I have great respect for Teddy Roosevelt. Same with FDR.

Truman sucked, Eisenhower sucked, Kennedy was a great improvement and would have taken this country in a much healtheir and more peaceful direction.

Johnson sucked, Nixon sucked, Ford sucked, Carter sucked, Reagen sucked, Bush 1 sucked, Clinton got sucked, Bush 2 sucked, Obama yet to be determined.

Read a book.

Kennedy would have taken us in a more peaceful direction? Nonsense. He was a cold warrior who escalated our involvement in vietnam. Kennedy is waaaaaaay overrated. Truman was much better. I agree about tr and fdr.

obama won the Nobel peace prize for not doing anything haha; I am pretty sure he is cheating on his wife too

ya kennedy and the whole Bay of Pigs thing kinda stinks not to mention the fact fact he was f***ing M monroe
FDR stayed in office for 3.5 terms until his death, i think thats lame and the calling card of a power monger

Wait...are we criticizing kennedy for getting a taste of marilyn?

@careful_w_that_axe_Miller said:

obama won the Nobel peace prize for not doing anything haha; I am pretty sure he is cheating on his wife too

ya kennedy and the whole Bay of Pigs thing kinda stinks not to mention the fact fact he was f***ing M monroe
FDR stayed in office for 3.5 terms until his death, i think thats lame and the calling card of a power monger

You oughta lay off the drugs brother.

@me_no_are_no_nice_guy said:

@careful_w_that_axe_Miller said:

obama won the Nobel peace prize for not doing anything haha; I am pretty sure he is cheating on his wife too

ya kennedy and the whole Bay of Pigs thing kinda stinks not to mention the fact fact he was f***ing M monroe
FDR stayed in office for 3.5 terms until his death, i think thats lame and the calling card of a power monger

You oughta lay off the drugs brother.

i am 100% sober, so you are saying I should take more drugs? At tyhe least FDR was a liar. kennedy promised air support to rebels in cuba and didnt even bother to tell them he wouldnt provide it, they got slaughtered. as far as obama, did you see him lickin his lips while that black girl was singing at his inaugaration?

Oh uh a smell a thread closure coming...

@DuckofDeath said:

Kennedy would have taken us in a more peaceful direction? Nonsense. He was a cold warrior who escalated our involvement in vietnam. Kennedy is waaaaaaay overrated. Truman was much better. I agree about tr and fdr.

bobbob,

Would you please name an unnecessary conflict TR got us in?

shuuuut upppp and go watch foootball.

I was criticized for saying presidents disproportionately sucked in a thread very similar to this (favorite president?) On my mind was, of course, Tricky dick, LBJ, and others, but I also said Andrew Jackson, I mean Indian Removal? THAT will get you on the twenty dollar bill? Come on...

@BernardShakey said:

I was criticized for saying presidents disproportionately sucked in a thread very similar to this (favorite president?) On my mind was, of course, Tricky dick, LBJ, and others, but I also said Andrew Jackson, I mean Indian Removal? THAT will get you on the twenty dollar bill? Come on...

We've had a lot of bad presidents that did a lot of horrible things. And some of the best were stilll huge hypocrites. I just visited Thomas Jefferson at Monticello (spoiler, he's dead) and the guide pointed out that while it was Jefferson who penned the line "All men are created equal," he also had 200 slaves that he whipped occasionally to set an example to the other slaves.

@PeterJenningsLovedTheFish said:

bobbob,

Would you please name an unnecessary conflict TR got us in?

He took the Monroe Doctrine way too serious. He got us involved in multiple Latin American conflicts. He essentially occupied Haiti. He squashed a rebellion in the Philippines. He forced Congress to fund the Great White Fleet, and then sent it around the world even though congress had refused to pay for it.

I still think the dude is a complete badass, but he also did some f***ed up shit too.

and compromise is what Democracy is all about

also... wtf does virtuous mean. I didn't realize the quality of president relied on how moral excellence. Last time I checked American's tend to have differing morals.

WW1 led to the greatest American prosperity up until that time, in part, due to our remaining neutral for the majority of the war, and providing arms to both factions. However, by joining the war effort, it cemented our role as a major player in world affairs, which subsequently led to the emergence of Wilson's League of Nations that can only be regarded as a miserable failure.

I would think anyone with a working knowledge of both World Wars would attribute the rise of German fascism as a reactionary by-product to the hyperinflation endured by the Weimar Republic. Yes, that can be linked to Wilson's dictation of war reparations at the war's end. However, I dont think you can just shrug off WW1 as an unnecessary foray into global war-mongering - no matter how ridiculous the root of the conflict may seem from a historical context. World War 1 is easily the single most important event that happened during the 20th century, any major conflict can be linked back to it - whether it's the bolshevik revolution, WW2, Vietnam, the Cold War, the Balkan conflict, the plight of Kurdish people, or the palestinian conflict.

So yes, there is a substantial difference between Wilson and Roosevelt.

@Phireonthemountain said:

This thread is hilarious. i have problems with almost every single post.

FDR: Someone called him a power monger...you know he was dealing with the biggest war in history and the worst depression in history right? an unprecendented government takeover was certainly necessary and led to the greatest economic prosperity america has ever had for about 30 years (also if power monger makes you a bad president then we can cross of lincoln and roosevelt as good presidents [these two are widely considered the best ever]

Jefferson: Wrote in the declaration of independence about how he detested slavery yet the other two writers made him take it out...he was also virginian in the 18th century...find me a rich guy from that era and place that didnt endorse slavery (which jefferson was against despite his hypocritical owning of many slaves...I agree this is pretty messed up)

someone said TR was bad for getting us in unnecessary conflicts yet wilson was a great president...WWI? Why were we involved? Not to mention him destroying the international community when he decided to try and run the world after the war was over which almost every political scientist and historian attribute as one of the main reasons leading to WWII

Kennedy would've gone down in history as one of the worst presidents in history had he not been shot...he is responsible for escalating american efforts in vietnam

the question wasnt who the BEST president was, it was who is the most virtuous. The point in context was a comparison between Washington who relinquished power and FDR who lied about his health and retained power.

edit: i guess the question is who is the BEST presi dent. Huh
I think we need a universal definition of BEST

jimmy carter was a terrible president by all accounts, but was probably the most virtuous man to hold the office inl the past century

Teddy Roosevelt was NOT the man. He was a populist in many ways that did some good breaking down of monopolies, etc., but he was a racist psycho - as were most politicians of the time including Taft. Seriously, read about him. He was all about eugenics and other weird Arayan supremacy stuff. Also true about him being an imperial exploitative weirdo abroad. Just because he rode a horse and talked smack doesn't mean he was a good president.

Besides FDR, who managed the world on fire and left America on top, Truman is probably the best. We could have easily gone right from war with Germany to conflict with China and Russia, but he avoided it by scaring the crap out of them with the a-bomb. Sorry, but sometimes you have to out flank the nutjobs to keep them in line. Nice job Harry.

Clinton was a little overrated and got lucky as hell with the internet, but he did not screw it up.

@JTodd said:

Wondering why Truman sucked?

He lost to Dewey, for starters.

Seriously though, Wallace should have been president, he was a peaceful man. Truman was an overwhelmingly insecure little man who competely escalated the cold war, and wanted nothing more than to strike fear into the hearts of the Russians and people throughout the world. He wanetd everyone to fear us. He dropped 2 bombs that killed 250,000 thousand (innocent) people days or weeks before the Japanese would have surrendered. They have 5 total submarines left in their fleet by that point. They were decimated.

Truman was an absolute and complete piece of shit. The untold history of the United States by Oliver Stone (despite his clear liberal bias) has a lot of interesting incite into Trumans presidency. Should be part 2 or 3.

@Phireonthemountain said:

Cemented our status as a major player in the world? You mean how we reverted to becoming completely isolationist and not even being a part of the league of nations we tried to set up? It wasn't just the fact that we levied war reparations on germany, but we left the world in shambles so that nobody could fight a rising hitler...we didnt build institutions that could combat the rising powers of Japan and Hitler (unlike FDR's administration and Truman's who are responsible for NATO, the UN, world bank, GATT, etc)...Wilson was a miserable failure in foreign policy and yes there was absolutely no reason for us to get in WWI if we were just gonna F it up right after. The conflict was solely european and had nothing to do with us except for the fact that Wilson was a liberal idealist who wanted to make the world a democracy and thus got us involved in the war by propaganda at the sinking of the lusitania.

"WW1 led to the greatest American prosperity up until that time, in part, due to our remaining neutral for the majority of the war, and providing arms to both factions." If you call 10 years of growth that was way too large and then the worst depression in history (also a major cause of WWII) good american prosperity then I really just don't know what your saying. There was nothing to stop the insane growth...again not like FDR's administration who put in place many stops (the rise of unions, large levels of taxation, regulation of stock markets, etc).

Yes, I agree that Wilson was a poor statesman in regards to foreign policy. I was merely making the argument that Wilson and Roosevelt had very different motivations. It's true we never joined the League of Nations, but so what? We never ratified the Treaty of Versailles. Does that mean the war was still going on? It's a moot argument. We still had been thrust to the forefront of the international stage. Hitler privately claimed to be worried about bringing the U.S. into the war because of the outcome of our involvement in WW1.

Truman didnt leave Europe in shambles after WW2? The same Truman who split Germany into 4 different sectors?The same Truman who split Berlin between east and west? The same Truman who allowed the soviets to keep most of Eastern Europe? FDR and Truman might of been able to develop the UN and Nato, but based off of Wilson's model. Wilson was navigating uncharted waters. That level of destruction was unprecedented, so the reconstruction process is obviously going to have some f*** ups. FDR and Truman were able to build off of Wilson's failures by benefit of coming second.

Also the catalyst for joining the war effort was the Zimmerman Note, not the Lusitania like most 4th grade history books would lead one to believe. And I said ww1 played a part in the prosperity - not the direct cause. I think it's overly caviler and presumptuous of you to place the depression on Wilson's hands. How exactly did you expect Wilson to predict the largest depression in history without having a precedent for one? Again, FDR was working retroactively.

@Sanudila said:

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/i-dont-always-get-shot-during-the-middle-of-a-speech.jpg

BRAVO!

Truman initiated the marshall plan, desegregated the armed forces and prevented wwiii by showing restraint on china. Considering that he had tocleanup fdr's .mess, he did all right.

@IntoYesterday said:

@JTodd said:

Wondering why Truman sucked?

He lost to Dewey, for starters.

Seriously though, Wallace should have been president, he was a peaceful man. Truman was an overwhelmingly insecure little man who competely escalated the cold war, and wanted nothing more than to strike fear into the hearts of the Russians and people throughout the world. He wanetd everyone to fear us. He dropped 2 bombs that killed 250,000 thousand (innocent) people days or weeks before the Japanese would have surrendered. They have 5 total submarines left in their fleet by that point. They were decimated.

Truman was an absolute and complete piece of shit. The untold history of the United States by Oliver Stone (despite his clear liberal bias) has a lot of interesting incite into Trumans presidency. Should be part 2 or 3.

I like Truman a lot. His daughter was a great singer, too. And fwiw, I've never seen convincing evidence that they were that close to surrendering; obviously you have...maybe I'll have to check out Oliver Stone's deal (despite his liberal bias...wasn't Truman a liberal, though? Oh well).