Sanders, LBJ, JFK, Ike, FDR, and Teddy Roosevelt -- rank them from most Socialist to least Socialist [View all]

[Attorney in Texas]

My ranking (with 1 being the most Socialist):

1. FDR
2. LBJ
3. Teddy Roosevelt
4. Ike
5. JFK
6. Sanders

Here's why I rank them in this order:

1. FDR

FDR successfully campaigned for president in 1932 on offering Americans a “New Deal,” which included

* the Works Projects Administration, a job creation and infrastructure rebuilding program or urban and rural renewal
* Tennessee Valley Authority, a job creation and infrastructure rebuilding and clean energy generation program
* the Civilian Conservation Corps, a job creation program dedicated to the environment
* the Civic Works Administration, a job creation and infrastructure rebuilding program with additional civic works goals
* labor reforms to promote minimum wages, maximum hours, and price controls
* mortgage reform and relief
* farm aid and subsidies
* federal relief to crashing state and municipal governments
* shutting down all banks and re-opening them under new regulations
* Securities Exchange Commission to regulate Wall Street well beyond all prior regulations
* Glass-Stegall Banking Act to break up and regulate the banking industry and to insure depositors

During his first term, FDR followed up the New Deal with the Social Security Act to provide support for the unemployed and retired funded by a new payroll tax, and the National Labor Relations Act to confirm rights of workers to unionize and bargain collectively and to strike when necessary.

In his 1936 re-election to the presidency, FDR ran with the endorsement of the the Social Democratic Federation. The keystone accomplishment of FDR's second term was the Fair Labor Standards Act, which created a minimum wage and set maximum work hours.

FDR's third and incomplete fourth term were mainly occupied by WWII and -- toward the end -- his failing health. Yet in 1941, FDR passed the Fair Employment Act by Executive Order at the request of the request of Philip Randolph, then the Socialist Party's chief advocate for African-American equal labor rights.

2. LBJ

I think of LBJ and the flip-side of the Jimmy Carter coin. Jimmy Carter may not have been one of our best presidents, but he was surely one of our best people who ever served as president. LBJ, by contrast, may or may not have been such a great person, but any flaws are more than redeemed when you consider how he accomplished so many unbelievably important and progressive goals as part of the "Great Society" and "War on Poverty" programs, which included

* Medicare
* Medicaid
* the Voting Rights Act
* the Civil Rights Act
* the National Endowment for the Humanities
* the National Endowment for the Arts
* the Public Broadcasting Act
* the Immigration and Nationality Act
* the Economic Opportunity Act creating the Office of Economic Opportunity to federally fund anti-poverty efforts
* Head Start program and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act
* VISTA
* the Job Corp
* the Legal Services Corp

No president other than FDR successfully passed so much legislation to use the government and society's collective resources to better promote the general welfare and equality and economic justice in our American society.

3. Teddy Roosevelt

I have previously posted about how Teddy Roosevelt dedicated his presidency to the pro-Socialist policies of curbing the power of large corporations, supporting the right of workers to unionize, passing strict and unprecedented regulations on the pharmaceutical and banking industries, and creating entirely new federal governmental agencies for the protection of the environment (including turning private acreage into public lands). I will not repeat that discussion here, but I will focus on his great post-presidency progressive advocacy.

TR formed the Progressive Party and ran as its first presidential candidate. The Progressive Party's 1912 platform convention and platform advocated

* expansion and aggressive enforcement of antitrust and anti-monopoly laws
* greater regulation of and federal oversight of businesses
* regulation of Wall Street securities trading
* an eight hour workday
* federal workers' compensation
* curbs on anti-union strike-busting
* regulation of lobbyists and reform of the business-government-lobbyist revolving door
* enhanced revenue generation through federal income taxation and estate taxation
* limiting the role of businesses in political campaigns
* greater governmental transparency with new requirements for open records and meetings
* direct election of Senators
* campaign finance reform
* a National Health Service
* Social insurance for the handicapped, the elderly, and the unemployed
* primary elections for federal office nominees
* voter rights to recall elected officials and judges
* voter rights to referendum elections
* voter rights to bring ballot initiatives
* minimum wage laws for female workers
* nationwide women's suffrage (long before the Republican or Democratic Parties supported that it)
* farm aid

4. Ike

Like FDR in his latter years, Dwight Eisenhower's full potential as an advocate of pro-Socialist domestic policy was abridged by his need to focus on foreign policy. While many Republican contemporaries loathed FDR and his New Deal, Ike's domestic policies left the New Deal largely in place notwithstanding great pressure from within his own party to dismantle the New Deal:

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history."

Under Ike, the top marginal tax rate was 91 percent. These taxes funded the construction of an almost unimaginably expansive public interstate highway system that was the envy of the entire world.

Ike also fought long and hard to direct capital from the bloated military to fund social programs:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people."

5. JFK

JFK comes in fifth because his work was tragically interrupted. I almost gave him an "incomplete," but LBJ carried out so much of what JFK started that JFK warrants some significant consideration. Much of LBJ's Great Society had its origins in JFK's "New Frontier," which included -- along with JFK's other legislative prioities

* expansion of the Fair Labor Standards Act and minimum wage laws
* expansion of Social Security
* an Executive Order protecting federal employees with collective bargaining rights
* the School Lunch Act and a precursor to the food stamp program
* Aid to Families with Dependent Children
* the Medical Health Bill for the Aged, a precursor Medicare
* the Equal Pay Act
* the Clean Air Act

6. Sanders

In the context of these great American presidents, what is it that Bernie Sanders is asking of America that has so many Republicans and other wealth-hoarders outraged?

Sanders will

* stop corporations from shifting their profits and jobs overseas to avoid paying U.S. income taxes
* create a progressive estate tax on the top 0.3 percent of Americans who inherit more than $3.5 million.
* tax Wall Street speculators
* gradually increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour
* create 14 million jobs or more by investing in infrastructure and youth jobs programs
* ensure that women are paid the same as what men earn for the same work
* provide free public college education
* enact a Medicare for all single-payer healthcare system
* enacti universal childcare and prekindergarten
* protect the right to unionize and bargain collectively
* break up monopolistic financial institutions

Is this platform really all that radical? These have been our American goals for a century now; goals supported by Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Ike as well as Democrats like FDR, JFK, and LBJ. Now is the time to fulfill our greatest American promises.