Who Was The Last Good U.S. President?

[Kirby101]

It's a bit sad that FDR was the last good one.

FDR was a great President and not even the last great one. Barack Obama was a good President. Not really debatable.

What is sad is the last two GOP Presidents were in the bottom five worst Presidents in history. And either could be argued to be the worst.

[DrNewGod]

George Bush 41 was probably the last of the statesmen, whose motives tended to be about duty rather than ambition.

Was he ambitious? Yes.

Did some of his policies suck a tailpipe? They did indeed.

Did he do some sketchy deals? You betcha!

Did he, in all of his public life, put obligation before his ego and personal wants? Looks like it to me.

McCain seemed to me to be cut from similar cloth. I often wonder what the world would look like today had he defeated Bush 43 for the presidential nomination in 2000.

[dancj]

I don't know enough about any of the pre-Reagan ones to judge, but from Reagan onward, Obama is the only good one.

[Kirby101]

George H.W. Bush.

He was also the last president to have served his country in a combat zone. His son stayed stateside the whole time. Trump and Clinton dodged draft. Obama never served at all.

Obama failed to unite the whole country due to his divisive speeches.

Bush entered the country into two lengthy and costly wars without accomplishing anything.

Clinton did not do much to reduce the deficit.

Divisive speeches? That is ridiculous. It was the GOP's refusal to work with him in any way and rampant racism that divided the country.
Divisive speeches...sheesh!

[Tendrin]

Divisive speeches? That is ridiculous. It was the GOP's refusal to work with him in any way and rampant racism that divided the country.
Divisive speeches...sheesh!

I wonder how the air is in the alternte dimension Zetsubou dwells in where Obama was divisive for his 'speeches' and the last president to balance the federal budget did not do much to reduce the deficit.

[jetengine]

I wonder how the air is in the alternte dimension Zetsubou dwells in where Obama was divisive for his 'speeches' and the last president to balance the federal budget did not do much to reduce the deficit.

Also where your worth is based off of military service in a nation that trumpets how much it cares about its troops then treats them like ****.

[Kirby101]

Also where your worth is based off of military service in a nation that trumpets how much it cares about its troops then treats them like ****.

And comparing someone who served in WWII to being eligible for Vietnam are vastly different. I was alive during Vietnam and barely missed the draft. While not to insult the individual soldiers, no one was "protecting our freedoms" in that immoral hellhole. If drafted, I would have left the country.

So GHWB gets credit for his service, but it is not a make or break to be President.

And this also:

[Moon Ronin]

FDR was great on almost everything except civil rights. He sent Japanese Americans to internment camps. He vetoed an anti-lynching bill that would punish sheriffs for failing to protect the accused from lynch mobs.

When the passenger ship St. Louis approached the coast of Florida with nearly a thousand German Jews fleeing persecution by Hitler, Roosevelt did not respond to telegrams from passengers requesting asylum, and the State Department refused entry to the ship. Forced to return to Antwerp, many of the passengers eventually died in concentration camps.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankl...d_civil_rights

Also according to many economists (one from UCLA byHarold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian) his economic policies set recovery from the great depression back more than half a decade he was really not that great of a president. Any president can be picked apart from Washington to Trump, they were/are all far from perfect. As for my "opinion" of who the last good US president was that's easy, Calvin Coolidge (dude was born on the 4th of July!).

[Tendrin]

Coolidge. xD

Not too many people rooting for Silent Cal, and I think generally justifiably, but I'd rank him fairly middling myself.

[Moon Ronin]

Coolidge. xD

Not too many people rooting for Silent Cal, and I think generally justifiably, but I'd rank him fairly middling myself.

Dude came in after the disaster (corruption) that was the Harding administration and cleaned it up not to mention the economically disastrous years of Wilson in office. He was one of the few presidents that left office with both the federal debt and budget deficit smaller than when he went in. His nickname of Silent Cal was really misleading as he was very good at public speaking and gave more press conference than any other president...ever to included all that came after him. He worked at ending lynching and signed the Indian Citizenship Act, he and his wife worked with the salvation army spending Christmas with it even. His presidency helped to break the second Ku Klux Klan and he never appointed a Klan member to any office. (Kurt Schmoke wrote a great paper on Coleridge and Civil Rights)..

He is not well know as he was not a president during a war, he even actively renounced war as a means of solving conflicts with the Kellogg-Briand Pact. His presidency was not marked was scandal. His administration officials received two Nobel Peace Prizes (back when they meant something). He was probably the most "Constitutional" president in the last 100 years. It is hard to come up with many strong negatives from the keeping it cool with Cal.

[Tendrin]

[QUOTE=Moon Ronin;4247027]Dude came in after the disaster (corruption) that was the Harding administration and cleaned it up not to mention the economically disastrous years of Wilson in office. He was one of the few presidents that left office with both the federal debt and budget deficit smaller than when he went in. His nickname of Silent Cal was really misleading as he was very good at public speaking and gave more press conference than any other president...ever to included all that came after him. He worked at ending lynching and signed the Indian Citizenship Act, he and his wife worked with the salvation army spending Christmas with it even. His presidency helped to break the second Ku Klux Klan and he never appointed a Klan member..]

And yet, he signed the the 'oriental exclusion act' and the national origin bill, wrote a whole lotta racism down, and backed supply side economic theories which can be said to have contributed to the eventual depth of the Great Depression. I mean, any president can be picked apart.

Silent Cal does have his admirers in conservative circles certainly.

Not being as bad as Harding is a pretty low bar.

[ZombieHavoc]

Absolutely he did own slaves. Even ordered the capture of a slave who tried to escape. At the same time, he did free them upon his death. A complicated figure. Definitely flawed, but ultimately redeemable).

Washington freed all but the one who escaped--and he used the full weight of the US military trying to recapture her. Through marriage, inheritances, etc., she was technically owed by Jefferson Davis at the time of her death.

[Moon Ronin]

[QUOTE=Tendrin;4247055]

Dude came in after the disaster (corruption) that was the Harding administration and cleaned it up not to mention the economically disastrous years of Wilson in office. He was one of the few presidents that left office with both the federal debt and budget deficit smaller than when he went in. His nickname of Silent Cal was really misleading as he was very good at public speaking and gave more press conference than any other president...ever to included all that came after him. He worked at ending lynching and signed the Indian Citizenship Act, he and his wife worked with the salvation army spending Christmas with it even. His presidency helped to break the second Ku Klux Klan and he never appointed a Klan member..]

And yet, he signed the the 'oriental exclusion act' and the national origin bill, wrote a whole lotta racism down, and backed supply side economic theories which can be said to have contributed to the eventual depth of the Great Depression. I mean, any president can be picked apart.

Silent Cal does have his admirers in conservative circles certainly.

Not being as bad as Harding is a pretty low bar.

I would say that his admires are more toward the libertarian than in today's conservative circles.

The Immigration Act of 1924 'oriental exclusion act' I will will agree was not a shining moment in his presidency yet it was only opposed by 6 senators and an hand full of congressmen and was a reflection of the xenophobic nature of the entire country of the time with the first Red Scare it was more aimed at eastern European countries as fear of something like the Bolshevik Revolution would happen in the US as the number of immigrants doubled between 1919 and 1920. Its odd that it is called the 'oriental exclusion act' which it did tighten the Immigration Act of 1917 and its restriction to Asian countries but its true aim was towards Italians, Slavs, Poles, and other people from Eastern Europe and Russia. Sadly this policy was not amended to excluded Jews fleeing Nazi Germany during WWII but was changed to allow allies in China and the Philippines to have immigration quotas. Coolidge did have misgivings before signing it becasue in included Japan that at the time had a decent relationship with the US... I would say that immigration was his weakest link but when put next to other presidents he is on par with almost all of them.

Every single president as said something raciest, Read papers by people like Kurt Schmoke and Maceo Crenshaw Dailey Jr. and not pot shorts from places like the Huffington post. Though he may have not been a huge civil rights reformer he was not a raciest, he like the democrats today more took the black vote for granted but was more open to meet with black leaders than previous presidents and unlike FDR he pleaded with congress "the rights of colored citizens were as sacred as those of any other citizen" and that it was "both a public and private duty to protect these rights." The President went on to urge the Congress "to exercise all its power of prevention and punishment against the hideous crime of lynching." He also acknowledged that money had already been appropriated to give black Americans vocational training in agriculture, recommended federal funds for the medical school of the predominant!y black Howard University. When compared Wilson and FDR is and even LBJ and JFK he was far from a raciest.

The Coolidge caused the depression is really a miss-given. The Fed has a pretty good hand in the bust of the twenties and that is independent with no presidential control Murray Rothbard coverd this very well, but this was not the countries first depression.. just the longest, Why? Because the government compounded its monetary errors with a series of harmful interventions. Then Hoover, his policy of a knee jerk reaction to the recession pushed the US into a deep depression as FDR campaigning against him accused Hoover of due to “the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history.” And FDR's running mate Garner said that Hoover was “leading the country down the path of socialism.” Which to me is very ironic. And as I stated before the polices of FDR more than likely prolonged the end of the Great Depression. Actually there is a large number of economist that believe that if Coolidge's economic policy's were kept in place that the Great Depression would have only lasted 2 to 4 years.. and not be such a big part of american history at all.

[ZombieHavoc]

Make America Cool Again.

[Kirby101]

Also according to many economists (one from UCLA byHarold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian) his economic policies set recovery from the great depression back more than half a decade he was really not that great of a president. Any president can be picked apart from Washington to Trump, they were/are all far from perfect. As for my "opinion" of who the last good US president was that's easy, Calvin Coolidge (dude was born on the 4th of July!).

Calvin Cooledge caused the Great Depression. Hoover was only in office a few months when the crash came. And it was due to Cooledge's lack of oversight of the market and the economy. Now Hoover made things worse and it took FDR to start back the road to recovery. But Cooledge gets the blame He is on the list of worst.

Irregardless of Moon's Cato Institute apologia. Reagan loved "silent" Cal and look where his policies got us.Soaring deficits and recession.