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Pick the Best President in last 50 years and rank them all

Who is the best president in the last 50 years (poll) & rank them all in a post

  • Total voters
    63
AGENT J

AGENT J

"If you ain't first, you're last"
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Going off the "Profile statistic links" the majority of posters fall here:

Ages 24-30 23.28%
Ages 30-40 31.63%
Ages 40-50 16.58%

Who is the best president in the last 50 years (poll) and rank them all in a post after.

Barack Obama
George W Bush
Bill Clinton
George H.W. Bush
Ronald Reagan
Jimmy Carter
Gerald Ford
Richard Nixon
Lyndon B Johnson
 
Best to Worst:
------------------
Ford
Reagan
Old Man Bush
Nixon
Clinton
Johnson
Obama
Carter
Bush the Younger
 
AGENT J said:
Going off the "Profile statistic links" the majority of posters fall here:

Ages 24-30 23.28%
Ages 30-40 31.63%
-----------------
snip
Click to expand...
Are you going to play your own game?
 
GWB
Reagan
Clinton
GHWB
Ford
Carter
Obama
Johnson
Nixon
 
  • Obama
  • Reagan
  • Carter
  • Ford
  • Johnson
  • Clinton
  • Nixon
  • Bush I
  • Bush II
 
Reagan..........inspired people
Clinton.......... worked with congress
No.41........... so so
Ford.............helped mend fences
No.43...........a dupe
Obama.........uninspiring....toss up with no.43
Carter..........Do nothing
Nixon......... looney tunes
Johnson.......a racist azz
 
Wanna play a game? Just look at the poster's picks and without checking their lean, guess what their lean is. Betcha you can get it right at least 85% of the time.
 
Abbazorkzog said:
Where do you rank them?
Click to expand...

1) Clinton
2) Ford
3) LBJ
4) Reagan
5) Bush I
6) Nixon
7) Carter

I would not rank Obama or Bush II. It generally takes 10 years to truly assess a President's tenure.
 
CaptainCourtesy said:
1) Clinton
2) Ford
3) LBJ
4) Reagan
5) Bush I
6) Nixon
7) Carter

I would not rank Obama or Bush II. It generally takes 10 years to truly assess a President's tenure.
Click to expand...

Are you going by 'best President' as in how well they performed/amount of good policies as opposed to adverse policies, or how well and upstanding their integrity as an individual is/was?
 
Abbazorkzog said:
Are you going by 'best President' as in how well they performed/amount of good policies as opposed to adverse policies, or how well and upstanding their integrity as an individual is/was?
Click to expand...

How well they performed and how well they performed based on things that I find important.
 
AGENT J said:
Going off the "Profile statistic links" the majority of posters fall here:

Ages 24-30 23.28%
Ages 30-40 31.63%
Ages 40-50 16.58%

Who is the best president in the last 50 years (poll) and rank them all in a post after.

Barack Obama
George W Bush
Bill Clinton
George H.W. Bush
Ronald Reagan
Jimmy Carter
Gerald Ford
Richard Nixon
Lyndon B Johnson
Click to expand...
Wild Bill.
 
AGENT J said:
Going off the "Profile statistic links" the majority of posters fall here:

Ages 24-30 23.28%
Ages 30-40 31.63%
Ages 40-50 16.58%

Who is the best president in the last 50 years (poll) and rank them all in a post after.

Barack Obama
George W Bush
Bill Clinton
George H.W. Bush
Ronald Reagan
Jimmy Carter
Gerald Ford
Richard Nixon
Lyndon B Johnson
Click to expand...
Best to Worst.

Reagan
Clinton
Obama
Bush H.W.
Nixon
Bush Jr
Ford
Carter
Johnson

Lived through all of them.
 
CaptainCourtesy said:
How well they performed and how well they performed based on things that I find important.
Click to expand...

Do you think it is important that the 1994 Crime Bill - despite only having a modest effect - resulted in an exacerbation of race-based mass-incarceration, with even Bill Clinton himself admitting that? He later contradicted himself on the campaign trail in 2016.

President Bill Clinton doubled down on his 1994 Crime Bill, pulling back from his recent apology for his role in the over incarceration of young African Americans. Instead, today he labeled these youth in similar fashion to his wife’s description 20 years ago, as a type of predator that leads to people being “hopped up on crack.” Mass incarceration has largely been the type of stain on the Clinton legacy with Black Americans that doesn’t wash out with words. Clinton’s bill has left in its wake a trail of devastated African American families cut off from loved ones that have served sentences for nonviolent drug offenses that were decades too long. For former President Bill Clinton to now insinuate that Black Lives Matter protestors are defending murderers and gang leaders, is offensive to a people that have been through so much due to his legislative actions. Yet, here we stand in 2016 hearing the same rhetoric espoused to create the Crime Bill, now being used to justify its abhorrent results. Where as in 1996 Hillary Clinton called young blacks super predators, that is now replaced with Bill Clinton saying, "I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out into the street to murder other African American children — maybe you thought they were good citizens."
Click to expand...

This super predator myth that was debunked long ago is now revived by President Bill Clinton in 2016, recycling the same racial stereotypes. Bill Clinton’s attempt to blame African American politicians for the Crime Bill he championed to prove he could be tougher on crime than the Republicans as part of his New Democrat strategy is historically inaccurate. President Clinton, this is your legacy; own it as you do the economic gains Hillary Clinton has touted throughout her campaign. While African American politicians facing communities devastated by the results of Reganomics and the crack epidemic were desperate to deal with violent crime leading to their support of many tough-on-crime measures. They did not foresee the results of your policies, being that large parts of their communities would be placed in prison, and stripped of welfare.
Click to expand...

2016-04-08-1460077774-1774733-Chart2.jpg


Continued in next post...
 
Abbazorkzog said:
Do you think it is important that the 1994 Crime Bill - despite only having a modest effect - resulted in an exacerbation of race-based mass-incarceration, with even Bill Clinton himself admitting that? He later contradicted himself on the campaign trail in 2016.





2016-04-08-1460077774-1774733-Chart2.jpg


Continued in next post...
Click to expand...

Bill Clinton and the 1994 Crime Bill

But that doesn’t mean it didn’t have any effect. Experts told us the law exacerbated the trend. And so Clinton’s defense that “90 percent of the people in prison too long are in state prisons and local jails,” rather than federal prisons, is a bit misleading. It suggests the law only affected federal prisons, and that’s not accurate.

The bill included a federal “three-strikes” provision which required mandatory life imprisonment without possibility of parole for those who commit federal violent felonies if they had two or more previous convictions for violent felonies or drug trafficking crimes. In his mea culpa in August, Clinton said that while most people are in prison under state law, “the federal law set a trend.”

The bill also had a more direct impact on state prison populations. It included $8.7 billion for prison construction to states that passed “truth-in-sentencing” laws requiring that people convicted of violent crimes serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. The New York Times at the time noted that those convicted of violent crimes served “55 percent of their sentences,” citing Justice Department data.[/indent]
Click to expand...

Additionally, he and Hillary Clinton were quite ruthless in the way they dominated Washington during the presidency, to almost frightening levels of such.

Hillary Clinton’s History as First Lady: Powerful, but Not Always Deft


It is for these reasons I don't agree that Bill Clinton was the best President we've had in the past 50 years.
 
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Abbazorkzog said:
Bill Clinton and the 1994 Crime Bill



Additionally, he and Hillary Clinton were quite ruthless in the way they dominated Washington during the presidency, to almost frightening levels of such.

Hillary Clinton’s History as First Lady: Powerful, but Not Always Deft


It is for these reasons I don't agree that Bill Clinton was the best President we've had in the past 50 years.
Click to expand...

For me, all the good that Clinton did, the economy, social programs, gay rights (even with DOMA) was enough to put him at the top of the list.
 
Clinton
Reagan
LBJ
Nixon
Obama
Bush Sr.
Carter
Ford
George W. Bush.

This is a ranking based on how well they performed and the positive impacts of the polices they advanced, not the decency of the men. If I were ranking them based upon the most decent presidents, I would have put Carter and Ford at the top of the list.
 
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SouthernDemocrat said:
Clinton
Reagan
LBJ
Nixon
Obama
Bush Sr.
Carter
Ford
George W. Bush.

This is a ranking based on how well they performed and the positive impacts of the polices they advanced, not the decency of the men. If I were ranking them based upon the most decent presidents, I would have put Carter and Ford at the top of the list.
Click to expand...

I'd have to agree with that order. Clinton is the best, with Reagan right on his heels. I think what keeps Reagan at #2 is the fact that Iran-Contra was a far worse scandal than Monica. But, both did a fine job leading the country. Clinton maybe unified people more effectively (not counting the crazy RW, who really are insatiable in their hate for anything Left of Center) while Reagan seemed to do a poor job of bringing minorities along and completely screwed up the AIDS thing.

LBJ and Nixon ahead of Obama seems fair. LBJ faced some really difficult circumstances, in that the assassination, the Vietnam War, and the civil rights problems were far worse than the Great Recession Obama had to deal with. Nixon had his issues, certainly Watergate cannot be ignored, but all in all, he did a really decent job with what all that he had to cope with: the War, Russia, China, etc.

Senior ahead of Carter? Of course. No question. Junior behind Ford. Yep.
 
Best to worst:

Reagan (inspiration)
Clinton (for working across the aisle)
Nixon (for China)
Obama
Bush 41
Ford
Bush 43
LBJ
Carter
 
calamity said:
I'd have to agree with that order. Clinton is the best, with Reagan right on his heels. I think what keeps Reagan at #2 is the fact that Iran-Contra was a far worse scandal than Monica. But, both did a fine job leading the country. Clinton maybe unified people more effectively (not counting the crazy RW, who really are insatiable in their hate for anything Left of Center) while Reagan seemed to do a poor job of bringing minorities along and completely screwed up the AIDS thing.

LBJ and Nixon ahead of Obama seems fair. LBJ faced some really difficult circumstances, in that the assassination, the Vietnam War, and the civil rights problems were far worse than the Great Recession Obama had to deal with. Nixon had his issues, certainly Watergate cannot be ignored, but all in all, he did a really decent job with what all that he had to cope with: the War, Russia, China, etc.

Senior ahead of Carter? Of course. No question. Junior behind Ford. Yep.
Click to expand...

LBJ was a hard call to rank that high given Vietnam, but most people don't realize how much we take for granted today was put there by LBJ. Civil Rights, Medicare, NPR, Federal Wilderness, The Clean Air Act, Wild and Scenic Rivers, Land and Water Conservation Fund, Consumer Protections..... The list goes on and on and on. He got more done in 4 years than any president has in American history.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
LBJ was a hard call to rank that high given Vietnam, but most people don't realize how much we take for granted today was put there by LBJ. Civil Rights, Medicare, NPR, Federal Wilderness, The Clean Air Act, Wild and Scenic Rivers, Land and Water Conservation Fund, Consumer Protections..... The list goes on and on and on. He got more done in 4 years than any president has in American history.
Click to expand...

Yep, his blemish was the VNW. But, even that was less his doing than coping with circumstance. However, it was enough to keep him from seeking a 2nd term, and that pushes him out of the top two spots.
 
AGENT J said:
Going off the "Profile statistic links" the majority of posters fall here:

Ages 24-30 23.28%
Ages 30-40 31.63%
Ages 40-50 16.58%

Who is the best president in the last 50 years (poll) and rank them all in a post after.

Barack Obama
George W Bush
Bill Clinton
George H.W. Bush
Ronald Reagan
Jimmy Carter
Gerald Ford
Richard Nixon
Lyndon B Johnson
Click to expand...

Bleh... pretty rotten bunch, honestly.

I think it's too soon for us to really know how Obama's presidency went. I have my guesses, but the reality is that it often takes a decade to see how things really wound up settling.

Bush 2 was terrible, obviously.

Clinton looks worse and worse the more we see the results of his policies (that 10 year thing I mentioned above).

H.W. Bush was forgettable-to-bad.

Reagan was awful.

Carter was bad.

Ford... eh. Can anyone even name anything he did?

Nixon... Um... Do I really need to explain this one?

Johnson, also crap.

So. Like, I don't know what to do here.

In my opinion, the last good president was Eisenhower.
 
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Reagan will win the poll as conservatives will flock to him.

On that list, the only ones who were actually successful Presidents were Reagan, Clinton & Obama. Nixon had great promise but his own demons did him in. Ford was not in long enough to show any record of success and will forever be haunted by the pardon of Nixon. Carter will forever be thought of as a failure because of Iran and the hostages. The Bushs - mediocre at best.
 
haymarket said:
Reagan will win the poll as conservatives will flock to him.

On that list, the only ones who were actually successful Presidents were Reagan, Clinton & Obama. Nixon had great promise but his own demons did him in. Ford was not in long enough to show any record of success and will forever be haunted by the pardon of Nixon. Carter will forever be thought of as a failure because of Iran and the hostages. The Bushs - mediocre at best.
Click to expand...

Bush Jr would probably slide down to the high thirties or lower forties if we listed all 45. He was that bad. I can think of only Buchanan and Franklin Pierce who are definitely worse. Maybe Grant and Hoover eclipse GWB in the ****ty president department. Jackson maybe too, if you are one to blame him for slaughtering Indians and ignoring the rule of law.
 
Nixon
Reagan
Ford
Bush I
Carter
LBJ
Clinton
Bush II (tie)
Obama (tie)
 
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