Best President who served between LBJ and Obama

[Dr. MB]

Carter wasn't a great president, but he did the least amount of damage, so this is an easy question.

[Progressive Pessimist]

The poll is asking who the best president was, not your personal favorite. By all calculations, Carter was a massive failure.

There's still a degree of subjectivity to that though.

[darklordoftech]

The poll is asking who the best president was, not your personal favorite. By all calculations, Carter was a massive failure.

There's still a degree of subjectivity to that though.

The truth is that politics is always subjective.

[Wazza [INACTIVE]]

Reagan

[Mr. Smith]

The poll is asking who the best president was, not your personal favorite. By all calculations, Carter was a massive failure.

So was Ford before him, and Nixon/Reagan/Bush Jr ran unprecedentedly corrupt administrations- took a New Yorker Businessman to top them.

This leaves the possibility of Clinton or Bush Sr being better presidents, but given how much damage they did with all those foreign wars, and given how the former squandered himself with a b*()j*% and the latter sat on his hands during a much more manageable recession....Carter still wins by any objective measure.

[SWE]

The poll is asking who the best president was, not your personal favorite. By all calculations, Carter was a massive failure.

Yeah but so were the other six choices so why are we singling out Carter?

[Izzyeviel]

Clinton. But if I knew then what I knew now, there's no way I could vote for him.

[UlmerFudd]

HW Bush

[Orser67]

I think there are two ways of looking this type of question.

By the standards of "most effective at implementing their agenda" and "most important legacy" I would say Reagan. His presidency played a major role in shifting the country to the right, his tax cuts and deregulation agenda were a pretty big deal, and his handling of the Cold War worked out pretty well. However, I personally don't care for much of his agenda.

By the standards of "best for the country," I guess I would say Clinton. He helped set up the country on strong fiscal and economic footing. While he did do a few conservative things (e.g. financial deregulation, welfare reform), imo he prevented the country from moving even farther to the right during the 1990s. On the other hand, the Lewinsky Affair was a huge self-inflicted wound, and he totally failed at passing his main piece of domestic legislation (Hillarycare). The fact that he's my favorite of this group says a lot about the others.