he got sick at his inaugural, and thus never functioned as president before his death.   I think someone needs at least 6 months in office to be properly evaluated

He's my relative, so I feel compelled to defend him.  He was one heck of a war hero, and it's not really fair to judge someone who never really had the chance to govern.

How are you related? I'm interested in Presidential history and genealogy.  

You can't possibly make a good president when your dead.  And whose fault was it that he took the oath of office outside on a wet and really cold day without his coat on?

I guess the Curse of Tecumseh is broken.

Dubya's constant comparisons of himself to Harry Truman has actually reduced Harry in my mind.  

Had W been president in the post war, WWIII would be a history lesson.

It is ironic that W wants to associate himself with one of the greatest Democratic presidents of the 20th century.

P.S. Your new sig, especially your mention of organic beer, is prompting me to visit your blog again :)

Yeah, it's unfortunate that Harry isn't around to give Georgie the Lloyd Bensten ... "Dubya, you're no me."

Keep an eye out for a new organic beer post later this week ...

on the best side, only 3 Republicans -  Lincoln, TR, and Eisenhower, and 6 Democrats -  efferson, Wilson, Truman, Jackson and Polk (whose inclusion surprises me - I guess getting 1/3 of Mexico qualifies him in the minds of some).

On the worst -  

Republicans are Harding, Grant and Garfield

Whigs (predecessors of Republicans) are W H Harrison, Tyler, Taylor and Fillmore

Democrats were Buchanan and Pierce

Andrew Johnson was a loyalist Democrat, but was elected on a Republican ticket with Lincoln.

It is interesting to note that on the bad list three died in office:  Harrison, Taylor and Garfield, and three succeeded presidents who died in office:  Tylyer, Fillmore and Johnson.  

Of course, on the good list two died in office, Lincoln and FDer and Truman was a successor.

But in general we can say a bad president was likely to be a Republican (or the precessor party, Whig) while a good president was likely to be a Democrat.

Polk is ranked high by historians because he set out certain goals for his term in office and achieved nearly all of them.

From Wikipedia:

When he took office on March 4, 1845, Polk, at 49, became the youngest man at the time to assume the presidency. According to a story told decades later by George Bancroft, Polk set four clearly defined goals for his administration:

1) the re-establishment of the Independent Treasury System,
2) the reduction of tariffs,
3) acquisition of some or all the Oregon boundary dispute,
and
4) the purchase of California from Mexico.

Resolved to serve only one term, he accomplished all these objectives in just four years.

Polk achieved all his major goals and he did it in the one term he had allotted himself to do it in.

I forget we, Americans, take nothing by force.  We did not purchase California from Mexico, we took from them when they refused to sell it.  Yes, we "purchased" it in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, but that was a treaty written by us, the victor, with the military-occupied government of Mexico.  Ooh, is this starting to sound familiar?

Dubya will probably have to settle for second worst, though he still has eleven months to cause a disaster of some sort.

James Buchanan had a conflict that was brewing from the start of the Constitution. All of the misfortunes of W were created after receiving the country is good shape.

But maybe Bush can't even excel as a failure. He may be #2.

The Civil War was unavoidable. The South was unwilling to compromise on slavery, and it was a constitutional contradiction that only a war could settle.

All the Presidents between Jackson and Lincoln had basically no chance to achieve much of importance (except Polk, who I believe served only one term) because the country was philosophically divided.

In my opinion, there are two Presidencies that stand head and shoulders above all other for pure destructiveness -- Andrew Johnson and George W Bush. Johnson was the antithesis to the spirit of Lincoln and tried to cede what was won in that necessary war. Bush can speak for himself.

... considering how many members of his administration are under investigation or threat of contempt of Congress.

...adn I wonder what the criteria are.  However, my thoughts...

1. Washington whould be #1.  If he had failed, then there is no need for a list of those who followed him because there would have been no country.

2. There should be some allowance for those who died in office.  WHH served for a month, Garfield for six months, and most of those in a sickbed after he was shot.  Taylor never had time to create a record.  Harding, though, did...and should be in the bottom ten.

3. I have to question Andrew Johnson's place in the bottom ten, given that he was hamstrung part of his term by a congress that wanted a harsh peace and for the other by the impeachment attempt-brought by a congress that wanted a harsh peace.

4. Jefferson is far too high.  His bold Louisana Purchase is at least balanced by his failed economic and foreign policy that pushed us into the War of 1812.  He was right not to include serving as president on his gravestone.

5. Nixon deserves a place in the bottom ten...high crimes and misdemeanors should get that for you no matter how many times you visit China.

6. Wilson should be lower in the top ten.  His war leadership and pre war domestic acheivements land him in the top ten-his pig headed leadership after the war drop him significantly.

7. Polk should be higher-he did everything he planned to do, and did it in one term.

Ultimately, my top ten:

1. Washington
2. Lincoln
3. FDR
4. TR
5. Jackson
6. Polk
7. Eisenhower
8. Truman
9. Wilson
10. Don't have one...now we start to get into the list of presidents who had a plus record in office, but with significant drawbacks.  I would probably put Reagan in the slot, but arguments could be made for Jefferson, LBJ, Cleveland, Adams, etc...

Within the last year an historian describing where Shrub would fall on the list of worst Presidents had Madison as the worst President.

While I believe Buchanan deseves that "honor", the historian's rational was presuasive.  Madison lost the War of 1812 which was an unnecessary war of choice that resulted in our Capitol being sacked and the White House being burned.  None of the war aims were achieved.  New England almost seceded and the economy was wrecked.  It was a powerful and persuasive indictment.

Madison's role in the 1829 Virginia Constitutional Convention, while not part of his presidency, is also worthy of condemnation.

Andrew Johnson facilitated the restoration of the treasonous plantation class in the South after the war. They had been the principal leaders of the rebellion. He also fought measures to help the newly freed blacks pursue independent lives. He needs to be among the worst three Presidents.

Benjamin Harrison belongs on the list of worsts also. He allowed recontrusction to fail which led to the establishment of apartheid throughout the South.

Garfield and W.H. Harrison weren't in office long enough to belong.

Any President who avoids WW III and the end of civilization belongs on the list of best Presidents - JFK.  

Eisenhower allowed Mccarthyism to go so far that McCarthy called George C. Marshall a commie. Marshall, of course, was the greatest American of the 20th Century.  Eisenhower did nothing to stop McCarthy.  He also refused to aggressively enforce Brown v. School Board. JFK should take his place.

While Harrison was not a shining light, how do you tag him with allowing Reconstruction to fail?

Harrison was elected President in 1888.  I thought the reconstruction rollback happend at the end of the Grant 2nd term and the Hayes admin (as part of the 1876 electoral college compromise).

It seems to me by the time he became president Reconstruction was long gone...

And Nixon's got to be in the bottom ten also.

1. FDR - of course

2. Andrew Jackson - working mans president

3. Lincoln - preserved the union (albeit through extraconstitutional means)

4. Teddy Roosevelt - busted the trusts, established national parks, gave the finger to traditional republicans.

5. Harry Truman - tough as nails and didn't care about what D.C. thought of him. Integrated the military, thus giving the civil rights movement a great base.

6. George Washington - Established the presidency as a truly elected position and not a kingship. Good man.

7. LBJ - I know, I know, VIETNAM. But still...Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Great Society programs. I think this evens things out for him. Anyone read Caro's books on LBJ. GREAT STUFF. Plus LBJ has the best quote ever, "Damn a bunch of Harvard's."

Civil Rights,
Voting Rights Act,
Great Society:
Medicare (United States),
Elementary and Secondary Education Act,
Higher Education Act of 1965,
War on Poverty welfare programs,
Head Start,
Wilderness Act,
National Endowment for the Arts,
National Endowment for the Humanities,
Public Broadcasting Act of 1967,
Department of Transportation,
expanded consumer protection,
Model Cities Program,
1965 Immigration Act,
clean air/soil/water laws

Or could any Democratic president have achieved these with the Congress LBJ had to work with?

Was LBJ a unique historical force, or just a good man (or not so good man) in the right place at the right time?

He pushed most of those through by the sheer force of his will. It was a unique time and he was the one to get it done.

I mean who on the list has their hands clean.  Andrew Jackson is famous for his Indian Removal Act.  Thousands of native Americans were removed from their lands in the South and forced to go West.  The Cherokee relocation and the Trail of Tears was actually under the Van Buren administration, but Van Buren was only executing a treaty that Jackson made possible.  

Right below Bill Clinton, and just above his daddy.

because the list only includes Cleveland once

John McCain:

A close look at John McCain's Senate voting record on judicial confirmations makes it painfully clear that progressives need to ignore the rantings of the Ann Coulter crowd and believe John McCain when he says he will listen to Sam Brownback and appoint judges like Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia. On judges, McCain's no moderate: if given the chance, he will appoint justices that move an already conservative Supreme Court sharply to the right.

Indeed, one looks in vain for a judge who is too ideologically conservative for McCain: he voted to confirm Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas and, unless I've missed something, every other Republican judicial nominee voted on in his 22 years in the Senate.

Even more tellingly, as part of his negotiation in 2005 of what has been dubbed the "Gang of 14 Deal" (more on this later), McCain pushed, hard, for the confirmation of both William Pryor and Janice Rogers Brown, the two hardest-edged conservatives appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush.

In other words, if you want a 6-3, 7-2 or worse Scalia/Alito/Thomas Supreme Court, then by all means vote for John McCain this November.  If a hard right Supreme Court scares the living daylights out of you, then vote Democratic.  It's actually pretty simple, given that the Supreme Court rules on everything from the environment to workers rights to civil liberties to women's reproductive rights to...you get the picture.

 

Basically... there's about zero risk of Bush being remembered as anything but an abject failure.

this.  That's right, "Lieberman says some waterboarding OK."  Holy Joe adds:

"It is not like putting burning coals on people's bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological."

So, there you have it.  Now, does anyone wonder why I've never liked Joe Lieberman and why I supported Ned Lamont in 2006?

he lied his @$$ off to convince voters that he'd work to end the war,  which is why he's now so broadly hated in his own state.

If they had the election to have over again, CT voters would throw his Bush Kissing @$$ out of power.  

his Benedict Arnold reputation when he voted against outlawing  waterboarding.  What a creep.  

Let's waterboard him for voting with the Repubs.

The WAPO had some articles on this topic in the Outlook section.  I had a post up on the topic with links to the 4 articles (good for a refresher on this topic).  It's also fun to read the comments - see if you can identify the rabid republican loon.

http://www.raisingkaine.com/sh...

I don't think one can put him in the same class as everyone else even lincoln.  He was great for so many reasons, many of them occured even before he became our first president.  We owe so much to him, and many don't even know it.

  For instance, we owe are entire democracy to him, because he gave up power at key moments; giving up his generalship to become president and then retiring from the presidency after two terms.  This was in sharp contrast to his peers throughout history who ussualy would consolidate their power to become despots, or kings.....a popular notion in some circles during Washington's time.

I agree with the top 3, though I guess I would put them in chronological order.  Washington was key in founding the union.  Lincoln preserved the union.  And FDR saved our capitalist democracy from full-on Socialism or worse Communism.  Though Lincoln never really succeeded in fully reintegrating Southern states into the union.  So, maybe FDR should be ahead of him.  Though I guess it was no fault of his that Reconstruction failed and they were unable to meaningfully change the economic system in the South.  

I do disagree with their placement of JFK above LBJ.  LBJ accomplished a lot.  What did JFK accomplish?  There was that bungled invasion of Cuba.  There was also the Cuban Missile Crisis which he precipitated by putting missiles in Turkey effectively antagonizing the Soviets.  Well, that and the Bay of Pigs ordeal set the crisis into motion.

Though in celebrating our presidents, I think we should also recognize the importance of social movements and leaders of those movements.  Women's right to vote, Civil Rights, Prohibition, Worker's Rights, Child Labor Laws, etc... didn't happen in a vacuum.  As we well know today, there was not a set of omnibeneficent politicians just deciding to do these things.  

I agree with most of your comments, but ...

How could Lincoln have reintegrated the Southern states back into the union? HE WAS ALREADY DEAD! Lee surrendered at Appamattox on April 9, 1865; the rest of the main Confederate army on April 26, 1965, in Durham, NC. Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, and died early on the 15th. He had about 5 days to enjoy the winning of the war before he was killed.

I did say that it was no fault of his that Reconstruction failed.  It was his goal to reunite the nation though.  And though the South was brought back into the union through force, it has never really assimilated and has always served as a conservative influence in American politics as John C Calhoun had foreseen the South's role.  Also, the formulation of reintegrating the Southern states was done prior to the end of the Civil War and Lincoln was very much a part of that debate and implementation of those policies.  Well before his death, the Union had reconquered several Confederate states.  So, I don't think it is wholly unfair to assess what he could have done towards that goal.  And ultimately, his argument was lost when he died; so, you can't judge him a great success there.  Andrew Johnson certainly didn't carry on Lincoln's policies and the Republican in Congress of the time didn't either.    

gave them up so easily and why they became the Gemini booster.   Read Khrushev's biography. K put them in Cuba to placate the Stalinists in the Politburo. The gambit failed and he was replaced by the hardliners.

I'll take all the Virginians as the top Presidents for their time. Washington/Jefferson of couse top that list but a;so like Wilson for nothing more than seeing andtstaing that the "committee system" would undermine American politics and the Federal System and take the power away from the people.

One Lincoln/Bush comparison. Lincoln was never considered amongst the best or greatest or even most liked Presidents until about 1900. In fact most things written in the North after the war and his death were anything but favorable. Now of course Lincoln is perceived as one of our greatest Presidents but only because it takes about twenty plus years after a President leaves offcie for an emotionless judgement to truly occur, with the exception being FDR who was truly great in his time and most Americans thought so at the time and history proved it was warrented. For Bush though he takes enormous heat, much like Linclon did, history will run its course a bit before any real judgement can occur. History is funny in a way because alot that can be used to judge a Presidency occurs not in that ones but during others who come after. For example, if Bush leaves offcie without another terror attack but then there is one on our soil in the next four or eight years history may be kinder to him than if there was not an attack...history can be funny that way.
Many people think Jimmy Carter was such a great Diplomat in the 90's and that mishapes perception I believe of his Presidency which though very young at the time can think of very little that should keep him of the worst list.  

And a welcomed relief from the Clinton-Obama mash-ups.

Alter, I lived through the Carter administration as a college-graduated adult.  Yes, he belongs on the worst list and here are just a few reasons why:
*drained the military capacity of the country without firing a single shot in anger.  Presided over the creation of our "hollow Army," something that has taken Bush five years of combat in Iraq to replicate.
*weak foreign policy that practically invited Soviet miltary adventurism.  Responded to the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets by keeping the American Olympic team from going to the 1980 Moscow Olympics.  See also the Iranian hostage crisis and Desert One.
*ignored his Council of Economic Advisors and allowed inflation to soar.  The prime interest rate reached 20% on his watch.
Carter, like Nixon, has managed to rehabilitate his image after he left the presidency.  However, while in office he was a complete failure.

LBJ greater than Reagan?

Don't even try debating it.

that you don't listen to scholars?

weren't you the same people who a few weeks ago were lauding RWR as a transformative president after Obama spoke glowingly of him? I mean, to the extent that I felt moved to write this diary:

http://www.raisingkaine.com/sh...

Sheesh.

But he didn't get to do much for the nation. He is an important figure in modern conservative thinking, but there for the nation, there isn't much there, there.

What has been in the impact of LBJ? Senior citizens get medicare, legal segregation in the U.S. is a thing of the past, our society has become fairer with the Civil Rights and the Voting Right acts. My family and my life have been impacted by his legacy directly.

Reagan's main "accomplishment" had nothing to do with him. He wasn't around when the Soviet bloc collapsed. He didn't set the policies that brought it down;those were set by Truman.

Now, what exactly did Reagan do for us?  

run up huge deficits and preside over the Iran-Contra scandal.  Those are no small accomplishments!  ****snark****

The Soviet Union was just waiting to fall under Carter.

Y'all are so out of touch, it's funny.

in bringing down the Soviet Union, and for that, I give him credit. But keep in mind that the policy of containment which ultimately proved victorious over Soviet communism was started under Harry S. Truman and continued under both Democratic and Republican presidents for over 40 years.  In the end, this was a bipartisan -- an American -- accomplishment.  It was also a result of the Soviet Union's own miscalculations (e.g., Afghanistan), imperial overstretch, Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa, collapsing oil prices, and other inherent contradictions within the Soviet system.  Certainly, it's much more complicated than "Reagan brought down the Soviet Union."  

Yes, the Soviet Union was going to fall, no matter who was in the White House because every president since Truman had sticked to the same policy.

Without this made-up oversimplification, the patron saint of conservatism seems to have done nothing that benefited America, doesn't he?

So where is the list of Reagan's accomplishments?

n/t

Don't even try debating it?  Well, it is quite difficult to debate something when you have not even offered an argument.  Why do you think the Reagan merits a higher position than LBJ?  And why just higher than LBJ, why not further up the list?

n/t

May just be all those Democrats that voted Republican in helping Reagan win the election in the first place.

This thread on Reagan reminds me of the Obama quotes on Reagan, his accomplishment as was Obama's point was to build a coalition of both Democrats/Republicans the likes no one has seen until then after the 60's/70's.

If thats not an "accomplishment" than please stop with all the rhetoric about how it is one for Obama please because when by not giving credit where it is due you discount Obama's achievements so far.

Be nice.....

My top 3

1:) Thomas Jefferson  http://www.nationalserviceact....
2:) FDR
3:) Abraham Lincoln

My 3 Runner ups

1:) George Washington
2:) Teddy Roosevelt
3:) Dwight Eisenhower

And you know it.

Answer this. How can you reconcile the amazing level of spending under Reagan with the GOP philosophy of spending as little as possible.

Posts you disagree with are propaganda, but posts you agree with are not?

Teddy Roosevelt is my personal #1.