US Presidents

roybatty

Who were the top three presidents over the last 100 years?

Carmel

Lynden Johnson 6'5", Bill Clinton 6'3" (claims never to have been "on top" though) Teddy Rosavelt 6"9" on his mount! Shut up sassy about your "mounting blocks"!

carmel

ColdRedRain

Reagan, FDR and a tie between Kennedy and Wilson.

Mulan

FDR, JFK, Clinton

For no particular reason..................other than I know more about them and their careers

Double Edge

Reagan and the two Roosevelts... Teddy and Franklin

Carmel

"top"? by what criteria?

Biggest spenders, greatest womanize, biggest warmonger???

what's the name of the game?

Euphemism

Oooh... tough one.

FDR for sure. Not only for his wartime leadership, but primarily for firmly establishing the idea that we could be a capitalist country without being Social Darwinists.

Wilson, probably. Even though he was a fairly weak President at home, he established the international system that is with us to this day.

Next in order of historic importance would probably be Reagan. You can agree or disagree with his policies (I would disagree with a substantial portion of them), but he completely changed how we talk about government and the economy.

Those aren't necessarily the Presidents I think were most rhetorically inspiring, or whose policies I most agree with. But they are the ones who were most effective at creating lasting change based on their visions.

JeffT

TR was what we need know. Progressive leadership domestically and willing to beat the snot out of anybody abroad that crossed us. Notice that we didn't have much in the way of wars under his watch.

FDR, have to love the man that got us through the Great Depression and a World War.

Reagan, built the economy and ended the cold war.

Honorable mention: Harry Truman, the man said what he meant and meant what he said. (Funny story, most likely not true, but certainly fits what we know about the man. Shortly after he became president a reporter asked Truman what he'd been doing on the previous Sunday afternoon and the reply was "spreading manure in the rose garden." Elanor Roosevelt called Bess Truman and told her the President of the United States couldn't be that crude, "make him call it 'fertilizer.' To which Bess replied "It's taken me thiry years to get him to call it manure.")

I'm sorry Wilson was clueless. Read "Paris 1919" by Margaret MacMillan. We're still paying for the screw ups in the Treaty of Versailles.

Euphemism

Jeff... I'm not necessarily endorsing Wilson's views. (Although I guess I should have made that clearer.) There's much to be criticized about the idea of the ethno-linguistic nation/state as the fundamental unit of international relations. (Not to mention, of course, the glaring failure of Versailles to keep the European peace.)

My point was just about historical impact... for good or for bad, Wilson's work is very much still with us today.

roybatty

I thought FDR would receive the most votes. Second question, which president deserves/deserved moreso to be impeached, FDR or George W. Bush?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630390/posts

Even by the Bush-basher standards, has he done anything as unlawful as what the great FDR did?

US Presidents

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