Harry S. Truman vs. John F. Kennedy

[Sir Mohamed]

I prefer Truman and think even objectively he was the better prez.

Thoughts?

[Alben Barkley]

Truman was the far better president and probably a better person too.

[courts]

kennedy

[President Johnson]

Harry Truman, quite easily. He's definitely a president of the Top-5 tier. Kennedy, while above average, is certainly overrated.

Also prefer Truman as a person.

[TDAS04]

Truman was a better president than anyone who served after him.

[Mr. Smith]

not kennedy.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Obviously, Truman, he had 8 yrs and Thomas C Clark, Minton and Burton Desegregated Schools and the other facilities

JFK and Bobby Kennedy lives we're cut short

[dw93]

Truman was a better president than anyone who served after him.

[Pink Panther]

Truman and it's not even close, honestly.

[GregTheGreat657]

JFK

[LBJer]

Truman was a better president than anyone who served after him.

I think LBJ was the best post-FDR president overall. 

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

His very based 1948 campaign aside, Truman didn't actually handle a lot of the domestic challenges that came his way well at all. That said, the Kennedys are and have always been an evil family. Both of their reputations just show that the way a lot of people interact with American political history is really not unlike how one is supposed to experience an MCU film - a succession of Cool Moments surrounded by .

[dw93]

Truman was a better president than anyone who served after him.

I think LBJ was the best post-FDR president overall. 

If not for esacalating Vietnam, I too would rank LBJ the best post FDR President. However, that to me was an avoidable mistake and thus is too much of a weight on his legacy for me to rank him that hightly. With that in mind, he's third best to Truman (who was the best of the post 1945 Presidents) and Eisenhower (due to a lack of better options).

[Vice President Christian Man]

The senator from my state

[If my soul was made of stone]

The contrast between the breadth and scope of domestic reforms enacted under JFK vs his successor shows how little the former really knew about playing hardball with Congress and getting an agenda through, something we've seen play out countless times since on all levels of government. Truman had the hard experience to understand that principle even if Congress itself was stacked against him enough that his achievements were fewer than they should've been and marred with his inability to stop the legislature's own regressive agenda (Taft-Hartley, etc). Kennedy also took Ike's, or at least the popular image and support of Ike's, depoliticized nice-guy image far further into the "Camelot" high-fashion celebrity sphere to the detriment of the seriousness of the office and its relationship with the mass media, reinforcing each other ad infinitum. And yet it is those two failures that in their own way create the mythology of JFK: no controversy, just good feelings and the national trauma mythos of his undoing and what followed. There was even a Beach Boys song ("The Warmth of the Sun") written in response to Kennedy's assassination, well before Van Dyke Parks was a glimmer in Brian Wilson's eye.

[Aurelius]

Truman (sane)