was a major advocate of desegregation, and Eisenhower's justice department filed a brief in Brown v Board in favor of desegregation. Brownell was also who Eisenhower recommended to Nixon to replace Warren as Chief Justice.

Eisenhower did have a habit of speaking out of both sides of his mouth on civil rights for political expediency and was very much a moderate in his methods. But the idea that he had no agency in Brown and just reluctantly went with what the Supreme Court forced him to do just doesn't survive scrutiny when you look at his actual actions. He had opportunity after opportunity to at least slow down the Supreme Court's embracement of civil rights, and at every one of those opportunities he instead chose to put his foot on the gas. It's like the out of context Lincoln quote about how if he could end the war without freeing any slaves he would. Sure, both men were pragmatics and had to deal with trying to gain electoral support from people who were very much not sympathetic to the cause of civil rights, but when push came to shove, their intentions really weren't ambiguous. If Eisenhower wasn't personally in support of Brown v Board, than he must have been one of the dumbest men to ever serve as president