Presidents

[AustinMillbarge]

How can any discussion of the best and worst presdients be held without mention of LBJ? Twice the social programs of FDR with none of the wartime leadership. FDR may have started the wheels turning on the giant goverment entitlement program bus, but LBJ got that sucker going at mach 1...not sure we'll ever recover from it, either.

I always thought James Monroe (with help from JQ Adams) was underrated. That Mondroe Doctrine thing worked out pretty well.

Like James Madison, too. More for what he did prior to entering the office, though.

Would agree with most on the Reagan, Washington, Lincoln, T Roosevelt bit. GW Bush gets a second term and continues to prosecute the WoT as he's done so far, and methinks he'll make the all time list.

Lincoln as one of the worst presidents? Man, that's just funny...or sad...I can't tell which.

[Local_Pol]

Originally posted by D9:
Ike was a good general, but a lot of precedents were set in the Middle-East during his presidency that are still haunting us today. The age of appeasement in that region really opened during Ike's tenure.

True, but what would have been the likelyhood that Adali Stevenson would have done any better? Because Stevenson would have been in Ike's place.

Let's not forget that Eisenhower also laid all the foundations for both NASA (which JFK got virtually all the credit for in the media) and the NSA. Also, most people don't realize to this day that Ike deserves a huge amount of credit for putting in place the foundations for our entire silicon revolution - just look what happened during his watch:

1) Mr. William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor seven years earlier, founds Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories in Santa Clara Valley (1955)

2) A new company (Fairchild Semiconductor) is formed by the “Traitorous Eight� from Shockley Semiconductor. Gordon E. Moore, C. Sheldon Roberts, Eugene Kleiner, Robert N. Noyce, Victor H. Grinich, Julius Blank, Jean A. Hoerni and Jay T. Last split off and come up with ways to mass produce silicon transistors using a double diffusion technique and a chemical-etching system (1957)

3) Robert Noyce develops the monolithic integrated circuit -- a miniaturized electrical circuit on a fingernail-size wafer of silicon. Noyce’s Fairchild colleague, Jean Hoerni, takes the idea a step further and puts a collector, base and emitter all on one plane. That's the same basis for how it's done today (1958)

Ike wasn't a "showhorse" like JFK and many others - if anything, in comparison, he was a "plowhorse" - but he sure understood the meaning of the term "LOGISTICS".

My .02

[CommoGeek]

Originally posted by AustinMillbarge
Lincoln as one of the worst presidents? Man, that's just funny...or sad...I can't tell which.

Guess I'm both then...... I stand by my comments, however. He kept the country together but I fail to see him as "Honest" Abe.

Agree with the LBJ and Monroe comments. In retrospect FDR started us down the path and LBJ pushed us over the edge. His and McNamara's handling of Vietnam was criminal.

Another bad one was Grant: very corrupt cabinet and he did nothing about it.

[The Reaper]

I think Lincoln transformed from an idealist to a pragmatic "ends justify the means" sort of guy during the war.

Most people are ignorant of the root causes of the war, the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the states in rebellion, the suspension by the North of many civil rights during the war, the riots in Northern cities and widespread killings of free blacks there, the war crimes committed by invaders like Sherman, and the terrible things perpetrated on the Southern states and their people during the Northern occupation after the war.

Just my personal O.

TR

[CommoGeek]

Shall I lay out in more detail my take on Lincoln? In this thread or shall I start another?

TR, I couldn't agree more, sir. In the effort to preserve the Union he threatened the very liberties that made the Union in the first place.

[AustinMillbarge]

Originally posted by CommoGeek
Guess I'm both then...... I stand by my comments, however. He kept the country together but I fail to see him as "Honest" Abe.

I'm sure you're neither sad nor funny...strange funny, that is. You may be haha funny, so I shouldn't rule that out.

You are absolutely right that Lincoln showed a willingness to shove the Constitution in a drawer when it proved convenient (during the war, that is). I'm inclined to agree with TR's statement that this was because "ends justify the means" was the order of the day for Lincoln during the war.

I still believe he was one of the finest of our presidents, though, but that's just my .02. There seems to be a pattern among the great ones, IMO. Their idealism is what makes them giants; It's the pragmatism that can get them into trouble. The true greats' vision outweighs the errors, though, and I think this is the case with Lincoln.

Originally posted by The Reaper
Most people are ignorant of the root causes of the war...

TR, why would we want to delve into the nuances of the Civil War, its causes, or the consequences of reconstruction when it is far easier to sit around and pile on the South as a backwater haven for rednecks and racists? No region or group of people are so consistantly belittled and ragged upon as Southerners. Maybe it's so high-minded intellectuals can feel good about themselves. The war was fought over slavery, and all southerners are religious fanatics, members of the KKK and/or bigots. End of story, ok? Now I can sleep peacefully tonight.

I lived with a kid my freshman year of college who tried to argue that Southern slave owners were suppressing technology--in particular the cotton gin--prior to the Civil War because such technology would make slavery unnecessary. Where this came from, I don't know. And this kid was certainly not uneducated. Ignoring that historical facts rendered his argument moot, some other students dared suggest that slavery was perhaps one of many contributing factors to the war. Of course, he wouldn't hear anything of it. Economic factors?!? Hogwash! Not surprisingly, he attributed most of his (strong) dislike of white southerners to this erroneous information.

If a scholarship student at a highly selective Southern liberal arts college is this misinformed on basic American history, I shudder to think how much (or little) other people know about that period of our history.

[Airbornelawyer]

Originally posted by CommoGeek
Teddy Roosevelt for starting the US down the road to being a world power. The man had vision.

TR had vision, but William McKinley deserves the credit for starting the US down that path. Victory in the Spanish-American War, the occupation of Cuba, annexation of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and the China Relief Expedition were on his watch. Of course, while McKinley came into office determined to resolve the Cuba question, much of McKinley's policy towards Spain was influenced by his Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

Our rise to world power status was inevitable given our growing economic power. One thing TR did was make sure we wouldn't be a world power in the European mold, by eschewing grand imperial ambitions (although maybe he should have kept Cuba).

McKinley and TR also had the able service of Elihu Root as Secretary of War (and later as TR's Secretary of State). Root created the modern US Army. Few occupants of that office have overseen a military transformation so marked, although Rumsfeld's legacy won't be known for years, if not decades. Probably the only other Secretary to have near as much of a legacy is Henry L. Stimson, but that's a topic for another thread...

BTW, my list (in chronological, not greatness, order):

George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
Abraham Lincoln
Theodore Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Ronald Reagan

BTW, for those criticizing the inclusion of FDR on various lists because of the New Deal, you might want to look again at TR's domestic policies for a more balanced picture of both men.

PS: in case anyone is confused, while no doubt our own TR is also a man of vision and would have led the Rough Riders with aplomb , the "TR" referred to above is Teddy Roosevelt.

[CommoGeek]

Re: TR and McKinley

Thank you ABL. I was thinking more of the Great White Fleet, but your answer makes more sense.

[Airbornelawyer]

Thanks.

BTW, I forgot a line. McKinley's aggressive Assistant Secretary of the Navy was Theodore Roosevelt. He resigned to join the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry. The Secretary of the Navy, John D. Long, was considered a good administrator, but he was a politician first and foremost and had little interest in military matters per se.

While Long would go back to Massachusetts to escape Washington's oppressive summer heat, Rossevelt hung out at the Metropolitan Club, where he befriended the president of the Naval Board of Inspection and Survey, George Dewey, and President McKinley's attending surgeon, Dr. Leonard Wood. Roosevelt got Commodore Dewey placed in charge of the Asiatic Squadron on the run-up to war.

[Airbornelawyer]

Minor threadjack:

Long's congressional bio says he was born in 1838. He was admitted to the bar in 1861 and began practicing law in Maine. In 1863 he moved to Massachusetts and continued to practice law.

Does anyone remember something happening in the early 1860s that a twentysomething guy like this ought to have taken some part in?

[CommoGeek]

Originally posted by Airbornelawyer
Minor threadjack:

Long's congressional bio says he was born in 1838. He was admitted to the bar in 1861 and began practicing law in Maine. In 1863 he moved to Massachusetts and continued to practice law.

Does anyone remember something happening in the early 1860s that a twentysomething guy like this ought to have taken some part in?

Considering that the Northern elite bought their way out of the draft, it isn't surprising. Go give some money to the family of some poor guy fresh off the baot and voila!, your own "deferment."

[ktek01]

Originally posted by CommoGeek
Considering that the Northern elite bought their way out of the draft, it isn't surprising. Go give some money to the family of some poor guy fresh off the baot and voila!, your own "deferment."

Very true, and one of the reason's for the draft riots. $300 or $400 could buy your way out IIRC. The South really didn't have the manpower to spare so I doubt that would have even been an option for them. Also didn't some of the "elite" use their wealth to buy a commission and fund their own units to lead in the war, on both sides? Or should that read raised their own units and then were granted a commission?

[CommoGeek]

Originally posted by ktek01
Very true, and one of the reason's for the draft riots. $300 or $400 could buy your way out IIRC. The South really didn't have the manpower to spare so I doubt that would have even been an option for them. Also didn't some of the "elite" use their wealth to buy a commission and fund their own units to lead in the war, on both sides? Or should that read raised their own units and then were granted a commission?

You are correct on all counts. Some that "bought" commissions were good leaders, some weren't.

...............

[The Reaper]

Originally posted by eyes


We owe that to Ike...

Or the Germans.

TR