Who is your favorite President?
Mine is JFK because of the space race. I'm curious about others. I'll SB you if you say someone pre 1970 and give a good explanation.
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Andrew Jackson
I know so little about US history that I don’t even get why this is funny
Andrew Jackson is well known for being against the Supreme Court's rulings ("King Andrew") and the Trail of Tears.
Common core these days...
Probably Washington or Eisenhower
Washington led the country to independence? Hard to beat that. Otherwise we may still be subjects of the queen? Not sure….
no need to SB. Just trying to contribute to a discussion.
No Ben you deserve a SB
Lol
W.
Trump
George Washington
Abe Lincoln
Gerald Ford
Ford? Not sure I know enough about him to understand why he is in your list?
I like Ford because he was a straightforward and honest guy who wasn’t really a politician. He never could have been elected president with his non-politician ways. But, once at the post, he did a good job. After that, our country wasn’t ready to willfully elect a non-politician until Trump.
You gotta admit, Trump was damn entertaining - even CNN misses hating on Trump.
I really thought he did well in his presidency except for 1/6/21 which was a disaster for him. He shouldn’t have said some things and definitely shouldn’t have gone against his VP.
Trump is consistently rated by analysts as one of the worst presidents that the US has ever had. I agree completely with them.
Edit - I've had MS thrown at me for being "inaccurate". Here you go - https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2021/06/30/trump-ranks-41-o…
William Henry Harrison
I respected you until you gave a shitpost answer to a serious question
Alright Intern - I think there is an argument to be made that WHH is the least polarizing and most neutrally balanced president in history. Almost nothing happened under his reign as president and the country kept moving forward.
I'm not SBing anyone who doesn't give a good explanation
Nixon. Srs.
Nixon was a mixed bag, and frankly did a lot of head scratching things, but the modern portrayal of him as this horrible corrupt tyrant is entirely inaccurate.
Exactly.
1. Had very little charisma or good looks, was raised poor. Managed to get elected President TWICE (honestly impressive to accomplish that, has to overcome it by being VERY competent and cunning)
2. Ended Vietnam (pulled out as gracefully as we could have, and got the POWs back etc).
3. Started EPA
4. Opened relations with China
5. Opened trade with Russia
6. landmark nuclear treaties
7. clean air act
8. desegregated schools
9. Ended the draft
He also won two absolute landslide elections back to back
If not for watergate and the hollywood/liberal media caricaturization of him, he would be the GOP version of Reagan today where everyone wishes he would rise from the grave to run.
He was very smart - but very insecure and that's what ultimately did him in.
Nixon was a very talented man.
This being an incorrect answer has nothing to do w/ Watergate - Nixon's One China Policy is one of the worst foreign policy blunders in the history of the country. Should've left those commie fuckers economically choked off from the rest of the world
This 100%. Now China is eating our lunch. Also, didn't Nixon take us off the gold standard?
Easily George Washington. Started the French and Indian War / Seven Years War, weakened Europe, then whooped their asses and made our country. Doesn't get much better than that.
Washington, Lincoln are the basic bitch answers and deserve no explanation.
Polk is an underrated one, and the only great president nobody's heard of. He achieved everything he set out to do in one term, including taking the Southwest from Mexico and the Northwest from Britain and modernizing the banking and tariffs system, and didn't even run for reelection.
These territorial gains were a double-edged sword. The debate over whether slavery would expand to these territories eventually turned our country into a terrible civil war, but in the long term they made America what it is today
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Washington was a mediocre President imo and gets way too much credit for very little. He wasn’t the first true president (John Hanson was) and the idea that we would have been under the British had it not been for Washington is silly. He wasn’t a military genius who solo defeated the British. We received a lot of help and military training from the French (Lafayette). Britain was also stretched thin having just engaged in the French and Indian War and other conflicts globally which is a big reason we won.
Lincoln wasn’t just mediocre, he was awful. We entered a war with 600,000 casualties for absolutely no reason but to “preserve the Union.” The states trying to secede was due to slavery status of states Midwest, but when the war was started Lincoln wanted to keep the states together, he wasn’t concerned about slavery. The easiest way to have brought about changes was to put economic pressure on slave farms in the south - northern factories were the biggest consumer of slave picked cotton and the ones quite literally funding the awful practices in the south, These changes could have been brought about whether the then confederacy was part of the US or separate. I just see Lincoln as another corrupt politician who let big manufacturing companies profit off of an unnecessary war.
Maybe the hottest take I've ever seen.
You wouldn't have your AM job if it wasn't for preserving the union. How could 1861 America put economic pressure on the CSA?
Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR were the closest we have ever come to dictators (turns out total war mobilization is the perfect excuse you need for curtailing constitutional liberties).
Even though I staunchly disagree with Marxists, the Marxist interpretation of the Civil War is pretty apt. When you strip out all the moralizing about abolitionism or state's rights, the war really can be boiled down to one thing:
An industrial bourgeoise robber baron elite toppled a rural aristocratic landed gentry elite. Northern robber barons had more money and capital, but Southern planters still held more political power. Eventually, one of them was going to have to go.
After abolitionism, the agenda of the Radical Republicans was essentially sign over the country to banks, railroad concerns, and early industrial conglomerates. The Gilded Age got started with fortunes made financing the Union war effort, and Reconstruction saw a massive transfer of Southern capital (esp. railroads) into Northern hands. So devastating was this for the South that the South didn't recover economically for nearly 80 years until the New Deal.
Lincoln was almost certainly corrupt as shit. Vanderbilt and Leland Stanford owe their very fortunes to his actions.
The first part of this comment is a shit take, the second is completely ahistorical.
The French only joined the war because it seemed winnable. It took the defeat of an entire British army in conventional warfare in Saratoga to convince the French to join. Even if France didn't join and America were to be crushed, Washington would still be remembered as a skilled tactician.
All seven states in the Deep South were gone prior to Lincoln's inauguration. They seceded simply because he ran on a political platform opposed the spread of slavery in the American West. If banning the sale of Southern cotton to Northern factories was part of his platform, they would have seceded even quicker! And by the way, there was a ton of cotton being exported to Britain and France, that was part of their strategy to bring them into the war, which failed. Sounds like a really really bitter Southerner made this comment.
Washington wasn't a brilliant general, but he was a brilliant administrator and eye for talent. He is responsible for holding an army together that, without him, absolutely would have dissolved given the little pay, poor supplies, and atrocious conditions. After Yorktown, there was a near-revolution in the ranks of officers that could have dissolved the army before there was an end to the conflict had it not been for a single speech of Washington. And the list of things Washington did is endless. The deep, personal relationship between Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette was arguably the most consequential in the American Revolution as Lafayette was instrumental in securing French aid. Washington spotted and elevated Alexander Hamilton, easily one of the most important people in American history.
Of course that's your contention. You're a first year grad student. You just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably, you’re gonna be convinced of that until next month when you get to James Lemon, then you’re gonna be talking about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year, you’re gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin’ about, you know, the Pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.
Not sure if anyone has seen this, but a truly hilarious mockumentary about the CSA (of course it's a Weinstein production!):
I’m just waiting for someone to say Obama…………….
He was aight. What didn't you like about him? I guarantee 99% of people who hate him wouldn't have noticed him in a vacuum besides taxes.
Obama was terrible but not for the reasons typically given.
His foreign policy was a heinous continuation of Bush neoconservatism (what he did to Libya is pretty horrendous), and he significantly expanded the national security surveillance state. As for a guy who was elected on "hope and change" during the financial crisis, he sure handed over a shitload of power to Citibank...
Hot take, but I support the surveillance state. What does it matter if you aren't doing anything wrong? It's not like real people are watching you. It's all computers.
Edit: reply if you disagree.
I'm just waiting for someone to say W or trump.
Already has happened
Hmm maybe a more elaborated question?
Who was your favorite President from 1900-present. Yes obviously Washington and Lincoln were great but maybe there will be more debate especially about the Presidents in the 20th century.
Teddy Roosevelt because he was an adventurer. And was an adherent of Muscular Christianity lol, give it a google if you don't know what it is.
just found my new favorite religion
For Biden being "the most popular president in history"... not seeing any mention of him
Isn't that because he received the highest popular vote, and not highest approval rating? Popular vote would increase along with the US population's growth.
probably because everyone knows he hasn't done an honest day's work in his whole life
Lincoln. He went against public opinion with a focus on morals to end slavery no matter the cost. He truly believed in what was right without listening to the pundits or even his own party. He even lost his son during his presidency but he forged ahead.
So many bitter Southerners in this thread. The Grant memorial is a great historical site in NYC for anyone who isn't a traitor
You just label everyone who goes against your predetermined thoughts as a "Southerner" and "traitor", both inaccurate in my case. Yet you've not given one explanation that justifies the 600,000 who died, given the fact that I've repeatedly proposed that there were other solutions to effectively end slavery.
Lincoln publicly went against fully equal rights for the races. We can't know if it was because he was racist or if it was because he cared but understood it would be an unpopular opinion at the time. Just wanted to say that.
Two things wrong with this. One, Lincoln only supported abolition in states in the West, and that's not a position he constantly held. He didn't propose abolition for all slaves until the Civil War had already started. Two, I think it's a bit unfair to say that abolition was unpopular. The abolition movement was big with key speakers like Frederick Douglass who were telling people about the horrendous treatment of slaves.
The man who talked of the "man in the arena"
Teddy Roosevelt for, among other things, his trust-busting and his outsized personality.
As a conservative, my initial reaction has always been to detest Teddy Roosevelt. But I watched a YouTube documentary on him that had, literally, 50 views, and it persuasively argued that Teddy Roosevelt saved capitalism and is the reason that Americans were able to reject communism a decade later when it started to gain momentum in the West/Eurasia. That kind of changed my opinion of him. It's hard for us to remove ourselves from the context of our day, but if we can with Teddy Roosevelt, we can see how important he was. However, he's also instrumental in getting us Wilson...
Link?
Can we get some love for #30 and his awesome quote 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Under- appreciated
I thought Ray Kroc said this
"Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages" - George Washington
Lol I feel like some people on this forum would gladly own slaves if they still could in 2021.
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Come on, what did you say before you deleted?
You can in Mauritania
Calvin Coolidge, the first modern conservative Republican president. The man was everything an American President should be--quiet and humble. He stepped back and let the nation do what it does best. The history books bias themselves toward the highly consequential presidents (Wilson, FDR in the 20th Century, for example). But what the American public should want is a president who does not lead the daily headlines and delegates to the American public the greatness of the nation. The 1920s in the United States is one of the most famous decades in American history yet you hear virtually nothing about Calvin Coolidge, who was the core president of the decade. That's exactly how things should be.
What's your view on what led to the Great Depression, since Coolidge is often blamed for that?
I think Hoover is the one who traditionally gets the blame. Of course, I think the Great Depression was exacerbated and lengthened by FDR's atrocious economic policies. People don't realize this, but Hoover's policies were basically the same as FDR's; they were the early New Deal.
But to me the Great Depression's origins were early capitalism without the longstanding institutions of modern banking and modern economic understanding. Today, we are capitalist but with strong and longstanding institutions. At the time, banks lacked federal insurance and were thus susceptible to banking runs. Tariffs were an immediate knee-jerk response to a weak economy. The stock market got overheated in part because of the strong economy with little stock market regulation. Our trading partners were weak. We were on a gold standard, which prevented the central bank from quantitative easing. Basically, a new economy ran into antiquated institutions.
silent cal was based
Stole my post. Cal was faced w/ an impending economic downturn early in his presidency and his response was to lower taxes then sit on his hands, which ushered in one of the greatest economic expansions in U.S. history. More comfortable than any modern president w/ staying completely out of the limelight and letting the economy regulate itself, regardless of how politically expedient it would've been to stick the government's beak in to claim that his administration was "pro-activelyaddressing the issues"
Came here to say this.
Coolidge is easily forgotten because he dedicated his entire presidency to the nitty gritty of running an efficient administration rather than grandiose policy platforms. This was a guy who would dedicate a considerable amount of time each week to sitting down with his budget director and going through department financials, receipts etc line by line to look for waste that could be eliminated. It's also pretty remarkable that, during a time when the country was immensely wealthy, he had the foresight and balls to refuse to sign up to major long term liabilities (namely by vetoing increases to farm subsidies and the introduction of Federal pensions for veterans).
I’m not sure if I would call them the best but I like Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower.
Teddy Roosevelt: National Park system is incredible. It’s on my bucket list to visit all of them.
Eisenhower: The interstate highway system is great. Makes it super easy and convenient to travel. I drive on it everyday.
Lol do you watch Wendover?
No, never heard of it
Wendover videos are fire
Not sure if he got the inspiration for it, but on the Stuff You Should Know podcast they talked about how he spent several days alone with John Muir (who ended up founding the Sierra Club) in Yosemite, imagine that happening today
When autonomous cars hit their stride, Eisenhower will go from middling president to HUGE president. Europe and Asia will be looking at America with the green eye of envy, and Ike (and the Congress) will be, in part, responsible.
I mean, I agree with you wholeheartedly, except for the "middling President" bit. I'm pretty sure he's already acknowledged as one of the best POTUS' ever. He's often just below the Washington/Lincoln/Roosevelt troika, like 4-6th. That's already huge!
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No matter the president, you're a dumbass if you can't say why.
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Hillary Clinton
I'll sell you a magazine of HC winning for $200
Killary's Husband and the Donald.
Billy Boy was the last president that generated a budget surplus (kudos!), and the Don was heroic in his effort to push back on all this woke overreach which is trying to put America last.
James K Polk
Manifest Destiny bitches
Chester Arthur
cause who is that
He sounds like a badass - a General in the New York militia what what
not to hijack the thread, but I had a high shower thought once about the almost deification of presidents that we do (though every country honestly does this in one form or another, especially those with historical monarchies where some kings literally became saints). What are your guys' views on this? The Capitol dome literally has a painting of Washington becoming a god, that's what apotheosis means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion
https://www.npr.org/2021/04/12/985036148/can-americas-civil-religion-st…
My top 5 has already been brought up on this list, but I'll give an honorable mention Truman. The man had the stones to drop the bomb (which was the alternative to an invasion of mainland Japan), then had the stones to drop a second one after the Japs refused to surrender. Even if successful, an invasion of mainland Japan would have resulted in an egregious number of casualties, so thanks, Harry.
Teddy Roosevelt. Established the national park systems, started the conservation program of land and wildlife, fought to establish workers rights and regulation of dangerous industries, helped open up international trade with the Panama Canal.
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