Who is the most underrated President in history?

[RScannix]

James K. Polk and Calvin Coolidge...two of the best.

What is with people and Polk? He invaded another country to annex some land and is imperialist scum. We probably could have bought the land anyways without a war, if a more liberal minded government came to power in the 1850's with Mexico's debt being such a problem.

Agreed. Screw Polk.

As for mine, I'll go with Cleveland or Truman. I like Coolidge, but I don't think he faced as many challenges as the other two, so I have to give them more credit. This Arthur kick intrigues me as well; I must admit that I overlook him all the time.

[RScannix]

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?

The hell with expanding the government, Nixon imposed price and wage controls for a time. I don't see how any economic conservative could support that, unless they simply didn't care about free competition.

     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.

It's all conservative inconsistency and hypocrisy. They know they're supposed to support someone, someway, for some reason, but the actual reasons for that support utterly escapes them. So Nixon - who created, among other things, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, and then escalated our interventionist exploits in Vietnam - is given the same lauds as the isolationist Coolidge, who would have gutted both, only because he was "demonized" by the dag-gummed lib-uh-rul media.

American conservatism is a hollow pretense.

[RScannix]

Whoops. Really screwed up my last post. All that quoting was necessary. This is all I meant to insert:

The hell with expanding the government, Nixon imposed price and wage controls for a time. I don't see how any economic conservative could support that, unless they simply didn't care about free competition.

[RScannix]

Whoops. Really screwed up my last post. All that quoting was necessary. This is all I meant to insert:

The hell with expanding the government, Nixon imposed price and wage controls for a time. I don't see how any economic conservative could support that, unless they simply didn't care about free competition.

Because he was a Republican. Ronald Reagan raised taxes and ballooned the deficit to massive proportions in order to stimulate jobs in his favorite side of pork (the military-industrial complex), and these same self-styled "economic conservatives" salivate over his gilded prick, too. The Republican Party is not the economic conservative Party; it is the Party of bloated white hypocrites.

As a libertarian, you need to rethink your association with conservatism.

What do you mean by "association with conservatism"?

If you're implying that I side with Reagan or Nixon, then I have no idea what you are talking  about. I do not, nor have I ever, supported their views.

If you're implying that I always side with the Republican party, I don't understand either. I vote on a candidate-by-candidate basis. Generally, I support Liberal Republicans and Blue-dog Democrats.

If you are referring to economic conservatism, then you don't make sense. Economic conservatism is part and parcel of virtually any libertarian program.

[RScannix]

Generally, I support Liberal Republicans and Blue-dog Democrats.

They're diametrically opposite from each other.

I am referring to socially liberal Republicans, not fiscally liberal. I support candidates who are generally liberal on social issues and moderately conservative on fiscal issues.