Presidential Rankings

[StevenNick]

5 Best (no particular order):

Reagan (defeated USSR)

Jefferson (wrote Declaration, L. Purchase)

Washington (set an excellent example with retirement after two terms)

Lincoln (kept the Union together, freed the slaves)

T.R. (one of the more brilliant men ever to lead the country, the quintessential American)


5 Worst (no particular order):

LBJ (Great Society disaster, Vietnam quagmire)

Nixon (Watergate, price and wage controls, too soft on USSR)

Clinton (did nothing to respond to terrorist attacks, lied under oath, eight scandal filled years)

Carter (the second most incompetent president of all time)

Kennedy (the most incompetent president of all time)

[StevenNick]

I think FDR is perhaps the most overrated president in U.S. history.  Most economist have come to the conclusion that he prolonged the Great Depression.  He interned the Japanese.  He created the welfare state that we're still paying for today.  He gutted the military putting us at risk when war came knocking at our door.  He fabricated the case for going to war.  Communists were infultrating his administration and he was asleep at the wheel.

Did this man do any lasting good for this country?  I don't see that he did.  To the contrary, I think he did more long term damage to the country than almost any other politician in American history.

Same with Truman.  Someone commented on this thread that even though Truman embraced failed economic policies, he was tough on Communism.  He wasn't though.  "Containment" was a sham.  He didn't contain Communism during his administration, rather, Communism spread.  Not long before announcing the policy of containment, Truman was still referring to Stalin as "Uncle Joe."

Reagan was the first president since the Bolshevic Revolution who actually saw Communism lose ground during his administration.  He recognized that the Soviet Union's economy couldn't withstand an arms race with the United States.  By walking out of the Reykjavik during the arms reduction talks, Reagan doomed the Soviet Union.  They were struggling to catch up as we built a military machine.  He swept away the Soviet pawn of Grenada and halted Communism's advance in South America.

Reagan was just about the only president who actually stood up to the USSR.  Who knows how much earlier the USSR would've fallen had Truman or FDR or Kennedy or Nixon or any other Cold War presidents had stood up to them?