Favorite US President of all time?
Title says it all. I’m stuck between Abraham Lincoln and Calvin Coolidge.
Lincoln had possibly the most stressful job as President in US history (aside from FDR maybe). He worked to unite the country throughout a destructive, demoralizing war that nearly tore us apart, not to mention helping free the slaves.
Coolidge was one of the only Presidents to significantly reduce the size of the federal government, and he presided over possibly the most prosperous era in American history. IMO, he’s the gold standard for how a President should act during times of peace.
Your thoughts and reasoning?
James Madison
Washington set a precedent that the President was not a King. He's the GOAT in my opinion.
It’s the ultimate test and strength of character to be able to do something selfish that’s not good for others, to exercise power when unneeded, etc.
Something probably no modern President could do republican or Democrat. We’ve gotten really far away from minimizing the executive role. (Most of) the founders wouldn’t know what to do with the country we have today haha.
The problem is every single president after him did something unconstitutional so to speak and set precedents therein of the potential to abuse it. Jefferson with the Louisiana purchase was not constitutional really, though argued pretty well that domain over a territory includes the power to expand it (or whatever) but that was constitutional, Monroe doctrine, etc. etc. The founders did a bad job in my opinion of balancing the judicial and executive branch, but Jesus Christ were they geniuses and do so many things well too. They may have put too much trust in how the relationships between the branches would involve, as it can be mutually beneficial for power to increase among all 3 branches and all could agree if the president appoints people who are favorable to government expansion in the justice department. Perhaps it would have been better for the current judges to impact and train, help outline the goals of the judicial / Supreme Court idk.
Donald Trump, thanks for the stonks returns %
You kidding right?
Trump did nothing but piggy back on an already improving economy. Good on the corporate tax decrease though.
Obama was quoted saying during his presidency saying that the level of econmic gains which later happened during trumps presidency was impossible and could never happen.
Reagan for his sense of humour & MAG
Bill Clintion
good choice in INTERNS
Bill Clinton
I’d say Coolidge is a tough one because he’s in some effect blamed for the extent the depression was, blamed for stock market crash and depression, etc. didn’t want to help the unemployed blah blah blah.
I think there’s some poor framing there, especially with Hoover as the 31st president.
If such actions led to FDR who turned this country into dogshit and allowed for socialism and abused executive power to the nines, which allowed for great society act by Lindon Johnson would you say these people were so great? I’m not sure they can be blamed for this, but at the same time I think there’s some responsibility for the government to preserve a peaceful society, and not just exist to guarantee freedoms. E.g. millions of starving people needs something done about it, but only in times of crisis. Anyway yeah I agree I like what he did too but it’s hard to judge whether he did as good of a job as say Jefferson who broke some principles of the constitution (with high amounts of guilt and discomfort) for the benefit of the company e.g. Louisiana purchase. That’s a tough balancing act and requires intelligent people; unfortunately, no such candidates will have that nuance beyond pandering to people now.
IMO, it's the ideologues who love Coolidge. I don't think Coolidge really understood how the economy works. Hence, he didn't do anything, even in areas where the government involvement is favorable.
But FDR created the massive tyranny of the status quo we call budget deficit through this thing called the New Deal. Why do we even have Social Security?
FDR's legacy = Siloed government organizations that only seems to focus on one-upping each other + organizations that only grows even when they become obsolete. Thanks to him, we can't spend enough on education and healthcare without bankrupting this country. ThAnKs for AOC, thanks for Bernie, thanks for Warren, and thanks for this voodoo economics called Modern Monetary Theory.
yeah you said it better than I did. I'd make the comparison for some people being conservative just because they grew up that way; good job for doing the right thing, but you don't exactly know enough to do a great job at being a conservative e.g. knowing your history and why things should work the way they do and how things play out in reality vs. leftist ideas.
Coolidge didn't really know how to manage an economy from what it seems, especially when it's all about "steering the ship". I don't remember if it was Hoover or Coolidge who was framed as cutting "taxes for the rich" and ushering in a prosperous period, but in terms of steering a ship you can't just ignore the economy and I think we both agree on that. Keynesian economics works obviously and should be exercised in times of crisis, but it is definitely hard for people to get off the teet of the government during non crisis times haha. Anyway props on the history knowledge, bro
George Washington for warning against political parties. Party politics is ruining this country.
Thomas Jefferson for his embodiment of the laissez-faire governance.
Reagan for his optimistic rhetorics and the revival of the entrepreneurial economic environment that eventually made the US the start-up capital of the world.
Bill Clinton for being the only president in the last 50+ years to have a budget surplus + policies that helped establish the US as the dominant power in technology, finance, and entertainment.
Care to expand on your Regan and Clinton policy points? Would be great to hear more of the specifics
When Reagan took over, the US was going through a stagflation, monster of a thing with high inflation and high unemployment (hence disproving the validity of the Keynesian Philips Curve and accelerating the adoption of Rational Expectation). Reagan trusted Carter-era Fed chairman Paul Volcker and extremely high interest rate that he set. In the short-term, this worsened the unemployment situation. But it eventually worked, inflation rate fell from 10+% to 2~3%. Reagan was patient and wise enough to reappoint Paul Volcker. This kind of monetary policy coupled with Reaganomics restructured the American economy and created a good environment to do business. Add Reagan's optimistic rhetoric in to the mix, and now you have a country poised for growth. Sure, Reaganomics created some inequality and displaced some workers, but when your choices are growth with a lot of growing pains vs. withering away, I'd choose growth.
As for Clinton, he restructured lots of government agencies and trimmed all the fat. A lot of organizations were digitized, obsolete jobs were removed. All the Clinton-era free trade agreements (helped handle trade deficit) and deregulation of the financial industry allowed the US to dominate the global financial and the entertainment sector. He's criticized for his deregulation eventually contributing to 2008 recession, but that's just some aspects of the deregulation that went horribly wrong.
What about when Jefferson pooped on the country because of his embargo and people were PISSED, and the Louisiana purchase any thoughts on those?
I admire Jefferson for his spirit of laissez-faire. Not necessarily his exact policies. Also economics was a nascent field back then, only couple decades after when Adam Smith published "The Wealth of Nations".
Embargo was a terrible move - yet another example of well-intended but horrible policy. Classic government move. It baffles me why people thought banning overseas trade would be a good idea to stop Britain from forcing American sailors into British military service. One good thing came out of it though - realization that America needs to industrialize ASAP otherwise it'll be fucked.
As for the Louisiana Purchase, it was one of the best things that ever happened to the US. Whether is was constitutional or not is up for debate of course. I don't think the Constitution strictly prohibited the executive branch from purchasing land though.
Mostly agree. It's hard to fault Clinton since he really couldn't know any better, but he dropped the ball on China and paved the way for them to become the rival they are today.
Free trade was the zeitgeist of the Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama eras. Free trade, in principle, reduces the wealth gap between nations, allowing China to come to the forefront. I mean if you disagree with free trade, that itself is an argument (a perhaps timely one in our era of deglobalization), but you'd need to clarify what you mean by "drop the ball," and in particular why you are attributing that to the Clinton presidency. You may be referring to something specific that I am unaware of.
Also, your post seems to imply that China being a rival today is a negative thing, which would also require further explanation. A true capitalist would take issue with that statement-- rivalry is the bedrock of capitalism.
Back then, widespread understanding was that economic freedom -> political freedom (and hence some form of democracy).
Quite obviously, we now know that economic freedom isn't the only requirement.
But can you blame Clinton? Opening up China was on US foreign policy agenda since Nixon.
Moreover, it's Xi's China that's bad. Before Xi, China was becoming more free by the day.
Reagan will always remain in my bottom 10 because of his War on Drugs/Black people and Iran Contra.
Everyone has their goods and bads.
Reagan ought to be criticized for 1) War on Drugs, 2) Prison privatization, and 3) Handling of HIV epidemic based on biases on homosexuality. It's undeniable that his rhetoric, decision to reappoint Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman, and parts of Reaganomics allowed the US to absolutely dominate financial, technology, and entertainment sectors. The US is home to more millionaires and six figure salary workers (in terms of ratio of such people to the total population) than anywhere else in the world.
As for racial injustice, New Deal era inspired public housing projects caused de facto segregation. FDR ought to be criticized for leaving a legacy of indiscriminate and thoughtless government action that doesn't consider the side effects and other alternatives. Legacy of the US government doing well-intentioned things with horrible consequences started with FDR. Of course, FDR ought to be praised for his leadership during WW2 + securing American interests in the post war world.
Just offering some perspectives. You gotta treat each action separately. In the same regard, I hate Trump and I disagree with most of his policies but I praise the corporate tax cut.
Eisenhower
James K. Polk hands down
I love how he only ran for one term and did pretty much everything he said he was going to do.
My high school US history teacher loved this dude. As the other poster mentioned, he basically did everything he promised to do and then didn't even pursue a second term. Pretty remarkable
.
"The gold standard" is actually one of the most ironic ways you can compliment a president. It's generally agreed upon that the literal gold standard (a mechanism established by ardent neoclassical economists and an embodiment of extreme laissez-faire economies) was responsible for generating the international tensions that led to WW1, which was relatively proximate to the time of Calvin Coolidge.
Also, Coolidge is pretty notoriously a bad president and many fault him for the circumstances that led to the extremes of the Great Depression. But then again we are dealing with utopian-level obsession of market organization on this forum.
"utopian-level obsession of market organization on this forum." hahahahaha but much of politics is that, is idealizing an idea to the highest extent it has. Sure, if everyone was willing to live communally and didn't worsen their work ethic communism, socialism would work.
I think being realistic in history is hard because we learn from history books and interpretations from historians who aren't impartial. But we should all do our best and be critical. Either way, people need to come together a little more to assess reality, I agree. I think UBI might be the way to go in this country, albiet I hate it.
By human nature, this would never happen. Unless we go through some crazy evolutionary change, something that'll make us no longer Homo Sapiens. I mean in a million years or something.
As for UBI, people forget that it's essentially just another name for negative income tax. I'm in favor of it. But I think there's quite a bit of administrative cost attached to UBI. Ideally, I want it to replace minimum wage.
The term UBI just doesn't sound right to many conservatives, may be because it was proposed by a Democrat. If a fiscal conservative like me proposed it in the mainstream politics, it'd need a whole new name to get the progressives to support it (because of their inexplicable love affair with minimum wage). We can call it "minimum income" or something.
FYI, the neoclassical & monetarist economists, notably Milton Friedman later showed that true automatic gold standard is impossible. I don't think there is much academic debate over whether a true automatic standard works or not - it works. But it's only theoretically possible and hence the early neoclassical economists were wrong to assume that a flawed non-automatic gold standard would work. At least we can cross out that option.
Interestingly, Friedman predicted the emergence of cryptocurrencies in early 2000s. Bitcoin was designed to be that perfect automatic standard currency. But of course, we don't use it because of security issues.
True, I may have more aptly said "classical economists."
Harry Truman for financial ethics, After his presidency he accepted exactly zero corporate payroll and endorsements believing that taking such positions would diminish the integrity of he presidency, living in near poverty for years until his memoirs and pension were respectively published and approved by Congress. Today you have a solid number of congressman exiting as law firm partners and lobbyists taking in 400k+ to represent the voices of the worst business practices and individuals. Does anyone find it strange that the Clintons are worth 200 million and Trump has high tier diplomats staying at the most expensive suites in his hotels?
Reaganomics baby
Teddy
William Henry Harrison.
Did absolutely nothing but cough his life away with pneumonia. Greatest president ever.
The one who couldn't get out of the bathtub. Legend.
Wiilliam Howard TAFT BABY
Followed by that guy who gave a speech in the rain and died after a month in office.
What is the point of this? Like really
There’s some very intelligent comments here you mouth breather. Click away if you don’t want to read it.
Millard Fillmore. 'Nuff said.
Kanye West
Are you from the future? What is it like?
Outside of the presidency, Hoover. The man is regarded as the “Great Humanitarian”. He was orphaned at the age of 9. He was in the first class of Stanford. He became a multimillionaire in his 20’s. Ran some of the biggest gold mines in Australia in his young 20s. And ran the biggest coal mine in China in his mid 20s. He fed the whole nation of Belgium during WWI as a private citizen. He assembled ships to take 100,000+ stranded Americans back home at the start of WWI. He also helped feed numerous countries, especially the losers of WWI when he was apart of the Harding/Coolidge administrations. He is credited with saving about 100M lives. I also saw somewhere that FDR even drove down to his house and tried to convince him to run as a democrat for president and he would run his campaign for him. What he did or rather what he didn’t do as President aside, he was a great man.
Reagan!
Donald Trump, for single-handedly taking down Donald Trump.
Teddy Roosevelt. surprised not many others have said this
so I guess imperialism is cool huh
Ulysses S. Grant – not saying he was the best POTUS but I think he was a bit underrated.
Warren G Harding the goat lol
lot of crazy ones
Also one of the most vulgar presidents ever.
1) He constantly called black people the n-word. I guess he used it like a term of endearment?
2) Once whipped out his dick, which he named Jumbo, in front of a reporter.
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