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Best US President

Who Was the Best US President?

  • Abraham Lincoln

    Votes: 15 19.0%

  • Franklin Roosevelt

    Votes: 20 25.3%

  • George Washington

    Votes: 9 11.4%

  • Thomas Jefferson

    Votes: 5 6.3%

  • Theodore Roosevelt

    Votes: 4 5.1%

  • Woodrow Wilson

    Votes: 1 1.3%

  • Andrew Jackson

    Votes: 2 2.5%

  • Harry Truman

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Lyndon Johnson

    Votes: 1 1.3%

  • Other (please list below)

    Votes: 22 27.8%
  • Total voters
    79
Why is Andrew Jackson on the short list. Isn't he the president responsible for the Indian Removal Project. The Cherokee Nations trail of tears in 1838/39. This founder of the Democratic Party was a ruthless genocidal killer. As a General
his first effort at Indian fighting was waging a war against the Creeks. President Jefferson had appointed him to appropriate Creek and Cherokee lands. In his brutal military campaigns against Indians, Andrew Jackson recommended that troops systematically kill Indian women and children after massacres in order to complete the extermination.
 
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SgtRock said:
Why is Andrew Jackson on the short list. Isn't he the president responsible for the Indian Removal Project. The Cherokee Nations trail of tears in 1838/39. This founder of the Democratic Party was a ruthless genocidal killer. As a General
his first effort at Indian fighting was waging a war against the Creeks. President Jefferson had appointed him to appropriate Creek and Cherokee lands. In his brutal military campaigns against Indians, Andrew Jackson recommended that troops systematically kill Indian women and children after massacres in order to complete the extermination.
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true and we can blame him for Lieyawatha's candidacy (dizzie Lizzie Warren)
 
I went with FDR, but it's a hard call. Really their is a tier that FDR, Lincoln and Washington are in where it is hard to rank them, but the three of them are clearly radically far above any of the others in terms of their historical importance. Without any of the three of them, we would not recognize the US. They are monumental titans of history and any of the three would be a very reasonable answer. Their presidencies are watersheds in US history. Our entire legal system, our ideas of the role of government, our economy, our constitution and our national security were all dominated by the actions of those three men for many decades and the marks they left were truly permanent.

In my view, LBJ and Reagan form a second tier. They each dramatically shifted the direction of the country. LBJ brought an end to segregation and rammed the civil rights act through Congress and established a number of the modern functions of government. Reagan invented the notion that we should hate and fear the poor and dote on the super rich, which still today is the reigning economic position in national policy. But, IMO, neither of them approaches the stature of FDR, Lincoln or Washington.
 
TurtleDude said:
FDR was not a failure if you supported massive mutations of the constitution, massive expansion of the federal government and rejection of over 100 years of precedent by the USSC. So FDR was certainly a "great president" to the left. For those of us who wanted the limited federal government the founders envisioned, FDR was the most malignant and pernicious president ever with Wilson and LBJ close seconds for the same reasons
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Without a doubt - I always like hearing other's arguments. You never know, he could say he was a failure because he suffered from Polio for all I know.
 
Isn't it strange that the President who founded the Democratic Party was a genocidal murderer of indigenous people and the President who was responsible for freeing the slaves was a Republican?
 
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teamosil said:
I went with FDR, but it's a hard call. Really their is a tier that FDR, Lincoln and Washington are in where it is hard to rank them, but the three of them are clearly radically far above any of the others in terms of their historical importance. Without any of the three of them, we would not recognize the US. They are monumental titans of history and any of the three would be a very reasonable answer. Their presidencies are watersheds in US history. Our entire legal system, our ideas of the role of government, our economy, our constitution and our national security were all dominated by the actions of those three men for many decades and the marks they left were truly permanent.

In my view, LBJ and Reagan form a second tier. They each dramatically shifted the direction of the country. LBJ brought an end to segregation and rammed the civil rights act through Congress and established a number of the modern functions of government. Reagan invented the notion that we should hate and fear the poor and dote on the super rich, which still today is the reigning economic position in national policy. But, IMO, neither of them approaches the stature of FDR, Lincoln or Washington.
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silly hackery at its worst
 
SgtRock said:
Why is Andrew Jackson on the short list. Isn't he the president responsible for the Indian Removal Project. The Cherokee Nations trail of tears in 1838/39. This founder of the Democratic Party was a ruthless genocidal killer. As a General
his first effort at Indian fighting was waging a war against the Creeks. President Jefferson had appointed him to appropriate Creek and Cherokee lands. In his brutal military campaigns against Indians, Andrew Jackson recommended that troops systematically kill Indian women and children after massacres in order to complete the extermination.
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He also preferred a limited government and advocated states' rights. He didn't renew the central bank, either.
 
SgtRock said:
Isn't it strange that the President who founded of the Democratic Party was a genocidal murderer of indigenous people and the President who was responsible for freeing the slaves was a Republican?
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Just FYI, the Democratic party was the conservative party back then and the Republican party was the liberal one. At least by modern definitions of those things. The Democratic party back then was all about limited federal government, states' rights, opposing civil rights, etc. The Republican party was about a stronger federal government, less state's rights, stronger civil rights, etc. They switched sides slowly between about 1900 and 1970, finally forming roughly the ideological camps they are in today when the last of the Dixiecrats converted to the Republican party.
 
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zgoldsmith23 said:
He also preferred a limited government and advocated states' rights. He didn't renew the central bank, either.
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Oh in that case I guess his campaign of genocide can be overlooked. I mean afterall they were only savages not human beings. :roll:

Im sorry, the guy was a murderer of women and children. He should be on the list of worst presidents ever.
 
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SgtRock said:
Oh in that case I guess his campaign of genocide can be overlooked. I mean afterall they were only savages not human beings. :roll:
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It's one of his political movements, not the only one. Go read "American Lion."
 
TurtleDude said:
If FDR had not had his head up his ass and had not been so eager to allow something that would goad congress and the public into supporting a war, the pearl harbor sneak attack could have been wiped out rather easily. If triple A batteries had been up and ready, the ships in the open ocean with air cover up, the Japanese attack would have seen the loss of almost all their planes. bombers would have then followed the stragglers back and taken out most of the japanese carrier fleet. The war would have ended much faster
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I know the conspiracy theory that the pearl harbor attack was allowed to happen so that congress would declare war. I also wonder though if the reality is that FDR had dug in so deep with debt for the new deal that he was hoping to avoid it but then got dragged into it. I do think that the public would have been accepting to the U.S. being involved in the war earlier, although perhaps not with a full congressional declaration.
 
teamosil said:
Just FYI, the Democratic party was the conservative party back then and the Republican party was the liberal one. At least by modern definitions of those things. The Democratic party back then was all about limited federal government, states' rights, opposing civil rights, etc. The Republican party was about a stronger federal government, less state's rights, stronger civil rights, etc. They switched sides slowly between about 1900 and 1970, finally forming roughly the ideological camps they are in today when the last of the Dixiecrats converted to the Republican party.
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I am aware of this shift. It dosn't change the facts I stated.
 
SgtRock said:
Why is Andrew Jackson on the short list. Isn't he the president responsible for the Indian Removal Project. The Cherokee Nations trail of tears in 1838/39. This founder of the Democratic Party was a ruthless genocidal killer. As a General
his first effort at Indian fighting was waging a war against the Creeks. President Jefferson had appointed him to appropriate Creek and Cherokee lands. In his brutal military campaigns against Indians, Andrew Jackson recommended that troops systematically kill Indian women and children after massacres in order to complete the extermination.
Click to expand...

I don't like Andrew Jackson either. My short list comes from a survey that compared the opinions of liberal and conservative historians on the best US Presidents. Because both groups ranked Jackson on their top ten list, at positions seven and six respectively, I added him to the short list, figuring some people may actually like him. You can find the survey here. Good question.
 
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zgoldsmith23 said:
It's one of his political movements, not the only one. Go read "American Lion."
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Go read "In Bitterness and in Tears" Andrew Jackson's Destruction of the Creeks and Seminoles by Sean Michael O'Brien
 
NotEliTanenbaum said:
I don't like Andrew Jackson either. My short list comes from a survey that compared the opinions of liberal and conservative historians on the best US Presidents. Because both groups ranked Jackson on their top ten list, at positions six and seven respectively, I added him to the short list, figuring some people may actually like him. You can find the survey here. Good question.
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the poll has problems because "best" can mean many things. FDR is ranked highly if you rate him on what he was able to accomplish in terms of his goals. Stalin would be ranked highly for his accomplishments of collectivizing the Russian farms for example. I rate FDR as awful because my criteria involves what the administration did to the USA. He is far worse than ineffectual pathetic presidents like harding, Millard Fillmore, Carter, or Grant since those lightweights didn't really create lasting harm on the USA. Those seen as "great" by some were those who did impose lasting changes and in several cases-the change was deleterious
 
SgtRock said:
I am aware of this shift. It dosn't change the facts I stated.
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Yeah, it doesn't. What you said is correct. I just think it's interesting how parties can shift like that. You can see it more clearly in retrospect. Makes you think about what shifts are occurring today. For example, just this year or next year we will be crossing the line where the intellectual property in the US will be worth more than the physical property. What kinds of shifts will that bring about in the way we divide up politically? 30 years ago, on average, more educated people were more likely to vote Republican, today they are more likely to vote Democratic. What shifts are going on because of that?
 
I voted for Abe, but honestly I don't think you can go wrong in the first four. Those guys are all a-one in my book.
 
teamosil said:
Yeah, it doesn't. What you said is correct. I just think it's interesting how parties can shift like that. You can see it more clearly in retrospect. Makes you think about what shifts are occurring today. For example, just this year or next year we will be crossing the line where the intellectual property in the US will be worth more than the physical property. What kinds of shifts will that bring about in the way we divide up politically? 30 years ago, on average, more educated people were more likely to vote Republican, today they are more likely to vote Democratic. What shifts are going on because of that?
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the least educated people are also more likely to vote dem. I guess the lesson is that those who want to rule people and those who want to be ruled want big government
the former because they think they will run it, the latter because they think it will take care of them
 
SgtRock said:
Go read "In Bitterness and in Tears" Andrew Jackson's Destruction of the Creeks and Seminoles by Sean Michael O'Brien
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Nah. You realize Jackson was pressured heavily by the Western-moving settlers. You really are upset about the Indian Removal Act, huh?
 
zgoldsmith23 said:
Nah. You realize Jackson was pressured heavily by the Western-moving settlers. You really are upset about the Indian Removal Act, huh?
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The Indian Removal Act came during Jackson's presidency. The genocide led by General Jackson started long before the trail of tears. Jackson or Sharp Knife as he was known by the indigenous people was a murderer of women and children. Adolf Hitler praised Jackson's genocide. Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of United States history. He admired the camps for the Indians in the wild west. Hitler often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination by starvation and uneven combat of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.
 
SgtRock said:
The Indian Removal Act came during Jackson's presidency. The genocide led by General Jackson started long before the trail of tears. Jackson or Sharp Knife as he was known by the indigenous people was a murderer of women and children. Adolf Hitler praised Jackson's genocide. Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of United States history. He admired the camps for the Indians in the wild west. Hitler often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination by starvation and uneven combat of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.
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Godwinn.

Anyway, whether Hitler praised it or not doesn't change the fact, Jackson's removal of the Indians helped us move Westward (Manifest Destiny).
 
zgoldsmith23 said:
Godwinn.

Anyway, whether Hitler praised it or not doesn't change the fact, Jackson's removal of the Indians helped us move Westward (Manifest Destiny).
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So you have no problem with Jackson telling his troops to kill all the women and children to complete the extermination? Don't get me wrong, I love my country. I am just about as patriotic a person as you will meet. But the genocide of the indigenous peoples of America and slavery are two severely wrong points in our history and the sooner we face that the better. That includes recognising Andrew Jackson for the genocidal murderer that he was.

btw, you can call Godwinn all you want but in this case the reference to Hitler is based in fact.
 
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What, no votes for W?

<ducks to avoid thrown shoes>
 
SgtRock said:
So you have no problem with Jackson telling his troops to kill all the women and children to complete the extermination? Don't get me wrong, I love my country. I am just about as patriotic a person as you will meet. But the genocide of the indigenous peoples of America and slavery are two severely wrong points in our history and the sooner we face that the better. That includes recognising Andrew Jackson for the genocidal murderer that he was.
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He helped move the nation Westward. Simple as that. It was common belief then that the Indians were savages and were slowing our expansion.
 
During my lifetime, and Ike was president when I was born. Ronald Regan was the best President. So I choose Regan. I was a Regan Democrat who has since become even more conservative.
 
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