Who's your least favorite president from each party?

[Virginian87]

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Here’s a list of which President’s were in which Party:

Federalist
George Washington
John Adams

Democratic-Republican
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
James Monroe
John Quincy Adams

Whigs
William Henry Harrison
John Tyler
Zachary Taylor
Milliard Fillmore

Democrat
Andrew Jackson
Martin Van Buren
James K. Polk
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Grover Cleveland
Woodrow Wilson
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Harry S Truman
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
Jimmy Carter
Bill Clinton

Republican
 Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Ulysses S. Grant
Rutherford B. Hayes
James A. Garfield
Chester A. Arthur
Benjamin Harrison
William McKinley
Theodore Roosevelt
William Howard Taft
William G. Harding
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Richard Nixon
Gerald R. Ford
Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush
George W. Bush

[skybridge]

Federalist
Tough one. Washington.

Democratic-Republican
Madison.

Whigs
Zachary Taylor

Democrat
James Buchanan

Republican
George W. Bush

[Emsworth]

Federalist
John Adams

Jeffersonian Republican
John Quincy Adams

Whig
John Tyler

Democrat
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Modern Republican
Abraham Lincoln

[Virginian87]

Federalist
John Adams

Jeffersonian Republican
John Quincy Adams

Whig
John Tyler

Democrat
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Modern Republican
Abraham Lincoln

Why do you hate FDR?  He's not my favorite either, but I consider him to be one of the best presidents.

[TexasGurl]

Washington
Madison
Fillmore
Buchanan
Bush II

[A18]

Adams
Adams
I don't really have an opinion on the Whig presidents
FDR, but Wilson and LBJ are also awful
Lincoln, but not including war criminals, TR or Hoover

[Flying Dog]

Federalist
John Adams


Democratic-Republican
James Madison



Whigs
Milliard Fillmore




Democrat
Martin Van Buren




Republican
William Howard Taft

[Virginian87]

Adams
Adams
I don't really have an opinion on the Whig presidents
FDR, but Wilson and LBJ are also awful
Lincoln, but not including war criminals, TR or Hoover

Why do you hate Wilson, besides the fact that he had some racist tendencies?

[Emsworth]

Why do you hate FDR?  He's not my favorite either, but I consider him to be one of the best presidents.

He had no regard whatsoever for the Constitution. He was responsible for the internment of the Japanese and for the court packing scheme. The New Deal did not achieve anything whatsoever, and was mostly unconstitutional anyway.

[A18]

Adams
Adams
I don't really have an opinion on the Whig presidents
FDR, but Wilson and LBJ are also awful
Lincoln, but not including war criminals, TR or Hoover

Why do you hate Wilson, besides the fact that he had some racist tendencies?

What I said is that he was awful. Wilson's administration was one of liberties lost and promises unkept.

Excess profits tax, the modern estate tax, a top tax rate of 77%. Kept us out of war, until he didn't. Outlawing criticism of the federal government.

[Virginian87]

Why do you hate FDR?  He's not my favorite either, but I consider him to be one of the best presidents.

He had no regard whatsoever for the Constitution. He was responsible for the internment of the Japanese and for the court packing scheme. The New Deal did not achieve anything whatsoever, and was mostly unconstitutional anyway.

OK, I agree with you on the court-packing scheme and the Japanese internment.  That was taking it a bit too far.  However, although it didn't change the economic state of the country, the New Deal gave hope and confidence to thousands.  The CCC helped make our National Parks tourist-friendly and gave people jobs when they would have had nothing.  The dams built in the Northwest like Grand Coulee and the Tennessee Valley Authority gave electricity and power to many for the first time.  So the New Deal may not have pulled us out of the Depression, but it was NOT a waste.  

Some consider FDR to be near-Socialist.  To all those out there who think so, it could have been worse.  You could have had Huey "Every Man a King" Long elected as president in 1936.

[Emsworth]

However, although it didn't change the economic state of the country, the New Deal gave hope and confidence to thousands.  The CCC helped make our National Parks tourist-friendly and gave people jobs when they would have had nothing.  The dams built in the Northwest like Grand Coulee and the Tennessee Valley Authority gave electricity and power to many for the first time.  So the New Deal may not have pulled us out of the Depression, but it was NOT a waste.

It may not have been a waste, but it was not the business of the government to "steal from the rich and give to the poor."   

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Yes, it could have been worse, but that doesn't justify FDR's actions.

[Virginian87]

Adams
Adams
I don't really have an opinion on the Whig presidents
FDR, but Wilson and LBJ are also awful
Lincoln, but not including war criminals, TR or Hoover

Why do you hate Wilson, besides the fact that he had some racist tendencies?

What I said is that he was awful. Wilson's administration was one of liberties lost and promises unkept.

Excess profits tax, the modern estate tax, a top tax rate of 77%. Kept us out of war, until he didn't. Outlawing criticism of the federal government.

The Federal Reserve was created.  Direct Election of Senators established.  Women were given the right to vote.  All of this happened during his administration.  Wilson was a brilliant visionary with regard to international affairs.  One of the biggest mistakes we made was burying our heads in the sand after the war instead of taking our rightful place in the world as an economic power.  

With the Germans attacking our trade, it was either enter the war or lose more ships.  Take your pick.  Not every politician can keep campaign promises.  Just ask George H. W. Bush.

[skybridge]

Why do you hate FDR?  He's not my favorite either, but I consider him to be one of the best presidents.

He had no regard whatsoever for the Constitution. He was responsible for the internment of the Japanese and for the court packing scheme. The New Deal did not achieve anything whatsoever, and was mostly unconstitutional anyway.

OK, I agree with you on the court-packing scheme and the Japanese internment.  That was taking it a bit too far.  However, although it didn't change the economic state of the country, the New Deal gave hope and confidence to thousands.  The CCC helped make our National Parks tourist-friendly and gave people jobs when they would have had nothing.  The dams built in the Northwest like Grand Coulee and the Tennessee Valley Authority gave electricity and power to many for the first time.  So the New Deal may not have pulled us out of the Depression, but it was NOT a waste.  

Some consider FDR to be near-Socialist.  To all those out there who think so, it could have been worse.  You could have had Huey "Every Man a King" Long elected as president in 1936.

Long might have been the best president ever.

[CheeseWhiz]

Federalist[/b]
John Adams

Democratic-Republican[/b]
John Quincy Adams

Whigs[/b]
Unsure about most of them, I guess Milliard Fillmore, but I really don't know.

Democrat[/b]
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Republican[/b]
Andrew Johnson

[A18]

Johnson was not a Republican

[© tweed]

Federalist

John Adams

Democratic-Republican

John Quincy Adams

Whigs

Milliard Fillmore

Democrat

Lyndon B. Johnson

Republican

Herbert Hoover

[A18]

You realize Herbert Hoover was to the left of Theodore Roosevelt, right? Almost the entire "New" Deal was based off Hoover's proposals.

[© tweed]

You realize Herbert Hoover was to the left of Theodore Roosevelt, right? Almost the entire "New" Deal was based off Hoover's proposals.

He was a disaster.  That's all I care about.

[A18]

Yeah, but then FDR extended the policies that made him a disaster.

[© tweed]

Yeah, but then FDR extended the policies that made him a disaster.

no, not exactly buddy.  I've already fought the FDR battle before and maybe will again one day here, but FDRs actions worked in getting the country out of a hole.

[A18]

The economy showed some signs of life when the Supreme Court struck his "New" Deal down. Unemployment dropped to 18 percent in 1935, 14 percent in 1936, and even lower in 1937.

Then you have the court packing scheme. Unemployment returns to 20 percent by 1938, and the stock market crashes nearly 50 percent.

[© tweed]

The economy showed some signs of life when the Supreme Court struck his "New" Deal down. Unemployment dropped to 18 percent in 1935, 14 percent in 1936, and even lower in 1937.

Then you have the court packing scheme. Unemployment returns to 20 percent by 1938, and the stock market crashes nearly 50 percent.

by the end of his presidency, the numbers were waaay back down.  Unemployment jumped only one year, decreased all the others.  I don't remember all the exact numbers, but I remember the steady decrease.

[A18]

Unemployment remained at 20 percent until new public works spending was approved. Which, of course, might as well be welfare.

See, it doesn't count as a decrease in unemployment when you draft all the unemployed people into the militrary.

World War II ended the depression because the artifical Hoover/FDR wages were frozen while the money supply was inflated with the war spending. This meant wages were low enough to clear the employment market, and business could get back to business again.

[dazzleman]

You realize Herbert Hoover was to the left of Theodore Roosevelt, right? Almost the entire "New" Deal was based off Hoover's proposals.

He was a disaster.  That's all I care about.

I think you're oversimplifying it.  To a large extent, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and while he probably had the right personality and leadership style to preside over prosperity, he had the wrong personality and leadership style to lead a country through a disaster.

I think presidents get too much blame, and too much credit, as the case may be, for what happens economically during their presidency.  A president's effect on the economy is more subtle, and more over the long run than the short run, in my opinion.

I believe that while Roosevelt's policies took the hard edge off the depression through various relief and stimulus programs, his anti-business approach prolonged the depression and prevented a longer term cure of the problem. 

Roosevelt was forced to reverse many of his anti-business policies in 1940 in order to induce companies to invest in productive capacity for war materials, and it is really from these new policies that the post-war prosperity was born.