ranking US Presidents

[ThinkCritically]

No question Washington was the father of our country. But the question was greatest presidents. What Washington did on the battlefield was before he was president

One of the most impressive parts of Washington's presidency is that he was essentially a figure head...he had no interest in becoming a dictator.

 

[ThinkCritically]

Nixon had to be the worst president we have ever had....worst day of his presidency August 15, 1971.

 

[rightwinger]

Nixon had to be the worst president we have ever had....worst day of his presidency August 15, 1971.

Nixon was actually quite good in office. His shortfall was his paranoid personality and need to get back at his enemies

 

[Dragon]

]
OK...So he provoked Pearl Harbor...Glad we settled that.

So much for your bogus claim that FDR didn't want war with Japan.

I made no such claim. But I will now: FDR would have preferred to go to war with Germany only, not Japan, if that were possible. I have a suspicion he knew it wasn't possible, though.

In any case, the assertion I was objecting to was not that Roosevelt provoked the Pearl Harbor attack but that he knew about it in detail ahead of time and deliberately sacrificed thousands of American lives. I think that's BS.

 

[Dragon]

Nixon had to be the worst president we have ever had....worst day of his presidency August 15, 1971.

Nixon was actually quite good in office. His shortfall was his paranoid personality and need to get back at his enemies

Exactly. If it weren't for all that paranoid crap, I'd have ranked him as the best Awakening president we've ever had. His accomplishments, in the view of this liberal, were wonderful: the EPA, detente, recognizing China, big advances in civil rights, and he finally got us out of Vietnam. He was like Lyndon Johnson without the big mistake. Too bad about those personal failings of his.

 

[Artevelde]

Give 'em hell Harry Truman couldn't even muster enough support from his own party to run for a second full term. He was a timid bean counter who couldn't stand up to MacArthur and it cost the lives of 35,000 American Troops in Korea.

That's a bit unfair towards Truman I feel. Overall I feel he wasn't a bad President. But he did make some major mistakes. Did help set the pattern for a lot of things in the Postwar era though.

 

[Artevelde]

No question Washington was the father of our country. But the question was greatest presidents. What Washington did on the battlefield was before he was president

One of the most impressive parts of Washington's presidency is that he was essentially a figure head...he had no interest in becoming a dictator.

Washington helped set the standard for the Presidency and guided the country through a formative period. He played a major role in getting the Federal government on its feet.

 

[Artevelde]

Nixon had to be the worst president we have ever had....worst day of his presidency August 15, 1971.

Nixon was actually quite good in office. His shortfall was his paranoid personality and need to get back at his enemies

Exactly. If it weren't for all that paranoid crap, I'd have ranked him as the best Awakening president we've ever had. His accomplishments, in the view of this liberal, were wonderful: the EPA, detente, recognizing China, big advances in civil rights, and he finally got us out of Vietnam. He was like Lyndon Johnson without the big mistake. Too bad about those personal failings of his.

I disagree. Nixon accomplished little or nothing that was lasting but did do a lot of damage to the Presidency.

 

[Artevelde]

Sending the carriers out to engage and destroy the Japanese fleet would have left Americans scratching their heads over what was going on.

Nonsense. "Those bastards sneak-attacked us and we kicked their asses." Clear as day.

Really?

Japanese fleet out on recon is engaged and attacked by the US Fleet, where was the "sneak attack"? It seems the US was the ones who ordered the sneak attack.

How would we have known they were on their way here, Sunshine? That would have tipped our hand that we cracked their codes, no?

Has it occured to you that Japan was attacking on many other fronts simultaneously? All this conspiracy nonsense just messes up your capacity for logical thinking.

 

[Unkotare]

No question Washington was the father of our country. But the question was greatest presidents. What Washington did on the battlefield was before he was president

One of the most impressive parts of Washington's presidency is that he was essentially a figure head...he had no interest in becoming a dictator.

Washington helped set the standard for the Presidency and guided the country through a formative period. He played a major role in getting the Federal government on its feet.

Washington had no interest in becoming a dictator. FDR had a hell of a lot of interest in it.

 

[Unkotare]

Nixon was actually quite good in office. His shortfall was his paranoid personality and need to get back at his enemies

Exactly. If it weren't for all that paranoid crap, I'd have ranked him as the best Awakening president we've ever had. His accomplishments, in the view of this liberal, were wonderful: the EPA, detente, recognizing China, big advances in civil rights, and he finally got us out of Vietnam. He was like Lyndon Johnson without the big mistake. Too bad about those personal failings of his.

I disagree. Nixon accomplished little or nothing that was lasting but did do a lot of damage to the Presidency.

Just say you are ignorant of history and leave it at that.

 

[Artevelde]

Exactly. If it weren't for all that paranoid crap, I'd have ranked him as the best Awakening president we've ever had. His accomplishments, in the view of this liberal, were wonderful: the EPA, detente, recognizing China, big advances in civil rights, and he finally got us out of Vietnam. He was like Lyndon Johnson without the big mistake. Too bad about those personal failings of his.

I disagree. Nixon accomplished little or nothing that was lasting but did do a lot of damage to the Presidency.

Just say you are ignorant of history and leave it at that.

That's pretty funny actually.

 

[Unkotare]

I disagree. Nixon accomplished little or nothing that was lasting but did do a lot of damage to the Presidency.

Just say you are ignorant of history and leave it at that.

That's pretty funny actually.

It's pretty sad, actually.

 

[Dragon]

Nixon was actually quite good in office. His shortfall was his paranoid personality and need to get back at his enemies

Exactly. If it weren't for all that paranoid crap, I'd have ranked him as the best Awakening president we've ever had. His accomplishments, in the view of this liberal, were wonderful: the EPA, detente, recognizing China, big advances in civil rights, and he finally got us out of Vietnam. He was like Lyndon Johnson without the big mistake. Too bad about those personal failings of his.

I disagree. Nixon accomplished little or nothing that was lasting but did do a lot of damage to the Presidency.

The EPA was lasting. Arms control agreements set precedents that were lasting. We never got back into Vietnam, although unfortunately we got into similarly stupid conflicts later in the Middle East. Measured purely by his accomplishments in office and ignoring his misdeeds, he should be ranked as one of the best presidents in history. We can't ignore his misdeeds, so I'm not suggesting he should be, but credit where it's due.

I understand the antipathy towards Nixon from any liberal who lived through either his presidency or his career in the House, but that shouldn't cause a rational person to overlook his accomplishments.

 

[Outback]

I remember studying US Presidents in class and back then I chose Harry Truman to report on.

 

[Artevelde]

Exactly. If it weren't for all that paranoid crap, I'd have ranked him as the best Awakening president we've ever had. His accomplishments, in the view of this liberal, were wonderful: the EPA, detente, recognizing China, big advances in civil rights, and he finally got us out of Vietnam. He was like Lyndon Johnson without the big mistake. Too bad about those personal failings of his.

I disagree. Nixon accomplished little or nothing that was lasting but did do a lot of damage to the Presidency.

The EPA was lasting. Arms control agreements set precedents that were lasting. We never got back into Vietnam, although unfortunately we got into similarly stupid conflicts later in the Middle East. Measured purely by his accomplishments in office and ignoring his misdeeds, he should be ranked as one of the best presidents in history. We can't ignore his misdeeds, so I'm not suggesting he should be, but credit where it's due.

I understand the antipathy towards Nixon from any liberal who lived through either his presidency or his career in the House, but that shouldn't cause a rational person to overlook his accomplishments.

Those arms control agreements were largely failures and proved stop-gap measures from an Administration that believed the struggle with the Soviet union was meaningless (talk about lack of forsight). Nixon got the US deeper into SE-Asia before he got the US out, and in a fairly bungled way which discredited the US with allies abroad. And the EPA, ranking that as a major accomplishment is pretty laughable. And have you looked at the economy under Nixon?

My judgment has nothing to do with political affiliation or preference. And I'm not a Nixon-basher. But he really wasn't a great President.

 

[Dragon]

Those arms control agreements were largely failures and proved stop-gap measures from an Administration that believed the struggle with the Soviet union was meaningless (talk about lack of forsight).

I can't say whether Nixon thought our struggle with the Soviet Union was meaningless, but if he did, he was right. It was. Whether his arms-control agreements were "failures" depends on what you expected them to do. Eliminate the risk of nuclear war? Yes, in that case, but that's an absurd expectation. Improve U.S.-Soviet relations, increase trade, and reduce the risk of war generally? In that case they were a success.

Nixon got the US deeper into SE-Asia before he got the US out, and in a fairly bungled way which discredited the US with allies abroad.

Nixon's initial move with regard to the war was to bring ground troops home and stop sending draftees. That was a very shrewd political move that dampened the protest movement. Personally, I would have negotiated a peace at that point rather than trying to win through a bombing campaign, so I don't say he's immune to criticism here, but the fact remains that he DID get us out of the war. That makes him miles better than LBJ who got us into it.

And the EPA, ranking that as a major accomplishment is pretty laughable. And have you looked at the economy under Nixon?

Well, this is interesting. I guess I was wrongly assuming you were a liberal with a liberal's visceral bias against Nixon. Instead, it appears you're a conservative with a conservative's visceral bias against Nixon. Equally irrational, but misidentified by me; my bad.

Yes, I consider the EPA to be a major accomplishment. I consider America's enactment of environmental values, while far from perfect, to be a sign we were moving in the right direction. I would do it differently if it were up to me, but then again we don't have a dictatorship for excellent reasons and I might have gotten something much less satisfactory out of Congress.

As for the economy under Nixon, note once more that we don't have a dictatorship. We suffered ten years of economic problems, from 1973 to 1983, because of control of oil production by a cartel, which first imposed an embargo and later kept prices very high. No president had any control over this whatsoever. The economy was poor in Nixon's last two years, Ford's half-term, Carter's term, and Reagan's first two years for reasons having nothing to do with the policies of any of them; it improved after that for reasons having nothing to do with Reagan's policies.

Saying "look at the economy under X" may serve to convince the ignorant and be a common campaign ploy for that reason, but if you actually believe it, then you are the ignorant one yourself.

I don't consider Nixon a great president, either, but that's because he did something unforgivable: he abused the power of his office to destroy his personal and political enemies. But I consider that classic Greek-tragedy stuff. Here was what could have been a great presidency, ruined by the personal failings of the man in office.

 

[Artevelde]

I can't say whether Nixon thought our struggle with the Soviet Union was meaningless, but if he did, he was right. It was. Whether his arms-control agreements were "failures" depends on what you expected them to do. Eliminate the risk of nuclear war? Yes, in that case, but that's an absurd expectation. Improve U.S.-Soviet relations, increase trade, and reduce the risk of war generally? In that case they were a success.

To begin with I disagree, rather strongly, with your premisse that the US struggle with the Soviet Union was meaningless. Most historians would agree. And all the arms control agreements did was provide some extra breathing space to the Soviets. They did not really improve relations and only made the world safe for more proxy wars.

 

[Artevelde]

Nixon's initial move with regard to the war was to bring ground troops home and stop sending draftees. That was a very shrewd political move that dampened the protest movement. Personally, I would have negotiated a peace at that point rather than trying to win through a bombing campaign, so I don't say he's immune to criticism here, but the fact remains that he DID get us out of the war. That makes him miles better than LBJ who got us into it.


You do realize that over 20,000 of the 58,000 US deaths in Vietnam occurred under Nixon? And that he broadened the war to Cambodia, with disastrous consequences?
As for LBJ getting the US into the War in Vietnam, wrong again: JFK got the US into the War in Vietnam.

 

[Artevelde]

Well, this is interesting. I guess I was wrongly assuming you were a liberal with a liberal's visceral bias against Nixon. Instead, it appears you're a conservative with a conservative's visceral bias against Nixon. Equally irrational, but misidentified by me; my bad.

I am indeed a conservative (of the European variety, not quite the same as US) but you are again wrong to say I have a visceral hatred of Nixon. I don't.