U.S. Presidential Rankings

[tigerbob]

The Times has published a ranking of all 42 U.S. Presidents. Interestingly, only one President in the last 50-some years has made it into the top ten.

Though this is only The Times' opinion, it does beg the question have there really been so few men of quality since the sixties, or is it that blanket media coverage finds a way to sully the reputation of even the ablest public servants?

I would disagree with several rankings, but it's food for thought.

The Greatest US Presidents - The Times US presidential rankings - Times Online

Happy reading...

 

[PoliticalChic]

The Times has published a ranking of all 42 U.S. Presidents. Interestingly, only one President in the last 50-some years has made it into the top ten.

Though this is only The Times' opinion, it does beg the question have there really been so few men of quality since the sixties, or is it that blanket media coverage finds a way to sully the reputation of even the ablest public servants?

I would disagree with several rankings, but it's food for thought.

The Greatest US Presidents - The Times US presidential rankings - Times Online

Happy reading...

It's too bad about Nixon because he certainly was one of the brightest and most competent of the presidents. He made tremendous strides in foreign relations particularly China. I thought also that Clinton should have been lower on the list due to his stain on the office of the president. I don't agree that Eisenhower should have been so high on the list...

Thanks for posting.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Abraham Lincoln does not deserve to be number 1, and how in the world does FDR get number 3 at all let alone over Thomas Jefferson? And Woodrow Wilson makes top 10... I'd hate to meet the "panel" that voted on this list.

 

[Silence]

I thought also that Clinton should have been lower on the list due to his stain on the office of the president.

I thought his stain was on the dress

 

[KGB]

Abraham Lincoln does not deserve to be number 1, and how in the world does FDR get number 3 at all let alone over Thomas Jefferson? And Woodrow Wilson makes top 10... I'd hate to meet the "panel" that voted on this list.

FDR prolonged the Great Depression with his New Deal garbage....Washington was 1, Lincoln 2, Jefferson 3, Reagan 4....

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

FDR prolonged the Great Depression with his New Deal garbage....Washington was 1, Lincoln 2, Jefferson 3, Reagan 4....

I agree with your assessment of FDR. Lincoln, however, would be near the bottom of my list.

 

[Dr Grump]

I can't believe Raygun was even in the top 10. After Dumbya, he is the worst president in my lifetime...

 

[greenpartyaz]

It's too bad about Nixon because he certainly was one of the brightest and most competent of the presidents. He made tremendous strides in foreign relations particularly China. I thought also that Clinton should have been lower on the list due to his stain on the office of the president. I don't agree that Eisenhower should have been so high on the list...

Thanks for posting.

What the hell are you talking about? Nixon ran a gangster government. He kept lists of his enemies, because he was a paranoid psycho? He was also a closet pot smoker, while he started the war on drugs! He gave us the dreadful HMO's. He ordered the Watergate break in. He now gave us the nightmare of trading with communist dictatorship in China. And unsafe imports. He resigned in shame and Spiro T. Agnew followed him out the door. So what the hell are you talking about competent leadership? Dwight D. Eisenhour was against de-segregation in public schools. He was close friends with Prescott Bush, Grandpa Bush who helped the Nazi's while George H.W. Bush was fighting the Germans in WWII. WTF are you talking about?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

I can't believe Raygun was even in the top 10. After Dumbya, he is the worst president in my lifetime...

We REALLY don't care what you think since you are not even an American.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

What the hell are you talking about? Nixon ran a gangster government. He kept lists of his enemies, because he was a paranoid psycho? He was also a closet pot smoker, while he started the war on drugs! He gave us the dreadful HMO's. He ordered the Watergate break in. He now gave us the nightmare of trading with communist dictatorship in China. And unsafe imports. He resigned in shame and Spiro T. Agnew followed him out the door. So what the hell are you talking about competent leadership? Dwight D. Eisenhour was against de-segregation in public schools. He was close friends with Prescott Bush, Grandpa Bush who helped the Nazi's while George H.W. Bush was fighting the Germans in WWII. WTF are you talking about?

You may want to check some of your facts. Nixon covered up the break in but had nothing else to do with it. Agnew resigned long before Nixon did. China was a master stroke at the time, separating China from the Soviets. George Bush fought in the Pacific not Europe. And as a Naval Pilot would have little to do except hunt subs if he had been in the Atlantic.

Let me guess, you are a product of our public education system in the last few years?

 

[Gunny]

The Times has published a ranking of all 42 U.S. Presidents. Interestingly, only one President in the last 50-some years has made it into the top ten.

Though this is only The Times' opinion, it does beg the question have there really been so few men of quality since the sixties, or is it that blanket media coverage finds a way to sully the reputation of even the ablest public servants?

I would disagree with several rankings, but it's food for thought.

The Greatest US Presidents - The Times US presidential rankings - Times Online

Happy reading...

It looks like a Times list too. Who's on the panel? 5 Mongols? Whoever it is needs to take class in US history. Elementary school kids could do better.

 

[Gunny]

What the hell are you talking about? Nixon ran a gangster government. He kept lists of his enemies, because he was a paranoid psycho? He was also a closet pot smoker, while he started the war on drugs! He gave us the dreadful HMO's. He ordered the Watergate break in. He now gave us the nightmare of trading with communist dictatorship in China. And unsafe imports. He resigned in shame and Spiro T. Agnew followed him out the door. So what the hell are you talking about competent leadership? Dwight D. Eisenhour was against de-segregation in public schools. He was close friends with Prescott Bush, Grandpa Bush who helped the Nazi's while George H.W. Bush was fighting the Germans in WWII. WTF are you talking about?

What are YOU talking about? Wipe the drool off your lips, btw. Reagan started the war on drugs, dipstick. Agnew PRECEEDED him out of office. How the Hell do you think the Speaker of the House became President?

Eisenhower was the first to send federal troops into Southern schools to enforce desegregation, so you'd be wrong on that score as well.

Prescott Bush was not President and his name is just a buzzword for you people that have that terminal buzz between your ears.

Keep your conspiratorial bullshit in the forum where it belongs.

 

[editec]

Define "great"

Our lists depend on our personal definitions of what that word means in this context, don't they?

If you think having a laissez fair economy is what makes a POTUS great then Herbert Hoover might be your best choice.

If you think having a strong nation, but one which is fair and isn't controlled by big money, then Teddy Roosevelt might be your choice.

If LUCK is the major issue, then IKE or CLINTON might be your choices.

 

[Toro]

I can't believe Raygun was even in the top 10. After Dumbya, he is the worst president in my lifetime...

I'd put Reagan in the top 10.

Reagan said some dumb things, i.e. "acid rain might come from trees," made terrible historical analogies to promulgate slaughter by vicious thugs in Central America "The Contras are the moral equivalents of the Founding Fathers," and promoted this ridiculous idea that cutting taxes and increasing spending could balance the budget which is depressingly rampant as a general belief among the economically ignorant and illiterate masses in the GOP still today.

However, Reagan's accomplishments where threefold. First, he made Americans feel good about themselves again. This is something I think most foreigners and academics either don't understand or downplay. I think its hugely important. Being a leader means inspiring people. During a time when the US was humiliated in Iran, after losing in Vietnam, after going through a terrible economy, and seeing the continued expansion of the USSR, Americans were at the lowest point in their collective self-esteem since the depression. Reagan reminded Americans of what made them a great nation in the first place.

Second, he was perhaps the greatest moral force in the Western world against communism. It is simplistic and wrong to say that the USSR collapsed because of Reagan, since there were many forces which contributed to the implosion of the Soviet Union, not least of which was the rotten state of the empire itself. However, Reagan's arms build-up and unwavering anti-communism was far more of a moral and economic force that contributed to the fall of the USSR than the peaceniks in Western Europe ever were.

Finally, and perhaps more controversially given the recent events, Reagan along with Margaret Thatcher represented the political manifestations that the state had gone too far in the economic lives of its citizens. "Freer" economic nations have generally grown faster than countries with more restrictions on their economies. This is important because it raises the standards of living for citizens. If two countries are at the same level at the beginning, and one country grows 3% per year and another 2%, within two generations, the faster growing country will have created 50% more wealth for its citizens than the slower growing country.

 

[rayboyusmc]

Prescott Bush was not President and his name is just a buzzword for you people that have that terminal buzz between your ears.

Buzzwords: Prescott, Ayers, Kalidi, etc. Both sides buzz.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I thought his stain was on the dress

That too!

 

[Gunny]

Buzzwords: Prescott, Ayers, Kalidi, etc. Both sides buzz.

I should have known there is NOTHING you can't spin and deflect.

 

[del]

I can't believe Raygun was even in the top 10. After Dumbya, he is the worst president in my lifetime...

i take it you were born in the 80's

 

[greenpartyaz]

What are YOU talking about? Wipe the drool off your lips, btw. Reagan started the war on drugs, dipstick. Agnew PRECEEDED him out of office. How the Hell do you think the Speaker of the House became President?

Eisenhower was the first to send federal troops into Southern schools to enforce desegregation, so you'd be wrong on that score as well.

Prescott Bush was not President and his name is just a buzzword for you people that have that terminal buzz between your ears.

Keep your conspiratorial bullshit in the forum where it belongs.

The War on Drugs is a prohibition campaign undertaken by the United States government with the assistance of participating countries, intended to reduce the illegal drug trade—to curb supply and diminish demand for certain psychoactive substances deemed "harmful or undesirable" by the government. This initiative includes a set of laws and policies that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of targeted substances. The term was first used by President Richard Nixon in 1971, and his choice of words was probably based on the War on Poverty, announced by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.

On October 10, 1973, Spiro Agnew became the second Vice President to resign the office. Unlike John C. Calhoun, who resigned to take a seat in the Senate, Agnew resigned and then pleaded nolo contendere (no contest) to criminal charges of tax evasion and money laundering, part of a negotiated resolution to a scheme wherein he accepted $29,500 in bribes during his tenure as governor of Maryland. The bribes were paid to Agnew by some members of the construction industry to get their projects approved. When Agnew moved from Annapolis, Maryland to Washington, D.C., he continued to demand payments. Angered, the construction men turned government's witnesses. Agnew was fined $10,000 and put on three years' probation. The $10,000 fine only covered the taxes and interest due on what was "unreported income" from 1967.

Eisenhower supported the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka U.S. Supreme Court decision, in which segregated ("separate but equal") schools were ruled to be unconstitutional. The very next day he told District of Columbia officials to make Washington a model for the rest of the country in integrating black and white public school children.[41][42] He proposed to Congress the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 and signed those acts into law. Although both Acts were weaker than subsequent civil rights legislation, they constituted the first significant civil rights acts since the 1870s. The "Little Rock Nine" incident of 1957 involved the refusal by Arkansas to honor a Federal court order to integrate the schools. Under Executive Order 10730, Eisenhower placed the Arkansas National Guard under Federal control and sent Army troops to escort nine black students into an all-white public school. The integration did not occur without violence. Eisenhower and Arkansas governor Orval Faubus engaged in tense arguments.

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

 

[KGB]

I agree with your assessment of FDR. Lincoln, however, would be near the bottom of my list.

why would Lincoln shoot to the bottom?