Rank the presidents
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Snowstalker Mk. II
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« on: March 19, 2012, 07:35:36 PM »
« edited: March 19, 2012, 07:37:47 PM by Coney 2012 »

Garfield, Harrison, and Obama are optional.

1. Abraham Lincoln
2. Franklin Roosevelt
3. George Washington
4. Theodore Roosevelt
5. Harry Truman
6. Dwight Eisenhower
7. Lyndon Johnson
8. Woodrow Wilson
9. James Madison
10. James Monroe
11. John F. Kennedy
12. Barack Obama
13. Richard Nixon
14. Grover Cleveland
15. Bill Clinton
16. Andrew Jackson
17. William Taft
18. Thomas Jefferson
19. Jimmy Carter
20. John Adams
21. George H.W. Bush
22. John Quincy Adams
23. Herbert Hoover
24. Chester Arthur
25. James K. Polk
26. Ulysses S. Grant
27. Ronald Reagan
28. Gerald Ford
29. Rutherford Hayes
30. William McKinley
31. Benjamin Harrison
32. Millard Fillmore
33. Calvin Coolidge
34. Martin van Buren
35. John Tyler
36. Zachary Taylor
37. George W. Bush
38. Andrew Johnson
39. Warren Harding
40. Franklin Pierce
41. James Buchanan

I feel that Grant and Nixon are highly underrated (and Chester Arthur, but nobody gives an [Inks] about him). Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, and Reagan are overrated. Wilson is overrated by historians and underrated by the Internets.
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« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2012, 05:51:15 PM »
« Edited: March 21, 2012, 02:52:57 PM by My Heart Is A Swastika, I Wear It On My Sleeve »

1. Calvin Coolidge
2. Thomas Jefferson
3. Martin Van Buren
4. Grover Cleveland
5. John Tyler
6. Zachary Taylor
7. John F. Kennedy
8. George Washington
9. Warren G. Harding
10. Ulysses S. Grant
11. Chester A. Arthur
12. Millard Fillmore
13. Andrew Johnson
14. James A. Garfield
15. William Henry Harrison
16. John Quincy Adams
17. Rutherford B. Hayes
18. Franklin Pierce
19. James Monroe
20. Gerald Ford
21. James K. Polk
22. William Taft
23. Andrew Jackson
24. John Adams
25. James Madison
26. William McKinley
27. Benjamin Harrison
28. Theodore Roosevelt
29. George H.W Bush
30. Harry Truman
31. Abraham Lincoln
32. Bill Clinton
33. Barack Obama
34. Dwight Eisenhower
35. Richard Nixon
36. Jimmy Carter
37. James Buchanan
38. Lyndon Johnson
39. Ronald Reagan
40. Woodrow Wilson
41. Herbert Hoover
42. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
43. George W. Bush
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Goldwater
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« Reply #2 on: March 20, 2012, 07:36:46 PM »

...
I went through all the Presidents and I'm missing one...can somebody tell me who it is? I can't figure it out...I'll reorder accordingly...

Um, you forgot that your forth favorite president served two non-consecutive terms? Tongue
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tpfkaw
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« Reply #3 on: March 20, 2012, 07:58:15 PM »

W. Harrison, Garfield, and Obama not included.

1. Van Buren
2. Cleveland
3. Jackson
4. Tyler
5. Jefferson
6. Harding
7. Coolidge
9. Pierce
10. Johnson
11. Monroe
12. Washington
13. Arthur
14. Taylor
15. Hayes
16. Quincy Adams
17. Grant
18. Buchanan
19. Fillmore
20. Adams
21. Polk
22. Madison
23. B. Harrison
24. Hoover
25. Carter
26. Taft
27. Reagan
28. Ford
29. Eisenhower
30. Kennedy
31. McKinley
32. Lincoln
33. Bush I
34. Clinton
35. T. Roosevelt
36. Bush II
37. Truman
38. Nixon
39. Johnson
40. F. Roosevelt
41. Wilson
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« Reply #4 on: March 20, 2012, 08:47:39 PM »
« Edited: March 22, 2012, 01:10:36 AM by ChairmanSanchez »

1. Grover Cleveland
2. Calvin Coolidge
3. Thomas Jefferson
4. Ronald Reagan
5. George Washington
6. James Madison
7. James Monroe
8. Franklin Pierce
9. John Tyler
10. Martin Van Buren
11. Millard Fillmore
12. Chester Arthur
13. James Buchanan
14. Gerald Ford
15. James Polk
16. Zachary Taylor
17. Rutherford Hayes
18. Andrew Johnson
19. John Quincy Adams
20. Bill Clinton
21. William Harrison
22. James Garfield
23. Ben Harrison
24. Richard Nixon
25. Herbert Hoover
26. Warren Harding
27. William Taft
28. John Adams
29. Dwight Eisenhower
30. Harry Truman
31. John Kennedy
32. US Grant
33. George W. Bush
34. Abraham Lincoln
35. John Adams
36. William McKinley
37. Theodore Roosevelt
38. James Carter
39. Lyndon Johnson
40. Andrew Jackson
41. Franklin Roosevelt
42. Barack Obama
43. George H.W. Bush
44. Woodrow Wilson
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20RP12
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« Reply #5 on: March 21, 2012, 05:19:13 AM »

...
I went through all the Presidents and I'm missing one...can somebody tell me who it is? I can't figure it out...I'll reorder accordingly...

Um, you forgot that your forth favorite president served two non-consecutive terms? Tongue

No I mean I know that but it messed me up so bad...Tongue
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #6 on: March 21, 2012, 02:18:28 PM »


...

...

Sigh...
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20RP12
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« Reply #7 on: March 21, 2012, 02:49:43 PM »


Expansion of Government and Keynesian economics aren't exactly good things in my book Tongue
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Snowstalker Mk. II
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« Reply #8 on: March 21, 2012, 02:50:22 PM »

Can we get a non-crazy's viewpoint? Tongue
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The world will shine with light in our nightmare
Just Passion Through
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« Reply #9 on: March 21, 2012, 02:51:24 PM »


FDR below Bush?  Does.  Not.  Compute.
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20RP12
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« Reply #10 on: March 21, 2012, 02:51:54 PM »


Okay fine lemme change it Tongue
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20RP12
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« Reply #11 on: March 21, 2012, 02:53:29 PM »

Can we get a non-crazy's viewpoint? Tongue

Hey! Tongue
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #12 on: March 21, 2012, 04:10:07 PM »


You might not like a politician's views, and still recognize that the results of his actions were positive. You know, things like, for example, pulling the country out of the worst recession of history and winning WW2...
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20RP12
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« Reply #13 on: March 21, 2012, 05:34:57 PM »


You might not like a politician's views, and still recognize that the results of his actions were positive. You know, things like, for example, pulling the country out of the worst recession of history and winning WW2...

WWII was won by the Allies, not just the United States. And really, when we were involved in WWII, FDR began halting some of his New Deal plans. At the time of his death, taxes on people who made $200,000 a year ranged around 90%. After 1945, taxes were cut to around 30% for this income bracket. This is when the economy really started to rebound in the United States. Coincidence? Not really.
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traininthedistance
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« Reply #14 on: March 21, 2012, 05:57:59 PM »
« Edited: March 21, 2012, 06:05:48 PM by traininthedistance »

1. George Washington- A stereotypical choice, but I defy anyone liberal or conservative to tell me he wasn't one of our best.

2. Theodore Roosevelt- Groundbreaking Progressive achievements (conservation, food safety, trust-busting) and handled America's emergence as a world power well.  Also saved football!

3. Abraham Lincoln- As far as I'm concerned, the USA has been in a grand total of two "just wars", where we were threatened by truly evil ideologies, and had to take up arms to defend our nation and our freedoms.  The Civil War was the first of those, defeating the Slave Power was the greatest single thing any President has ever done.

4. Franklin Delano Roosevelt- And WWII was the other just war.  The New Deal was hugely beneficial too.

5. Dwight Eisenhower- A competent, incrementalist manager who preserved the New Deal and probably did the best foreign policy job of the Cold War era.  The Interstates have since proved to have unanticipated negative consequences but they were a great achievement too.

6. Harry Truman- Finished FDR's job and continued the New Deal era of broad-based prosperity and improvement.  Desegregating the armed forces was the domino that really started the civil rights movement going.

7. John Quincy Adams- Underappreciated and awesome.  Internal improvements, humane treatment of Native Americans, and post-presidency abolitionism make him a shining beacon in otherwise a pretty horrible age.

8. John F. Kennedy- Perhaps loved more for the myth than actual accomplishments, but he pushed us on the road to civil rights and the Moon, and wasn't as tainted as LBJ by Vietnam.

9. Lyndon B. Johnson- Pro: Great Society.  Con: Vietnam.  But it didn't seem as bad an idea as we know in retrospect.  All of the presidents of the New Deal era have to rank highly.

10. Thomas Jefferson- I think his emphasis on anti-urban agrarianism would become poisonous to our development as a society, but the Louisiana Purchase was a coup, and axing the Alien and Sedition Acts really saved our bacon.  Hard to pigeonhole in modern terms.

11. Bill Clinton- America with likely the most broad-based prosperity we'll ever see.  Popular and competent more than innovative, but that's still pretty good!

12. James Madison
13. James Monroe- I actually know really really little about these two.  But they seem to have done a good job.

14. Richard Nixon-  Yeah, that's right, a left-winger like me ranking Nixon in the top third.  That's right!  Dude was a racist, paranoid scumbag who poisoned our political discourse and resigned in shame, but he was also the guy who: a) opened up Communist China, b) got us out of Vietnam, and c) FOUNDED THE DAMN EPA.  Those three things were so important that he deserves this high rank despite all his problems.  If he was a decent human being, he'd be Top 5.

15. Jimmy Carter- Yes, he was ineffectual and vilified, but he was also the only president who truly saw with clear eyes how fragile and oil-dependent our prosperity was, and how we needed to work like madmen to find a way to get beyond fossil fuels.  He was our Cassandra.

16. George H. W. Bush- The last Republican moderate, and I think his reputation is going to get better as time goes by.  Desert Storm, Clean Air Act, and was willing to raise taxes to fix the deficit.  

17. James K. Polk- One of the only effective presidents in the antebellum period, so I have to rank him decently, even though I think the Mexican-American war was an amoral abomination of aggression in the service of Slave Power.  The independent treasury and Oregon was genuinely good for us though.

18. Chester A. Arthur- The Pendleton Act may be the only truly consequential thing he did, but given his origins  it's impressive all the same.  A good guy, rather than great, but that's still better than most.  Also I'm related to him, so that's worth a few slots.

19. Barack Obama- Gets an incomplete, obviously.  I think he's not been as effective as hoped, but it's a difficult situation.  Basically everyone above Obama was a good president, everyone below him has been neutral at best.

20. Woodrow Wilson- His ideals were often loftier than his results (c.f. League of Nations), and he was also a raging racist, but he did have a bunch of positive accomplishments as well- Clayton Anti-Trust, for one.

21. William Howard Taft- A step backward from Teddy Roosevelt, but he didn't do anything horrible.

22. William McKinley- The best thing he did was choose Teddy Roosevelt as Veep. Tongue  He was wrong on the gold standard, but was right to focus on urban interests.

23. Gerald Ford- Not much to say here.

23. Grover Cleveland- Good on anti-corruption, but very, very bad on the Pullman strike.

25. Benjamin Harrison- Didn't do much.
26. James Garfield- Same.
27. William Henry Harrison- Did the least.  Had he survived, he would have been a puppet of Henry Clay and that would have been so much better than what we actually got.  Below WHH are the presidents who were negative in their impact, rather than just neutral.

28. Calvin Coolidge- Presided over prosperity, but turned a blind eye to business abuses, the crime-generating hypocrisy of Prohibition, and the great 1927 Flood.

29. Martin Van Buren- Gets respect for his later Free Soil run, but bungled the Panic of 1837 badly, as well as relations with Canada.

30. Rutherford B. Hayes- I realize he had to do it, but ending Reconstruction and letting Jim Crow take hold is a pretty bad legacy if you ask me.

31. Ulysses S. Grant- Did a good job on Reconstruction, but was a corrupt bastard and mishandled the economy, too.

32. John Adams- I like a lot of John Adams' policies, but the Alien and Sedition Acts are one of the darkest episodes in our history, and at an especially fragile time, too.

33. Herbert Hoover- Arguably underrated- but that doesn't mean he was any good.  His Presidency is more than anything a stark reminder that sometimes government intervention is good and necessary.

34. Ronald Reagan- Deserves a little credit for his policy of out-spending the Soviets, but by and large his influence was pretty much awful in all other spheres.  

35. Zachary Taylor- Least bad of the three Whigs who actually did anything.

36. George W. Bush- Yeah, not last.  People forget just how bad the presidents were in the antebellum period.

37. Andrew Jackson- I have a deep and irrational hatred for Jackson.  Indian Removal was one of the most immoral policies we've ever pursued, the crankaholic Ron Paul-esque Specie Circular was the direct cause of the worst economic downturn we've ever seen (Panic of 1837), and his style of "us rural Southerners are the Real 'Murika, all that fancy-pants northeastern elitist book-larnin is bad" is a truly toxic legacy as far as I'm concerned.  I will give him credit for handling the Nullification Crisis well.

38. John Tyler- His Accidency, his horribleness.  Neither party wanted him.

39. Millard Fillmore
40. Franklin Pierce- The antebellum appeaseniks deserve no love.

41. Warren G. Harding- Not just anti-progressive, but the most corrupt president ever.

42. James Buchanan- No explanation necessary.

43. Andrew Johnson- Confederate-sympathizing racist f***wit.  
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« Reply #15 on: March 21, 2012, 11:00:23 PM »

1. Franklin Roosevelt
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. George Washington
4. Lyndon Johnson
5. Theodore Roosevelt
6. Harry Truman
7. Ulysses Grant
8. John Kennedy
9. Dwight Eisenhower
10. Woodrow Wilson
11. Chester Arthur
12. William Taft
13. James Polk
14. William McKinley
15. Bill Clinton
15. Gerald Ford
16. John Quincy Adams
17. George H.W. Bush
18. John Adams
19. James Monroe
20. James Madison
21. Thomas Jefferson
22. Benjamin Harrison
23. Grover Cleveland
24. Rutherford Hayes
26. Martin Van Buren
27. Zachary Taylor
28. Andrew Jackson
29. Ronald Reagan
30. Millard Fillmore
31. Herbert Hoover
32. George W. Bush
33. Calvin Coolidge
34. Jimmy Carter
35. Franklin Pierce
36. John Tyler
37. Andrew Johnson
38. Richard Nixon
39. Warren Harding
40. James Buchanan

Left out Harrison, Garfield, and Obama.
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Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook
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« Reply #16 on: March 22, 2012, 12:10:10 AM »




Saving the world isn't enough?
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20RP12
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« Reply #17 on: March 22, 2012, 08:09:42 AM »


WWII was won by the Allies, not just the United States. And really, when we were involved in WWII, FDR began halting some of his New Deal plans. At the time of his death, taxes on people who made $200,000 a year ranged around 90%. After 1945, taxes were cut to around 30% for this income bracket. This is when the economy really started to rebound in the United States. Coincidence? Not really.
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Snowstalker Mk. II
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« Reply #18 on: March 22, 2012, 02:19:19 PM »

Revised:

1. Abraham Lincoln
2. Franklin Roosevelt
3. George Washington
4. Theodore Roosevelt
5. Harry Truman
6. Thomas Jefferson
7. Dwight Eisenhower
8. Lyndon Johnson
9. Woodrow Wilson
10. James Madison
11. James Monroe
12. John F. Kennedy
13. Barack Obama
14. Richard Nixon
15. John Quincy Adams
16. Grover Cleveland
17. Bill Clinton
18. Andrew Jackson
19. William Taft
20. Ulysses S. Grant
21. James K. Polk
22. John Adams
23. George H.W. Bush
24. Jimmy Carter
25. Herbert Hoover
26. Rutherford Hayes
27. Ronald Reagan
28. Chester Arthur
30. William McKinley
31. Benjamin Harrison
32. Millard Fillmore
33. Calvin Coolidge
34. Martin van Buren
35. John Tyler
36. Zachary Taylor
37. George W. Bush
38. Warren Harding
39. Franklin Pierce
40. Andrew Johnson
41. James Buchanan
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Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook
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Junior Chimp
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« Reply #19 on: March 22, 2012, 03:47:19 PM »


WWII was won by the Allies, not just the United States. And really, when we were involved in WWII, FDR began halting some of his New Deal plans. At the time of his death, taxes on people who made $200,000 a year ranged around 90%. After 1945, taxes were cut to around 30% for this income bracket. This is when the economy really started to rebound in the United States. Coincidence? Not really.


And FDR was part of the allies. Therefore, he saved the world.
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20RP12
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« Reply #20 on: March 22, 2012, 04:38:29 PM »


WWII was won by the Allies, not just the United States. And really, when we were involved in WWII, FDR began halting some of his New Deal plans. At the time of his death, taxes on people who made $200,000 a year ranged around 90%. After 1945, taxes were cut to around 30% for this income bracket. This is when the economy really started to rebound in the United States. Coincidence? Not really.

And FDR was part of the allies. Therefore, he saved the world.

No, by your logic, he helped to save the world.
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Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook
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Junior Chimp
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« Reply #21 on: March 22, 2012, 07:49:24 PM »

Still justifies putting him higher than Buchanan or Johnson.
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20RP12
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« Reply #22 on: March 22, 2012, 08:12:42 PM »

Still justifies putting him higher than Buchanan or Johnson.

Everything is subjective.
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