Atlas ranks the presidents -- week 9 (WORST OF THE WORST)
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  Atlas ranks the presidents -- week 9 (WORST OF THE WORST)
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Author Topic: Atlas ranks the presidents -- week 9 (WORST OF THE WORST)  (Read 9623 times)
StateBoiler
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« Reply #100 on: August 03, 2020, 09:32:09 AM »
« edited: August 03, 2020, 09:43:14 AM by StateBoiler »

3. John F. Kennedy (Kennedy gets dinged for the Cuban Missile Crisis, but I suspect that if he had survived and defeated Barry Goldwater in 1964, we would not be involved in Vietnam)

I dispute that take heavily.

LBJ literally went to war in Vietnam to secure his image as a wartime President. I don't think Kennedy cared that much about whether or not he was a wartime President or not.


Oh bullsh**t. Both presidents had the same administration! Dean Rusk - Secretary of State for Kennedy and Johnson. Robert McNamara - Secretary of Defense for Kennedy and Johnson. You think Kennedy died and Rusk and McNamara suddenly became "we need war!"?

He was president for two and a half years and in his time had the Bay of Pigs (total disaster), the Cuban Missile Crisis (success), and started Vietnam. Being objective about it, he had the foreign policy of George W. Bush. Throw on top of it long-rumored mob ties which may or may not have influenced the result of the 1960 election, and he had the sexual proclivities of Clinton. His backers don't want to think about all that, so they talk about Jackie and JFK Jr. As far as playing on the media and his personal image, John Fitzgerald Kennedy is an absolute A+. His performance as president, it's something else.
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Battista Minola 1616
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« Reply #101 on: August 03, 2020, 10:05:36 AM »

The original post is really mean with Gilded Age presidents.

Anyway:

1. Lyndon Johnson is probably my favourite president
2. Franklin Roosevelt
3. Harry Truman
4. Dwight Eisenhower
5. Calvin Coolidge
6. John Kennedy
7. Woodrow Wilson
8. Warren Harding
9. Herbert Hoover
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NewYorkExpress
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« Reply #102 on: August 03, 2020, 10:45:33 AM »

3. John F. Kennedy (Kennedy gets dinged for the Cuban Missile Crisis, but I suspect that if he had survived and defeated Barry Goldwater in 1964, we would not be involved in Vietnam)

I dispute that take heavily.

LBJ literally went to war in Vietnam to secure his image as a wartime President. I don't think Kennedy cared that much about whether or not he was a wartime President or not.


Oh bullsh**t. Both presidents had the same administration! Dean Rusk - Secretary of State for Kennedy and Johnson. Robert McNamara - Secretary of Defense for Kennedy and Johnson. You think Kennedy died and Rusk and McNamara suddenly became "we need war!"?

He was president for two and a half years and in his time had the Bay of Pigs (total disaster), the Cuban Missile Crisis (success), and started Vietnam. Being objective about it, he had the foreign policy of George W. Bush. Throw on top of it long-rumored mob ties which may or may not have influenced the result of the 1960 election, and he had the sexual proclivities of Clinton. His backers don't want to think about all that, so they talk about Jackie and JFK Jr. As far as playing on the media and his personal image, John Fitzgerald Kennedy is an absolute A+. His performance as president, it's something else.

I think the difference is Johnson, because of his desire to be seen as a wartime President was more inclined to listen to Rusk and Macnamara.

Also, the Bay of Pigs plan was born in the Eisenhower Administration. Kennedy removed the vital air support needed for the plan to succeed. If Castro had been overthrown, the Soviets almost certainly would have retaliated in West Berlin.
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« Reply #103 on: August 03, 2020, 11:45:34 AM »

1. FDR
2. Truman
3. LBJ
4. Ike
5. JFK
6. Harding
7. Hoover
8. Coolidge
9. Wilson
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« Reply #104 on: August 03, 2020, 11:59:59 AM »

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Calvin Coolidge
Warren G. Harding
Franklin D. Roosevelt
John F. Kennedy
Herbert Hoover
Woodrow Wilson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Harry S. Truman
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Unconditional Surrender Truman
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« Reply #105 on: August 03, 2020, 09:53:19 PM »

   1. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
   2. Lyndon Baines Johnson
   3. Harry S. Truman
   4. Dwight David Eisenhower
   5. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
   6. John Calvin Coolidge
   7. Warren Gamaliel Harding
   8. Thomas Woodrow Wilson
   9. Herbert Clark Hoover

This sequence of presidents might see the greatest average divergence between my opinion of them as chief executives and my opinion of them as human beings.
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #106 on: August 03, 2020, 10:23:34 PM »

1. F. Roosevelt
2. Truman
3. L. Johnson
4. Eisenhower
5. Kennedy
6. Wilson
7. Hoover
8. Coolidge
9. Harding
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Alcibiades
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« Reply #107 on: August 05, 2020, 04:00:54 AM »
« Edited: August 05, 2020, 04:04:00 AM by Alcibiades »

1. Franklin D. Roosevelt
2. Lyndon B. Johnson
3. Dwight Eisenhower
4. Harry Truman
5. John F. Kennedy
6. Woodrow Wilson
7. Calvin Coolidge
8. Herbert Hoover
9. Warren Harding

FDR to LBJ was the greatest run of Presidents in American history. FDR and LBJ are both in my top 3, and Eisenhower, Truman and JFK in my top 10.
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #108 on: August 05, 2020, 10:48:56 AM »

Again, this is FAR from my "ideological ranking" of these men, which I get probably sounds ridiculous to many on a site like this ... but I find it a more interesting challenge to rank them in a more "historian-like" way.

Tom's Rankings
1. Franklin D. Roosevelt (D-NY)
2. Dwight Eisenhower (R-KS)
3. Harry Truman (D-MO)
4. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX)
5. Woodrow Wilson (D-NJ)
6. Calvin Coolidge (R-MA)
7. John F. Kennedy (D-MA)
8. Herbert Hoover (R-CA)
9. Warren Harding (R-OH)

Tom's Ramblings
- It's hard not to rank FDR first, even if you don't like his politics ... and I do not like his politics.  I'd like to think many Democrats would feel similarly about Reagan in the coming group, but I'm pessimistic.
- I have always been a big Ike fan, but I honestly believe he deserves #2 here; he reigned in the Presidency in the post-FDR world in a good way, and he articulated a vision for (politically) conservative use of Executive power that only intervened when necessary (see Brown v. Board enforcement).  Truman gets #3 mostly for making the immensely difficult decision about the A-bomb so soon after taking office.  Additionally, historians have correctly started to rehabilitate him.
- I am no fan of LBJ and definitely not one of Wilson, but these men's accomplishments have shaped our world in nearly immeasurable ways.  I also don't really knock off points for Wilson being a racist or LBJ's Vietnam situation (in addition to quite clearly being a racist, though signing the CRA is more important than that).  LBJ gets the nod over Wilson due to civil rights legislation, mostly.
- I see Coolidge and JFK similarly, in that they both took restrained-but-responsible attitudes toward their power.  I admit that I chose Coolidge on ideological grounds, and I find the narrative that he was to the Great Depression what Buchanan was to the Civil War (i.e., let it happen due to his lack of foresight or lack of concern) ridiculously simplistic and misguided and do not believe the nearly unavoidable crash of 1929 should really bear a bad mark on his Presidency.
- The last two are pretty easy, and I REALLY like both.  Hoover was the most qualified man to ever take office, and by all accounts a fantastic man ... and Harding was my Spirit President, as I totally would have lived out my term exactly like he did (minus, hopefully, the affairs and, definitely, the dying).  Both men were not up to the tasks in front of them, but Hoover was not negligent; Harding was.

For fun, this would be my "personal rankings," taking both ideology, how much I like them and of course a bit of their actual performance as President into account:

(Don't use these rankings ... lol)

1. Dwight Eisenhower (R-KS) - One of the most underrated Presidents of all time and an archetype for what Republicanism must look like in the next several decades.
2. Calvin Coolidge (R-MA) - We REALLY need a Coolidge right about now to save the GOP from itself.
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt (D-NY) - I actually think he did some underrated damage to this country that we're still dealing with, but the leadership he showed was rivaled by few.
4. Herbert Hoover (R-CA) - Iowa!
5. Warren Harding (R-OH) - He and I would have been bros.
6. Harry Truman (D-MO) - Don't like his politics, but I appreciate that he was "just a guy" in a crowd of politics types.
7. John F. Kennedy (D-MA) - You have to respect the presence he commanded, if nothing else.
8. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX) - I am of the camp that LBJ was a complete opportunist and find the rewriting of his civil rights attitudes by historians to be wishful thinking ... that said, the guy signed the CRA and VRA, so props.
9. Woodrow Wilson (D-NJ) - Everyone focuses so much on his racism, but Wilson kind of revived the toxic world outlook of your more "snooty" modern liberals that had waned a bit since Jefferson ... nothing to like.
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jeron
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« Reply #109 on: August 05, 2020, 10:50:38 AM »

1. FDR
2. Eisenhower
3. LBJ
4. Wilson
5. Truman
6. Coolidge
7. JFK
8. Hoover
9. Harding (worst president until Donald J. Trump)
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Alcibiades
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« Reply #110 on: August 05, 2020, 01:02:29 PM »

8. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX) - I am of the camp that LBJ was a complete opportunist and find the rewriting of his civil rights attitudes by historians to be wishful thinking ... that said, the guy signed the CRA and VRA, so props.

I’m sorry, how is this true? All his advisors told him not push for civil rights legislation, as it was a waste of political capital which would have negative electoral results. He did it because he had a genuine belief in racial equality. His only competition in doing more to advance this is Lincoln.
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #111 on: August 05, 2020, 03:08:26 PM »

8. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX) - I am of the camp that LBJ was a complete opportunist and find the rewriting of his civil rights attitudes by historians to be wishful thinking ... that said, the guy signed the CRA and VRA, so props.

I’m sorry, how is this true? All his advisors told him not push for civil rights legislation, as it was a waste of political capital which would have negative electoral results. He did it because he had a genuine belief in racial equality. His only competition in doing more to advance this is Lincoln.

There are plenty of stories from his contemporaries of him playing the "good cop" on civil rights while other Democratic Senators played the "bad cop," effectively watering down the civil rights legislation of the 1950s, not to mention his infamous "I'll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for 200 years" quote, which always initiates an irate refutation from Democratic partisans, but I have zero reason not to believe he said that.  I think by LBJ's Presidency, it was more than apparent which way the winds were blowing, and the South was really starting to crack for the Democrats, while the votes of Northern Blacks (which had been reliably Democratic for decades at this point) were absolutely essential to the Northern urban support the party relied on for both Congress and the Presidency.  Again, I give the man credit for signing the laws and pushing for them, but it's just odd to me that Democrats have tried to paint him as this truly altruistic man who took a huge political risk ... I'd argue the bigger risk would be kicking the can down the road another ten years and possibly alienating Northern Black voters.  His early career involved opposing civil rights legislation and then supporting watered down versions in the 1950s.  I don't know why it's so controversial that a man born in rural Texas who entered Congress as a segregationist *MIGHT* have been a bit personally racist and seen some political capital in solidifying the Black support that was now absolutely essential for Democrats to win the Northern states necessary to win the White House...
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Alcibiades
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« Reply #112 on: August 05, 2020, 03:27:27 PM »

8. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX) - I am of the camp that LBJ was a complete opportunist and find the rewriting of his civil rights attitudes by historians to be wishful thinking ... that said, the guy signed the CRA and VRA, so props.

I’m sorry, how is this true? All his advisors told him not push for civil rights legislation, as it was a waste of political capital which would have negative electoral results. He did it because he had a genuine belief in racial equality. His only competition in doing more to advance this is Lincoln.

There are plenty of stories from his contemporaries of him playing the "good cop" on civil rights while other Democratic Senators played the "bad cop," effectively watering down the civil rights legislation of the 1950s, not to mention his infamous "I'll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for 200 years" quote, which always initiates an irate refutation from Democratic partisans, but I have zero reason not to believe he said that.  I think by LBJ's Presidency, it was more than apparent which way the winds were blowing, and the South was really starting to crack for the Democrats, while the votes of Northern Blacks (which had been reliably Democratic for decades at this point) were absolutely essential to the Northern urban support the party relied on for both Congress and the Presidency.  Again, I give the man credit for signing the laws and pushing for them, but it's just odd to me that Democrats have tried to paint him as this truly altruistic man who took a huge political risk ... I'd argue the bigger risk would be kicking the can down the road another ten years and possibly alienating Northern Black voters.  His early career involved opposing civil rights legislation and then supporting watered down versions in the 1950s.  I don't know why it's so controversial that a man born in rural Texas who entered Congress as a segregationist *MIGHT* have been a bit personally racist and seen some political capital in solidifying the Black support that was now absolutely essential for Democrats to win the Northern states necessary to win the White House...

LBJ was a complex and flawed man, insatiably ambitious and craving power. But he appeared to have a genuine belief in social and racial justice, inspired by his religiosity and experience growing up in the Depression. I also have no reason to doubt the infamous n-word comment, but it in no way shows he is racist. The word was one he grew up with and he was known for off-colour language. He is acknowledging the political upside to a bill which carried arguably more considerably downside in that regard.
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #113 on: August 05, 2020, 03:31:35 PM »
« Edited: August 05, 2020, 03:36:37 PM by RINO Tom »

8. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX) - I am of the camp that LBJ was a complete opportunist and find the rewriting of his civil rights attitudes by historians to be wishful thinking ... that said, the guy signed the CRA and VRA, so props.

I’m sorry, how is this true? All his advisors told him not push for civil rights legislation, as it was a waste of political capital which would have negative electoral results. He did it because he had a genuine belief in racial equality. His only competition in doing more to advance this is Lincoln.

There are plenty of stories from his contemporaries of him playing the "good cop" on civil rights while other Democratic Senators played the "bad cop," effectively watering down the civil rights legislation of the 1950s, not to mention his infamous "I'll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for 200 years" quote, which always initiates an irate refutation from Democratic partisans, but I have zero reason not to believe he said that.  I think by LBJ's Presidency, it was more than apparent which way the winds were blowing, and the South was really starting to crack for the Democrats, while the votes of Northern Blacks (which had been reliably Democratic for decades at this point) were absolutely essential to the Northern urban support the party relied on for both Congress and the Presidency.  Again, I give the man credit for signing the laws and pushing for them, but it's just odd to me that Democrats have tried to paint him as this truly altruistic man who took a huge political risk ... I'd argue the bigger risk would be kicking the can down the road another ten years and possibly alienating Northern Black voters.  His early career involved opposing civil rights legislation and then supporting watered down versions in the 1950s.  I don't know why it's so controversial that a man born in rural Texas who entered Congress as a segregationist *MIGHT* have been a bit personally racist and seen some political capital in solidifying the Black support that was now absolutely essential for Democrats to win the Northern states necessary to win the White House...

LBJ was a complex and flawed man, insatiably ambitious and craving power. But he appeared to have a genuine belief in social and racial justice, inspired by his religiosity and experience growing up in the Depression. I also have no reason to doubt the infamous n-word comment, but it in no way shows he is racist. The word was one he grew up with and he was known for off-colour language. He is acknowledging the political upside to a bill which carried arguably more considerably downside in that regard.


I won't derail the thread much further, but I think history has overrated how risky it actually was.  The Democrats retained the vast majority of Southern Senate seats for decades to come, the South continued to vote left of the nation for multiple Presidential elections in the coming decades and Democrats solidified Black support to astronomical levels that haven't fallen off since ... it certainly was in some ways risky, but I actually think it was the smartest thing to do in the moment.

I think Truman's 1948 victory proved that Democrats needed Black support at least as much as they needed Southern support, and I think Eisenhower's two landslides (both of which he still lost the Black vote, even with a segregationist VP pick for Stevenson and after enforcing Brown v. Board with the national guard) effectively caused the GOP to abandon any ambition of winning over Black voters.  From what I have read, the Democrats figured they would expand upon their Black support as a way to flip close Northern states in the future and that even if they lost some of the more conservative voters in the South, populist and working class Southern Whites would stick with them to provide a winning coalition in those states still ... and I would say history largely proved them correct.  (I would argue the GOP victories in 1968, 1972 and 1984 tell us very little about the political winds of the time.)
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GeneralMacArthur
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« Reply #114 on: August 05, 2020, 03:52:00 PM »

LBJ was coarse, flippant, snarky, and liked to brag.

The "I'll have those n***ers voting Democratic for 200 years" quote sounds like the kind of thing he would say, but not in a sinister or manipulative way.  Just in the kind of coarse, bragging, "look how big my dick is" way that LBJ was known to speak.

And of course, using the n-word in the 1960s is not the same as using it today.  To imply LBJ is a racist because he used it then is just plain ignorant.
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The Ex-Factor
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« Reply #115 on: August 05, 2020, 06:25:04 PM »

1. Harry Truman
2. Dwight Eisenhower
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt
4. Lyndon Johnson
5. John F. Kennedy
6. Woodrow Wilson
7. Calvin Coolidge
8. Warren Harding
9. Herbert Hoover
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Joe Biden 2024
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« Reply #116 on: August 06, 2020, 07:40:10 AM »

Roosevelt
Eisenhower
Truman
Kennedy
Johnson
Coolidge
Harding
Hoover
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GeneralMacArthur
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« Reply #117 on: August 09, 2020, 11:00:01 AM »

Week 4 results are in the OP.

Week 5:  The Modern Presidency
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
George HW Bush
Bill Clinton
George W Bush
Barack Obama
Donald Trump
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« Reply #118 on: August 09, 2020, 11:20:26 AM »

1. Barack Obama
2. Bill Clinton
3. Gerald Ford
4. Ronald Reagan
5. Jimmy Carter
6. George H.W. Bush
7. George W. Bush
8. Richard Nixon (due to Watergate)
9. Donald Trump
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SWE
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« Reply #119 on: August 09, 2020, 11:23:41 AM »

1. Carter
2. Ford
3. HW Bush
4. Obama
5. Clinton
6. Reagan
7. Nixon
8. Trump
9. Bush
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LAKISYLVANIA
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« Reply #120 on: August 09, 2020, 11:28:01 AM »

1. Obama
2. Carter
3. Nixon
4. Ford
5. HW Bush
6. Reagan
7. Clinton
8. Trump
9. W Bush
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« Reply #121 on: August 09, 2020, 01:19:40 PM »

I really don't understand how, after recent events, people still think W. Bush is worse than Trump
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« Reply #122 on: August 09, 2020, 01:24:40 PM »

I am not gonna rank trump as his presidency is yet not over So I’ll do Nixon through Obama

1. Reagan
2. HW Bush
3. Clinton
4. Nixon
5. Obama
6. Ford
7. W Bush
8. Carter


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« Reply #123 on: August 09, 2020, 01:29:28 PM »

I really don't understand how, after recent events, people still think W. Bush is worse than Trump


We don’t yet know what the state of the nation will be when Trump leaves office though . I don’t even think he should be ranked given we don’t even know that
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« Reply #124 on: August 09, 2020, 01:32:22 PM »

1. Obama
2. Clinton
3. Carter
4. Ford
5. HW Bush
6. Nixon
7. Reagan
8. W Bush
9. Trump
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