Poll of the Day > Which was the best US President of the past 57 years?

(+) Yeah! (+)

LBJ was the last President to be frequently referred to by his initials. You never hear anyone talking about DJT, BHO, or GWB.

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They all suck.

I see a bunch of guys each with their own flaws :/

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JixHedgehog posted...

I see a bunch of guys each with their own flaws :/

I never thought it about it that way.

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JixHedgehog posted...

I see a bunch of guys each with their own flaws :/

What flaws did Gerald Ford, HW Bush, and LBJ have?

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Carter maybe?
At least his post-Presidential President-y things have been.

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Obama, LBJ, and Bush Sr. are the only decent ones in the whole list and still notably flawed.

What a pathetic run of leaders we've had.

Though Eisenhower and JFK both seemed pretty good and just barely missed the 10-person cutoff, so there's that.

JixHedgehog posted...

I see a bunch of guys each with their own flaws :/

those are called humans

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thedeerzord posted...

What flaws did Gerald Ford, HW Bush, and LBJ have?

Ford - Wasn't ready to succeed Nixon, then pardoned him
Bush Snr - No new taxes?
LBJ - .. Vietnam :(

Edit : Ford was my choice because of the Simpsons :P

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Ergh, that's a rough pick. I have serious issues with all of them.. I guess Carter is the least bad, but man did he botch a few key things.

Also, for those saying Bush... Remember when he and William Barr decided to turn Guantanamo Bay into a concentration camp for Haitian refugees, especially those with HIV? Ah, those were the days. I still find it funny that people think that the Obama/Trump refugee detainment is somehow unusual behavior from neo libs and neo cons.

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Carter is definitely my favorite but just because I think he is the only president who has genuine integrity.

In terms of what they actually did while president though? Probably LBJ, even with Vietnam? Things were best under Clinton for most Americans but thats mostly just the result of an incredible economic expansion that wasn't the result of him but just being in the right place at the right time, but also so much of what he did has resulted in the massive police-prison state we have today. Reagan and Nixon definitely have their pluses too besides the obvious negatives. All have tons of awful, legacy diminishing flaws though for sure, but thats basically what it goes into taking on being the '''world leader''' so to speak.

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idk. America had things pretty good under the Reagan years, but wasn't necessarily just his presidency.

Technically Obama is a bit too recent to judge the full fallout from his presidency (although he set race relations back decades while in office) and Trump hasn't even finished serving his first term.

streamofthesky posted...

Obama, LBJ, and Bush Sr. are the only decent ones in the whole list and still notably flawed.

Obama was mediocre, LBJ was one of the worst presidents we've had (Vietnam, bungled race relations, fathered the entitlement state, etc), and GHWB violated a key campaign promise (although considering everything else, maybe that wasn't as bad).

streamofthesky posted...

Though Eisenhower and JFK both seemed pretty good and just barely missed the 10-person cutoff, so there's that.

JFK was the spiritual predecessor of Obama -- a hype but little substance president who coasted by on his charisma and looks.

Judgmenl posted...

Carter maybe?
At least his post-Presidential President-y things have been.

Carter is almost universally recognized as a terrible president.

George RR Martin kinda summed things up nicely:
And a lot of fantasy makes it seem simply: a good man will be a good king. Well, a good man is not always a good king. And a bad man is not always a bad king. You know, its much more complicated than that. Its you know, I look at in my lifetime, I think probably the best man to serve as President in my lifetime was Jimmy Carter. As a human being, the best human being, but he was not a good President. He was not. General goodness did not automatically make flowers bloom.

And then you look at what I think are bad men, like Richard Nixon. Nixon was a bad President too in some ways, but in other ways, he was a very effective President doing things like opening China and things like that.

When you look at the Carter administration, you see a staggering number of failures in leadership which ultimately led to primary challenge when he was going for re-election before he ultimately lost in an electoral landslide against Reagan in 1980.

Lots of people are great as people, but that doesn't mean that they make passable leaders. Tom Hanks is one of the nicest guys on the planet, but he'd probably be a lousy president.

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I personally liked Obama.

Hmmm, I like LBJ, Carter, Bush 41, Clinton, and Obama. Bush I like more as a dude than a president though, and LBJ's penis stuff doesn't sit well with me. Clinton did a lot of good, but messed up in some major major goofy ways.

So between Carter and Obama.... probably Obama.


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Obama is the best I can remember.

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From that list, Ford, but JFK was the last good president

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Eisenhower -- I like Ike! \^.^/
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Close between 41 and Obama (and that could go back 68 years, not just 57)

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Obama seems like a genuinely good dude

Theres so many videos of him being great with kids for example, youd see stuff like that with former presidents too. Never with trump though.

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