How would you rank the last 12 US Presidents in order of best to worse?

[WI_DEM]

They are:
FDR 1933-1945
Truman 1945-1953
Ike 1953-1961
JFK 1961-1963
LBJ 1963-1969
Nixon 1969-1974
Ford 1974-1977
Carter 1977-1981
Reagan 1981-1989
Bush I 1989-1993
Clinton 1993-2001
Bush II 2001-?

Here is how I would rank them (from best to worse)
FDR
Truman
LBJ
Carter
Ike
Clinton
JFK
Ford
Nixon
Bush I
Reagan
Bush II

[bikesein]

1. Ranking

FDR
LBJ
Truman
Clinton
Carter
JFK
Ford
Ike
Bush I
Reagan
Nixon
Bush II

[liberaldemocrat7]

40. My Presidential greatness list.

Washington 95
Lincoln 95

FDR 90
Truman 85
JFK 79
LBJ 75
Clinton 72
Carter 67
Ike 50
Ford 50
Nixon 20
Hoover 15
Bush I 15
Reagan 10
Bush II 10


I included a rating value from 0 to 100 as for the magnitude of greatness / failure.

I do like and admire Dwight Eisenhower as one of the greatest generals in United States History BUT his caretaker role as President I gave a 50, just as I gave Ford a 50 for his caretaker role as President. Hoover, Reagan, the Bushes and Nixon belong in the low end of the scale for their performance.

[WiseButAngrySara]

44. You give Bush II a 10!!! (a minus 100 would be my score for

him...or the equivalent of a universal black hole!)

[liberaldemocrat7]

49. I graded on a scale from 0 to 100 so yes I gave the riff raff low ratings

based on the scale.

[WiseButAngrySara]

52. Could we settle for a 1? LOL! ....n/t

[terrya]

2. Your list is almost like mine.

I would place LBJ before Truman, though. In spite of Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson has a good place in history because of his work in Civil Rights.

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. FDR, Truman, Clinton, Ike, Carter, JFK, LBJ, Ford, GHWB, Nixon, Reagan, GWB. n/t

[ProfessorGAC]

6. Pretty Close To Mine

I think i'd bump JFK above Carter, if only for the fact that he was an inspirational speaker. Probably not as good a man, but a far better speaker. And his ability to convince the people we "needed" to go to the moon changed the world.
The Professor

[indepat]

14. Like your list: almost all of us clearly see the worst four, the last four 'pukes

[Warpy]

4. I would bump Truman down below Clinton

for several reasons. First, he OK'd dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki instead of military targets because the generals wanted to see what would happen to an intact city. Second, he signed the NSA into existence, helping create a shadow government that has poisoned foreign policy for decades and which should have been disbanded after the USSR fell, but wasn't. Third, he created the CIA without the oversight it should have had but with the capacity to form its own quasi military. Fourth, he began the buildup of a massive peacetime army with a peacetime draft to support it. Fifth, he backed the French in Indochina, thereby ensuring we'd get sucked into Vietnam when they left. Sixth, he got us involved in Korea instead of letting the people slug it out. The separation of the two Koreas is something that will undoubtedly come back to give us a very big bite.

Other than that, he was just peachy. He certainly wasn't anywhere near FDR in stature or stewardship of the country.

[Zynx]

27. You tell me that South Korea would have been better off had we not

been there with a straight face. I dare you. The Stalinist regime in the North was always aiming to unite the country through the force of Soviet supplied arms. Their goals were expansionary. Today South Korea is much better off that we intervened. This is one of the few examples of Cold War intervention that was positive. Just because most of our interventions during the Cold War sucked doesn't mean that all of them did. For example, Greece would not have been in better hands under the control of Stalinist guerillas.

[Warpy]

29. I didn't say the people of South Korea would be better off

I did say accepting the division of that country is going to bite us. Hard.

[Zynx]

34. What exactly was the alternative?

[Toots]

37. Would you say the same about Vietnam?

I don't really agree with your logic. I believe Korea would be bettr off united. Of course that all depends upon one's definition of better off. Some base that upon wealth others upon contentment and happiness. Believe it or not there are some poor countries I might consider better off than America...

[Marr]

5. You know, I think presidents are mostly just reflections of the

political landscape of their day. The individuals hardly seem to matter- they change the moment they're sworn in, if that's what the dominant power centers of the moment demand. That might be business or it might be the populace (very occasionally). I have trouble crediting most politicians with anything.

Even Bush- a far right ideologue- is simply a reflection of a political movement. It's a top-down movement, and it's real adherents are mostly very wealthy, very powerful people, but it's a movement nonetheless. And it was the dominant movement for a time.

Anyway, I don't know how I'd rank the presidents, but I'd put Nixon and Bush at the bottom out of sheer criminality.

[Smarmie Doofus]

7. Your's is good. I'd drop Truman about three slots....

... for exacerbating the cold war and JFK and Johnson about two slots each for VN and related cold war adventurism.

[kentuck]

8. Here is how I would rank them:

FDR
LBJ
JFK
Carter
Clinton
Ike
Truman
Nixon
Bush I
Ford
Reagan
Bush II

[KansDem]

9. My list...

FDR
Truman
Clinton
Ike
Carter
JFK
LBJ
Ford
Nixon
GHWB
Reagan










GWB

[WiseButAngrySara]

46. LOL! Looks like mine.... a negative score for gw. ....n/t

[Uncle Joe]

10. My only difference with you is, I have switched Bushes

If Bush 1 had done his patriotic duty and had him self neutered, we wouldn't have Bush 2

[AlGore-08.com]

11. Just curious. Why do you have Clinton ranked above Kennedy?

In every ranking of U.S. Presidents I've seen by historians, Kennedy is usually ranked somewhere around 12, and Clinton is ranked somewhere around 20. What's the reason for your ranking?

[WI_DEM]

13. Well just because Clinton had more time in the WH and more of a record

both were very inspiring speakers and political leaders. With all due respect to JFK I feel Clinton had more accomplishments on the legislative level. I also feel that JFK for the first two years of his presidency did little except give lip service to civil rights.

[Burma Jones]

12. Here you are

FDR
Clinton
Ike
Kennedy
Nixon
Truman
Ford
Carter
Bush I
Johnson
Reagan
Bush II



I thought Johnson was a scummy SOB with some Civil Rights Credibility, but he handled himself so poorly, he lost the south for the Dems and sent tens of thousands of us to die in a war with no goal and no justification. Yeah, I know, he didn't start that war, but he escalated the living hell out of it. There is more blood on Johnson's hands than on the Chimp's. Nixon really won the Cold War by letting some western goods trickle in and defining the Cold War in terms of quality of life. Reagan was just there for the denouement. Reagan's job was to establish the selling out of America's working class while making them feel good about it. But for sheer awfulness, nobody beats the Chimperor. Ike warned us against the Military Industrial Complex and extricated us out of Korea.

[SaveElmer]

15. My ranking...

FDR
Truman
LBJ
Clinton
JFK
Carter
Eisenhower
Ford
Bush I
Reagan
Nixon
Bush II

[gemdem]

16. Not a lot of greatness here...

It's hard to rank them from 1 to 12 (except for 1 and 12). There's a lot of mediocrity and flawed presidencies once you get past FDR. I grouped them (names are listed chronologically within the groups).

The biggest challenge is to set partisanship aside, look beyond the personalities (good and bad), balance the pluses and minuses of each presidency, and come up with something that passes for objectivity.

GREAT
Roosevelt

NEAR GREAT
None

ABOVE AVERAGE
Truman
Eisenhower
Johnson

AVERAGE
Kennedy
Reagan
Clinton

BELOW AVERAGE
Ford
Carter
Bush I

POOR
Nixon

WORST EVER
Bush II

[marmar]

17. Bush II is certainly the worst in terms of how he's managed things....

but in my opinion, Reagan doesn't get nearly as much scorn and blame as he deserves. A lot of the groundwork for this mess was laid on his watch.
I've only been alive since the '70s, but based on my reading of history, I'd certainly rank FDR (for the New Deal) and LBJ (for the Great Society) at the top. Many of the civil rights gains were made under LBJ. And I know there's a lot of reverence paid to Ike because of his stances on the military industrial complex, but he was no great champion of civil rights, and as an African American (or a member of any minority group), that's a huge deal.

[sandrakae]

18. Bush II is the worst

FDR
JFK
Clinton
Ike
Truman
Reagan
Carter
Ford
Bush I
LBJ
Nixon
Bush II

[madokie]

19. best to worst

Clinton
JFK
Carter
Truman
FDR
Ike
LBJ
Ford
Nixon
Reagan

Bush I

Bush II

In my idea black and white world, no grey, those would be four firsts and four lasts

[Mnemosyne]

20. FDR, JFK, Ike, Carter, Clinton, Ford, Nixon, LBJ, Poppy, Raygun, * and Truman.

FDR 1933-1945
JFK 1961-1963
Ike 1953-1961
Carter 1977-1981
Clinton 1993-2001
Ford 1974-1977
Nixon 1969-1974
LBJ 1963-1969
Bush I 1989-1993
Reagan 1981-1989
Bush II 2001-?
Truman 1945-1953 - last simply because he is the only man to have authorized the use of the atomic bomb on another nation. Unforgivable, imo.

[Zynx]

25. I fail to see the difference between Truman doing what he did and

FDR ordering the firebombing of German population centers for the explicit purpose of killing as many civilian workers in German war industries as possible.

[Mnemosyne]

32. The effects of a nuclear bomb can last over a million years; and while almost as heinous,

I don't believe the fire-bombing caused long-lasting biological and environmental damages.

[Zynx]

35. The effects of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not that long

lasting and in addition we did not understand the effects of radiation at that time. We were going to use them on the beaches and land our troops almost immediately afterwards. We had no idea.

In any case, 455,000 people call Nagasaki home today and over 1.1 million live in Hiroshima. They were not contaminated for all time.

[Mnemosyne]

36. Believe what you wish. n/t

[Zynx]

38. I choose to believe the truth.

Every word of what I just said was the truth, backed by facts, not historical conjecture.

[Mnemosyne]

54. I am not trying to insult you nor argue with you, Zynx. I just consider

the dropping of the atomic bombs on the Japanese as one of the most heinous crimes ever committed by any country in this world. No one can possibly know the extended long-term consequences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People are still getting cancers from it and there are genetic effects that can be passed on over generations.

I guess I am just not explaining it right. In the extended long-term no one can actually know until something happens. I understand what you are saying about the scientific studies, but since it had never happened before, there may be effects no one ever dreamed of even looking for yet.

This started because you did not like where I placed Truman on my list.

Sorry to piss you off, that was not my intention at all.

[natrat]

21. i like your list but put clinton way lower for what he left us with

[pitohui]

22. fdr, maybe clinton and carter (both good men fucked w. by assholes) then it gets tough

fdr, clinton, carter, not sure whether i would put lbj or jfk next, i simply can't put truman on such a list when he ordered the bombing of nagasaki and the others on the list just completely, totally suck as leaders and as human beings

well, ike was a good general, i'll give him that, but i don't think he had a clue of who was running the country

fdr was of course the greatest success among them

clinton and carter could have both done more with their great minds, hearts, and abilities if they weren't constantly being fucked w. and undermined and back-stabbed

the others have such huge flaws -- i don't think anyone can deny lbj's greatness as a leader and his attempt to bring his powerful skills to the problems of racism and poverty but then there's the ugly way vietnam was handled -- jfk seems more a man who inspired people without being around long enough to actually do what he could have done (but i suppose being gunned down in cold blood is the extreme example of being fucked with by the opponent)

considering the number of truly bad, venal, brain-dead, and pure-dee evil leaders we have had in the last few decades, i suppose it's a miracle we're here at all

i won't try to rank ford, nixon, the bushes, or reagan on the scale of who is more evil and who was more incompetent, where do you even begin? is being a victim of obvious alzheimer's syndrome and thus completely incompetent and allowing your wife's astrologer to run the place "better" or "worse" than deliberately invading another country to save your vice president's stock options? they're all god awful embarrassments to america and to the human race

[Zynx]

24. If you're going to fault Truman for Nagasaki, you must dock FDR

for approving of the firebombings and deliberate targeting of civilians in Germany and Japan during his oversight of the war as well. I do not see the difference between a nuclear strike and a large conventional strike when they are targeting civilians. I do not find fault with either man. I've read extensively on the decision making of both men and the honestly believed what they were doing was the right thing to do and in truth WWII was conducted about as well as one could possibly expect from our side.

[pitohui]

26. i suppose that's a reasonable argument

but fdr's overall achievement is so outstanding that it dwarfs the others in my view

i don't fault truman for hiroshima or fdr for these fire-bombings because, honestly, i don't know enough about military strategy to say if they were needed or not -- germany was deliberately targetting civilians in london also, so there were these acts of terror aga. civilians on both sides

i don't see the reason for nagasaki, just to field test a second and different model of the bomb, yeah yeah fog of war and all that but i think a few more days could have been managed for the japanese to understand the full extent of hiroshima and give them a chance to surrender at that point

that is my reasoning, it may be faulty tho because as i say military issues are not my main area of interest or reading

[Zynx]

28. Japan deliberately targeted civilians in China by the millions.

Japan's atrocities rival Germany's so if you can justify bombing Germany for the reason they were shitbags, you can definitely do the same with Japan. The Japanese regime in WWII was irredeemably evil.

Nagasaki was done kind of rapidly and in truth we should have waited, but I am not going to hold up that carnage to a more critical light than any of the conventional firebombings and that destruction. Between Japan and Germany we killed 4-5 million people through targetting of civilian areas. I am not going to say Nagasaki was worse than what we did in Tokyo or Dresden or Hamburg. We did what we did in WWII because we were trying to end the worst conflict in human history as quickly as possible. Our intentions were not malicious, but were calculated to end the war as soon as was humanly possible. Were mistakes made? Did more people die than had to? Yes. I dare say another three months of firebombing would have killed more people than the atomic bombs did, but I digress. It was a very different time than today and I firmly believe we did the best we could.

[pitohui]

42. i can't really argue with that

your thoughts on the topic seem well informed and well reasoned and based on more knowledge than mine

[Zynx]

23. FDR, Truman, Ike, Clinton, LBJ, JFK, Ford, Carter, Bush I, Reagan, Nixon, Bush II

[etherealtruth]

30. Though, I adore Jimmy Carter ...

and would probably vote him the best person ...

FDR
Truman
LBJ
Ike
JFK
Clinton
Carter (very prescient)
Ford
Bush I
Nixon (though a paranoid delusional little man)
Reagan
Bush II

[rolleitreks]

31. Mine:

FDR
Truman
LBJ
Ike
JFK
Ford
Clinton
Carter
Reagan
Bush I
Nixon
Bush II

[leftofthedial]

33. FDR

Clinton (grudgingly)
Carter (most underrated in modern times)
Truman
JFK
LBJ
Ike
Ford
Nixon
Raygun
Bush I
Bush II

Nixon, Raygun and Bush I are a virtual dead heat. Junior W-A-Y below them in worst slot.

[jmowreader]

39. Eisenhower first

Eisenhower because he warned us about the military-industrial complex.

Seriously, guys, take slips of paper, write the names of Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Ford, Carter and Clinton on them, throw them in a bag, mix and draw. They're all about the same--flawed but essentially decent men who did good and bad in their terms in office.

Those are your top seven. Now let's talk shit about the other five.

The cream of the scumbag crop is, without question, Richard Nixon. If Nixon would have been born thirty years later than he was, he'd never have been president. He wouldn't have a party. The Democrats wouldn't accept him because he's a criminal, the Republicans because he's too liberal. Oh yeah...Nixon was also a War Veteran--a World War II Naval supply officer--and you know how well that goes over in today's all-chickenhawk GOP.

Johnson comes next because of the way he escalated the Vietnam War.

Then comes George Herbert Walker Bush. It is safe to say that if Mrs. Bush would have had a headache the entire month of October 1945 (Shrub was born in July 1946), we might be facing a very different reality. But other than that...he was such a lousy DCI that Jimmy Carter fired him, he armed Saddam, he armed Osama bin Laden, he set the Kuwaitis up with the Halliburton slant drill they used to tap the al-Rumaila oil field, he gave Saddam written permission to congratulate the Kuwaiti National Petroleum Company on their purchase of a slant-drill...it's safe to say that the only decent thing he did in his life was to throw the 1992 election. And then he decided to invade Somalia as a housewarming gift for President Clinton.

I'm going to be a contrarian and list our current nightmare as number eleven, not number twelve. Bush is definitely the most corrupt president we've ever had to deal with. The current US body count, which we don't actually know because the "number of reasons the DSM is important" list doesn't include guys who died after they left the battlefield, is lower than the Vietnam totals, but it's rising faster than the Vietnam numbers did and this war is still going on. Worse, Bush actually started this war--we entered the Vietnam War during active hostilities, but initiated hostilities in Iraq. And Bush has turned into a tinhorn dictator. Still, Bush doesn't gain the coveted twelfth spot...

and that's because we still have Ronald Reagan to kick around. By turning "tax" into a dirty word, by making "I'm going to cut your taxes" an acceptable reason to vote for someone who's already proven he can't lead (y'know, like Bush did in Texas), Reagan is, was and will always be the worst president in the history of the republic. The fact that he was a worthless criminal of a president who surrounded himself with men who make Charles Manson look law-abiding is just a bonus.

[natrat]

41. at first i thought maybe chimp the worst but reagan might be

he is the bastard who said global warming/ solar power/alternative energy needed "more research" and the problems that this line of thinking has and will produce make wars and pestilence seem like childs play. Indeed the reagan revolution was the main streaming of the dumbing down of america. Chimp just a garden variety crook that people now recognize as such . Friggin reagan was a god to alot of people.

[pitohui]

43. did ike warn us or did his speechwriter warn us?

i think gore vidal told the story that eisenhower often did not know what he was going to say until he read it in front of the crowd or news media

it's said that when he announced our invasion of korea that he stopped in mid-stream and then blurted out, "did i just say that?"

hmmm

i wonder where i could research this rumor

[jmowreader]

47. Either way, samey-same, GI

Let's fast-forward a few years. Do you think Shrub's speechwriters would have written a script that called for him to warn the world about the menace of militarization? Not at all. The Bush boy is definitely the property of the defense, frankenfood, pharmaceutical and oil industries.

Someone upthread pointed out that South Korea was one of the few good things to come out of the Cold War. They're absolutely right. If we wouldn't have entered South Korea and forced Kim Il Sung to agree to the armistice, the entire Korean peninsula would have turned out just like North Korea has. This I know because that paranoid fucker would have convinced his people that the US was going to invade any second now so they would have to starve AGAIN this winter to help beef up the defenses along the Korean coastline.

[rexcat]

51. Ike's administration toppled more than a few democratic governments...

while placing dictators in their place. Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Lebanon 1957-1958, to name a few thanks to the Dulles brothers (one was SOS and the other was head of the CIA). He did not support democracies worldwide, in fact he supported dictatorships that came to bite the US in the rear later on. Can you say Iran 1979! Because of his Middle Eastern policies Islamic fundmentalism got its foothold in the Middle East! We are paying a terrible price for his policies. Of course the British didn't help the situation dating back to 1921 (to the present) when they drew the map for the Middle East with the help of Wilson and the League of Nations following WWI.

[JohnLocke]

45. FDR, JFK, Truman, Clinton, Ike, LBJ, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Bush I, Reagan, Bush II (nt)

[WiseButAngrySara]

48. Fascinating to read all of the comments... How do you suppose

the Freepers would rank? How about a moderate Republican?

[stevietheman]

50. My ranking

Note: If I were ranking based on post-Presidency, Carter would be somewhat higher. I think Reagan ran a better presidency than Carter, but Carter has done great service to the nation since his term.

Also, I ranked LBJ low because of Vietnam, despite his other accomplishments.

FDR
Truman
Ike
Clinton
JFK
Reagan
Carter
Bush I
Ford
LBJ
Nixon
Bush II

[SteveG]

53. my choices

FDR
Truman
Clinton
Ike
JFK
Ford
Carter
Bush I
Reagan
LBJ
Nixon
Bush II

I have to rank LBJ just slightly lower than Reagan for one big reason- Vietnam. Yes he did much for Civil Rights - but for me all that good is negated by Vietnam and the harm it did to the national fabric. I think that it was LBJ who set in motion the events that have lead to Bush II.

[atre]

55. my ranking

Roosevelt
Truman
Eisenhower
Johnson
Clinton
Kennedy
Nixon
Carter
Reagan
Bush I
Ford
Bush II

[k_jerome]

56. ...

LBJ
FDR
JFK
Clinton
Truman
Ford
Ike
Carter
Reagan
Bush I
Nixon
Bush II

[in_cog_ni_to]

57. list:

FDR
JFK
Clinton
LBJ
Truman
Ike
Carter
Ford
Nixon
Bush I
Reagan
Bush II

[Johnny Appleseed]

58. clinton

[Initech]

59. Here's my ranking:

FDR
Truman
JFK
Carter
Ike
Clinton
Ford
Nixon
Bush I
Reagan
Bush II