Presidential Review

[Duemellon]

Ok, since some pretty "amazing" things were said in the Obama v. McCain thread about this when we were talking about past presidents.

Whereas the most incredible things were being said about Lincoln, there was plenty of opportunity for other presidents & their legacy to be mentioned.

Personally I find it sad that we focus on the President as the leader of our country when in fact they're supposed to only be 1/3 of the equasion. Beyond that, they're supposed to do nothing more than execute the will of law & judgment. They're nothing but "production" in the workhouse. However, their role has changed over the centuries & they are, indeed, the most powerful individual in our governmental system.

So, having said that, who are your faves? Who do you think were the worst? What legacies do you think we'd all be surprised to see come from certain prezs?

[Duemellon]

Lincoln

He was racist.

Then again, who wasn’t? The only people who weren’t were the slaves they were fighting over. The people who were enslaved had no power, no opportunity, to be racist in a consistent systemic way.

Now, in comparison to his contemporaries, Lincoln was very progressive. Even if he didn’t believe in the inherent equality of Blacks he believed in protecting their rights to be equal. In that, even though he felt that their own abilities would keep them as 2nd class status over time with the rare exception coming through. In other words, it was the compassion he had for them as humans with desires & feelings, even if he thought they’d never match the innate superiority of Whites in general.

As for what he did with the States, federalization, & such, that’s unrelated to his view of slavery & Blacks. The Civil War was as much about freedom for the Blacks from slavery as WW2 was about saving the Jews from extermination. The injustices were a rallying cry for people AFTER the war was over. The injustices were retrospectively laid overtop the war. At its root, the war was about slavery, but was never about the slaves.

The Civil War was brewing for a considerable time before it began. A few presidents before Lincoln had made special efforts to delay the war by giving territories to slavery, allowing the continuation of the independence of states & militias, as well as allowing disparate alliances to form between the South & North. Lincoln was elected as someone who would be patient & continue the delicate balance between the growing feuds; however, certain things outside of his control escalated the situation to the point where financial crises & rogue elements were destabilizing everything.

Depending on your view, the war was a success or a failure. You either view the unionization of all the states under the single banner of a federal government as the necessary evolution of the growing nation or as a betrayal of the original intents of the forefathers. Even if you look at it from the more “sentimental” view of dealing with slavery the success & failure comes out as a mixed bag. Freeing them by law but freeing them in actuality, have two different moments of “success”.

[Duemellon]

The Cold War was finished by Reagan's administration by outgunning his opponent with blanks & feints.

Any time you continue to escalate the threat it forces your rivals to meet that bid & increase it or accept defeat. The race to gain the upper hand in missle count, defense spending, & geopolitical influence took out our only consistent rival between the 40's - 80's, but at what cost?

Our economy became focused on increasing the military & demonstrating our military might. Now that we're wieghed with guns & bullets, we started running out of money to maintain them. Add that to the fact that during that 40+ year span of the Cold War we didn't pay attention to all the other players in the world as we should. Now we're in a situation where we're seeing the "good times" weren't really a persistent state & our greatest strengths of guns & gold have passed the tipping point to be our greatest liability.

It is not so much that Reagan was the author, as he was just the last chapter in our military posturing. We are now the worlds largest & most powerful military operating off a government credit card.

[juggles]

This exercise might be easier if you try to do it in order, say, worst to best. I've got someone in mind you could start with.

[Duemellon]

This exercise might be easier if you try to do it in order, say, worst to best. I've got someone in mind you could start with.You can do your chart if you'd like. Perhaps you'll have some interesting things to talk about on it?

[seafoamgreen]

I have an incredibly strange affinity for richard nixon.


maybe it's because we're both motivated by self-consciousness and an overwhelming sense of insecurity.


or maybe i've been reading too much edmund burke.

[the happy prole]

Harding?!?

[OldManIndieKid]

Good: Harrison, Harding, Coolidge
Bad: Lincoln, Wilson, FDRWilson won a Nobel Prize, right? Can you be a bad president and win a Nobel prize?

And echoing THP, Harding? Really? The guy's presidency was littered with scandal, both personal and political.

Coolidge, maybe I can give you that one. But a big part of his "success" was that he did inherit a post-war economy. So all the good things of the roaring twenties can't solely be attributed to him, he may have just been in the right place at the right time. (you're not a Reaganite are you? Every Alex P. Keaton I've ever met loves Coolidge. Wait, yes, you hate FDR, of course you're a conservative). ;)

And you meant William Henry as opposed to Benjamin right? Kind of hard to do anything bad if you're only president for a month. :p

Ok, I picked on someone else's, so I'll throw mine out there:

Good: Polk, Reagan, Eisenhower
Bad: Grant, Harding, Hoover.

[Duemellon]

Anyone gonna elaborate?

I mean, looking back, comparing George HW Bush to George Washington is a very difficult task considering the amount of items on either George's desk, the current size of the nation, economy, military, & such. I mean, one was a leader of a unified nation the other was just 1 third of a government managing several independent states. How do you go about comparing them?

I guess you can focus on their character. You could focus on their decisions when faced with challenges. How they handled crises & how they (if they) kept their hands out of stuff they shouldn't be involved in.

[OldManIndieKid]

Anyone gonna elaborate?
.Probably not. I said my piece. And I gave up writing history term papers about 18 years ago.

[Jumpman]

And then Roosevelt....puke. I am totally baffled by FDR idolatry.

You shouldn't be. You obviously don't agree with his establishment of the Welfare state, and that's fine as your opinion. But how can you be baffled that a man who became president during the worst economic crisis in history, who weathered that storm through WWII all the while maintaining an intimate (relatively) relationship with the public, only to lead the USA to be the leader of the world economically, politically and socially, is so revered still today? Does he deserve criticism? sure, who doesn't? Were all the successes of his presidency his alone? they never are. I'd argue that regardless of your ideological position on his policies the man was a far cry from a failure as a president. And you shouldn't be surprised by people heaping a shit ton of praise on him, fully deserved or not. Just look at how much praise the "Greatest Generation" has gotten, and he was their elected leader.

[bestlaidplans]

Theodore Roosevelt is still my favorite president ever. This was a guy who really fucking crossed party lines.