Rank FDR as president

[A18]

vote

[Cubby]

He's my favorite president. The only liberal president we've ever had.

[Rob]

2.

[Emsworth]

He attempted to pack the Supreme Court and approved the use of internment camps. He had very little regard for the constraints imposed by the Constitution on the federal government. Most significantly, his New Deal accomplished nothing whatsoever with respect to economic recovery. It is ridiculous for people to say FDR brought the U.S. out of the Great Depression.

Consequently, I give him a 2. He does deserve some credit for wartime leadership.

[jokerman]

5

[Schmitz in 1972]

He's my favorite president. The only liberal president we've ever had.

and what is Lyndon B Johnson?

[PBrunsel]

He's my favorite president. The only liberal president we've ever had.

"True Liberalism is found not in striving to spread bureaucracy but in striving to set bounds to it."
- Herbert Hoover

[Erc]

I will give him some credit for his leadership and oratorical skills, which did help out the economy to a certain extent where the Fed could not.

However, when it comes to matters of policy, it was the worst of both worlds--he ran the government into a deficit, enacted near-socialist programs, started Social Security (which, regardless of its merits in itself, probably made the Depression worse [as it didn't start paying out until 1940], and has cursed subsequent generations)--without doing anywhere near enough to pull us out of the Depression.

And that's just the first two terms...

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

A 5, especially when you compare him to his opposition. Most Presidents are pretty crappy.

[dazzleman]

I gave him a 4 for his leadership against the Nazi menace.

Roosevelt led an isolationist people who wanted no part of World War II, against their will, into facing the Nazi threat.

Many Republicans at the time were isolationists who argued that we should pay no mind to Hitler.  Roosevelt had a superior vision, and he had the courage to act on it when things were at their darkest.  Had he not acted then, we might have lost our last chance to defeat Hitler.

I'm ambivalent about his pre-war presidency.  His class warfare played well with depression-era voters, but helped to prolong the depression.  I don't think he understood economics that well, and he never ended the depression until the war.  But he did put in place some long-term supports for social and economic stability.

[Rob]

Most Presidents are pretty crappy.

I agree with that.

[Jake]

Average is 2.7%

[Emsworth]

Most Presidents are pretty crappy.

I agree with that.

Me too. Were some of us (I include myself) applying the same level scrutiny to other presidents, quite a few of them would get even lower scores.

[Moooooo]

4

I doubt I would rank any president a 5.  No one is perfect.

[Jake]

4

As a President, the foremost responsibility is to protect the people of the US.  FDR preformed that duty better than any President this century.

[Rob]

As a President, the foremost responsibility is to protect the people of the US.  FDR preformed that duty better than any President this century.

That's an interesting perspective. To be honest, I was grading him on domestic legislation alone. If I were to factor in his wartime leadership (which I should have in the first place), I would give him a 3.5 overall (yeah, it's not an option, but it should be ).

[Jake]

I tend to think the things a President does domestically really have little direct effect on my life, at least as long as they don't do anything terribly bad. So, I usually grade them on the things that truly do impact my life, mostly issues of security.

[Sam Spade]

3.

Domestically, 2.  Internationally 4.

His domestic policies probably helped prolong the Depression much the same way Hoover's did.  Economically, they actually weren't very different people, but Roosevelt managed to exude an image of trust that places him higher than Hoover economically.  His court-packing scheme was terrible.

Internationally, the only real main fault I can find is his underestimation of Stalin's motives.  While he was giving half of Europe to Stalin, we sort of sat on our druthers because he was our ally.  I'm not saying that we could have gotten all of Europe or that we should have driven him back a la Patton, but making it much more difficult for Stalin would have helped in the long run.

I also find it rather amusing that the real "liberals" on this board think so highly of FDR, not necessarily because of the foreign policy, but because of his total disdain of interest in trying to eliminate the Jim Crow laws in the South and his general disdain for black people as a whole.  As we know, he did it for political purposes, but in comparison to Truman and his integration of the armed forces and the chances that he, along with Eisenhower took, it creates a sort of black mark on FDR's record.

[MaC]

1 the ONLY good thing, that happened when Roosevelt was in office was the repeal of prohibition