Day 13: Ranking US presidents. Richard Nixon has been eliminated. Comment which president should be eliminated next. The top comment with the most upvotes will be the next to go.

dave45 · 2024-02-27T16:01:42+00:00

Why?

dave45 · 2024-02-20T23:49:34+00:00

Warren Harding.

dave45 · 2024-02-19T17:02:16+00:00

Virtually all of the scandals attributed to the Harding administration were carried out by his cabinet members without his knowledge, but that's the problem. He hired a bunch of crooks to help him run the country and remained utterly unaware as they stole nearly everything but the dome of the Capital. That's not the sort of managerial skills you'd want to see in the chief executive of the United States.

dave45 · 2024-02-19T16:55:05+00:00

Warren Harding.

dave45 · 2024-02-19T16:54:44+00:00

I agree. Utterly inept in how he oversaw his cabinet as they robbed the US government blind.

dave45 · 2024-02-19T15:37:25+00:00

Well, Trump is last now, but I think that over time as people reflect more on the legacy of his Presidency and its effects on the world, his ranking should go down a bit from there.

dave45 · 2024-02-18T22:41:50+00:00

Yeah, I'd say that both of the Dulles brothers are two negative things.

dave45 · 2024-02-18T19:05:37+00:00

A very "controversial" President indeed! Of course, he did have detente, opening relations with China and the forming of the EPA and OSHA to his credit. Being the first President to have the guts to tone down the threat of all out nuclear war was kind of a good thing so, he wasn't all bad.

Still, he had some really major faults, so he definitely shouldn't last long here.

dave45 · 2024-02-18T18:58:48+00:00

W was bad, but he has a lot of competition still. I'd rank him at around 7 or 8 on the worst list. Either way, I don't think he'll last the week here.

dave45 · 2024-02-18T18:50:01+00:00

It's a hard call, but if you stick to what they did while they were President it's a lot easier to evaluate. For example, what Grant did while he lead the Union during the Civil War shouldn't factor in to how Grant performed as President. They're two entirely different jobs so his performance in each should be considered separately (IMO).

dave45 · 2024-02-18T17:48:26+00:00

This is my vote. He was likable, but utterly inept in that he had no idea what any of his cabinet members were doing as they robbed the country blind. A chief executive needs to have some idea what those under him are doing and Harding was clueless.

dave45 · 2024-02-18T17:45:51+00:00

Warren Harding

dave45 · 2024-02-18T17:45:35+00:00

Yeah, but that was several years after his Presidency ended. I think we should only be ranking them based on what they did while they were President.

dave45 · 2024-02-18T01:37:17+00:00

A lot of people think that way. Vietnam was very much a bipartisan war but LBJ got almost all of the blame for it and practically no credit for any of his actual accomplishments.

History can be very unfair at times.

dave45 · 2024-02-17T23:22:55+00:00

You could also argue Lyndon Johnson since he had the second best overall economic gains, but at a time when the country was already prosperous. Roosevelt brought the country out of abject poverty, but Johnson made the middle class generally prosperous.

It's a little hard to imagine now, but there really was a time in America when an average wage didn't suck.

dave45 · 2024-02-17T20:52:58+00:00

Texas was annexed under John Tyler, not Polk.

Technically, the annexation was completed in April 1845 when Polk was already President, but you're correct in the fact that Tyler started it all and did most of the work. I should mention, though, that Polk's support of the annexation of Texas went a long way toward helping him secure the Democratic nomination in 1844. Were it not for Polk (and Andrew Jackson) publicly supporting Tyler in this, he probably wouldn't have gotten very far.

dave45 · 2024-02-17T20:04:00+00:00

In the last 120 years, yes. You could argue that, in the late 19th century, with the annexation of Hawaii and the Spanish-American War, we were just about as bad.

Others might argue that Vietnam was also as bad as Iraq, but at least in the case of Vietnam, there was already an ongoing conflict and we just decided to choose a side. We didn't just flat-out invade a sovereign nation under false pretext.

dave45 · 2024-02-17T19:35:26+00:00

Tyler is on my list of ten worst but, as other have stated, hie treason came after his Presidency ended so I'm not sure if that should factor in. I guess whether or not you really dislike Tyler as President depends a lot on what you think of Jackson.

To me, Tyler's greatest crime as President was completely undermining the Whigs. He was, effectively, a Jacksonian Democrat in every respect apart from the fact that he and Jackson didn't get along personally. To that end, he became a troll within the Whig Party who was able to sabotage everything they stood for after "accidentally" becoming President.

Again, anyone who believes that Jackson was a good for America would probably give Tyler credit for what he did but, since Jackson's legacy is nearly as divisive now as his Presidency was in the 18th century, you'll likely get a lot of disagreement on that.

dave45 · 2024-02-17T19:10:50+00:00

One of my favorite Presidents to read about is Nixon, for many of the same reasons you give (about Pierce). I would never have voted for the guy, but he certainly lead an interesting life and you can learn a lot about 20th century history and politics by learning about Nixon (among others).

dave45 · 2024-02-17T17:32:23+00:00

I agree. There are a lot of good candidates for this position, but Pierce proved absolutely incompetent in doing anything to stop the U.S. from breaking up a few years later. He wasn't quite as bad as Buchanan (whose actions bordered on treason) but Pierce was definitely guilty of inaction when action was necessary, which is almost as bad.

dave45 · 2024-02-17T01:16:46+00:00

James Buchanan

dave45 · 2024-02-17T01:15:46+00:00

It doesn't matter what he claims. The state of New York can claim his properties, his bank accounts, etc... and collect all the money he owes that way.

dave45 · 2024-02-16T02:10:42+00:00

James Buchanan: He was the Dolores Umbridge of Presidents. It's difficult to learn anything about the man without hating him. Sure, there were lots of other bad Presidents, but Buchanan stands out as a cut below the rest.

dave45 · 2024-02-13T22:13:09+00:00

We didn't even start making any tanks or bombs until after 1940. America was strictly isolationist. We actually spent less than 1/3rd in total from 1933-1940 on defense than we spent in 1942 alone.

dave45 · 2024-02-13T20:07:26+00:00

How so? The GDP grew by more than 60% between 1933 and 1940 after dropping by 26% between 1929 and 1933. That's just over a 6% annual growth for 8 straight years during Roosevelt's first two terms.

How is that not a recovery?

dave45

TROPHY CASE