Presidents that were the right person at the wrong time

[Thomas]

State your opinion

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Herbert Hoover. He would pretty easily have been a phenomenal president in time when no recession was happening.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Herbert Hoover. He would pretty easily have been a phenomenal president in time when no recession was happening.

Do you mean depression?  Otherwise, I'd have to agree with you.  I'd also put George W. Bush, Grant, and Van Buren on this list.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Herbert Hoover. He would pretty easily have been a phenomenal president in time when no recession was happening.

Do you mean depression?  Otherwise, I'd have to agree with you.  I'd also put George W. Bush and Martin Van Buren on this list.

lol yeah, that was a typo.
Hoover was undoubtebly a smart man in my view, even if his political instincts failed him.

[Kingpoleon]

George H. W. Bush, Herbert Hoover, Warren G. Harding, William Howard Taft, Benjamin Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Zachary Taylor, Martin Van Buren, and (to a lesser extent) James Madison.

[Lincoln Republican]

Lyndon B Johnson.

If he had been President when there was no Vietnam War raging, which he handled abysmally that had horrendous consequences for America, he could have been a great domestic  affairs President.  That was his strong suit.

I realize he did have domestic  accomplishments, but he could have done so much more domestically without being swamped in Vietnam.

[Beet]

Barack Obama. With the nation heavily polarized, his "We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and yes, we have Gay friends in the Red States" message is exactly what the country needs right now.

[BlueDogDemocrat]

I'd have to say George H.W. Bush. He was very popular and was very effective with foreign policy. If it wasn't for the economy he very well would have wen't down as a very effective leader.

[Mr. Smith]

JFK

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

George H. W. Bush, Herbert Hoover, Warren G. Harding, William Howard Taft, Benjamin Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Zachary Taylor, Martin Van Buren, and (to a lesser extent) James Madison.

I would argue that, to the extent Taylor can be considered a "good" or noteworthy president, it is almost entirely due to the times in which he served — I highly doubt a man whose only professed political principle was 'the president should never do anything, ever, and just let Congress run the country' would be remembered without the Crisis of 1850 to make his mark on. I absolutely agree with regards to Hoover, Harrison, and Madison.

[Lechasseur]

Herbert Hoover. He would pretty easily have been a phenomenal president in time when no recession was happening.

Do you mean depression?  Otherwise, I'd have to agree with you.  I'd also put George W. Bush, Grant, and Van Buren on this list.

Not sure about Grant, but I agree with the other three

[Wakie77]

Adams, Madison, LBJ

[SWE]

I'd say John Quincy Adams. He was one of the few men of actual character to rise to the office of the Presidency. If not for the whole fiasco that was election of 1924 and the resulting emergence of the Democratic party with the singular goal of stopping him from accomplishing anything, he would've been a great President.

I really doubt Hoover would have been even an okay president even without the Great Depression. His politics were basically that of Coolidge, but with an added dash of an eagerness to throw African-Americans, immigrants, and religious minorities under the bus if it meant furthering his own career. What's the basis for the consensus here that Hoover could have been a "phenomenal" president in better circumstances?

Lyndon B Johnson.

If he had been President when there was no Vietnam War raging, which he handled abysmally that had horrendous consequences for America, he could have been a great domestic  affairs President.  That was his strong suit.

I realize he did have domestic  accomplishments, but he could have done so much more domestically without being swamped in Vietnam.

I disagree. LBJ didn't get roped into Vietnam because he was a victim of his circumstances, rather, it was his choice to escalate the conflict because he had a bizarre obsession with leaving an FDR-esque legacy, and he saw winning a war as a component of that. LBJ would actually be a good example of the opposite of what this thread is asking for: someone who was elected with an opportunity to be a fantastic president that he squandered because he was fundamentally unfit to hold a position of power.

[SingingAnalyst]

Jimmy Carter perhaps? The Southern Baptist, "born again" Christian with a social conscience could perhaps even now be a uniter if he were President. As it was in 1976, he was considered "too strange" by some, which, after Howard Dean, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump, would not even ruffle feathers nowadays. Sure, he faced inflation and rising unemployment near the end of his term, but I think it was the Iran hostage crisis (my first political memory that really helped shape my worldview) that did him in in 1980.

[catographer]

I see a theme: individuals who were generally good people, good politicians and who were smart and capable. But who oversaw bad economies, and therefore became unpopular (Hoover, Bush 41, Carter, Bush 43). It's almost as if the economy rides the waves of ups and downs and booms and busts without much care for a party or a President's policies. (Presidents have much less influence on the economy than many think!)

[fluffypanther19]

hw bush and hoover for sure

[Blue3]

Herbert Hoover (could have been better if earlier)

John Quincy Adams (good if unremarkable president, but I think he would have handled, say, post-Lincoln Reconstruction or the Late 19th/Early 20th century much better than those in that time)

James Madison (perhaps later in his career, in the 1820's or 1830's or 1840's... he wasn't a good President for the British tensions that led to war and the management of that war... could have been worse, though)

[Orser67]

I'll agree with Madison, JQA, Hoover, and LBJ. I think Hoover would've made an outstanding Gilded Age president, and would've been far better than Harding or Coolidge earlier in the 1920s.

Other than that, I could see Millard Fillmore making a decent 19th century president in better circumstances. He adhered to the Whig view of the presidency, meaning he was generally deferential to Congress, and that could have worked out pretty well prior to the Mexican-American War. Taylor might have made a decent president too.

[Blue3]

I’m not sure I agree with LBJ. A lot of his domestic policy accomplishments are BECAUSE of the time he became President, sadly enough. It’s not like sticking him into 1948 would have gotten us the same results minus Vietnam.

[Peanut]

Carter, Hoover, GHWB...

[The Undefeatable Debbie Stabenow]

I'd say John Quincy Adams. He was one of the few men of actual character to rise to the office of the Presidency. If not for the whole fiasco that was election of 1924 and the resulting emergence of the Democratic party with the singular goal of stopping him from accomplishing anything, he would've been a great President.

JQA was my first thought when I saw this thread too.

[Skill and Chance]

Teddy Roosevelt.  Would have been on the same level with Lincoln and Washington if there was a national crisis that enabled him to get all of his proposed reforms though congress.  He also could probably have gotten women's suffrage done circa 1911 if he ran for another term in 1908. 

[David T]

An old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

 ***

Was James Buchanan a great or only a near-great president? Historians continue to debate the question, but it would be foolish to underrate his accomplishments.

Let's review how Buchanan was elected president: In 1844 Van Buren had a majority of delegates nominally supporting him at the Democratic national convention but enough of them voted to re-impose the two-thirds rule that he had no chance to gain the nomination. Lewis Cass, a Westerner, ardent expansionist, and favorite of the "soft money" Democrats, was the obvious alternative, but because it was the Cass men who had initiated the drive to block Van Buren with the two-thirds rule, the Van Burenites were bitterly determined that he not be nominated. For a while, there was some talk of nominating a "dark horse," James Knox Polk of Tennessee, but Polk, who was a loyal Van Buren supporter despite his disappointment with Van Buren's stance on Texas, refused to be a candidate. (I have often wondered if Polk and the convention might have decided differently if General Jackson, known to be a Polk supporter, had not died earlier that year.) Eventually the convention turned to James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, who like Cass was a bit too conservative on economic issues for hard-core, hard-money Van Burenites, but won their support by agreeing to revive the Independent Treasury. In any event, despite his having been a Federalist in his youth, he was less obnoxious to the Van Burenites than Cass was. In the general election, Buchanan, promising the "reoccupation of Oregon and the re-annexation of Texas, at the earliest practicable period" narrowly defeated the Whig candidate Henry Clay. (Buchanan did lose a few Southern states which a Southern Democratic candidate might have carried--notably Georgia and Louisiana--but narrowly carried the key Northern states of New York and Pennsylvania. In New York, he was helped by the Liberty Party splitting the anti-Texas vote, and by the Van Burenite Silas Wright's gubernatorial candidacy. In Pennsylvania, of course, he was helped by his "native son" status; indeed I am by no means certain that any other Democratic presidential candidate would have carried the state.)

Buchanan's most important accomplishments as president are too familiar to require extended discussion: the compromise that divided Oregon, and the Mexican War which got the US the Southwest. There are, however, some other decisions of his that deserve attention, because they show his political shrewdness. He resisted the cries of dogmatic "strict constructionists" to veto the rivers and harbors bill; he knew that to do so would only further enrage Northwesterners disappointed by his "timidity" on Oregon. He also resisted cries by some Southern free traders for a massive reduction in the tariff; as a Pennsylvanian he knew that this would hurt the Democrats badly in that state. The result was that in the 1846 elections, despite some dissatisfaction with the war, the Democrats were able to maintain control of both houses of Congress.

Perhaps the most unappreciated aspect of Buchanan's presidency was his resolution of the problem of the status of slavery in the newly acquired Mexican cession. Buchanan at an early stage came out in favor of extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific. (In this, he disagreed with Secretary of State Cass, who instead favored something called "popular sovereignty" under which the people of each territory would themselves decide the status of slavery. Buchanan thought that this would merely encourage conflicts between pro- and anti-slavery settlers in each territory. A handful of squatters had no right to determine something that was of interest to the nation as a whole.) Southerners-- whether Democrats or Whigs--almost unanimously agreed with Buchanan's policy in this area. (True, a few thought that government prohibition of slavery in *any* territories was unconstitutional, but for the most part they dismissed this as a purely abstract question, since they didn't expect slavery to flourish north of 36° 30' anyway, and since extension of the line would set a precedent for having slavery in any future territory the US might acquire in Latin America or the Caribbean.) Getting 36° 30' through the Senate was relatively easy, but in the Northern-majority House, Buchanan had to use all the patronage and pressure at his disposal to convince just enough Northern Democrats (in combination with a virtually solid South) to pass his plan.

So why did historians once tend to rank him as only a near-great rather than a great president? Well, some of them had been brainwashed by the Whig and Abolitionist propaganda about the Mexican War being an evil war of aggression. (Though I notice that few people who argue this way actually want to give San Francisco or Los Angeles or Santa Fe or Monterrey back to the Mexicans.) And of course some people still argue that Buchanan's policies gave slavery a new lease on life, enabling it to last until 1900 (and black "apprenticeships" to last a couple of decades longer). But realistically, how could slavery have been abolished much earlier (except perhaps through a bloody civil war, but nobody really advocates *that*, and anyway I can't see how the North could win such a war, since Great Britain was so dependent on Southern cotton that she would be sure to intervene)?

Buchanan was of course way too controversial to be re-nominated in 1848 under the two-thirds rule but today we should appreciate him--as an increasing number of historians do--as one of America's truly great presidents.

***
In that post, I had Buchanan nominated and elected instead of Polk (my POD is having Polk's most important supporter, Andrew Jackson, die early), and had him choose policies similar to Polk's but with two exceptions: (1) he doesn't alienate the North by vetoing the rivers and harbors bill or by decreasing the tariff as much as Polk did in OTL; and (2) he comes out squarely in favor of territorial division on the Missouri Compromise Line (something he advocated as Secretary of State in OTL) and manages to implement it (I'll admit that getting it through the House will be hard, but if he manages to retain a Democratic majority there and to use patronage adroitly it is not inconceivable--he *almost* got the Lecompton Constitution through an even more northern-majority House years later in OTL, after all) so that the doctrine of "popular sovereignty" which bore such disastrous results in Kansas, never becomes widespread...

(Note that I also have the US expand a little further into Mexico than in OTL, with my reference to Monterrey.)

[SaneDemocrat]

Obama is an arguable case

[Galaxie]

JFK

Yeah, the trip to Dallas was bad timing...