Wait a sec, how can the past presidents move up and down the rankings from this time 10 years ago?!

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Originally posted by George Smiley Wait a sec, how can the past presidents move up and down the rankings from this time 10 years ago?!

different historians participated in the ratings.

obviously, though, everyone under bush necessarily had to move down one slot if the order at the bottom remained static.

Why is Reagan 10th? He ballooned the government deficit, participated in illegal arms smuggling, intervened in numerous 3rd world internal conflicts, and turned the Republican party into a party of hypocrites...since they preach small government but spend like there's no tomorrow. To bad there isn't a viable third party out there.

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Originally posted by Krypton Why is Reagan 10th? He ballooned the government deficit, participated in illegal arms smuggling, intervened in numerous 3rd world internal conflicts, and turned the Republican party into a party of hypocrites...since they preach small government but spend like there's no tomorrow. To bad there isn't a viable third party out there.

And why is Kennedy so high? For a guy that made a couple memorable speeches, got us into Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, slept with Marilyn Monroe and then got shot, I'm not sure what he did to get placed there.

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Originally posted by Krypton Why is Reagan 10th? He ballooned the government deficit, participated in illegal arms smuggling, intervened in numerous 3rd world internal conflicts, and turned the Republican party into a party of hypocrites...since they preach small government but spend like there's no tomorrow. To bad there isn't a viable third party out there.

OMG what are you talking about? Republicans are the party of "fiscal conservatives" so they don't want to spend any money! Except billions of dollars toward the war in Iraq, privatized social security, bans on abortion, stem cell research, and the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction. Perfectly fine in my eyes! Why would you want to invest in alternative energy or science? Those silly "tax and spend liberals" will do anything to spend our hard earned dollars!

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Originally posted by NeoPhono And why is Kennedy so high? For a guy that made a couple memorable speeches, got us into Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, slept with Marilyn Monroe and then got shot, I'm not sure what he did to get placed there.

It's probably because this "survey" isn't even truly about who is really the best president. It's about who gives them a warm and fuzzy feeling inside...

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The Presidents were rated on "ten attributes of leadership" and then the scores added up. So its not a direct representation of who was the best but who had the highest score. The link breaks it all down

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Originally posted by Krypton Why is Reagan 10th? He ballooned the government deficit, participated in illegal arms smuggling, intervened in numerous 3rd world internal conflicts, and turned the Republican party into a party of hypocrites...since they preach small government but spend like there's no tomorrow. To bad there isn't a viable third party out there.

... created 20 million jobs, brought down communism in a peaceful end to the Cold War, turned Jimmy Carter's 70% tax rates into 28%, drastically lowered inflation and the unemployment rate taking us out of a major economic downturn, had 52 hostages released from Iran the day he was signed into office after 444 days of Carter's worthless dialogue appeasement methods failed, ended the price controls on domestic oil which had contributed to energy crises in the 1970's, repealed the Windfall profit tax in 1988 which had previously increased dependence on foreign oil.... Jesus man, he had some blunders but he wasn't the devil.

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Originally posted by The17sss ... created 20 million jobs,

from 80-90 the US experienced a 22M increase in population. His presidency also began in a severe recession in which the unemployment rate was >10%. Business naturally goes through cycles. He was fortunate enough to be on the upswing. Job creation during his presidency was less a result of reagan policies and more a result of population growth and the natural business cycle.

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Originally posted by The17sss brought down communism in a peaceful end to the Cold War,

who cares. i hate when republicans cite this. social forces bigger than reagan were at play.

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Originally posted by The17sss turned Jimmy Carter's 70% tax rates into 28%,

1) he was also the first president since the end of WW2 that increased the national debt over his presidency.

2) he also decreased the amount of income needed to fall within the highest bracket from over 212K to about 30K (also, highest marginal rate of 70% doesn't mean people were paying anywhere near 70% - more likely 40% or something like that).

EDIT: BTW - 212K in 1980 is about the same as 550K today. that's a pretty high marginal bracket.

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Originally posted by The17sss drastically lowered inflation and the unemployment rate taking us out of a major economic downturn,

that was the independent actions of Paul volker, the fed chairman during the 1980s, appointed by Jimmy Carter in 1979. (NJ native!!!) Reagan had nothing to do with ending the stagflation problem.

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Originally posted by The17sss had 52 hostages released from Iran the day he was signed into office after 444 days of Carter's worthless dialogue appeasement methods failed, ended the price controls on domestic oil which had contributed to energy crises in the 1970's, repealed the Windfall profit tax in 1988 which had previously increased dependence on foreign oil.... Jesus man, he had some blunders but he wasn't the devil.

i'm not commenting on the rest because i'm not well informed about those issues.


EDIT: on a side note, i was searching the historic highest marginal rates and the lowest high marginal rate from 36-80 was 70%. With that in mind, it's funny that republicans say that raising the highest rate from 35 to 38 will ruin the US economy. However, they always cite the good old days of america during the postwar period when america became so prosperous. ironic!

Last edited by jerZ07002 on Feb-17-2009 at 05:05

I found this indirectly, it has a survey of surveys for ranking Presidents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor..._survey_results

Pretty much, the top and bottom 10 don't change a lot whomever you tend to ask.

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Originally posted by jerZ07002 from 80-90 the US experienced a 22M increase in population. His presidency also began in a severe recession in which the unemployment rate was >10%. Business naturally goes through cycles. He was fortunate enough to be on the upswing. Job creation during his presidency was less a result of reagan policies and more a result of population growth and the natural business cycle.

Ah.. so, lowering the tax rate from 70% to 28% definitely didn't have a positive affect on the business climate. It was just the typical ebb and flow. Jimmy Carter was all about bad timing, and Regan good timing.

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who cares. i hate when republicans cite this. social forces bigger than reagan were at play.

Plenty of Poles, Ukranians, Czechs, Germans, Slovakians, Bulgarians, Romanians, etc. care... I would guess. Sure there were plenty of other social forces at play, but it's not just a coincidence that Regan was president when it happened... he in effect put things in play that caused their economy to crumble within itself.

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1) he was also the first president since the end of WW2 that increased the national debt over his presidency.

Yes... which he lamented after leaving office was his biggest regret and failure as a president. At least the man didn't try to pass the buck.

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that was the independent actions of Paul volker, the fed chairman during the 1980s, appointed by Jimmy Carter in 1979. (NJ native!!!) Reagan had nothing to do with ending the stagflation problem.

I'm not an economist, but I find it hard to believe that Regan's policies seriously had nothing to do with the economy getting back on track. That's a crazy statement.


But my point is really that there's no reason to villfiy him like Krypton did, as if he is evil incarnate. That list put out by C-SPAN is a joke! Washington's presidency, and his voluntary retirement after two terms, saved America from the establishment of a new royalty. FDR, comes in at number 3 while being the only American President to refuse to follow Washington's precedent, and Congress eventually had to place explicit term limits on the office after FDR's president-for-life ambitions.

Andrew Malcom sums up the rest nicely:

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Kennedy doesn't belong on the top ten, either. Kennedy was definitely an inspirational figure in American politics, but his presidency was a mess. He fumbled the Cold War badly enough to prompt the USSR to build the Berlin Wall, and nearly started a nuclear war over Cuba with his fecklessness. He jumped into the Vietnam War when France withdrew, and meddled significantly with Vietnam's government to exacerbate the crisis. His successor LBJ comes in at #11 despite making the situation even worse. Reagan ended the Cold War in victory and restored American economic health, and yet trails JFK by four positions. I find it terribly ironic that Harry Truman gets ranked as #5 now. I don't have a big issue with that ranking, but when he left office, he was less popular than George W Bush, who comes in at #36 in this survey. But was Truman more important than Thomas Jefferson, who doubled the size of the nation with the Louisiana Purchase and set the stage for Manifest Destiny? I know JFK wasn't a better President than Jefferson, which alone makes this survey deeply suspect.

Basically, this list is top heavy with media favorites rather than a serious look at the accomplishments of each President.