Who is the most underrated President in history?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Truman.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Cooldige, Nixon, Cleveland, John Adams.

Those four two.

You realize, do you not, that Nixon and Adams were philosophically antithetical to Coolidge and Cleveland? Two of the above wanted to decrease the size and scope of the Federal government; two of the above massively expanded it. Care to take a guess as to who did what?

     Generally speaking, I find that most admirers of John Adams & Richard Nixon admire them for reasons completely unrelated to the policies that they supported. Of course, that makes posting them in a topic about the most underrated President nonsensical.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Cooldige, Nixon, Cleveland, John Adams.

Those four two.

You realize, do you not, that Nixon and Adams were philosophically antithetical to Coolidge and Cleveland? Two of the above wanted to decrease the size and scope of the Federal government; two of the above massively expanded it. Care to take a guess as to who did what?

     Generally speaking, I find that most admirers of John Adams & Richard Nixon admire them for reasons completely unrelated to the policies that they supported. Of course, that makes posting them in a topic about the most underrated President nonsensical.

Oh yes, keeping us out of an international war that would have destroyed us, while people on both sides of American politics were screaming for one, and holding back people who genuinely wanted to use their new military to pursuit the broadest interpretation possible of the Alien and Sedition Acts (which he didn't enforce, BTW) to lock up their political enemies and basically preventing the United States from becoming a busted-up, backwards, third world country is no political accomplishment.

     I did not say that John Adams was without political accomplishments. I was saying that most people who admire him do so without really knowing why they admire him or for that matter what he did. The same can be said for most Presidents, though.