Who was the best U.S. President between the Roosevelt's, and WHY?

[Orser67]

Wilson's foreign policy even today is hard to evaluate. No one can be sure what the world would look like without the US intervention in WWI and Wilson's push for a democratic nation-states. Imo his biggest failure in foreign policy was caused by resistance from isolationist Republicans who opposed US entry into the League of Nations, which left the world with a confusing new order that lacked the most powerful country in the world to uphold it. But I'm a big fan of most of his non-racial domestic policy, including the creation of the Federal Reserve and the FTC, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the 8-hour day for railroad workers, and the permanent introduction of the income tax. He also appointed Louis Brandeis, a key Supreme Court Justice in ending the Lochner Era (though this is almost outweighed by his appointment of the conservative McReynolds), and helped pressure Congress to enact women's suffrage. He did go too far with the crackdown on Communism and dissenters, though.

Harding presided over a return to conservatism, so it's not surprising that I'm not a fan. Coolidge left office just months before Black Monday and deserves as much blame for the Great Depression as Hoover. Hoover was ineffective in combating the Great Depression and failed to veto Smoot-Hawley. Taft was a decent president who actually did bust trusts, though I would have preferred if Roosevelt had maintained more influence over him.