Who were the greatest American Presidents?

[Swammerdami]

A favorite parlor game is to rank the U.S. Presidents -- Who were the "Greatest"?
Let's keep the discussion out of Politics by ignoring Presidents since Reagan; there are few candidates for "Great President" in the 21st century anyway.


A good starting point for Presidential rankings is  Historical rankings of presidents of the United States, especially the Siena rankings.

There are 12 U.S. Presidents who rank #6 or better on at least one of the 25 surveys shown in the Scholastic Summary. These twelve can be formed into three groups of four.

The Mount Rushmore quartet. These might rank near #1-#4 in some order.

• George Washington
• Thoma Jefferson
• Abraham Lincoln
• Teddy Roosevelt

Four in a Row, likely ranks #5-#8, probably in the chronological order shown

• Franklin D, Roosevelt
• Harry S. Truman
• Dwight D. Eisenhower
• John F. Kennedy

Remaining Four also-rans; might rank #9+. Those who rank Wilson high usually do NOT rank Reagan or Jackson high.

• James Madison
• Andrew Jackson
• Woodrow Wilson
• Ronald Reagan

L.B.Johnson was a "Jekyll and Hyde" President.-- He was an outstanding leader, and had great domestic accomplishments. However his War in Vietnam was a dreadful mistake. But if he is considered great anyway, he completes a string of FIVE consecutive great Presidents, beginning with FDR.

The first SEVEN Presidents were all great also. These include four listed above, John Adams, James Monroe, and John Q. Adams. Both Adams were known for very high intelligence and very high integrity. Monroe is especially noted for his Monroe Doctrine.

So who do Infidels pick as the greatest President(s)? Do you choose from among the Twelve shown above -- more or less the Scholarly consensus -- or do you nominate someone else? Let's argue about this!

I'll spoil the suspense now and say that I'm tempted to go with Roosevelt and Roosevelt for #1 and #2 slots. The other three on Mount Rushmore were great -- I acknowledge that -- but each was slightly over-rated, in my opinion.

 

[Politesse]

"Great" in the most common historical sense of winning a lot of wars and adding vast territories and wealth to the empire? Or "great" as in "a good person and an effective leader"? There have been very American presidents who I feel obliged to respect as people. Having your face carved illegally into a rock face by a jingoistic yahoo is no great honor from my point of view. Aside from maybe Lincoln, they were all genocidal maniacs with good press, and where genocide is considered I am one of the asshole Progressives your pastor warned you about. Completely judgy and unreasonable. Not even sorry about it, such a jerk.

Of those you mention, I do greatly respect Franklin Delano Roosevelt for giving a damn about the American people as a whole, all the more so because he was handed more power than almost any other American leader and still, as near as I can tell, was committed to honoring the responsibilities he had to the communities that he was ultimately serving.

Also on your list is James Madison, another who I greatly respect as a person, and though his term as president was obviously and notoriously turbulent, he was also handed one hell of a mess by his predecessors. Never mind the Redcoats, his own Cabinet was at war with him. I appreciate his commitment to democratic principles and the process of negotiation even under the kinds of circumstances that have turned other presidents into hawkish dictators. He also somehow won one of the most unlikely re-elections in our history. By the end of his second term, he had ended the war - almost entirely through diplomacy, not battle - and ushered in an era that was later dubbed "The Era of Good Feelings" and one of the most productive legislatures on record. A most improbable man, a most improbable presidency. Utter asshole to our neighboring nations though, like most US presidents.

In fairness I have never liked the term "great" anyway, as my opening screed indicates. Considering some of the people it puts you in the company of, mostly vicious warlords like Cyrus the Great, Constantine the Great, and Casimir the Great, I would be straight up insulted if anyone ever called me "the Great".

 

[Harry Bosch]

A favorite parlor game is to rank the U.S. Presidents -- Who were the "Greatest"?
Let's keep the discussion out of Politics by ignoring Presidents since Reagan; there are few candidates for "Great President" in the 21st century anyway.


A good starting point for Presidential rankings is  Historical rankings of presidents of the United States, especially the Siena rankings.

There are 12 U.S. Presidents who rank #6 or better on at least one of the 25 surveys shown in the Scholastic Summary. These twelve can be formed into three groups of four.

The Mount Rushmore quartet. These might rank near #1-#4 in some order.

• George Washington
• Thoma Jefferson
• Abraham Lincoln
• Teddy Roosevelt

Four in a Row, likely ranks #5-#8, probably in the chronological order shown

• Franklin D, Roosevelt
• Harry S. Truman
• Dwight D. Eisenhower
• John F. Kennedy

Remaining Four also-rans; might rank #9+. Those who rank Wilson high usually do NOT rank Reagan or Jackson high.

• James Madison
• Andrew Jackson
• Woodrow Wilson
• Ronald Reagan

L.B.Johnson was a "Jekyll and Hyde" President.-- He was an outstanding leader, and had great domestic accomplishments. However his War in Vietnam was a dreadful mistake. But if he is considered great anyway, he completes a string of FIVE consecutive great Presidents, beginning with FDR.

The first SEVEN Presidents were all great also. These include four listed above, John Adams, James Monroe, and John Q. Adams. Both Adams were known for very high intelligence and very high integrity. Monroe is especially noted for his Monroe Doctrine.

So who do Infidels pick as the greatest President(s)? Do you choose from among the Twelve shown above -- more or less the Scholarly consensus -- or do you nominate someone else? Let's argue about this!

I'll spoil the suspense now and say that I'm tempted to go with Roosevelt and Roosevelt for #1 and #2 slots. The other three on Mount Rushmore were great -- I acknowledge that -- but each was slightly over-rated, in my opinion.

I think that Washington is by far the greatest president because he united the country and established the peaceful transfer of power to new administrations. And this is why Trump will go down conversely as the worst president in US history.

 

[Ford]

For my money, it is still FDR. Aside from Lincoln, it is hard to think of another US President who faced more challenges during his time in office. He came in during the Great Depression. The Dust Bowl devastated the middle of the country. Then there was that whole World War II thing. He led the country through all of it, did so from the confines of a wheelchair, and stayed on the job even though it killed him.

Was he perfect? No. Japanese internment camps comes to mind. He should have kept Wallace as his VP/successor instead of settling for Truman. Yet while also dealing with great adversity he changed the trajectory of the country for the next generation and beyond.

 

[southernhybrid]

Since this thread is so lonely, I'm going to change it a little bit if Swammerdami doesn't mind. Instead of replying to who were the greatest presidents, how about what great things did presidents do, during the time they were in office, or in some cases after they left office.

I'm going to start with a controversial one, Richard Nixon, who I literally protested against during my early college years. Nixon started the EPA, which was the first time a president drew attention to the environment. The air quality was horrible during my late teen years in the 60s and it vastly improved over the years following the start of the EPA. He also started OSHA, and believe it or not, he pushed for more social programs for the poor, but the Senate defeated those things. He started what was the first form of affirmative action, helping minorities have a better chance at getting certain jobs etc. While it took him longer than we boomers wanted, he did finally ended the Viet Nam War, which was a total failure from start to finish.

Yes, he was a crook, but he resigned from office, unlike the last crook we had as president. Plus, when JFK defeated him in1960, despite being pushed by some Republicans to question the validity of the election, he gracefully accepted that defeat. So, despite his crimes, the start of the stupid war on drugs, and failure to get everything he wanted done, he did do what could be called some great things.

Obama got us out of a deep recession, but his greatest accomplishment imo, was the Affordable Care Act. I've had two family members that depended on that for insurance when they lost jobs and were too young for Medicare. The ACA is more expensive than it should be, but at least it gave most people the opportunity to have health insurance. Prior to that, an insurance company could turn down anyone that had any type of preexisting condition. Sadly, some states, including Georgia, have refused to expand Medicaid, which was meant to be a part of the ACA. SCOTUS allowed them to do that. Obama also finally saw the light regarding gay marriage, which was made legal on a federal basis in 2015. Sadly, this is under threat due to the religious zealots that have so much power these days. He was also the first Black president, although he was actually Blackish, as his mother and paternal grandparents were white and they raised him. If any of you don't know it, his mother was an atheist, who also identified as a Secular Humanist. He spoke highly of her in his book, "The Audacity of Hope".

It's hard for me to give the founders and the first several presidents any credit for doing great things. They were all slave holders, even when some of them privately said they knew that slavery was wrong. Washington and Jefferson had about 200 slaves each and Jefferson had children who's mothers were slaves. Madison had about 100 slaves. So, imo, they were racist hypocrites. These early presidents also looked down on poor white people, who were often treated almost as poorly as slaves. Large percentages of them were indentured servants. Jefferson really was an asshole imo, after reading the book that I keep mentioning called "Poor White Trash", I learned a lot about the dreadful things he did and thought. Plus, while Washington may have done a good job of defeating the British, the country was formed via genocide and the exploitation of Black people and poor white people. But, I digress.

Let me add Lincoln to the good list. I'm almost finished reading a book about Lincoln written by Jon Meacham. He did so much detailed research on Lincoln, that at times I felt as if I was sitting in the room with him. Lincoln knew that slavery was wrong from the time he was a child, but it took a long time to accomplish the Emancipation Proclamation, which was the start of the end of slavery, although sadly not the end of racism or the start of giving all people the same civil rights. There were times when Lincoln was ready to give up since the Civil War was lingering on and he feared the insisting on ending slavery might be impossible. He also didn't see Black folks as equal to white folks. He proposed that free slaves be sent back to African, but Frederick Douglas and his organization told Lincoln that isn't going to happen because they were now a part of this country and had no intention of leaving. Douglas and Lincoln were close, so Lincoln respected Douglas and agreed that when slavery ended, all Black folks could remain here. So, regardless of his weaknesses, Lincoln accomplished a great thing.

FDR's accomplishments have already been mentioned. Many of my former patients lived during his era and they raved about him to me.

I'll add some more later, if it's okay with Swammardami. If not, perhaps we can make this into a new thread about the accomplishments of American presidents. There were some presidents who weren't very good, but they accomplished at least one or two great things. Or maybe we need a thread discussing the worst things done by American presidents.

 

[Politesse]

I'm going to start with a controversial one, Richard Nixon, who I literally protested against during my early college years. Nixon started the EPA, which was the first time a president drew attention to the environment. The air quality was horrible during my late teen years in the 60s and it vastly improved over the years following the start of the EPA. He also started OSHA, and believe it or not, he pushed for more social programs for the poor, but the Senate defeated those things. He started what was the first form of affirmative action, helping minorities have a better chance at getting certain jobs etc. While it took him longer than we boomers wanted, he did finally ended the Viet Nam War, which was a total failure from start to finish

A person can be more (or less) than the sum of their legacy. George Bush Sr was a man I agreed with on very few political matters, and ultimately his impact on the country and on the Middle East was quite negative. But, he was also a relatively competent manager of the executive departments in a way that has become rare, and the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990 was a watershed moment for archaeology, and for relations between the Federal Government and the so-called "tribes" it oversees. I've been elbows deep in a repatriation claim recently, and as stressful as it is, it's the right thing to do. The connected research has really made me respect a lot more how unlikely that initial legislation actually was. The Republican Party was under no real obligation to get on board with the notion, and I am certain that it would be impossible to pass such an act in today's political climate.

 

[pood]

I'll spoil the suspense now and say that I'm tempted to go with Roosevelt and Roosevelt for #1 and #2 slots. The other three on Mount Rushmore were great -- I acknowledge that -- but each was slightly over-rated, in my opinion.

Teddy Roosevelt was a vicious racist and imperialist, and supporter of eugenics, though he could, as the article notes, treat individual blacks and other minorities with respect. Woodrow Wilson was another virulent racist who tried to root out black employees of the federal government. These two presidents, ranked highly by academic historians, are considerably lower on my list. OTOH, if racism were a key metric, damned few presidents get positive reviews on that score.

 

[pood]

He also didn't see Black folks as equal to white folks. He proposed that free slaves be sent back to African, but Frederick Douglas and his organization told Lincoln that isn't going to happen because they were now a part of this country and had no intention of leaving. Douglas and Lincoln were close, so Lincoln respected Douglas and agreed that when slavery ended, all Black folks could remain here. So, regardless of his weaknesses, Lincoln accomplished a great thing.

To be clear, Lincoln didn’t propose sending them “back” to Africa, since by the 1860s virtually none of them were from Africa in the first place. Almost all had been born in the U.S., since the country ended the Africa slave trade in 1808. Lincoln also did not advocate deportation. He wanted the freed slaves to voluntary leave the country, for he feared that blacks and whites could never live peacefully together, and who’s to say he was wrong, given even our recent history and experience with a racist psycho as president? However, by the end of the war, Lincoln had pretty much dropped that notion, and he had been deeply impressed with the valor of black Union soldiers in the war. In his final speech, he became the first U.S. president to discuss giving the vote to some blacks, among them veterans. John Wilkes Booth was present for the speech and decided then and there to kill Lincoln because of this.

Lincoln always believed that the rights enumerated in the Declaration and Constitution should apply to everyone, including blacks, but he also professed his belief, early in his career, that blacks were not the “social equals” of whites, whatever that was supposed to mean. In fact, these sort of statements might have been descriptive rather than normative, though on other ocassions he was more explcit in his racist beliefs. Still, it should be recalled that no politician, North or South, could have been elected back then on a platform of “social equality” of the races, and Lincoln was an ambitious pol. His later friendship with Frederick Douglass and many other acts large and small reveal a man of uncommon largeness of character who by the end of his life had pretty much transcended any true racist beliefs he might have held earlier in life.

 

[Swammerdami]

I certainly agree with southernhybrid about Nixon. Four weeks ago I wrote

I think Richard Nixon is under-rated....

In many ways, Nixon was a GOOD President. He cooled tensions with both the Soviets and China, and ended the War in Vietnam. Unlike Trump and Cheney -- whose goals were personal enrichment -- Nixon was a patriot who saw the Presidency as his chance to contribute positively. He had the gumption to revoke America's 40 year-old commitment to selling gold at a statutory price. (Can you imagine Rand Paul or any of the Ilk having the gumption to do that? First they'd connive to buy billions in gold for their family and friends.) And don't forget that Nixon pushed -- against the wishes of his own party -- for a socialized healthcare program that was MORE progressive than Obamacare! (It failed when Demos thought it not progressive enough. Instead Dems had to wait decades to get the watered-down Obamacare: especially watered down since the vote of DINO Lieberman (Senator for Aetna) was needed to break the QOPAnon filibuster.)

BTW, there IS reason to think that the 1960 election was stolen from Nixon by malfeasance in Illinois and Texas. But Nixon knew that litigating this would be bad for America, and did the patriotic thing.

... the large bulk of U.S. casualties [in Vietnam] came during LBJ's terms. U.S. involvement dropped after Nixon's election.

(I didn't praise him in the OP of this thread since that OP was intended to summarize the greatest according to the Wikipedia lists.)

If Nixon is considered great, that makes SIX consecutive great Presidents (FDR, HST, DDE, JFK, LBJ, RMN) with all six perhaps greater than any of the nine Presidents since.

Among these "Six Consecutive Greats" it is JFK who is most difficult to judge. Like the little girl whom Longfellow writes about, when he was good, he was very very good, but when he was bad he was horrid.

Obama had the intelligence, charisma, grace and compassion to be one of the greatest, but by his time political schism, FoxNews and QAnon made governing difficult, and of course Obama was the victim of huge (masked) racism. Also Obama missed a chance to rescue American home-owners in the 2009 crisis; instead he followed the advice of banking experts who prioritized banks over people.

Since this thread is so lonely, I'm going to change it a little bit if Swammerdami doesn't mind. Instead of replying to who were the greatest presidents, how about what great things did presidents do, during the time they were in office, or in some cases after they left office.

Yes! I'm happy to expand the topic.

I'm going to start with a controversial one, Richard Nixon, who I literally protested against during my early college years....

I did too. My parents followed politics and were quite anti-Nixon in 1960. We read a pamphlet titled Know Nixon: No Nixon.
My mother became increasingly liberal, while my father voted Nixon in 1968 I think. (They divorced in 1972.)

I'm willing to give the early slave-owners a pass. People are products of their time. Washington rose to prominence BECAUSE of his great wealth and, in Virginia, the wealthy were slave-owners. (Among Americans born 1750 or earlier, only Stephen Girard, Elias Hasket Derby and John Hancock were wealthier than Washington, according to a reputable list.)


I revised my own ratings and started this thread as I was reading Great Military Blunders by Geoffrey Regan. Lincoln lost patience with McClellan and asked Ambrose Burnside to head the Army of the Potomac. Burnside told Lincoln "I am not competent to command such a large Army." By this time reading the book, I felt that if an officer himself knew he was being promoted beyond his niche, he shouldn't be promoted! But Lincoln insisted, and Burnside ended up badly misjudging at Fredericksburg. This setback was a major disaster, and added to the huge loss of life in the Civil War. (But I shouldn't demote Lincoln too harshly for this. Regan's book is full of great blunders, including ones by Napoleon himself.)

 

[pood]

I don’t think we should overrate Nixon’s domestic record. We should remember that the Democrats were in control of both houses of Congress. Nixon LET a lot of those reforms pass, because he didn’t want to veto them and risk a politically damaging fight. He even told aides this. I don’t believe (I could be wrong about this) that he proposed ANY of the things he seems to be getting credit for, although it is true that he proposed a sweeping national helath care law that didn’t pass. Later in life, NIxon, asked about the domestic initiative he was proudest of, replied, “the cancer initiative,” which was a moonshot-style program to end cancer in a decade or so. Needlessly to say that went nowhere.

He gets no credit for ending the Vietnam War. He ended it on worse terms than Lyndon Johnson almost got in 1968, and the reason those talks failed was because Nixon treasonously worked behind the scenes to derail them. His signature accomplishments, IMO, were the opening to China and detente with the Soviets, including the first nuclears-arms reduction treaties, which were substantial accomplishments.

 

[steve_bank]

Lincoln is usually at or near the top because he navigated the extreme politics of the day managing to keep the country together. Had he lived for a second term reconstruction would have been different.

Washington's greatest contribution was the peaceful transfer of power when he left office. The antithesis of Trump. Washington set the stage.

JFK was not a great president. The disaster of the Bay Of Pigs invasion of Cuba. His great contribution was navigating the Cuban Missile Crisis ending in a negotiated settlement with Russia. He is most noted for inspiration during the Cold War and threat of nuclear war. The White House was called Camelot. Women did their hair and dressed like Jackie Kennedy. It was alla crfed poliical facade. The press and Jackie knew JFK had a stream of women in the WH. It was not reported and Jackie went along with the fmily facade. Pictures of JFK and his kids laying in the Oval Office. People loved the images.

Regan's accomplishment was with Russia. Gorbachev said Reagan's personality gave the Russians confidence they could negotiate in good faith with the USA. He was called 'the great communicator'. You may not have liked him, but he connected with people on a grass roots level.


Nixon ordered the unresricted bombing of the North which brought them to the table.

 

[pood]

Nixon ordered the unresricted bombing of the North which brought them to the table.

Not so. Heavy bombing of the north began under Johnson. And, there were peace negotiations in the 60s — the North came to the table back then. The bombing accelerated under NIxon and was spread secretly to Laos and Cambodia (and the secret war in Cambodia brought about one of the articles of impeachment against Nixon). It accomplished nothing. As mentioned above, the U.S. in 1973 got worse terms for leaving Vietnam than they would have gotten in negotiations by Johnson ion 1968 that Nixon secretly sabotaged. The 1973 accords left all of the North’s gains in the south in place, and everyone, including Nixon and Kissinger, knew it was only a matter of time until the North overran the South, which happened in 1975.

 

[lpetrich]

 Cyclical theory (United States history) and  Historical rankings of presidents of the United States

I'll use the Schlesingers' periodization.

• Revolution and Constitution - lib - pre-Presidency
• Hamilton Era - con - George Washington (one of the best), John Adams (good)
• Jefferson Era - lib - Thomas Jefferson (one of the best), James Madison (good)
• Era of Good Feelings - con - JMad, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams (good)
• Jackson Era - lib - Andrew Jackson (good), Martin Van Buren (bad)
• Slaveowner Dominance - con - James Polk (good), his predecessors and successors (very bad, some of the worst)
• Civil War Era - lib - Abraham Lincoln (one of the best), Andrew Johnson (one of the worst)
• Gilded Age - con - somewhat bad to somewhat good
• Progressive Era - lib - Teddy Roosevelt (one of the best), William Taft (mediocre), Woodrow Wilson (good)
• Roaring Twenties - con - Warren Harding (one of the worst), Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover (bad)
• New Deal Era - lib - FDR (one of the best), Harry Truman (very good)
• Fifties - con - HT, Dwight Eisenhower (very good), JFK (good)
• Sixties - lib - JFK, LBJ (good), Richard Nixon (bad), Jerry Ford (mediocre to bad), Jimmy Carter (mediocre)
• Gilded Age II - con - JC, Ronald Reagan (mediocre? good?), George Bush I, Bill Clinton (mediocre), George Bush II (bad), Barack Obama (good), Donald Trump (one of the worst), Joe Biden (mediocre? good?)

Many of the better Presidents were in liberal periods, and the conservative periods with consistently good Presidents were the first ones (Hamilton, Good Feelings). After that, however, good Presidents in conservative periods are very spotty: James Polk (Slaveowner Dominance), Dwight Eisenhower (Fifties), and Barack Obama (Gilded Age II).

The worst Presidents were usually in conservative periods, like Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan (Slaveowner Dominance), Warren Harding (Roaring Twenties), and Donald Trump (Gilded Age II).

What's in each kind of period:

• Liberal -- Conservative
• Wrongs of the Many -- Rights of the Few
• Increase Democracy -- Contain Democracy
• Public Purpose -- Private Interest
• Human Rights -- Property Rights

Liberal periods have had creedal-passion periods and racial-upheaval periods, even if not universally.

 

[steve_bank]

As to Nixon opening China. The idea was China would be a vast market for American goods. It did not quite work out that way, and in a sense we through buying Chinese goods funded the rise of the Chinese militray.

I was in the Navy in the war. The war had been fought politically not militarily. Ships at anchor in Haiphong Harbor with decks loaded with e weapons could not previously be attacked.

To some Kissinger became evil incarnate.

Operation Linebacker II - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Operation Linebacker II, sometimes referred to as the Christmas bombings, was a strategic bombing campaign conducted by the United States against targets in North Vietnam from December 18 to December 29, 1972, partaking of the Vietnam War. More than 20,000 tons of ordnance was dropped on military and industrial areas in Hanoi and Haiphong and at least 1,624 civilians were killed. The operation was the final major military operation carried out by the U.S. during the conflict, and the largest bombing campaign involving heavy bombers since World War II.

What president ordered the bombing of North Vietnam?
Nixon
Rather than accept the prospect of defeat, Nixon sent massive air force and naval reinforcements to bases in Indochina and Guam. On May 4 he decided to mine North Vietnam's harbors and open a sustained air offensive, Operation Linebacker, against North Vietnam.

Nixon disparately neede to appear to win the war. I remember the headlines in bold in the newspaperswith Nixo declaring peace was at hand. His saying was 'Peace with honor'.


You can credit LBJ with escalating the war and creating the mess.

What happened in the Gulf of Tonkin according to Johnson?
Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964) | National Archives
On the evening of August 4, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson addressed the nation in a televised speech in which he announced that two days earlier, U.S. ships had been attacked twice in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin near North Vietnam.Feb 8, 2022

The alleged Tonkin Gulf incident led to leg station allowing POTUS to take any action deemed needed in South East Asia.

Gulf of Tonkin incident - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Gulf of Tonkin incident (Vietnamese: Sự kiện Vịnh Bắc Bộ) was an international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. It consisted of a confrontation on August 2, 1964, when United States forces were carrying out covert operations close to North Vietnamese territorial waters and North Vietnamese forces responded. The United States government falsely claimed that a second incident occurred on August 4, 1964, between North Vietnamese and United States ships in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. Originally, US military claims blamed North Vietnam for the confrontation and the ostensible, but in fact imaginary, incident on August 4. Later investigation revealed that the second attack never happened; the official American claim is that it was based mostly on erroneously interpreted communications intercepts.[5][6][7] The National Security Agency, a subsidiary of the US Defense Department, deliberately skewed intelligence to create the impression that an attack had been carried out.[8]

LBJ's accomplishment was the first federal comprehensive civil rights legislation. Remarkable since he was a southern Democrat, and southern democrats were generally racist. He was known for backroom arm twisting and getting deals done.

 

[pood]

What president ordered the bombing of North Vietnam?
Nixon
Rather than accept the prospect of defeat, Nixon sent massive air force and naval reinforcements to bases in Indochina and Guam. On May 4 he decided to mine North Vietnam's harbors and open a sustained air offensive, Operation Linebacker, against North Vietnam.

Nixon disparately neede to appear to win the war. I remember the headlines in bold in the newspaperswith Nixo declaring peace was at hand. His saying was 'Peace with honor'.

And yet, the U.S. was defeated, and it left Vietnam with worse terms that were avaialble in 1968. So all that bombing and all those innocent civilians killed was a total waste by any metric.

Nixon and Kissinger were war criminals.

LBJ's accomplishment was the first federal comprehensive civil rights legislation. Remarkable since he was a southern Democrat, and southern democrats were generally racist. He was known for backroom arm twisting and getting deals done.

It should be recalled that the civil rights legislation in question was proposed by JFK. Johnson got it through, but JFK probably would have too if he had lived. It also seems to be the case that JFK was highly lukewarm to the civil rights movement, and was irritated by the Freedom Rides, thinking they damaged U.S. prestige. I suspect Bobby goaded JFK into proposing the civil rights act.

 

[steve_bank]

Nixon coined the term Vietnamization. We train ARVN and get out. I don't think anybody who understood the war believed it would work.

We withdrew and ARVN collapsed. Same as what happened in Afghanistan. Nixon got his political win. Just before the second election the headlines in the papers read something like Nixon wins the war , it is over. It drove me crazy.

I know a Vietnamese woman in my building who worked with the US in VN and appreciated us, not enough did. She escaped. I have listened to her stories. Another man fought in ARVN and escaped after the collapse,

As to LBJ the Pete Seeger anti war song Waist Deep In The Big Muddy.

'Waist deep in the big muddy and the big fool says move on', the big muddy being the Mekong River and the big fool LBJ. LBJ was emotionally crushed by the war and did not run for a second term. Emphatically said 'if I am nominated I will not accept'. Worth watching.

lbjvideo I will not run for reelction - Google Search

Pete Seeger

 

[steve_bank]

JFK and civil rights is murky. Sammy Davis Jr was a supporter in the campaign. When he married a white woman JFK banned him from the White House.

JFK also dropped Sinatra after the camping because he was associed with organized crime. Odd since JFK had also partied with organized crime figures.

And the of course the Marylin Monroe scandal. JFK would have a hard time geting elected today. The Keneddys were a corupt family. Ted Kennedy gort away with murder at Ckapaqutic. No locals were gong to prosecute a Kennedy.

Trump camplains about voter fraud. In the JFK ection it was clear there was fraud on the JFK side. Joe Kennedy made deals with organized crime and unions for votes. When JFK got elected RFK went after ornized crime.

 

[Ford]

I don’t think we should overrate Nixon’s domestic record. We should remember that the Democrats were in control of both houses of Congress. Nixon LET a lot of those reforms pass, because he didn’t want to veto them and risk a politically damaging fight. He even told aides this. I don’t believe (I could be wrong about this) that he proposed ANY of the things he seems to be getting credit for, although it is true that he proposed a sweeping national helath care law that didn’t pass. Later in life, NIxon, asked about the domestic initiative he was proudest of, replied, “the cancer initiative,” which was a moonshot-style program to end cancer in a decade or so. Needlessly to say that went nowhere.

He gets no credit for ending the Vietnam War. He ended it on worse terms than Lyndon Johnson almost got in 1968, and the reason those talks failed was because Nixon treasonously worked behind the scenes to derail them. His signature accomplishments, IMO, were the opening to China and detente with the Soviets, including the first nuclears-arms reduction treaties, which were substantial accomplishments.

If he did nothing else, Trump made me look more favorably on Nixon.

I remember watching him resign on live TV. I didn't quite understand all that was going on, but I knew he was clearly upset. It was an echo of "you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore." Because at his core, Nixon was a patriot. He'd spent his entire life in service to the country, and being thrown out of office hurt him deeply. Was he corrupt? Of course. Was he a racist? Yes. Egomaniac? Probably. He thought he had all the answers, and had an overblown sense of self-importance. Was he a genius? I think the argument could be made that he was one of the most intelligent Presidents we've had.

And that was his problem. He was the "smartest guy in the room," thought "only I can fix this" and was willing to do whatever he needed - no matter how crooked - to stay in power. Partly because of his ego, but also because he really thought he knew what was best for the country. I remember watching an interview with him near the end of his life, and he was still "plugged in" to world events. He had all sorts of ideas he wanted to present to Clinton, and I got the sense that he stayed up to date so when the opportunity came, he could say "put me in coach. I'm ready to help." It was actually kind of sad.

At the moment, Trump only wants to get back in the White House so that he can pardon himself and then keep on grifting.

 

[southernhybrid]

I"m not over rating Nixon. I'm just saying that in retrospect, he was better than we who protested him, thought at the time. Imo, it doesn't matter who controlled Congress when he was president. The fact is that back in those days, the two parties worked together and actually got things done. In more recent times, there is no way that a Republican president would have passed things like the EPA or OSHA. I don't give Nixon a lot of credit for ending the war, as I hinted at in my post. Almost everyone was disgusted with the war by the time that Nixon got us out. All I'm doing, is mentioning some good accomplishments that happened during various presidencies, regardless of who controlled Congress at the time. Even the worst president, probably accomplished at least one good thing.

I think it's only fair to see the positives and negatives of a presidential term. Even W did one good thing that I remember. He worked with Congress to get Part D Medicare. Now, some people may not think that's a big deal, but I was working as a home health nurse prior to Part D. I remember trying to help my poor patients figure out which of their medications were the most important ones since they couldn't afford them all. I remember calling pharmacies and begging them to give a discount to poor patients or allow them to pay for their drugs over time. Part D is far from perfect, but based on my own experiences prior to Part D, I consider it a great accomplishment, not perfect, but much better than what we had before. Now, at least partly thanks to Biden, a lot of Part D drugs are free or very low cost. So, while in most ways, the Bush presidency was a terrible failure, there was at least one good accomplishment during his time in office.

I may not agree with every poster here, but it's good to see this thread get warmed up.

 

[Swammerdami]

Let me make the case that JFK was the ultimate "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" President. Some of the negatives come from Seymour Hersh's The Dark Side of Camelot. Was this book a hatchet job? It couldn't all be lies. And remember that Seymour Hersh is the only journalist to win FIVE George Polk Awards.

John F. Kennedy was one of the very greatest Presidents ever.

It's hardly necessary to say what was GOOD about John F. Kennedy. He was a genuine war hero. He was -- and still is -- the youngest person ever elected President, succeeding Ike who at age 70 was then the oldest President ever. His youth and vigor inspired the Boomer generation. I wonder if it was partly due to this inspiration -- not just his smart domestic policies -- that the economy grow much faster under JFK than it had under Ike.

JFK improved the country's foreign prestige with programs like the Peace Corps. He deployed a very large number of U.S. marshalls and soldiers to ensure that James Meredith could attend the University of Mississippi. There was great resistance to his civil rights proposals, and it is probably true that his assassination -- the date 22 November is etched in the memory of my generation -- instilled an awakening and sense of responsibility which led to the passage of such proposals during LBJ's term.

Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the Apollo Moon landing. This difficult and expensive task might not have been attempted at all without JFK. Documents from that era show that the country's space experts, politicians, and even Kennedy himself were awed and surprised by this bold challenge. I've excerpted from his speech at Rice University but feel free to listen to the entire speech!

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
... we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to Earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun ...

The Apollo project was one of the most difficult endeavors ever attempted by mankind. It used the best supercomputers of the time. (Nowadays, some people throw away their old iPhones because they're only half a million times faster than those 1961 super-computers.) The Saturn-5 rocket which launched the Moon landings was a 3000-ton behemoth and -- unlike those supercomputers which now seem laughable -- still holds several records 50+ years later.

John F. Kennedy was one of the most corrupt and narcissistic Presidents ever.

It is probably the case that the 1960 election was stolen by shenanigans in Illinois and in Texas. (But this shouldn't be blamed on JFK specifically.)

JFK was consistently hubristic and overconfident about foreign policy. The delicate negotiations during the Cuban Missile Crisis were conducted by JFK and his brother with zero communication with the State Dept. or other entities. Kissinger reported on the Kennedys' sense of entitlement: At one long crisis meeting, the White House waiter served two bowls of clam chowder (to JFK and RFK) leaving the others hungry.

JFK allowed the ridiculous Bay of Pigs landing by anti-Castro rebels to go ahead, and denied these insurgents even the limited air force support they had been promised. There was zero chance this invasion could succeed. It is literally true that the decision was partly based on the cynical observation that dead rebels were preferable to disbanded rebels: they wouldn't be able to reveal their CIA ties. Apologists say the Bay of Pigs project was started under Ike, but Ike didn't issue a Go order. I think it's possible Ike tried to caution his successor, but of course JFK had little interest in others' inputs.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a direct result of JFK's incompetence at Bay of Pigs. Khrushchev wanted to see if this inexperienced man would make more mistakes. JFK responded by bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war -- we now know it came much closer to nuclear attacks than one would think. JFK had been advised that the Cuban missiles had NO strategic significance, and Khrushchev had already agreed to the terms JFK eventually accepted, but JFK wanted to prove something. That this Crisis is regarded as a triumph for JFK just shows how confused histories get.

JFK gave CIA the (illegal) GO order to let President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam be assassinated. He was already planning to abandon the South Vietnamese but wanted to wait until after the 1964 elections. Progressive Americans would vomit at such bloodthirsty hypocrisy if a Republican did it.

Finally, JFK was one of the most notorious womanizers in all of American history. I'm no prude, and understand that the same ambition and narcissism that makes a man seek high office is likely to lead to overindulgence in extramarital sex. But JFK carried this beyond all decency. Secret service agents say they were aghast when expensive call-girls, two at a time, would show up at the President's hotel suite when he was on tour. Were they supposed to frisk these women, or what? The mind boggles when you compare JFK's behavior with the $75 million Starr Inquisition that uncovered one (1) Clinton blow job.